from Part I - Black Geographies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 August 2025
Chapter 2 examines the circulation and application of medical and ritual knowledge in Caribbean and Pacific New Granada, including Venezuela and Panama, and is based upon Inquisition trial records and secular court cases. The chapter approaches healing and ritual as intimately connected and often inseparable activities for African-descended practitioners who were solicited by clients of all ethnicities. Where clients were also people of colour, they were often hired to perform work of community healing. The chapter outlines the gendered and racialised patterns of prosecution and punishment of defendants of African descent tried by the Inquisition of Cartagena de Indias. This is followed by an analysis of the mobility and exchange of healing knowledge in Caribbean and Pacific New Granada, an examination of the marketplace of ideas, and an exploration of the social worlds in which black specialists practiced. Case studies include that of three Kongolese bondsmen, who had hired Joseph and Thomas to poison his owner in 1740s Cartagena, and that of enslaved man Aja, who was accused by fellow bondspersons, other members of the cuadrilla on the gold mines of San Antonio in the Cauca valley mines (owned by the Convent of the Encarnación in the city of Popayán) in the 1770s.
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