In the heart of San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia—recognized by UNESCO as the “first free people of the Americas”—stands a bronze monument dedicated to the legendary maroon leader Benkos Biohó. Sculpted by Luis Guillermo Vallejo and installed in the late 1990s, the statue has spent the decades since its erection at the center of an intense, ongoing dialogue about how history is commemorated, whose narratives are prioritized, and what freedom truly signifies.
Far from serving as a static, passive marker of historical pride, the monument to Benkos Biohó has undergone a continuous process of material and textual mutation. Through successive iterations of its epigraphs, structural additions, and spatial contextualization within the village plaza, the local Palenquero community has actively rewritten the monument’s narrative. The statue captures a striking contradiction: a heroic maroon warrior depicted in chains, straining upward from a base that anchors him to the imagery of the slave ship. By examining these persistent alterations—ranging from the changing spellings of the town’s name to the physical removal of shackles and plaques—this investigation explores how a community resists sanitizing, neocolonial interpretations of its past, opting instead for a dynamic, living relationship with memory.
Detailed Chronology: The Evolution of a Monument
To understand the friction surrounding the monument in San Basilio de Palenque, one must trace its physical and textual transformations from its inception in the late 1990s through its recent institutional redesigns.
1997: The Initial Installation and Contradictory Semiotics
Following UNESCO’s 1995 recognition of San Basilio de Palenque under its "Routes of Enslaved Peoples" program, a bronze sculpture by Luis Guillermo Vallejo was brought to the town by anthropologist Nina de Friedemann. Before receiving its pedestal, the bronze figure spent two years housed inside the local church, where villagers initially treated it with the reverence of a miraculous image or a saint.
Once mounted on a rudimentary concrete-and-tile pedestal outside the church in 1997, the monument presented a jarring visual paradox. The sculpture portrayed Benkos Biohó—the mythical founder of the settlement who fiercely fought the Spanish Crown—naked and enchained, straining upward with a desperate cry. Below the statue, a handwritten epigraph declared:
Palenke Fundado por BENKOS BIOHO en 1603 (Palenke Founded by Benkos Bioho in 1603)
This initial iteration fused the identity of the town directly with its founder. Notably, the town’s name was spelled with a "k"—Palenke—marking an intentional, subtle resistance to Hispanic orthography. However, the spatial configuration placed the monument squarely within a traditional colonial layout (church-plaza-monument), creating a confusing synthesis of maroon defiance and Hispanic spatial syntax.
The Second Epigraph and the Removal of Chains
As the years progressed, the community and local authorities sought to standardize the monument’s historical claims. A second epigraph replaced the original, altering the spelling to the Hispanicized Palenque and reclassifying the text to reference the statue rather than the town:
BENKOS BIOHO fundador de Palenque. 1603 (Benkos Bioho founder of Palenque. 1603)
Despite this institutional smoothing, the core contradiction remained: the symbol of maroon freedom was physically yoked to his pedestal by the chains of slavery. Unbearably conflicted by this representation, members of the community intervened directly by removing the chains from the sculpture. Stripped of its shackles, however, the figure’s desperate upward reach became a mute, confusing allegory. To resolve the resulting aesthetic vacuum, the epigraph was temporarily covered by a series of concrete steps, converting the base into an anonymous cenotaph—a tombstone without a body.
2015: Institutionalization, Restructuring, and Plaque Erasure
Major government-funded interventions in 2015 sought to institutionalize the site further. The village church and central plaza underwent major renovations. A new tile design was laid down, featuring a heliocentric pattern emanating from the base of the statue to establish it as the geographical and symbolic epicenter of Palenque.
A new, elaborate pedestal and historical scroll were installed, detailing Biohó’s origins in West Africa (present-day Guinea-Bissau), his leadership in the seventeenth century, and his execution by the Spanish Crown on March 16, 1621. A secondary, smaller pedestal was also erected nearby bearing the inscription: "Palenque: primer pueblo libre de América."
Yet, these stone inscriptions were once again short-lived. Demonstrating a continuous refusal to let the monument become a fixed, untouchable state artifact, the commemorative plaque was eventually removed, and the secondary pedestal was chiseled down, leaving behind visible scars of contestation.
Supporting Context & Metrics
Phase / Year
Epigraph / Textual Focus
Orthography Used
Community / Institutional Action
1997–2000s
Palenke Fundado por BENKOS BIOHO en 1603
Palenke (Kikongo-inflected)
Initial installation; sculpture housed in church before mounting on a rudimentary concrete base.
2009–2012
BENKOS BIOHO fundador de Palenque. 1603
Palenque (Hispanicized)
Standardization of the epigraph; subsequent removal of chains by community members and covering of text with steps.
2015–Present
Elaborate historical scroll detailing Biohó’s life and execution
Palenque (Hispanicized)
Government-funded plaza renovation, heliocentric tile layout, addition of a secondary pedestal, followed by subsequent removal and chiseling of plaques.
Historiographical Debates: Myth vs. Archive
The evolution of the monument reflects deeper academic and historical debates surrounding the founding of San Basilio de Palenque. Historical research by María Cristina Navarrete has complexified the popular libertarian myth by separating the history into two distinct epochs:
The 1603 Palenque of La Matuna: Led by Benkos Biohó (an enslaved African king from the Guinea coast), this fierce jungle-based insurgency successfully frustrated Spanish military expeditions and temporarily forced the colonial government to grant Biohó the right to carry a sword and move freely in Cartagena. This era ended with his trial and hanging by the Crown in 1621.
The 1713 Entente Cordiale: Nearly a century later, the "legal constitution" of the town of San Basilio occurred through a formal contract with the Spanish Crown, releasing the Palenqueros from slavery in exchange for territorial self-determination, mandatory schooling in Spanish, the establishment of a Catholic chapel, and their incorporation as a reserved military force for the Crown.
The monument in San Basilio de Palenque collapses these distinct histories into a single foundational myth, creating an ideological tension that the community’s physical interventions continually negotiate.
Official Statements and Institutional Perspectives
The contestation over Benkos Biohó’s monument highlights a fundamental philosophical clash between international institutional bodies, national governments, and local grassroots memory:
The UNESCO and State Perspective: Through programs like "Routes of Enslaved Peoples" (La ruta del esclavo) and the 2005 proclamation of Palenque as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, international and national bodies have sought to preserve and honor the town’s exceptional cultural contributions. However, critics note that these institutional frameworks often rely on Western artistic canons—such as upright, heroic, phallic statues and allegories of slave ships (seen globally in monuments like Guinea-Bissau’s independence memorial and UNESCO’s "Arc of Return")—which pacify the militant, political force of maroonage into a palatable, folkloric narrative.
The Palenquero Grassroots Perspective: Rather than accepting the state-sanctioned, immutable monument as the definitive archive of their identity, Palenqueros and Palenqueras treat the memorial as an ongoing workshop of collective memory. By chiseling away plaques, removing chains, and altering epigraphs, the community rejects the notion that Black freedom must be permanently framed through the lens of enslavement and victimization.
Future Outlook: Beyond Representation
The ongoing transformations of the Benkos Biohó monument pose a profound question for urban planners, historians, and cultural theorists alike: Can a monument truly capture the essence of liberation, or are communities doomed to constantly battle against static representations?
Archival photographs taken by Richard Cross during the 1970s—long before UNESCO’s official recognition—depict a community whose daily life effortlessly blurs the lines between past and present, the living and the dead. Images of children and women playing boxing near cemetery walls as a vestige of wartime training illustrate a ludic, intimate relationship with memory that defies Western compartmentalization.
Ultimately, the successive alterations to the monument in San Basilio de Palenque suggest that maroon freedom is not a static artifact to be gazed upon, but a continuous, active practice of displacement and negotiation. As long as the community continues to tinker with its sculptural rhetoric, the monument remains what it was always meant to be: a living dialogue with history, unbound by the silence of official stone.
Comments
Facebook App ID not configured. Please add it in the Customizer.