66 A BRIEF HISTORY OF COLOMBIA
on indigenous labor and trade, while the English were more interested in taking
land and forcing the Indians to move (an attitude continued in the nineteenth
century by the U.S. government). In Spanish America there was more of a
negotiation of sorts between the desires of the Spanish and the interests of the
Indians — which has resulted in a greater degree of indigenous cultural
preservation, seen throughout Colombia today.
The Spanish called the region New Granada, and for most of its colonial history it
remained a backwater. Gold was found in the west, near Santa Fe de Antioquia,
providing the colony with its major export; still, the enormous silver trade from
Mexico and Peru was far more important to the empire. Shipping gold back to
Spain led to the fortification of the city of Cartagena on the Caribbean coast,
which also became the first stop for Spanish slave traders coming from Africa
(early in the conquest, the Crown decided that the Indians could not be
enslaved, but that Africans could continue to be captured and traded). Africans
were put to work constructing the walls of Cartagena; this labor force was also
taken to mine the gold of Antioquia. Certain remote areas of the nearby Chocó
region along the Pacific coast became havens for escaped and recently freed
slaves, who formed their own settlements. These communities, called
palenques, were also established on the Caribbean coast.
Throughout the Western Hemisphere, however, the majority of enslaved
Africans were involved in raising sugar cane, which explains the enormous
presence of people of African descent on the islands of the Caribbean and on
the northern coast of Brazil. The sugar trade in New Granada was limited by
comparison. Nevertheless, Colombia has the largest Spanish-speaking
population of African origin in the Americas — even larger than Cuba's.
Colombia's geography limited trade during and after the colonial period:
transportation inland from the Caribbean coast to Andean towns and cities took
weeks by pole boat via the Magdalena River, then by mule over difficult
mountain trails. Internal commerce was based on regional agriculture and