La Negra Chantaduro

[Peter Dexter]

Women in front of a hospital in Cali, Colombia selling chantaduro and mango biche. Chantaduro is the fruit from the Peach Palm tree. It is served with honey, salt and lemon juice. Mango biche is green mango (not sweet) served with lemon juice and salt. The women are always Black and typically from the Pacific coast.

Figurines of "La Negra Chantaduro" are sold in crafts stores (in this case holding in a bowl of fruit).

 

[Asher Kelman]

Women in front of a hospital in Cali, Colombia selling chantaduro and mango biche. Chantaduro is the fruit from the Peach Palm tree. It is served with honey, salt and lemon juice. Mango biche is green mango (not sweet) served with lemon juice and salt. The women are always Black and typically from the Pacific coast.

Figurines of "La Negra Chantaduro" are sold in crafts stores (in this case holding in a bowl of fruit).

Here in the USA, such a sculpture would likely be considered racially insensitive.

But here in context it’s beautiful as a celebration of a long tradition.

Asher

 

[Peter Dexter]

Quite true.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Quite true.

What’s the brown fruit,or is that bead?

Are blacks treated with respect and as much as others? Do they have their own variation of the local language?

Asher

 

[Peter Dexter]

Don't know, might be coconut.Pretty much the same attitudes as in the US. Everybody except the Indians just speaks Spanish. Of course there are somewhere around seventy indigenous languages still in use. However there is an exception. There is a village not far from Cartagena called San Basilio de Palenque that was established by escaped slaves called cimarrones or marrones in the early 1600s.The old people there still speak palanquero which is a mix of Spanish, Portuguese, Kikongo, Bantu and other African languages.