#MappingFreedom

Freedom colonies are the communities that formed immediately as a response to Western colonialism; from the palenques, quilombos, maroon colonies in Colombia, Brazil, and Jamaica and the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean including Haiti, to the “black/brown settlements" in North America, Australia, Africa and SE Asia. (I descend from at least 10 of these communities.)

As soon as Western Colonialism set out to disenfranchise, there was instant resistance: enslaved Africans jumped ship and with indigenous groups created what became to be “colonies of freedom.” The very first ones were founded in the late 1400s and early 1500s. Africans who had been enslaved by European colonists escaped the slave ships as they docked in ports in what is now Brazil and Colombia, and ran for the hills.

#TheResistance had immediately begun. As soon as Western colonialism decided to create constructs of “race” to separate and divide people into, in order to carry out its race/ism (take away freedom from, and disenfranchise people based on Europe’s Dark Age medieval feudalistic terrorism, and the color hierarchy of white supremacy), the people targeted reacted instantly, creating the original “safe spaces.”

The freedom colonies offered an alternative way of being in the colonized world. Escaped Africans often banded with the remaining indigenous peoples who had managed to survive the carefully planned genocides, creating communities fiercely devoted to protecting their freedoms.

Colombia’s San Basilio de Palenque was one of such. Created in the early 1500s by escaped Africans who jumped ships as they docked into the port of Cartagena, and headed to the hills to form their own fortified colonies of freedom, the community fended off invaders since inception. By 1605, the colonial Governor of Cartagena, Gerónimo de Suazo y Casasola, unable to defeat the “Village of the Maroons” as it was then known, offered a peace treaty, but broke it in 1619 to capture and execute one of its founders, former Mande/Kabuu Mandinka royal, Benko Biohó (originally captured from what is now the islands off of the coast of Guinea-Bissau).

A veritable T’Challa, this prince was certainly the Black Panther of this Wakanda, dedicating his life to the rescue, livelihood and protection of the palenque. This betrayal by the Spanish colonial government has contributed to the history of distrust of Columbia’s government ever since. In 1691, the Spanish crown officially recognized San Basilio de Palenque by Royal Decree, thus guaranteeing its freedom. In 2005, UNESCO declared it a heritage site.