The First Maroon Community: Santiago del Príncipe and Panama’s Congo Heritage

Photo: Mario Ruben for DICPNY

On October 12, 2019, nearly 30,000 Panamanians attended the 24th Annual Pre-Independence Parade of Panamá held in Brooklyn, New York. The parade, organized by a group of Afro-Panamanians committed to preserving and celebrating our cultural heritage, is one of the largest outside of the country.

During the parade we posted a picture of a traditional Afro-Panamanian Congo dance group with a truncated description. The post received many comments, including several objections. It also highlighted a persistent issue which has been around for decades as diaspora communities forge bridges of solidarity. Many within Black diaspora communities do not know their own histories; this is exacerbated even further when discussing the histories and cultural contexts of other Black diasporas.

Panama celebrates its 116th year of independence from Colombia this week amidst nationwide civic protests. In this context, we briefly highlight the resilience, independence and heritage of Panama's 500 year old Congo traditions. 

In 2014, archeologists from the University of Barcelona discovered,  "La Villa de Santiago del Príncipe", the first documented community of free blacks in the Western Hemisphere built in 1579. The findings, part of the UNESCO Slave Route Project were reported in  "Afrocolonial Archaeology – Slave Route Sites of Memory – Resistance, Freedom and Heritage". They confirmed the location near the town of “Nombre de Dios”, a key trade port in Colón Province, 80 miles from the capital of Panama City. This first free community was established by Luis de Mozambique, one of the earliest maroon kings in the Americas. Nearly a century before 1619, enslaved Africans who rebelled throughout the Western Hemisphere established communities of free Blacks or "maroons". Many of these communities, called "palenques" in Spanish or quilombos in Brazil, still exist. The Congo community in Panama are descendants of King Bayano, another in the line of 16th century maroon leaders in Panama. Ftnte The writings of Spanish friar and colonizer Bartolomé de las Casas described Africans possibly from Guinea, already in Darien, Panamá, by 1514. 

Credit: UNESCO

The cultural heritage of Panama’s present day Congo descendants has been passed down through the generations for more than 500 years.  These traditions, principally rooted in maroon practices, are most often seen in celebrations, death or carnivals, clothing colors and patterns, dance movements, song and character themes and percussions. These practices were functional and intentional. For example: wearing of clothes inside out as a form of communication and mockery of slave owners; use of oil/paint on the hands and faces common for 1) palenque watchmen,  2) maroons responsible for raiding Spanish colonial towns and plantations and 3) slaves escaping to freedom; and strapping of trinkets around their belts symbolizing their few personal possessions. The clothing used during these ceremonies and dances represent the Queen, (the most important character within these matriarchal communities), the King, the bird, the Devil and more. Each of the five polleras (or traditional dresses) have their own significance and connote certain status in the matriarchy. 

The first documented slave revolt in the Western Hemisphere occurred in Santo Domingo, Hispaniola on December 25, 1522, by Senegalese men on the sugar plantation of Admiral Don Diego Colón, the son of Christopher Columbus. According to spanish colonial records, the second occurred in Nombre de Dios in 1527. Both were brutally suppressed after bloody battles.

CREDIT: Creative Commons

[We have news of the first rebellion of blacks in Panama in the year 1527, in which the victims of desperation due to their treatment, rebelled against authorities, but were brutally put down, following a bloody fight] "Tenemos noticias del primer alzamiento de negros ocurrido en "Panamá en el año de 1527, en donde victimas de la desesperación por el trato recibido, se rebelaron contra las autoridades, pero fueron brutalmente sometidos, tras una sangrienta lucha.( fragmento tomado de escrito del Sr Jorge Conte Porras)"

Geographical, military and economic considerations often proved key to the success of any single revolt or effort to sustain maroon communities against continued armed assaults by colonial forces, pirates or slave owners. By relentlessly attacking the vital Atlantic-Pacific Ocean trade route, Luis de Mozambique and Bayano were able to force negotiated treaties with the spanish crown, recognizing them as free men in exchange for a ceasefire. 

In 1553, relentless Maroon revolts and raids in Panama had forced the Spanish to the negotiating table. By 1580, after years of battling pirates and the spanish crown, Maroons aligned themselves with British pirates/profiteers including Sir Francis Drake. This Maroon-buccaneer alliance posed a serious challenge to Spanish hegemony in the region.  In fact, to help confirm their own findings on Santiago del Principe, UNESCO researchers used Drake's cartographic footprint, the General Archive of Indias in Seville, Spain together with key works of Spanish colonial literature, such as the poem "La Dragontea" by Lope de Vega (supported by other works).

Following Luis de Mozambique's reign and between 1542-1581, came other maroon leaders included Felipillo, Bayano, Antón Mandinga, Juan de Diosa, El Negro Madagascar, Domingo Congo.  

Felipillo became such a threat to Spanish trade in the 1540's that he was captured, drawn and quartered by horse and his palenque burned to the ground in 1551. The death and bravery of Felipillo turned him into a legend. Those who followed another cimarron leader, Anton Mandinga, continued fighting and by 1581, another treaty was negotiated guaranteeing freedom, land, non aggression by Spanish colonizers and autonomy to the palenque.

CREDIT: America Economia

While Bayano was not the first maroon king from Panamá, he was one of the most successful. He organized and protected a palenque of 1,500, stretching from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean from 1552-56/1556-58, and has rivers and lakes named in his honor.  The descendants of Bayano, the Congo, thus preserve a rich heritage as the earliest practitioners of black liberation through oral history's, dance, attire and more.

Although widely known in Panamá, Congo traditions had been guarded from outside eyes for centuries and simultaneously excluded from national patrimony.  In 2015, the Congo attire was first recognized in Panama's Festival of the Thousand Polleras after several years of unsuccessful attempts. In 2016, the 1st Festival de la Polleras Congo was held in Colon province. In 2018, UNESCO declared Congo culture as intangible cultural patrimony to the world. In 2019, the Festival of las Polleras Congo was denied funding by the Institute of Arts and Culture (INAC). Despite setbacks the push by Afrodescendants for recognition and plenary participation, culturally as well as economically and politically continues in Panamá, as it does in all of Latin America.

Other early maroon communities include:

• Colombia, 1600 - San Basilio de Palenque, one of the first free space communities still in existence was founded by Benkos Bioho. Inspired a 50 year slave revolt from 1621-1671.

• Mexico, 1608- Yanga founded by Gaspar Yanga known for his military and organizational prowess and his community leadership skills forced the Spanish to negotiate

• Mosquitia (present day Nicaragua) 1633/1687. King of the Mosquitia.

• Colombia, 1634- Leonor, Queen of the Limón palenque near Cartagena

• Brazil, 1670 Ganga Zumba king of the Quilombo do Palmares captured along with 5,000 of his men by the Portuguese in Angola.

• Zumbi and Dandara dos Palmares 1655-1695 Leaders of the Quilombo Palmares and revered as the godparents of AfroBrazil. Day of Black Consciousness in Brazil dated in honor of the death of Zumbi dos Palmares. 

• Jamaica - Queen Nanny c. 1686. Leader of the Maroons in the first Maroon War of 1734 and hailed as a Jamaican national hero in 1976

• Honduras/Nicaragua/Guatemala/Belize - 1797 Black Caribs/Garifuna  fought against being enslaved at all, reaching a truce with the British which exiled them from St. Vincent, Grenadines to Roatan, Honduras. 

• The most well known slave revolt Haitian Revolution, 1791-1804. The military support by Haitian President Alexandre Petion of Simon Bolivar lead to the end of slavery in Gran Colombia (Panama, Ecuador, Colombia) and Venezuela.

Formal education systems barely teach us black history in any country. Some of the work to educate those less knowledgeable about the Black Americas (often times our own) is on Afrolatinxs. We encourage you to dig deeper and learn about other black diaspora cultures in the Americas, specifically from black diaspora cultures from the Americas. If not, instead of an ally, you become part of the problem of erasure and invisibilization Afrolatinxs and Afrolatinamericans continue to combat.

Additional readings:

Craft, Renée Alexander. When the Devil Knocks: The Congo Tradition and the Politics of Blackness in Twentieth-Century Panama. OSU Press, 2015

Fortune, Armando . “Los Negros en Panamá”, en Revista Lotería 2ª. época, no. 143. (1976, octubre) bdigital.binal.ac.pa › loteria › descarga › 1967_143_LNB

Lindsay, Arturo. “The Research Methods of an Artist-Ethnographer on the Congo Coast of Panama”. Breaking the Disciplines: Reconceptions in Knowledge, Art and Culture. Edited by Martin L. Davies and Marsha Meskimmon. I.B. Taurus, (2003).

Maloney, Dr. Gerardo. “Armando Fortune” . Protagonistas Panamá Siglo XX. (2015, septiembre). http://www.protagonistaspanamasigloxx.com/product/armando-fortune/

Pike, Ruth. "Black Rebels: The Cimarrons of Sixteenth Century Panama," The Americas 64/2 (2007): 245-46, by Ruth Pike citing the original source, Pedro de Aguado, Historia de Venezuela, Book 9, chapter 13.

Pulido Ritter, Luis. “Armando Fortune y la Identidad Cultural Panameña” Tareas, núm. 140, enero-abril, 2012, pp. 83-106 Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos "Justo Arosemena" Panamá, Panamá https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/5350/535055523007.pdf

Vila Vilar, Enriqueta. “Cimarronaje en Panamá y Cartagena. El costo de una guerrilla en el siglo XVII”. Caravelle. Cahiers du monde hispanique et luso-brésilien. 1987  Vol. 49 pp. 77-92 https://www.persee.fr/doc/carav_0008-0152_1987_num_49_1_2341