Tag: Cartagena

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Colombia

Slave of the blacks: a visit to San Pedro Claver church and cloister

Marcus

Known as the “slave of the blacks”, San Pedro Claver was a revered yet polemical character who dedicated his life to the aid of slaves. A visit to his eponymous church and cloister in Cartagena is recommended.

A historic colonial city

Cartagena sweats history. It was founded in 1533 on the site of an indigenous settlement by Pedro de Heredia. With its strategic location, it quickly became the main Spanish port on the Caribbean coast and the most important gateway to South America, growing rich on the cargo, including humans, that passed through the city.

The old town, surrounded by thick walls to protect against invaders, is packed with preserved colonial churches, plazas and mansions. Ambling around the old town and soaking up its rich, and often bloody history, is the best way to appreciate the city. On one such meander, I stumbled upon San Pedro Claver church and cloister.

San Pedro Claver church and cloister
San Pedro Claver church and cloister

It was named after Pedro Claver, a Spanish Jesuit born monk that lived and died in the humble cloister. Beside it is an imposing baroque church, its facade built from golden coraline rock, and now the resting place for Claver’s bones.

The open square is busy with tourists and hawkers trying to attract their attention. Facing the church is an up-market colonial hotel, beside which are rusted iron sculptures, skeletal figures designed by Carmona, a local artist, depicting traditional life in Cartagena. The square is connected to Plaza de la Aduana, the city’s old slave market and where a statue of Christopher Columbus stands today.

The early life of Pedro Claver

Pedro Claver was born in Catalonia in 1580, just 70 years after King Ferdinand of Spain legitimised the culture of slavery by giving permission to directly import slaves from Africa.

Claver studied in Barcelona and Mallorca and entered the society of Jesus in 1602. 8 years later he moved to modern-day Colombia to continue his theological education and was ordained in 1616.

In Cartagena, the main centre of the slave trade in the new world, he met Jesuit Alonso de Sandoval, author of De instauranda Aethiopum salute, the earliest known book length study of African ethnicity and culture which included an expose on slavery. Against the custom, Alonso would baptise the slaves as they arrived at the port. Inspired by his colleague, Claver started doing the same.

The slave trade

By this time, the slave trade had been established for over a century. Mine owners considered indigenous people ill-suited to work in their mines and so met their labour requirements by importing people purchased in West Africa. Others were captured at random, especially able-bodied males and females deemed suitable.

A bronze statue of San Pedro Claver along with a representation of an evangelised slave stands outside the church, sculpted by Enrique Grau.
A bronze statue of San Pedro Claver along with a representation of an evangelised slave stands outside the church, sculpted by Enrique Grau.

“The slave of the blacks”

The miserable conditions of the enslaved people aboard ships and in the pens of Cartagena prompted Pedro to declare himself “the slave of the blacks forever”. He dedicated his life to relieving their suffering.

Accompanied by interpreters and carrying food and medicines, he would board incoming slave ships and visit the pens, where he tended to the sick, comforted the distraught and terrified captives, and taught religion.

During the fallow season when slave ships were less common, Claver would visit, slaves on local plantations to encourage their faith and to ask their masters to treat them humanely. During these visits, he often refused the hospitality of the plantation owners, preferring to stay in the slave quarters.

Despite opposition from proponents of the lucrative trade, Pedro continued for 38 years, preaching against the ill-treatment and baptising an estimated 300,000 enslaved individuals.

A visit to San Pedro Claver church and cloister

The cloister is a three story building that surrounds a tranquil and jungle-like courtyard. It’s been turned into an eclectic museum, each room covering a different theme. One shows Haitian paintings and African masks, another is covered from wall to wall with pencil sketches of Afro faces, perhaps a tribute to the countless slaves that passed through the city and their descendents.

On the third level, there’s a thought-provoking exhibition dedicated to feminism, possibly inspired by the saint’s progressivism. Other rooms show religious iconography and paintings of every bishop the city has had (predominantly male and white – despite over 36% of the population being black – 2005 census). Paintings along the colonnade tell the story of Calver’s life. A highlight is the visit to the humble and dark cell where the saint lived and died.

The adjacent church, which can be admired from the choir stall, shows off impressive stained glass windows and a spectacular altar made of Italian marble. Below which you can find the saint’s remains, including his visible skull.

The bones of San Pedro Claver lie below the marble altar

Future legacy

Claver died in 1654 in the cloister, having been confined to his cell for the previous four years after contracting the plague. It’s said that when news of his death spread, such big crowds, many seeking relics, came to the church that soldiers had to be called to protect his body. The city authorities, who had considered him an annoyance for his advocacy, ordered a public funeral and buried him with pomp and ceremony.

In 1896, he was canonised by Pope Leo XIII, who proclaimed him patron of all Roman Catholic missions to African peoples. He is also the patron saint of those in slavery and the Republic of Colombia.

Pedro Claver is the saint that has most impressed me after the life of Christ.

Pope Leo XIII

In 2017, Pope Francis honoured the saint on his final day of his visit to Colombia.

However, the saint for some is still a divisive figure. Katie Grimes, author of Fugitive Saints: Catholicism and the Politics of Slavery, believes that the way the church celebrates Claver as “the saint of the slave trade” upholds racism more than it undermines it.

She argues that it gives the impression the church was historically fighting racist practices rather than actively participating in them. Instead of searching inside itself for racial heroes, Grimes believes, the church should celebrate the black fugitives who sought refuge outside of it.

Perhaps they should. Even still it’s no surprise that a church that today struggles for relevance continues to celebrate a figure that went against societal norms to support the downtrodden.

Further information

Entry costs 24,000 pesos for foreigners and 16,000 pesos for Colombians. You can hire a guide for 30,000 pesos. Opening hours are 10am – 5pm.

The address is Plaza de San Pedro Claver, Cra. 4 #30-01.

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Categories
Colombia

When the British tried to invade Colombia

Marcus

In 1741, a vast British naval force died in a disastrous attack trying to capture Cartagena. They were repelled by a wily and mutilated Spanish naval commander, named Blas De Lezo, who managed to withstand the invasion with his much smaller force. This is the story of when the British tried to invade Colombia.

A controversial plaque

Fast forward almost 300 years and in 2014 the then Prince Charles (now King to the UK) visited Cartegena to unveil a granite plaque that acknowledged  “the valour and suffering of all those who died in combat whilst seeking to take the city”. 

The tribute appeared very close to a statue of Blas de Lezo, the Spanish hero of the battle, which characteristically shows him peg-legged, wielding a sword, and staring out with his one good eye.

Statue of de Lezo in Cartagena

The locals, who consider de Lezo a hero, reacted angrily to the plaque’s salute to an invading force.

“In London, why don’t they put up a tribute to the Nazi pilots that bombed the city during World War II?” asked Juan Carlos Gossaín, the governor, as reported by the New York Times.

El Universal, the local newspaper, speculated that de Lezo would rise from his grave if he knew of the plaque.

The back-garden of the Iberian Peninsula and Jenkin’s ear

During the age of discovery, the Spanish had the immense fortune of being the first to arrive in the Americas.

Despite the vast distances and limitations in technology, in less than a century, the new world had become the ‘back garden of the iberian peninsula’. A fabulous garden full of riches, gold, silver, tobacco and spices.

But at the same time, its sheer size made it difficult to defend and rival European powers wanted their piece of the cake.

One such example was in 1739 when Britain and Spain went to war in a dispute over market access and Spanish resentment of increasing British colonisation of North America. 

The conflict was posthumously christened the War of Jenkins Ear, so called after Spanish coastguards cut off the ear of a British Captain, Robert Jenkins, accused of smuggling off the coast of Florida. “Go, and tell your King that I will do the same, if he dares to do the same”, Jenkins was told

The British public were outraged by this perceived insult to Britain’s honour and the incident was seen as a justification of war, or casus belli.

Cartegena was the most important port in Virreinato de Nueva Granada, the Spanish colonial territory that today makes up Colombia, Panama, Venezuela and Ecuador. The city was vital to the empire for the export of Bolivian silver to Spain and for the import of enslaved Africans. See my post on the history and origin of the Colombian people in which Cartegena played a vital role.

The British eyed up Cartegena as a means to effectively control entry and exit to South America.

The foiled attack on Cartagena

The Battle of Cartagena is little known in the UK. With so much colonial history, this particular embarrassment has mainly escaped the history books. (See my other post on Spain’s five most influential wars).

It was a sizable defeat. The British, led by Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, had 186 ships, including dozens of large warships, with about 23,600 sailors and soldiers, and 300 artilleries. Part of the contingent included American colonists, among which was George Washington’s older brother, Lawrence.

It was one of the largest fleets ever assembled, with 60 more ships than the famous Spanish Armada.

The Spanish had just six warships and about 4,000 men. They were led by De Lezo, a storied veteran who years before had lost his left leg and his left eye in battle. His right arm was virtually useless due to a previous wound.

The British enjoyed early success in the battle, chasing the Spanish from some forts protecting Cartagena’s harbour. But they were later held back by infighting between Vernon and his troop commander. Delay and bad weather set in. Dysentry, yellow fever and starvation soon ravaged the troops.

When the weakened British forces attacked the city’s most strategic fort, San Lazaro, where De Lezo’s statue now stands, they were unable to breach the walls, which had been recently fortified. At the mercy of the Spanish, the British were slaughtered and forced to depart in defeat.

The death toll was enormous, mostly from disease. Overall, the British lost between 9,500 and 11,500 men.

Nonetheless, Lawrence Washington went home full of admiration for Vernon and named his estate after him. It later became the home of his brother, George.

After news of the attack reached Britain, Robert Walpole, the de facto first ever prime minister, was forced to resign. The Spanish consolidated their hold over its colonies and shipping routes, while the hero of the hour, Blas de Lezo, died of illness weeks later.

A hammer to the plaque?

The then Prince Charles presenting the controversial plaque. credit: AFP

Back to 2014 and the unpopular plaque to the British soldiers.

Finally, the mayor of Cartagena bowed to pressure and asked the historical association responsible for its erection to remove it. But before they had a chance, it was smashed up by a local wielding a hammer, Senor Mr. Rendon, a retired electrical engineer, who soon became a local folk hero. A modern day de Lezo for some.

Rendon was later quoted as saying, “You don’t play around with history here, You’re not going to put up a plaque in New York in honour of the people who knocked down the twin towers, isn’t that right? For us it’s the same thing.”