Panel discussion Antioquia negra: routes and roots
Date: Thursday, May 23, 2024
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Format: In-person
Location: Labs
Free admission
Antioquia holds a very rich social history that can be recovered through the documentation housed in the Historical Archive of Antioquia. The British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme project 1531 seeks to make this history visible by making available online the manuscripts that narrate the stories of those voices that were silenced in the past, especially those related to the roots of the Black population of Antioquia.
The objective of this presentation is to show the progress in the digitization and cataloging of two collections: succession records (Mortuorias) and notarial records (Escribanos) from 1606 to 1750, which allow for the study of the slave trafficking of African people to Antioquia, the forms of slavery, and the African, mestizo, Indigenous, and European genealogies that inhabited the province during that period. Characterized by the diversity of peoples and cultures that have nourished it over the last five hundred years, Antioquia is also a meeting place for sectors that have sought to create and defend their own identities, amidst tensions, conflict, and social inequality that has historically had a racial component. From the Indigenous societies whose descendants are scattered throughout the department, to the plurality of Afro peoples who descend from African persons trafficked to extract gold and work as farmers. Likewise, there is a variety of white settlers, descendants of those Spaniards who took the territory once inhabited by the Zenu, as well as recent migrations of Syrians, Lebanese, Turks, and Europeans. This is the history contained in the manuscripts that this project is working with and that this conversation seeks to disseminate.
About:
Diana Paton, general director of EAP BL1531, William Robertson Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Edinburgh.
Jose Luis Vargas Forero, university-level professional at the Document Management Division of the Government of Antioquia.
Whiston Perez Cassiani, historian from the University of Cartagena.
Kelly Lopez Roldan, historian with a master’s degree in history from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Jaqueline Gutierrez Restrepo, audiovisual communicator, with a focus on human rights and the environment.