El Africa’s Crew: From Rebel Soldiers to "Pulperos" in Cartagena de Indias, 1720s to 1750s

• In Event: Daily Life and Death in Port Cities of the Colonial Circum-Caribbean

Abstract

In this paper, I present a spatial and historical analysis of taverns and pulperías in the port city of Cartagena de Indias in the eighteenth century. These places provided their clientele refreshment and relaxation, but they were also spaces of communication and exchange, and occasionally of conspiracy. I follow the case of a vessel known as ‘El Africa’ (possibly a slaver) from one of the military contingents that came to defend Cartagena’s Caribbean coast in 1726. When the vessel arrived in this important port city, El Africa’s soldiers contracted yellow fever and their quarantine proved a death sentence for many. The lucky survivors rebelled against the crown that had condemned them to that suffering, but I found that decades later some were working in the taverns and pulperías of the colonial entrepôt. During this decade of imperial upheaval, when imperial troops in Cartagena and several other Caribbean areas rose up against the crown seeking justice, wages, and good treatment, El Africa’s sailors, I argue, played an important geopolitical role. Ultimately, this paper attempts to broaden the view of these historical subjects and to show how their knowledge allowed them to claim respectability in their adopted communities. Further, I interrogate the history of pulperías as centers of connection, collaboration, and contamination in Nueva Granada and the larger colonial World of the eighteenth century.

Author

• Viviana Quintero