Migrating to Freedom
The Histories of Paánza and Marème
People resisted slavery and colonialism in various ways. Many were able to build lives and meaning within the confines of enslavement, creating space to care for themselves and their loved ones.
Others moved beyond the reach of colonial authority, migrating to known and unknown spaces of freedom. The stories of Paánza and Marème Diarra illuminate histories of marronage in the Americas and waves of self-liberation.
Maroon Communities
The Maroons in Ambush on the Dromilly Estate in the Parish of Trelawney, Jamaica, 1801
Around the world, people fled slavery and created thousands of communities. These escapees, or Maroons, created new cultures with their own languages, traditions, and political structures that reflected their various African backgrounds.
Many of these communities persisted for generations, some until the present day.
Maroon Communities Map
Hundreds of communities were established as spaces of freedom by people who fled slavery. This map shows some of the recorded communities formed by these escapees or Maroons.
Ranging from small groups to large settlements, Maroon communities defied racial slavery and colonial rule. Maroons drew upon their various African backgrounds to create new, autonomous lives and systems of governance. Several communities sustained themselves for generations and some continue to this day.
Paánza
Seeding Liberation
Surinamese wooden comb, 19th century
Today, Saramaka Maroons—descendants of people who escaped slavery in the former Dutch colony of Suriname—honor an ancestor named Paánza for bringing rice to their community in the 1730s.
The daughter of an enslaved African mother and a European plantation owner, Paánza made the daring decision to flee the plantation, joining the Saramaka rebels living in the rainforest. Before making her escape, Paánza hid grains of rice in her hair. By planting this rice in the forest, the Saramaka were able to feed and sustain themselves during a century-long war for liberation.
Rice—Seeds of Memory
Matawai women and baby, ca. 1972
From northeastern Brazil to the southeastern United States, descendant communities share a common story about African women bringing rice to the Americas in their hair.
A dietary staple of West Africa, husked rice was a vital provision aboard slave ships. Captive African women were forced to prepare it—possibly concealing seeds to be planted later.
While rice was grown on plantations in the Americas to profit enslavers, it was also widely grown by the enslaved and Maroons for subsistence and ritual purposes. Rice serves as both a source of survival and a culinary connection to Africa.
Within Surinamese Maroon communities, the rice crop represents freedom and survival. Certain rice varieties bear the names of the women who brought the grain to their communities. For example, the Saramaka people grow several varieties of rice that are named after Paánza.
Self-Liberation in Western Africa
Map of European settlements involved in the trade of gum, grains, ivory, and enslaved people on the west coast of Africa, 1781
In the mid-19th century, people across West Africa began fleeing bondage collectively. This self-emancipation reached its height during the Bamana Slave Exodus of 1905. Bamana, a center of agriculture in modern-day Mali, had prospered with the Atlantic slave trade. Local African traders helped supply Europeans with captives but also kept enslaved people for themselves. While the French had technically abolished slavery in their African colonies, they still relied heavily on free or cheap labor for public works and had little interest in implementing abolition legislation in French Colonial West Africa.
Enslaved people themselves brought about the transition from slave to free labor. Within a year of the Bamana departures, similar exoduses occurred in hundreds of other locations. Over several years, groups of escapees trekked across western Africa looking for their previous homes and building new, free communities.
Marème Diarra
From the mid-19th century until World War I, European colonization and African resistance spurred massive displacement and the capture and sale of vulnerable people across western Africa.
Marème Diarra was swept up in the wake of that instability. Captured in Mali and enslaved in Mauritania, she bravely escaped slavery with her three children. They trekked over 200 kilometers to the French colonial city of Saint-Louis, Senegal, where slavery was legally abolished. Diarra settled in Diel Mbam, a haven for newcomers whose rights remained restricted in nearby Saint-Louis.
Artist Spotlight
Akonga and Visualizing Memory
Akonga poses in RBS Akademya, a graffiti school in Senegal
In 2021, the Unfinished Conversations team interviewed community members living near and outside of Saint-Louis, Senegal. In the community of Diel Mbam, many participants reflected on the life, character, and leadership of Marème Diarra.
While the community held many stories of Diarra, there were no images of her. Artist Akonga—a graffiti artist, designer, and teacher—worked with the collected oral histories to create a set of portraits of Marème Diarra. One portrait was gifted to the community in Diel Mbam; another portrait was created for this exhibition.
"Liberty" Villages
"Liberty” village near Saint-Louis, Senegal
"Liberty” village near Saint-Louis, Senegal
Thousands of people fleeing slavery came to the French colony of Senegal, where slavery was legally abolished in 1848. Their path to freedom was often incomplete and led to other forms of exploitation.
French “liberty” villages were purportedly built to welcome people who had self-liberated, promising refuge from re-enslavement. However, these communities began to function as labor camps for the French colonial government. In the aftermath of abolition, villagers were an essential labor population for the expanding colony.