Fugitive Alliances: The Palenque Treaty and Its Afterlives

The 1713 treaty between Bishop of Cartagena de Indias, Antonio María Cassiani, and the palenque of the Montes of María has loomed large in the history of marronage in the Hispanic Caribbean. The agreement, motivated by survival and pragmatism on both sides, showcases the ambivalent compromises that enlightening Spanish colonial authorities and racialized subjects made in the early eighteenth century. Situating the treaty within a broader history of marronage in the region, this paper examines the treaty and its afterlives, with a focus on the dynamics of gender, sacramental orthodoxy, and slaveholding within San Basilio de Palenque (Palenque). The settlement fundamentally shaped the history of fugitivity in the montes of the interior of the province of Cartagena de Indias and the society that grew up within Palenque itself. Palenque was just one of many maroon communities in the circum-Caribbean, yet the only one that was legally recognized in Spanish America. Contrasting Palenque’s protection to the experiences of other free black communities in the region, the paper connects the wider history of maroon mobilization in the Montes of María and the particular political moment in the early eighteenth century to the pursuit of compromise and Palenque’s autonomy.