From Cameroon to Colombia
Ricardo Márquez García
BCDSS PhD Researcher
An estimated 9.5 to 11 million men, women, and children were trafficked from Africa to the Americas between 1500 and 1880. Despite inhumane conditions and systematic physical and psychological oppression and physical violence, enslaved people fought for freedom. Cultural practices from Africa were passed on, modified, and reinvented.
Carnival in Colombia was a celebration in which local indigenous elements came together with influences from West and Central Africa and Christian Europe, and people – including enslaved people – conquered the streets for themselves. African masks and garments, which originally often had a ceremonial character, took on a new interpretation and meaning (fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Marimonda-mask and Kah-mask (photo: B. Frommann, 2024).
This Tucum mask (also known as a Kah or elephant mask) from Cameroon is a good example of this. To this day, it is worn in Cameroon only at important funeral ceremonies or enthronements (fig. 2). It reached the Caribbean through the transatlantic slave trade and served as inspiration for the Marimonda carnival mask in Barranquilla, Colombia, at the latest from the beginning of the 20th century (fig. 3). This cultural transfer testifies to the strong spiritual resilience of enslaved people and their descendants. Despite all the restrictions, they succeeded in passing on traditions from Africa and adapting them to the living conditions in the Americas.
Fig. 2: Members of the Kah-Society in the Chiefdom of Foto / West Region of Cameroon (photo: R. Márquez García 2018).
Fig. 3: Marimonda dancers at the carnival in Barranquilla / Colombia (photo: Shutterstock-ID 2215648833, license 2024).
Fig. 4: “Lecciones Marimondeñas Vol. II“ (cartoon: C. Díaz Orejarena, 2022). This cartoon is a spin-off from the graphic novel ‘Otras Rayas – Andere Linien’, in which the Colombian carnival mask Marimonda recounts facts and contexts of German colonial history in the Colombian department of Santander in the 19th century. The mask tells its own story of origin, which is characterized by a variety of cultural appropriations, and connects it to political discourses in present-day Colombia. More about the author and his work: Christiandiaz.net
Further Reading
Argenti, Nicolas, and Ute Röschenthaler, 2006. “Introduction: Between Cameroon and Cuba: Youth, Slave Trades and Translocal Memoryscapes”. Social Anthropology, vol. 14, 33–47.
Arocha, Jaime, 2022. “Nina S. de Friedemann and the African Shadow.” In Routledge Handbook of Afro-Latin American Studies, edited by Bernd Reiter and John Antón Sánchez, 604–609. London: Routledge.
Diaz Orejeana, Christian, 2022: Das ultimative super-dramaturgische-Fakten-Hacker Splatter Intermezzo. https://www.literaturmagazin-bremen.de/beitraege/satzwende-christian-diaz-orejarena-1-2.
Vargas Arana, Paola, 2016. Aka, cazumbas e marimondas: diálogos entre culturas de matriz africana em Camarões, Brasil e Colômbia. Revista Cantareira, vol. 25, 96–121.