I’ve been taking photographs in Quinamayó in west Colombia for around six years now, for a project about the town’s Black Baby Jesus celebrations. Quinamayó is what is known in Colombia as a palenque, a community founded by enslaved people who fled the country’s haciendas before slavery was abolished in the 1850s. These people had not been allowed to preserve their African cultural beliefs – nor to participate in the most important Catholic events, even though they had been forced to convert to Catholicism. So in Quinamayó they decided to perform their own version of Christmas, 45 days after the traditional date – the same number of days the Virgin Mary is said to have rested after the birth. The celebration still takes place every year in mid-February.
It lasts four days, with the second day devoted to a procession centring on a wooden figure of Black Baby Jesus, which is paraded around the town. Children dress up as biblical characters and people dance to a local variation of the juga rhythm, which in Quinamayó is performed by a brass band. Dancers shuffle their feet as a reference to their forebears, with chains around their ankles.
