The slavery and Bolivar (wk15a)

The independence includes a lot of things, some good and others not so good. Simon Bolivar was a very important character in the independence; he was the general that motivated the countries to be independent.

Simon Bolivar made very useful things and he is very important to the countries of the “Gran Colombia”, he was the principal character that fight for his rights and for the rights of the country, but like all human beings, he also made some bad things (in my opinion), although at that time that was normal. He made the slaves become soldiers with nothing in exchanged. A lot of soldiers were killed because of the sicknesses and the little food, because of this reason Bolivar chose to use the slaves like soldiers.

At that time, when Bolivar decided to take the slaves like soldiers, there were few slaves, the masters that had slaves were giving them their freedom, “sin embargo, los que fueran llamados a las armas por el presidente de la republica, o hicieran algun servicio distinguido, entran desde luego en posesion de su libertad” Colombia imagenes diversidad ( 1492 a hoy), pg 152. It was converting into illegal to have slaves, only the state can take them if they need to, that was what Simon Bolivar made. Sime slaves after knowing this condition decided to enole the army before they were taken. “Y los esclavistas acentuaron sus resentimientos contra Bolivar y una vez pasó la guerra, buscaron una liberación con el pago de indemnización” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1942 a hoy), pg 154

In April of 1820, Bolivar asked Santander to bring him 3000 slaves. Santander answer to this buy telling his fears. “El testimonio defiende la esclavitud por razones economicas. La independencia valia menos que lo intereses de los esclavistas” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy), pg 150

The process of Independence (1808-1824) wasn`t the same in the entire continent. “En el norte de suramérica la independencia estuvo signada por un enfrentamiento abierto entre españoles y americanos. En cambio, en el virreinato del Perú, fue obra de una fuerza multinacional que reclutó hombres de Argentina, Chile y Colombia”. Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy), pg 156

So, the slaves at this time are finally getting their freedom. They can know make there own decisions, and do what ever they want in their lives.

The slave’s picture (wk 12 -13)

Mutambe was a normal kid that lived in Ghana, he was 6 years old and lived with his mother Quisha. Every day, after going to study, he painted. He loves to make drawings of landscapes and of people doing things. There was always a story behind each drawing.

One day when he was drawing, some people came to his home and took him and his mother, they sent them into a big boat with a lot of Ghana citizens. All the people were worried about where they were sent. Mutambe was very scared, but his mother clamed him down by saying to him that they were exploring new lands, that this was a trip. She always played games with him when something was going to happen.

After a long trip they landed into a beautiful place, with a lot of nature and lovely houses. In that moment Mutambe was very happy because he thought that one of those big houses was for him, but unfortunately they were sent into a place that didn’t have beautiful nature around, and had a very small and ugly house.

That house was empty, the only thing it had inside was two beds, a lot of paper on the floor, and cockroaches. In the bedroom, there where two beds for 5 people and only one bathroom.

The next day some persons handcuffed them and took them to a place where a lot of handcuffed people where in a line and other people would take one of them and give to some man gold. After two hours of being there, with out sitting, one man took Mutambe and Quisha, he give some gold coins in exchange for them and took them into a big house, that house was the house of the man. There was a little house infront of that big house, that was for them and other 4 people. Mutambe asked a woman that was in the house, where were they, and the woman said that they were in the land of their master, and that they were slaves.

Four years later

Mutambe was now 10 years old and he had to work in the farm with his mother. They were very unhappy because as slaves have not rights. Their master treats them like if they were garbage.

Mutambe every night did the same that he did before: he painted. He was very good at it, he always drew his life. One day he drew a ship with a lot of black people inside and all crying. He also drew a boy taking a rock into a big house and a man looking at him and saying bring more.

His mother was very impressed about his drawings, they were very good. They seemed like professional paintings, so she decided to play another game with his son, she said to him that his paints were a treasure and that he had to hide them in a safe place where the bad people couldn’t find them.

She knew that when the master saw those paintings he was going to take them and sell them, without giving Mutambe any money.

One day the master went to the slaves house, and he found Mutambe painting, he as Quisha predicted, took his painting and asked him to give him all the paintings he had. He give them all. Mutambe was very sad and he cried a complete day, his mother was very worried and angry, so she decided to escape from that farm. She said to Mutambe that they were going to leave the master, and go to another place.

The next day they were working, and in the time of lunch they escaped! It was very difficult to escape but they did it.

They lived for 6 more weeks after escaping, and they died because they didn’t have food and shelter.

The independence (Wk 11A)

This chapter tells how the citizens in Colombia began to search for the independence, like every country in the World that has been colonized.

It was thought that the independence process of Colombia started in 1810, but really it started in 1808, when the Pre-Columbians, and Comuneros began to realize that the Spaniards were taking control of the complete country, and they were converting into some kind of slaves. All the people were worried about this situation, the governor of Cartagena de Indias was worried too, “manifiesto públicamente, en 1810, que el terrorismo era el medio mas eficaz para mantener a los pueblos en quietud” (Colombia imagines de su diversidad 19… a hoy, pg 118).

The citizens were so desperate that they made a council named “Real provisión de la suprema junta del gobierno”. There they talked about the country, and made things for the country. At the end all this council became a city council.

In the city council, the people asked:

1. To establish the administration in the city.

2. To et over the abuse and the miss trust from the Spaniards.

3. To become very similar to the Castilla´s kingdom.

4. To send to the supreme council the same rules that were dictated.


“ El cabildo consideraba que este era el modo mas seguro de conservar la unión nacional y ser conducida a todo el grado de poder a que la convidan sus innumerables recursos” pg 125.

One of the causes for the citizens to search for the independence was because of the strict hierarchy in the country being the king the most powerful.

“La independencia constituye entonces fenómeno de ruptura y transición, un esfuerzo por salir del pasado y por construir la modernidad” pg 127.

In this chapter you can notice how the people were desperate to be independent from Spain, they wanted to choose their own rulers and control the complete country. And my question for this chapter is: ¿do you think that the independence was a good idea?

The Importance of the Agriculture for a Country wk10a

The agriculture is an important source of economy for a country; it gives a lot of money, especially in the XVI century where most of the people worked in farms cultivating food and other things.

People had ranches and there they worked like farmpeople. The ranches had of different sizes, that depended of the amount of things the people had, so if they had a cow he would have 10 hectares, if the person had 20.000 cows, he would have a million of hectares. “Es decir que la tierra era esencialmente un factor fundamental en la organización de una hacienda pero no era en si misma, un fin” Colombia imágenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy) pg 102. The people that helped farming were slaves; they had to work a lot and all the profit would be for the owner of the ranch.

The ranches at first were distributed by taking neighbour and Pre-Colombia lands. The fight for the land was very common. The people that had more money use their influences to corrupt the people that were in charge of distributing the lands properly. “Es esta lucha jurídica lo que ha llamado la atención de algunos estudiosos mas que otros aspectos de la vida empresarial” Colombia imágenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy) pg 103.

All the products of the ranch were sold, some of them to other countries. One of the most important products was the cocoa (it was the first product to get to Spain), the corn and the coffee. “En consecuencia el cacao no fue solo un producto de consumo y factor de riqueza sino que fundo sentimientos de vanidad y orgullo” Colombia imágenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy) pg 112.

The agriculture gave a lot of money to the land owners, because the people that helped them were slaves so they didn’t have to pay them. The state began to make them pay a tax of 5% of their profit. With that tax they still earned a lot of money.

So being an agriculturer produced a lot of money if you were the land owner. But I think that the land owners took a lot of advantage of the slaves. They treated them very badly, and they didn’t pay them. The slaves had not rights, they were treated like animals. What do you think? Do you think that’s a good or a bad thing? How would you think that the slaves should have been treated?

The black slaves (wk 9a)

The slavery and especially related to the black slaves, in Latin-America was a big problem because they were treated very badly, and they had very few rights.

The slaves where changed from the Pre-Columbians to the black people and the mixed race (of Spaniard and Pre-Columbian). In “La Nueva Granada”, the slaves where organized in spaces next to the house of their master or far away from the ranch. They made their own houses and in each one lived more than one family. In each home there were hundreds of slaves.

The master had to give to his slaves wardrobe and food, but “en la practica una y otra necesidad basica fue resuelta por los mismos negros las cuales debían cultivarse en tiempos de descanso” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 94). Thanks to this, the black people not only had to give food to their family, but also to find the clothes.

When the black people came from Africa they were very weak because the trip was hard. Because of this “la compra y venta de un esclavo incluía denuncias y regateos sobre su salud ya fuera enfermedades adquiridas, males congenitos, defectos fisicos o defectos morales” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 94). The relationship with the slaves was determined by the violence: “ arrancados de sus comunidades en Africa eran trasladados a los puertos de embarque por las compañías portuguesas, francesas, españolas o inglesas para ser vendidos en las colonias americanas” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 100).

When the slaves went to the doctor, they were treated like garbage. “ La calificacion de inhabil, invalido e inutil que se registra en los cansos o inventarios son conceptos muy ambiguous ya que no estan referidos solo a fenomenos de vejez sino a algun tipo de enfermedad que convirtio en inutiles a los esclavos para ejecutar determinado tipo de trabajo”. Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 99).

The masters prefered to have a family of slaves, because they could have kids, and those kids became slaves when they grew up. “De ahi que la esclavitud no fue solo un factor de trabajo sino un factor de capital” Colombia imagenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 100).

In this week the most important thing I would like you to remember is that black people where treated very badly, and their life was not fair because of all their work, their trades, and their masters. I always wonder, why did the Spaniards have to bring from Africa the black people? Why couldn’t they do the things by themselves?

Aguirre, the wrath of God (wk 7a and 8a)

Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a movie of a famous director called Werner Herzog. This movie shows how was the trip for the Spaniards to Latin-America, and the search of the legendary city of gold El Dorado. In this film there are famous people like Lope de Aguirre, Pizarro, and others.

Werner Herzog was born on Munich, on the 5th of September of 1942. He studied history, literature and theater, but he gave up his studies later and began to make movies.

Aguirre Wrath of God is a very famous movie of Herzog. It’s a representation of a real story. It’s the story of the priest, he was one of the Spaniards who came to Latin America, and he wrote a diary of all the things that happened, so based on that text is how the movie was planned.

It starts when the famous general, Francisco Pizarro organized two groups, in one of them was Aguirre, the crazy man how shot his general, and began to rule that group, they were searching for the city of El Dorado. They thought that if they found it they would become very rich, because there it was all the gold, and richness. In the trip they found two Pre-Columbians, (this is shown in the movie when they were in a ship, and they saw a canoe, in that canoe there were two Pre-Columbians, a woman and a man, they had necklaces of gold) when they saw that, Aguirre asked them where they found that, and they showed them where, so they began to go in that direction.

Aguirre wanted to conquer that territory, but they were few Spaniards and it was impossible, to do so. The trip was very difficult also because of the weather and all the mosquitos and sickness that were in the Amazonas. At the end, all of them die because of all these problems, but at least Aguirre dies fighting for the thing he wants.

All the people think that for the Spaniards the conquest of America was easy because they had weapons, ships, a lot of men, but this movie shows that it was difficult for them too to conquer Latin America.

From Protected Shelters to Towns (wk6a)

After the XVI Century the Spaniards took control of Colombia, and they began to change everything: the religions, the language, the homes, all the things that composed Colombia.

Colombia is a new thing, all was radically changed by the Spaniards: “el pueblo debia tener una iglesia, plaza, y calles bajo la administración de un cacique y su población no debía superar los 300 vecinos” Colombia imágines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 76). If the Pre-Columbians didn’t obey the rules that the Spaniards imposed, then they became outcasts.

In the New World made by the Spaniards, the Pre-Columbians couldn’t talk in their own languages and also, they couldn’t have their own religions. Although they did all of these things in their homes when the Spaniards couldn’t see: “estas decisiones hicieron que distintas comunidades quedaran sujétas a un solo dominio centrado en la ciudad con su oicota su cabildo y su iglesia, tres simbolos del poder español en America” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 78).

The Spaniards began to re- distribute the territories without thinking who was the owner of those lands and if that benefited them or not: “el espacio de la ciudad se convirtió en una trampa que enjaulaba diversos modos de vivir y de ser, diversidad que solo podria ser o parecer ser a la manera del regimen español” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 80).The land they distributed was selected, so they took the land that was better, and to the Pre-columbians the rest.

When the Spanirds came, they lost a lot of money, so when the came they took the gold, the emeralds, and slaves to “pay themselves for their efforts”.
“La conquista no era pues solo predicar, enseñar la lengua y la buenas costumbres, sino que ella fue ante todo robar y expoliar la presencia comunitaria para hacer rentable la presencia de los españoles en America” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 84).
When Colombia was all converted into Spanish colony, the Pre-Columbians had to work very hard, they where not slaves but they had to work like if they were, they worked from 12 to 14 hours a day, and it was a hard work.


So, Colombia has changed a lot, thanks to the Spaniards, all that changed were hard to accept for the Pre-Columbians. Is like being a complete different person, with different ideals, cultures, food, etc.