Aims and objectives
he aim was to digitise court documents in Istmina, Chocó (Colombia) and in collaboration with project partner, Fundación Muntú Bantú, thus ensure that this set of deteriorated records, spanning 1860- 1930—still legible despite decades of neglect—would be accessible to future generations of Chocoanos. Furthermore, with project partner Fundación Neogranadina, we aimed to have the material be able to be incorporated within the online portal of Fundación Neogranadina’s digital repository, where it will be freely available.
Another explicit aim was to accompany a group of young researchers from the region over a six month-long process of cataloguing the digitised files. These materials had been in sacks for years, Our team cleaned, sorted and organised the documents in acid-free boxes. This initial assessment complete, we understood our work to include not only photographing the files but also introducing interns to the process of reading and contextualising them—a project made possible by the involvement of Sergio Mosquera and María Fernanda Parra of Muntú Bantú.
Outcomes
We produced 61,163 images, resulting in 1,959 gigabytes of data and 37 box-level descriptions. These images now constitute a digitised collection of of 814 legal case files, dating to 1860-1930, organised into 37 boxes, reflecting the bulk of the historical documents for this date range housed at the Circuit Court of Istmina, in the Colombian Chocó. A relatively small number of records produced before 1930 and currently held by the courthouse were excluded from digitization given an extreme state of deterioration or because they concern administrative activities of the court and are not legal case files. The digital files created have been fully catalogued at the box level. Interns familiar with the Chocó, supervised by project partner Fundación Muntú Bantú catalogued approximately 30% of the total digital collection at the level of individual case files. This work has been reviewed by project partner Fundación Neogranadina, which has received the TIFF files and the accompanying metadata. Neogranadina is in the process of incorporating these materials into their online platform, https://abcng.org.
The basin of the San Juan River in Chocó —where the documentation was produced— was demographically reshaped by African enslavement during centuries of gold mining. It was also a space within which freed-people of colour both remained and continued reshaping settlement patterns through the 18th and 20th centuries, making present-day Chocó one of the country’s most demographically Afrocolombian regions.
In addition, the collection allows for research in legal history and state formation; the history of social interactions among African-descendants, Amerindians, Mestizos, and migrants both from other parts of Colombia and from other nations—especially independent traders of Arab origin, particularly Syrian-Lebanese merchants and those who arrived in the employ of international mining companies involved in dredging operations for the extraction of platinum and gold. The collection further offers an unusual level of detail about family organisation, gender relations, local commerce and government, criminal activity, land disputes, territorial demarcation, and legal processes associated with mining claims and the extraction of precious metals from this densely forested riverine environment.
A significant achievement of this project, made possible by the involvement of Sergio Mosquera and María Fernanda Parra of Muntú Bantú, was the successful involvement of young researchers from the Chocó. This group has worked with Kelly López Roldán to create essays and audiovisual material as part of a planned digital exhibit being produced in collaboration with project partner Daniel Varela, of the University of Michigan, and with Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania. Cataloguing is on-going and support from the University of New Brunswick and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada will allow an additional set of the case files digitised by this project to be catalogued in AY 2023-24.
Our planed digital exhibit will showcase interpretative work by Muntú Bantú interns Ernestina Lemos, Javier Hurtado, Yurleyda Perea Cuesta, Jhon Leison Rivas Rodríguez, Nallely Taborda, and Yeison Vente, as well as by project co-leads and students at the University of Pennsylvania, including Nadia Sumner, Julia Pastor Trujillo. It is being developed as part of a larger project supported by the Just Futures Initiative “Dispossessions in the Americas”, funded by the Mellon Foundation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies.
