Private Story
The Stories that Plants Tell: Traditional Healers of the African Diaspora in San Basilio Palenque
Summary
Although little known outside of Colombia, the town of San Basilio de Palenque is fundamental to the history of the African diaspora in America. This work focusses in the spiritual healers tradition, like Rosalinda Quinones Pardo one of the last remaining spiritual healers of Palenque, whose vast knowledge of plants is based on medicinal practices that date back to Africa prior to the slave trade. Unfortunately these practices are being lost within the new generations. The point of this project is to document and thus help safeguard these ancestral medicinal practices.
To help uncover and evoke the role of African tradition in my culture, since 2009 I have gone numerous times to San Basilio de Palenque, an isolated village along the Caribbean coast of Colombia with great importance for the history of the African diaspora in Colombia and the Americas in general.
Four hundred and one years ago, Palenque was founded by the maroon leader Benkos Biojó and his army who freed enslaved Africans from the port city of Cartagena, one of the largest slave markets in Latin America at the time, establishing Palenque as a refuge against attacks by the Spanish army. Undefeated, Palenque was finally recognized by the Crown as the first free community of Africans in the New World.
Over the centuries, the Palenqueros have largely maintained the integrity of their African traditions. Descended from the Central African region called Mayombe Kongo; they speak Palenquero, a Creole language closely related to Kongo. In 2005 UNESCO recognized Palenque as a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible heritage of Humanity.”
In Palenquero cosmology, after death one’s soul goes to the highest mountain in Africa. Society is organized by Cuadros, lifelong hereditary fraternities that provide mutual support and moral guidance. Palenquero musicians preserve and elaborate on African rhythms, influencing contemporary Colombian and Caribbean musical genres.
My documentation centers around the figure of spiritual healers, like doña Rosalinda Quiñones Pardo, a woman in her late 80s whose vast knowledge of plants exemplifies the African legacy in Palenquero medicinal practice. When I first met doña Rosalinda I discovered the key to my connection to Palenque, and the motif of this work. She deeply reminds me of my own grandmother, who transmitted to me an immense respect for plants and their healing and sacred potential. Indeed, doña Rosalinda plants and harvests different species according to the phases of the moon, just like my grandmother did.
With support from this open call from Visura I will be able to return to Palenque and complete this work. The goal is to create a photobook and exhibition which I will donate to the Palenque Cultural Center and other local actors dedicated to preserving and celebrating Palenquero culture.
