Colombia

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. 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.

Despite the precautions, the city was attacked many times. In 1544 the French pirate Roberto Baal (aka Roberval) forced Governor Pedro de Heredia to flee and to give him gold to avoid being at the mercy of the invaders.
In 1559, the Frenchman Martín Cote also dominated the city. He took huge plunder in spite of Cacique Maridalo's resistance.
Another pirate attack was that of Francis Drake , who 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 a nave of 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 Governor Marín de las Alas did not want to carry out a commercial fair in the city; Hawkins could not subjugate the city.

This was the case in the Raid on Cartagena (1697) by a combined fleet of regular French soldiers under Pointis and buccaneers under Jean Du Casse .   In order to resist these attacks, during the 17th century the Spanish Crown hired the services of prominent European military engineers to carry out the construction of fortresses, which are nowadays one of Cartagena's clearest signs of identity.  In March of 1741 the city was surrounded by the troops of the English admiral Edward Vernon , who arrived at Cartagena with an enormous fleet of 186 ships and 23.600 men (the biggest fleet assembled up to that time, and which was not seriously overcome up to the Disembarkation of Normandy ) against only 6 ships and 3.000 men. Finally he had to retire after the siege was repelled by the commander, General Blas de Lezo and expelled finally by the colonel of engineers Carlos Suillars and his men.

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 5 February 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 on November 11, 1811, 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 carried out twelve autos-de-fé, 767 defendants were punished and six of them were burned at the stake.

In colonial times, the Spaniards also built a series of constructions and fortresses to defend the city, such as San Sebastián de Pastelillo Fort, in the neighborhood of Manga, and the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, a large fortress named in honor of Spain's King Philip IV . In the 18th century, the Vaults were constructed by the Spanish engineer Antonio de Arévalo . Outside the city, the Forts of San Fernando and of San José were located strategically at the entrance of the bay to entrench the pirate vessels that attacked the city.  Cartagena gained modern notoriety in the 1984 hit movie, "Romancing the Stone" when romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) travels to Cartagena to deliver a treasure map in an effort to ransom her kidnapped sister. Although the Cartagena scenes were filmed in Mexico for safety reasons, the audience walks away thinking they were in Cartagena, Colombia.