Cartagena was founded in 1533 by Pedro de Heredia, in the area where the Caribbean Calamarí people lived, their name meaning 'crab'. This native population was part of a native tribe called the Mocanáes; Spanish accounts describe them as fierce and warlike, and point out that even women fought on a par with men. Nevertheless, the Spanish conquered the less equipped Calamari and claimed the bay for Spain.
A few years after it had been founded, the Spaniards designed a defense plan in which the main strategy was the construction of a walled military fortress to protect the city against the plundering of English, Dutch and French pirates.
Cartagena was a slave port; Cartagena and Veracruz (México) were the only cities authorized to trade with black people. The first slaves arrived with Pedro de Heredia and they worked as cane cutters to open roads, in the desecration of tombs of the aboriginal population of Sinu, and in the construction of buildings and fortresses. The agents of the Portuguese company Cacheu distributed human 'cargos' from Cartagena for mine exploitation in Venezuela, the West Indies, the Nuevo Reino de Granada and the Viceroyalty of Perú.
On February 5th, 1610, the Catholic Monarchs established from Spain the Inquisition Holy Office Court in Cartagena de Indias by a Royal Decree issued by King Philip II. The Inquisition Palace, finished in 1770, is still there with its original features of colonial times. When Cartagena declared its complete independence from Spain, the inquisitors were urged to leave the city. The Inquisition operated again after the Reconquest in 1815, but it disappeared definitely when Spain surrendered six years later before the patriotic troops led by Simón Bolívar. During its two centuries of existence, the court heard 767 defendants, most were punished, and six of them were burned at the stake.
Sir Francis Drake enters
For the British, Francis Drake is "Sir" Francis, the brilliant sailor who defeated the Spanish Armada. For the Spanish, Drake is a pirate, the heartless predator who plundered its settlements from Chile to Peru and extorted a fabulous ransom from Cartagena de Indias and from St. Augustine in Florida. For the English he was a brilliant strategist and loyal subject of Queen Elizabeth; for the Spanish he was an infamous despoiler of churches so sinister that even today when the children refuse to do as they are told, their parents threaten them with the words, "El Draque is going to get you!". Drake was known as "The Dragon", no relation.
Drake and Hawkins were amongst the first to prey on the new settlement of Cartagena de Indias in the late 1500's. Drake disembarked at night and took the city at dawn; he forced the inhabitants to take refuge in the neighboring village of Turbaco, burned the houses and destroyed the Cathedral. Drake forced the authorities to pay him 107.000 ducats and took some jewelry and 80 artillery pieces. And in 1568, the Englishman John Hawkins besieged the city for seven days because the governor Marín de las Alas did not want to carry out a commercial fair in the city; Hawkins could not subjugate the city.
It was their activities and those of their French counterparts, Robert Baal and Martin Cote, that forced the Spanish Crown to undertake the construction of the intricate complex of fortresses, walls, and castles that were to make the city unassailable for almost one hundred years. It is said that the King of Spain looked out the western windows of his palace one morning and insisted ironically that he should be able to see the fortifications of Cartagena de Indias, considering the immense fortune he had spent in constructing them.
It was only at the end of the 1600's that the Baron of Pointis and a crew of buccaneers were able to successfully attack the city. And still the defenses, although weakened, were sufficient to resist the Siege of Cartagena undertaken by the English Admiral Edward Vernon in 1741. No one made another attempt until the winds of Independence swept Spanish South America at the beginning of the 19th Century.
Don Blas is called
If there is one man who stands out in Cartagena’s colorful 470-year history, it is Don Blas de Lezo. He was born in Spain in 1689, in the Basque country, of noble parents. As was the custom with the well born, he entered the service of the King, and as a young officer he had the misfortune to lose his left leg in the battle of Gibraltar when he was 16. He remained in the service, however, and in the battle of Tolon he lost his right eye, and more was to come. Even when in the battle of Barcelona he lost his right arm, he continued as a commander, as his reputation for tenacity and courage was already making him a legend.
In 1740, King Philip’s spies in London learned that Edward Vernon and Chalamar Ogle were planning a major assault on Cartagena the following year. On learning this, Sebastian Eslava, the Viceroy in Cartagena, immediately requested Don Blas de Lezo to bring his fleet to help and defend the city. This gave Don Blas scarcely four months to train and coordinate the defending forces. Historians differ on the number but it was probably less than 2,500 counting slaves and Indians, and about 500 Spanish soldiers.
Capitan Nicolas de Zubiria was born between the years 1705 y 1710 on the island of Milazzo, in Sicily, then under the Spanish crown and arriven in Cartagena de indias asigned to one of headquarters of the barracks in the city where he lived during Vernon's assault on the city and his behavior was that of a brave Spanish officer. Capitan de Zubiria found himself in all actions defending the city of Cartagena de Indias in seventen fourty one mainly in castillo de Bocachica, where he attended with honor and valor the glorious resistence that the english experienced.
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