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Veteran
AfroColombians
English text
Colombia is the country in Latin America and the Caribbean where surnames of African origin were retained due to the culture of resistance by the descendants of the different African civilizations. They were kidnapped from the mother continent for five centuries.
Surnames such as Loango, Mina, Carabali, Matamba, Lucumi, Angola, Congo, Arara, Ambuila, and Malemba, among others, appear in Afro-Colombian territories from the colony to the present day.
In my trips to Cuba and Brazil, countries where slavery was only abolished in 1886 and 1888 in the 19th century, I did not observe the diversity of surnames of African origin that exist in Colombia.
The explanation for the significant presence of African surnames in Colombia, due to the fact of many rebellions against slavery and intensive exploitation when fleeing to the jungle and building new peoples, was the leading cause for African surnames to be maintained to preserve their ethnic, spiritual and cultural identity until the 21st century.
The enslavers imposed Catholic names on Africans, but their surnames from sub-Saharan Africa were preserved as an act of rebellion.
African Surnames’ Provenance
In Colombia, the surnames of people of African descent can be grouped according to their origins into four great civilizations.
The surnames Matamba, Congo, Angola, Malemba, and Ambuila, came from the former territory called Kongo Día Nntotela, which had its spiritual capital called Mbanza Kongo, located in what is now the Republic of Angola.
Kongo Día Ntotela had a territorial extension that started from what is now Angola and encompassed Congo Brazaville, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea. In that space, there is the Bantu linguistic unit, and part of its linguistic elements are classified into Kikongo, Loango, Umbundu, Kimbundu, and their variants, such as Lingala and Monokutaba.
The second group is made up of the group of the Ewe-Fon civilization that in Colombia we are going to get as Mina and Arara, located in what is now the Country of Benin and Togo that in the past constituted the kingdom of Dahomey; this area is where the name Mina comes from, which is the second surname of the vice president of Colombia Francia Marquez MINA.
The third group comprises the surname Carabali, located in Calabar, a territory today belonging to the Atlantic coast of Nigeria. The name Carabali comes from the Efik-Efok civilization.
The last group is composed of the surname Lucumi, and to say Lucumi is to say Yoruba, which is also located in Nigeria. Its diaspora through the slave trade is as large as the Kongo diaspora.
These four African diasporas, Kongo, Ewe-Fon, Efik-Efik, and Yoruba in Colombia, express the process of the culture of African resistance that did not bow to the Western slave system and enriched the identity of the Colombian people.
Without the African presence, Colombia is not Colombia.
African Surnames in Colombia
English text
- By Jesus Chucho Garcia (Special from Bogota) Translation by Yoji Senna
- Aug 28, 2022
Colombia is the country in Latin America and the Caribbean where surnames of African origin were retained due to the culture of resistance by the descendants of the different African civilizations. They were kidnapped from the mother continent for five centuries.
Surnames such as Loango, Mina, Carabali, Matamba, Lucumi, Angola, Congo, Arara, Ambuila, and Malemba, among others, appear in Afro-Colombian territories from the colony to the present day.
In my trips to Cuba and Brazil, countries where slavery was only abolished in 1886 and 1888 in the 19th century, I did not observe the diversity of surnames of African origin that exist in Colombia.
The explanation for the significant presence of African surnames in Colombia, due to the fact of many rebellions against slavery and intensive exploitation when fleeing to the jungle and building new peoples, was the leading cause for African surnames to be maintained to preserve their ethnic, spiritual and cultural identity until the 21st century.
The enslavers imposed Catholic names on Africans, but their surnames from sub-Saharan Africa were preserved as an act of rebellion.
African Surnames’ Provenance
In Colombia, the surnames of people of African descent can be grouped according to their origins into four great civilizations.
The surnames Matamba, Congo, Angola, Malemba, and Ambuila, came from the former territory called Kongo Día Nntotela, which had its spiritual capital called Mbanza Kongo, located in what is now the Republic of Angola.
Kongo Día Ntotela had a territorial extension that started from what is now Angola and encompassed Congo Brazaville, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea. In that space, there is the Bantu linguistic unit, and part of its linguistic elements are classified into Kikongo, Loango, Umbundu, Kimbundu, and their variants, such as Lingala and Monokutaba.
The second group is made up of the group of the Ewe-Fon civilization that in Colombia we are going to get as Mina and Arara, located in what is now the Country of Benin and Togo that in the past constituted the kingdom of Dahomey; this area is where the name Mina comes from, which is the second surname of the vice president of Colombia Francia Marquez MINA.
The third group comprises the surname Carabali, located in Calabar, a territory today belonging to the Atlantic coast of Nigeria. The name Carabali comes from the Efik-Efok civilization.
The last group is composed of the surname Lucumi, and to say Lucumi is to say Yoruba, which is also located in Nigeria. Its diaspora through the slave trade is as large as the Kongo diaspora.
These four African diasporas, Kongo, Ewe-Fon, Efik-Efik, and Yoruba in Colombia, express the process of the culture of African resistance that did not bow to the Western slave system and enriched the identity of the Colombian people.
Without the African presence, Colombia is not Colombia.
