Cartagena ( KAR-tə-HEN-ə), known since the imperial era as Cartagena de Indias (Spanish: [kaɾtaˈxena ðe ˈindjas] ⓘ), is a city and one of the major ports on the northern coast of Colombia in the Caribbean Coast Region, along the Caribbean Sea. Cartagena's past role as a link in the route to the West Indies provides it with important historical value for world exploration and preservation of heritage from the great commercial maritime routes. As a former Spanish colony, it was a key port for the export of Bolivian silver to Spain and for the import of enslaved Africans under the asiento system. It was defensible against pirate attacks in the Caribbean. The city's strategic location between the Magdalena and Sinú rivers also gave it easy access to the interior of New Granada and made it a main port for trade between Spain and its overseas empire, establishing its importance by the early 1540s.
Modern Cartagena is the capital of the Bolívar Department, and had a population of 876,885 according to the 2018 census, making it the second-largest city in the Caribbean region, after Barranquilla, and the fifth-largest city in Colombia. The metropolitan area of Cartagena is the sixth-largest urban area in the country, after the metropolitan area of Bucaramanga. Economic activities include the maritime and petrochemical industries, as well as tourism.
The present city—named after Cartagena, Spain and by extension, the historic city of Carthage—was founded on 1 June 1533, making it one of South America's oldest colonial cities; but settlement by various indigenous people in the region around Cartagena Bay dates from 4000 BC. During the Spanish colonial period, Cartagena had a key role in the administration and expansion of the Spanish Empire. It was a center of political, ecclesiastical, and economic activity. In 1984, Cartagena's colonial walled city and fortress were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It was also the site of the Battle of Cartagena de Indias in 1741 during the War of Jenkins' Ear between Spain and Britain.
History
Pre-Columbian era: 4000 BC – AD 1500
The Puerto Hormiga Culture, founded in the Arjona Municipality of the Bolívar Department in the Caribbean coast region, particularly in the area from the Sinú River Delta to the Cartagena Bay, appears to be the first documented human community in what is now Colombia. Archeologists estimate that around 4000 BC, the formative culture was located near the boundary between the current departments of Bolívar and Sucre. In this area, archeologists have found the most ancient ceramic objects of the Americas, dating from around 4000 BC. The primary reason for the proliferation of primitive societies in this area is thought to have been the relatively mild climate and the abundance of wildlife, which allowed the hunting inhabitants a comfortable life.
Archaeological investigations date the decline of the Puerto Hormiga culture and its related settlements to ~3000 BC. The rise of a much more developed culture, the Monsú, who lived at the end of the Dique Canal near today's Cartagena neighborhoods Pasacaballos and Ciénaga Honda at the northernmost part of Barú Island, has been hypothesized. The Monsú culture appears to have inherited the Puerto Hormiga culture's use of the art of pottery and also to have developed a mixed economy of agriculture and basic manufacture. The Monsú people's diet was based mostly on shellfish and fresh and salt-water fish.
The development of the Sinú society in what is today the departments of Córdoba and Sucre eclipsed these first developments around the Cartagena Bay area. Until the Spanish colonization, many cultures derived from the Karib, Malibu and Arawak language families lived along the Colombian Caribbean coast. In the late pre-Columbian era, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta was home to the Tayrona people, whose language was closely related to the Chibcha language family.
Around AD 1500, the area was inhabited by different tribes of the Carib language family, more precisely the Mocanae sub-family.
Mocana villages of the Carib people around the Bay of Cartagena included:
- on a sandy island facing the ocean in what is present-day downtown: Kalamarí (Calamari)
- on the island of Tierrabomba: Carex
- on Isla Barú, then a peninsula: Bahaire
- on present-day Mamonal, the eastern coast of the exterior bay: Cospique
- in the suburban area of Turbaco: Yurbaco Tribe
Heredia found these settlements "...largely surrounded with the heads of dead men placed on stakes."
Some subsidiary tribes of the Kalamari lived in today's neighborhood of Pie de la Popa, and other subsidiaries from the Cospique lived in the Membrillal and Pasacaballos areas. Among these, according to the earliest documents available, the Kalamari had preeminence. These tribes, though physically and administratively separated, shared a common architecture, such as hut structures consisting of circular rooms with tall roofs, which were surrounded by defensive wooden palisades.
First sightings by Europeans: 1500–1533
Rodrigo de Bastidas traveled to the Pearl Coast and the Gulf of Uraba in 1500–01. On 14 February 1504, Ferdinand V contracted Juan de la Cosa's voyage to Uraba. However, Juan de la Cosa died in 1510 along with 300 of Alonso de Ojeda's men, after an armed confrontation with indigenous people, and before Juan de la Cosa could get possession of the Gulf of Urabá area. Similar contracts were signed in 1508 with Diego de Nicuesa for the settlement of Veragua and with Alonso de Ojeda for the settlement of Urabá, "where gold had already been obtained on earlier voyages," according to Floyd.
After the failed effort to found Antigua del Darién in 1506 by Alonso de Ojeda and the subsequent unsuccessful founding of San Sebastián de Urabá in 1510 by Diego de Nicuesa, the southern Caribbean coast became unattractive to colonizers. They preferred the better known Hispaniola and Cuba.
Although the royal control point for trade, the Casa de Contratación permitted Rodrigo de Bastidas (1460–1527) to again conduct an expedition as adelantado to this area, Bastidas explored the coast and sighted the Magdalena River Delta in his first journey from Guajira to the south in 1527, a trip that ended in the Gulf of Urabá, the location of the failed first settlements. De Nicuesa and De Ojeda noted the existence of a big bay on the way from Santo Domingo to Urabá and the Panama isthmus, which encouraged Bastidas to investigate.
Colonial era: 1533–1717
Under contract to Queen Joanna of Castile, Pedro de Heredia entered the Bay of Cartagena with three ships, a lighter, 150 men, and 22 horses, on 14 January 1533. He soon found the village of Calamari abandoned. Proceeding onwards to Turbaco, where Juan de la Cosa had been mortally wounded 13 years earlier, Heredia fought an all-day battle before claiming victory. Using India Catalina as a guide, Heredia embarked on a three-month exploration expedition. He returned to Calamari in April 1533 with gold pieces, including a solid gold porcupine weighing 132 pounds. In later expeditions, Heredia raided the Sinú tombs and temples of gold. His rule as governor of Cartagena lasted 22 years before he perished on his return to Spain in 1544.
Cartagena was founded on 1 June 1533 by the Spanish commander, Pedro de Heredia, in the former location of the indigenous Caribbean Calamarí village. The town was named after the port city of Cartagena, in Murcia in southeast Spain, where most of Heredia's sailors had resided. King Philip II gave Cartagena the title of "city" (ciudad) in 1574, adding "most noble and loyal" in 1575.
The city's increasing importance as a port for the export of Bolivian silver from Potosí to Spain made it an obvious target for pirates and corsairs, encouraged by France, England, and Holland. In 1544, the city was pillaged by 5 ships and 1,000 men under the command of the French pirate Jean-François Roberval, who took advantage of the city still without walls. Heredia was forced to retreat to Turbaco until a ransom was paid. A defensive tower, San Felipe del Boquerón, was built in 1566 by Governor Anton Davalos. It was supposed to protect the anchorage and the Bahía de las Ánimas, a water lane into Plaza de la Mar (current-day Plaza de la Aduana), but the fort's battery had limited range. Then the French pirate Martin Cote struck in 1569 with 1,000 men, ransacking the city.
A few months after the disaster of the invasion of Côte, a fire destroyed the city and forced the creation of a firefighting squad, the first in the Americas.
In 1568, Sir John Hawkins tried to persuade Governor Martín de las Alas to open a trade fair in the city, which would allow his men to sell foreign goods. This was a violation of Spanish law, which forbade trade with foreigners. Many in the settlement suspected this would have allowed Hawkins to sack the port afterward; as such, the governor declined. Hawkins bombarded the city for 8 days, but failed to make any significant impact and withdrew. Then Francis Drake attacked in April 1586 with 23 ships and 3,000 men. Drake burned 200 houses and the cathedral, departing only after a ransom was paid a month later.
Spain then commissioned Bautista Antonelli in 1586 to design a master scheme for defending its Caribbean ports. This included a second visit to Cartagena in 1594, when he drew up plans for a walled city.
In 1610, the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in Cartagena, and the Palace of Inquisition was completed in 1770. Sentences were pronounced in the main city plaza, today's Plaza de Bolívar, during the Autos de Fe ceremonies. Crimes under its jurisdiction included those of heresy, blasphemy, bigamy and witchcraft. A total of 767 people were punished, with punishments ranging from fines and wearing a Sanbenito to life imprisonment or even the death penalty. The Inquisition was abolished with independence in 1811.
The first enslaved people were brought by Pedro de Heredia to work as "macheteros", clearing the underbrush. By the 17th century, Cartagena had become an important slave market in the New World, centered around the Plaza de los Coches. European slave traders began to bring enslaved peoples from Africa during this period. Spain was the only European power that did not establish factories in Africa to purchase enslaved people. Therefore, the Spanish Empire relied on the asiento system, awarding merchants from other European nations the license to trade enslaved people to their overseas territories.
Gov. Francisco de Murga made the Inner Bay an "impregnable lagoon", according to Segovia, which included the forts El Boquerón, Castillo Grande, Manzanillo, and Manga. Besides the walls built to defend the historic district of Calamari, Francisco de Murga enclosed Getsemani with protective walls starting in 1631. This included the battery of Media Luna of San Antonio, located between the bastions of Santa Teresa and Santa Bárbara, which protected the only gate and causeway to the mainland.
The practice of Situado is exemplified in the magnitude of the city's subsidy between 1751 and 1810, when the city received the sum of 20,912,677 Spanish reales.
The Raid on Cartagena, in April 1697 during the Nine Years' War, by Sir Bernard Desjean, Baron de Pointis and Jean Baptiste Ducasse was a severe blow to Cartagena. The Baron's forces included 22 large ships, 500 cannon, and 4,000 troops, while Ducasse's forces consisted of 7 ships and 1,200 buccaneers. They quickly overwhelmed Sancho Jimeno de Orozco's force of 30 men in the San Luis de Bocachica fortification. Then, San Felipe de Barajas also fell, and the city came under bombardment. When the Half Moon Gate was breached and Getsemani Island occupied, Governor Diego de los Ríos capitulated. The Baron left after a month of plunder (roughly 2 million livres), and Ducasse followed a week later.
When King Philip II employed the Italian engineer Juan Bautista Antonelli to design a master plan of fortifications for Cartagena, construction would actually continue for the next two hundred years. On 17 March 1640, three Portuguese ships under the command of Rodrigo Lobo da Silva ran aground in the Bocagrande Channel. This accelerated the formation of a sand bar, which soon connected the Bocagrande Peninsula to the island of Tierrabomba. The defense of the bay then shifted to two forts on either side of Bocachica, San José and San Luis de Bocachica. San Luis was replaced by San Fernando after the 1741 English raid. The next narrow passage was formed by the Island of Manzanillo, where San Juan del Manzanillo was constructed, and Santa Cruz O Castillo Grande opposite on Cruz Grande at Punta Judio, both connected by a floating chain. Finally, there was San Felipe del Boquerón, later San Sebastián del Pastelillo. The city itself was circled with a ring of bastions connected by curtains. The island of Getsemani was also fortified. Protecting the city on the landward side, atop San Lázaro hill, was the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas named in honor of Spain's King Philip IV and Governor Pedro Zapata de Mendoza, Marquis of Barajas' father, the Count of Barajas. Completed in 1654, the fort was expanded in the 18th century, and included underground corridors and galleries.
Viceregal era: 1717–1811
The 18th century began poorly for the city economically, as the Bourbon dynasty discontinued the Carrera de Indias convoys. However, with the establishment of the Viceroyalty of New Granada and the constant Anglo-Spanish conflicts, Cartagena took on the role of the "gateway to the Indies of Peru". By 1777, the city included 13,700 inhabitants with a garrison of 1300. The population reached 17,600 in 1809.
In 1731, Juan de Herrera y Sotomayor founded the Military Academy of Mathematics and Practice of Fortifications in Cartagena. He is also known for designing the Puerta del Reloj starting in 1704.