Cartagena

Cartagena was once the richest port in the Americas and the busiest slave market in the Western Hemisphere—two facts that remain inseparable. Founded by Spain in 1533, the city became the mandatory entry point for all South American trade under the Spanish colonial monopoly. Gold from Peru and Colombia, silver from Bolivia, and emeralds from the Colombian highlands flowed through Cartagena's port, making it so valuable that Spain built the most extensive system of military fortifications in the New World to protect it. The walls, completed over two centuries, still stand.

The same port that exported precious metals imported enslaved Africans. An estimated one million enslaved people entered South America through Cartagena between the 16th and 19th centuries. San Pedro Claver, the Jesuit priest who ministered to enslaved arrivals, is now a saint; the legacy of the trade he opposed is visible in the Afro-Colombian neighborhoods of Getsemaní and La Boquilla, where descendants of enslaved people live alongside the boutique hotels that now occupy their ancestral streets.

Modern Cartagena generates its economy from three sources: petrochemicals (the Mamonal industrial zone houses Ecopetrol refineries and chemical plants), tourism (over 500,000 cruise passengers annually visit the walled city), and port logistics (the deepwater port handles a significant share of Colombian trade). The UNESCO-listed old city has become Colombia's premier tourist destination, attracting both international visitors and domestic tourism.

Cartagena's inequality is stark even by Latin American standards. The tourist districts of the walled city and Bocagrande showcase restored colonial architecture and luxury hotels. A few kilometers away, neighborhoods like Nelson Mandela and Olaya Herrera lack basic water and sewer infrastructure. This spatial inequality—wealth concentrated behind walls, poverty outside them—echoes the colonial geography that created the city five centuries ago.