Under pressure over border, Biden admin grants protection to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans

[stuck in the middle]

32. Like most American nations, ...

…Colombia is at its best when it channels its Palenque and Indigenous roots.

(Much the same could be said of the Catholic Church here in America, by the way, who my wife’s ancestors fought holy wars for in the struggle against slavery.)

It’s not a country without problems, by any means.

In the mid 1700s, my wife’s ancestors were offered full pardons for all of their crimes (stuff like running away from their former masters and setting up an autonomous society, and rustling cattle from their former masters, which apparently were considered as crimes by the colonial authorities, despite widespread support in my wife’s culture), but they refused the offer. They refused to stop accepting refugees and immigrants, as the colonial government wanted them to do.

Instead, they fought holy wars against the institution of slavery.

Yet, as occured in the neighboring palenques of Esmeraldes and Baudó, and in other runaway communities in colonial contexts, the inhabitants of El Castigo sought the presense of representatives of the church in their territory. Between 1731 and 1732, they sent three messengers to the city of Pasto to request that a Priest visit Nachao and Nalgua, two towns they had established, each of which had built a church within its boundries. This request exposed their strategy of aligning their community with the Catholic precepts that were central to social and political life in Popayán.

The Quito Audiencia tried to take advantage of the maroons' interest in the church, attempting to co-opt the palenque into establishing civil government in the area in exchange for a pardon from the state. The runaway community resisted the audencia's attempt to include them within its juristiction (reducción) but succeeded in securing a permanent priest for their settlement. Morover, the Popayán municipal council conceeded their right to name two people from the palenque to "administer justice in the name of His Magisty to all the individuals who currently are congregated in those towns," with the condition that they not admit any more runaways to the community, detaining the fugitives and informing the Popayán authorities to their presence. Thus, the maroons of Patía not only used religion for the purpose of community building; they also seem to have preferred to establish a relationship with the church rather than with the civil authorities.

From post #1 of this thread

https://www.democraticunderground.com/12298882

Yeah, the English translation is every bit as convoluted as the Spanish sentence that it came from, which I happen to know because I had the same impression when I first read it in Spanish. (I was really hoping that she’d clear that up, but she didn’t. Oh, well…)

But the upshot is that my wife’s ancestors, who were considered as “illegals” here in America, chose to fight holy wars against their former masters rather than submit and regularize their status, because they could, because, due to the fortunes of plate tectonics and their own courage, they had the ability to resist.