"A Bellicose and Ferocious People": The Politics of Kisama Identity in Angola and Colombia, 1588–1640

Since at least the late sixteenth century, the lands between the Kwanza and Longa Rivers of Angola known to outsiders as “Kisama” have figured prominently in the imaginations of leaders of the Kongo, Ndongo, and Portuguese kingdoms as a hostile terrain inhabited by bellicose and intractable resisters.  For those living between the Kwanza and Longa Rivers, however, the political realities were far more complex.  At the turn of the seventeenth century, a series of charismatic leaders named Kafuxi Ambari began forging a political coalition among the dispersed, heterogeneous, peoples of the region, including a growing number of fugitives from the escalating trans-Atlantic slave trade.  As Kafuxi Ambari’s dramatic military successes against the Portuguese led to his growing regional acclaim and reputation, the notion of a Kisama identity began to gain local salience.  At the same time (1630s), the first self-ascriptions of Kisama identity appear in documents from the Americas in conjunction with rebellion and maroonage, including seven Kisama-identified individuals in the Limón palenque outside of Cartagena, Colombia. 

In this paper I draw from oral histories, ritual practices, judicial documents, and contemporary accounts by priests and colonial officials in both Angola and Colombia in order to understand the political meanings of the Kisama identity that was beginning to emerge trans-Atlanticly in the seventeenth century.  I argue that Kisama identity, whether in Angola or in the Diaspora, reflected not a simplistic claim of geographical or ethno-linguistic origins but rather a political opposition to slavery and material inequality.  By consciously eschewing centralization and engagement with the Portuguese and their allies (including those between the Kwanza and Longa Rivers) in Angola and by advocating for the strategic, radical use of violence in defense of community integrity in the Americas, these early seventeenth-century actors constructed a political platform articulated through the language of identity.