Death, Slavery, and Spiritual Justice on the Colombian Black Pacific (1837)

Quibdó, the frontier, majority-black capital of Chocó on the Pacific Coast of New Granada (present-day Colombia), was declared to be in a state of “general alarm” when a free black woman launched a street protest after her enslaved grandson, Justo, was murdered by his Italian master in August 1836. This article explores the contending spiritual politics that emerged in the wake of Justo’s death, and how his death became a point of political confluence between the province’s black underclass and a local elite opposition.