We are winding slowly and heavily the broken roads of the western mountain range of Colombia. We cross its final elevations and this exuberant nature is going to offer us something fascinating. Suddenly the elevations descend and an impressive horizon opens before our eyes, an immense plain of tropical vegetation. We cannot see, but it is there, like a mute witness of history. Beyond our sight and the thickets. This is the black and indigenous Chocó. Few access routes and an ample selvatic fluvial net, a natural transportation route of its habitants. Through it arrived the Spaniards 500 years ago. It is one of the regions of the Colombian Pacific.
"The Chocó was always abandoned", and "it is Colombia's most abandoned place" are common statements of its people. These remarks can and must be enlarged all along the Pacific coast: Valle, Cauca and Nariño, the remaining departments that make it up and where the overwhelming majority of the people living there are black. A land very rich in natural resources. An activity of intense mineral, forestal and fishing extraction searching easy money.
A black population which has always lived in extreme poverty, with almost total unemployment and serious problems of malnutrition, without health or education services, without running water, with extremely scarce conditions of inhabitability. Blacks in Colombia are estimated at 5 million with significant concentration in the Pacific (1 million) and in the Atlantic regions. In the Pacific, the black population, comprising 5% of indigenous people and another 5% of mixed-race, makes up 90%. This is the place of highest concentration of blacks in all Colombia.
The black population of the American continent is estimated at 14% (1: footnotes at end) The black presence in America was tied to the need that conquerors and colonists, and, above all, the European kingdoms, had for the extraction of silver and gold. Cheap labor for an intensive and productive work. Mining, plantations, sugar mills were the preferred places for black slaves. Indians were not enough to satisfy those needs and, thus, black slavery was born in America. 1511 received the first black slaves from places as diverse as Mauritania, Ghana, Togo, Dahomey, and also from Nigeria, Luanda y Angola. The business of "trade" was so profitable that slave traders, basically English, French, Dutch. and Portuguese, besides working at it profusely, divided among themselves the places where to recruit the slaves (2).
Starting in the XVI century, the doors of America remained wide open to receive the new slavery and through it kept entering tens of thousands of people of the black race. The "trade" business was very good and the benefits rendered by that massive labor was unsurpassable. In the XVII century about 1.5 million Africans arrived in America. Through the whole duration of the "trade" there were 15 million plus 2 million who died in the crossings (3).
Slavery remained a symbol for blacks. The terms black and slave became one thing. The emancipated blacks, to distinguish themselves from the slaves, began to use the term "African". Starting in 1830, the movement to have them returned to Africa caused the emancipated blacks to call themselves Afro-americans (4). Obviously, the stigma of nature and the beyond were not missing in rounding off this situation. "To go against slavery is to go against God", said the Church. All the black towns, all the persons of black race became, without interception, "pieces of Africa", regardless of their origins or other cultural characteristics, to be bought, owned or sold. In the beginning they were called "bozales" or pure blacks (all slaves of African language received this appellative). Their identity as African people or peoples disappeared gradually under such traumatic conditions. All their needs were satisfied by the masters, who imposed all limits to their activities. Such living conditions broke little by little the African cultural (5) and linguistic traditions.
The Spanish Crown got to the Chocó and found out about the existence of gold. It had to face a long indigenous resistance lasting approximately till the end of the 16th century. An indigenous population estimated at 90,000 people ended up reduced (6) by half. The needs of mining caused the arrival in the early 1700s of the first black slaves to El Chocó. Towards the end of the 17th century, the number of black slaves counted was 17,000. If the indigenous population was reduced by half, the blacks did not want to be slaves any more and, throughout the 18th century, escapes, rebellions and uprisings (the largest of which took (7) place in 1728) were frequent. They wanted to remain blacks with dignity, giving birth to a phenomenon known as "cimarronismo".
The landowners called the cattle that escaped from the pastures "cimarrones" and so were called the runaway blacks, the places where they took refuge being known as "palenques". These were relatively secure places, of difficult access, where the "cimarrones" organized their lives and from where they planned their assaults on properties and masters. The freedom that was decreed in the mid 18th century was fully opposed by the landowners and fully difficult for those who benefitted from the law, since they were freed in the midst of a hostile society and left without means to sustain themselves. Some kept on working in the mines, others worked on arts and crafts, others spread themselves through the Atrato, San Juan, Baudua and other rivers to begin building their huts and working in staple-producing plots. This created conflicts with the natives who saw their lands being invaded. And, thus, they started a life full of uncertainties.
The American invasion in 1903 and the creation of Panama as a new state (until then Colombian territory and continuation of the Pacific coast towards the north), the construction of the Panama Canal with an ample zone of military protection (a great base included), put over the table the strategic and economic importance of the place, today corroborated by the passing of years. With great difficulty, blacks were breaking with the very strong and initial discrimination.
Little by little were breaking new fields as important as education and began to belong to the liberal and conservative parties and to participate in the institutions and in the regional government. We are already in the 60s of our century. These new representatives introduced old dominations and privileges among the Pacific poor, between those who were always their own brethren and with whom they had shared long hardships and history. Their new social position, their higher economic availability were distinguishing a group from the crushing poverty in which them have live and are living the immense black majority.
Nowadays, the small sectors of well to do blacks who have been achieving a differentiated level of life have initially obtained their resources through their participation in the institutions. that has been the springboard from which they have introduced themselves in businesses, the transport of passengers and also, Œin the extraction of gold, with methods of exploitation as juicy as the "endeude" or falling into debt. But it should not be forgotten that we are talking about a very small group and that, for instance, trading, one of the economic activities which brings most distinction, particularly in the cities and important towns, is mostly in the hands of people of mixed-racial background, the well©known "paisas" of Antioquia.
Their previous life, in the conditions of slavery, brought as an effect, the traumatic cut with the original traditions and languages. But a series of new cultural components were giving way to other forms of cultural expression which are maintained and make sense, more so in the field, to a series of events or moments considered very important.