{"id":48,"date":"2019-08-15T21:26:11","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T19:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africamericanos.vistprojects.com\/en\/?page_id=48"},"modified":"2019-10-05T19:30:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-05T17:30:11","slug":"portobelo","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/africamericanos.vistprojects.com\/en\/portobelo\/","title":{"rendered":"Portobelo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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PORTOBELO<\/div>\n
Sandra Eleta, Panama<\/div>\n

I cannot separate this photographic work from my personal life in Portobelo.<\/p>\n

Located on the Caribbean coast of Panama, this town has been the context of my experiences. Its history is marked by the arrival of enslaved Africans, who came through the Gateway of No Return in Senegal (1) and who endured the painful journey to these lands in order to be sold in Portobelo\u2019s former negrer\u00edas<\/i> \u2015now reduced to rubble\u2015 and to then work in the construction and upkeep of the imperial capital. Many of them, called cimarrones<\/i> or Maroons, managed to escape their Spanish overlords and established settlements called palenques<\/i>, where they sought their freedom.<\/p>\n

A prevailing spirit of libertarian defiance was what attracted me to Portobelo when I came here for the first time over thirty years ago. The pictures I\u2019ve taken form part of a personal journal of my experiences, with healers and conga dancers, with the children whom I kept in touch with, as they grew up and became adults. Some of them are outstanding artists, like Tatu and Gustavo, who painted the mural on the walls of the Centro de la Imagen. Gustavo Esquina has the following to say about the process: \u201cI feel good in my own skin now. Memories of my ancestors have been dispersed in the waters of the Atlantic that separated us from our roots, so that we could achieve a new awareness, where the beat of the drum no longer sounds like a dirge, but like a tribute to everyone who is ready to celebrate the fact that they have achieved their freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sandra Eleta<\/p>\n

SANDRA ELETA<\/div>\n
(b. 1942) Panama City, Panama<\/div>\n

Photographer and defender of freedom, as she describes herself, Sandra Eleta has documented the Afrodescendant and indigenous communities of Panama, portraying the women in these societies in order to render them more visible. Among her most celebrated photo essays are Guna Yala<\/i> (ca. 1992), La servidumbre<\/i> (1975-1979), and Portobelo<\/i> (1977). It is in the port town of Portobelo that Eleta has produced most of her work, photographing its inhabitants, its traditions, and the Maroon influence in the region. Eleta is chairwoman of the Fundaci\u00f3n Portobelo and cofounder of the Taller Portobelo, a cooperative textile workshop for visual artists in the area. In 2018, Editorial RM published Sandra Eleta: The Invisible World<\/i>, the first book-length treatment of her work.<\/p>\n

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1. According to anthropological studies, most of the ancestors of the Congos and Afro-Panamanians arrived in Portobelo from Central Africa, from the region known as the Kingdom of Congo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":14,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-proyecto-en.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/africamericanos.vistprojects.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/africamericanos.vistprojects.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/africamericanos.vistprojects.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africamericanos.vistprojects.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africamericanos.vistprojects.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/africamericanos.vistprojects.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/africamericanos.vistprojects.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/africamericanos.vistprojects.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}