The Problems and Challenges of Research and Writing on Africans and their Descendants in Colonial Cartagena de Indies:A Research Report

Abstract

This paper is a work-in-progress summarizing the kinds of documents that can be used to learn about the history of Africans in colonial Cartagena de Indias. Some of the sources described here include the work of Alonso de Sandoval, a seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary who worked with African slaves, and documents related to the Cartagena leper colony. The paper's emphasis is on analysis of Afro-Cartagenan's testimonies given during the beatification process of Saint Peter Claver. These testimonies may offer a window into local African and Creole conceptions of heroism and miracles.