Paper short abstract:

This presentation addresses the history of black neighborhoods/diasporic communities in Cartagena by resorting to the work of Afro-Colombian writer Manuel Zapata Olivella. His work challenged racial silence introducing race as a salient factor in thinking of the city's process of urbanization.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout the colonial era, thousands of enslaved Africans arrived in America through the port of Cartagena. Up until today, their descendants make up a significant share of the city’s population. However, the racial silence that has prevailed since Colombian independence has compromised the efforts by local and national historiography to discuss the historical experience of Black people in the city, including, the question about the role that race and racism played in the way they have settled in the urban space. This presentation addresses this question by resorting to the work of Afro-Colombian writer Manuel Zapata Olivella. His work, which included novels, ethnographic accounts, and essays, challenged racial silence and placed race at the center of the analysis. His novel Chambacú, Black Slum (1965) openly introduced race as a salient factor in thinking of the process of urbanization that Cartagena went through since the mid-twentieth century. Zapata represented the city’s Black-majority neighborhoods as diasporic communities where African-rooted cultural traditions prevailed despite racism, state violence, and poverty. He also described the state efforts to clear these sites as part of the history of material dispossession faced by the African diaspora in the Americas. By analyzing his novel this presentation discusses the intersection between race and space in the production of urban space in Colombia as well as the possibilities to overcome racial silence by decolonizing the archive through the use of non-hegemonic historical sources.