The 500 years of Santa Marta: commemorating to celebrate

On Saturday, August 31, a group of about sixty cultural managers from Santa Marta met at the headquarters of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History for four hours. Some of them had questions and the feeling of not being taken into account by the city’s mayor’s office. The Ministry of Culture offered to address their reflections. Many of them were the subject of conversation: the update of the Special Plan for Management and Protection of the Historic Center, the connection of the Santa Marta Theater with the National Center of the Arts, the strengthening of the megabiblioteca through the National Library of Colombia, the creation of true cultural tourism routes in Pescaíto, Mamatoco or Taganga, and, of course, Law 2058, of 2020, which created the commission for the Celebration of the Fifth Centenary of the Foundation of Santa Marta. This law recognizes, in 12 articles, the city as the oldest (surviving) founded by Spain in America. The Ministry of Culture was authorized by law to assume technical leadership. During the first two years (2020-2022), this commission met twice and the Master Plan was approved in a session on April 7, 2022, with the task of updating it by the District of Santa Marta, which has not happened. Among other things, this commission has not met again because one of its articles was challenged before the Constitutional Court (Judgment C-189 of 2022) by the black, Afro-descendant, Raizal and Palenquero communities, considering that their rights to participation had been violated. The Court protected their rights and determined that they would also be part of the commission, which was extended to indigenous peoples, thus recognizing their fundamental place in this history.

During this last year, from August 2023 to the same month in 2024, we have held six meetings, we have indicated that we are coordinating the commemorative meaning of this event and we have accompanied the communities so that they can establish the procedure to choose their representatives according to their autonomy, their own rights and organizational forms. In addition, we will fully comply with the commitments of our portfolio set out in the law: the beginning of the second phase of rehabilitation of the Historic Center; the launching of a visitor service center (Ecotourism and rural tourism in the Sierra Nevada) and the consolidation of the cultural dimension of the District, which corresponds to the plans that we are already advancing. But we have declared, and this has caused discomfort in some parts of society, that we must think about the 500 years of the Hispanic foundation of Santa Marta without simplifying the complex memories of the conquest and colonization that took place there. Thinking about a commemoration, 500 years later, is then a gesture of recognition towards indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples who not only resisted long centuries of colonization, but who also made efforts during a large part of the Republic to avoid being condemned to live in the lands of otherness. And it is also to comply with article 13 of the 1991 Constitution. The State has the power to create measures that recognize the violence of the colonial period and contribute to the compensation of the impacts of this fact today. The incorporation of these norms is part of the construction of democracy and the reparation to ethnic peoples for the colonization, genocide and long-term violence that is prolonged through the current social, economic, political and territorial inequality.

It is also to ratify the ILO Convention 169of 1998, according to which the international community recognizes that indigenous peoples suffered historical injustices as a result of the colonization and alienation of their lands, territories and resources.

Five hundred years later, there are those who maintain that civilization, language, and religion arrived through Santa Marta, and that our discovery took place, and that we must leave the past behind and celebrate the Hispanic community that we are. And there are those who believe that it is necessary to recognize colonial violence as part of a long historical period of imposition of a language and a religion of a culture over many others, so that an intercultural matrix prevails over a Eurocentric one. The palenques, the shantytowns, the black and Afro communities, enslaved for two centuries, and the Sierra Nevada can help us understand the relationship of this foundation with this biocultural territory. Gonawindua, the four towns of the Sierra, have opposed colonization by safeguarding “the black line,” a system of sacred spaces as a “traditional area, of special protection, spiritual, cultural, and environmental value,” that is, a system of knowledge that protects the heart of the world. There is something to learn there, because it is in cultural diversity that we can find insurance against uncertainty.

On July 29, 2025, we have a historic opportunity to overcome an idea: we may never reach an ideal consensus, but we can become adversaries and stop being enemies. We can gather around a fact that cannot make us lose the meaning of what happened by talking about how we all feel about what happened five hundred years ago, and how those Hispanic foundations of our cities are related to who we are today as a deeply unequal society that has not effectively achieved the same rights. And also with an undoubted and wonderful Hispanic heritage that cemented a republican society of incontestable artistic, scientific, and social intellectual value. Once we recognize those unresolved passions, we will be able to say that the celebration/commemoration of the 500 years of Santa Marta sowed, five centuries later, hope for a city and a country that understood that it can celebrate the beauty of its bay, its mountains, and its swamps; its cultures and trades; of their knowledge and languages. We will continue to open spaces for dialogue and reflection. The next one will take place on September 13 in the city of Santa Marta.

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