Afro-Colombian women braid messages of freedom in hairstyles

In the time of slavery in Colombia, hair braiding was used to relay messages. For example, to signal that they wanted to escape, women would braid a hairstyle called departes. “It had thick, tight braids, braided closely to the scalp and was tied into buns on the top,” Asprilla Garcia says.

Someone in the crowd tells Asprilla Garcia that style seems very much like the one she sees black women in the District wearing.

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“Yes, also,” she says.

“And another style had curved braids, tightly braided on their heads. The curved braids would represent the roads they would [use to] escape,” Asprilla Garcia says. “In the braids, they also kept gold and hid seeds which, in the long run, helped them survive after they escaped.”

“Why did they not speak the messages?” someone asks.

“By that time, a lot of the owners understood their language,” Asprilla Garcia says. The message in the women’s braids “was the best way to not give back any suspicion to owner. He would never figure out such a hairstyle would mean they would escape.”

Not every woman who was planning to escape had the same braids.

“Always,” Asprilla Garcia says, “there was a big mother in the whole group.” Such matriarchs always had a distinctive hairstyle. “The rest would know what it meant.”

She notes with satisfaction that there has been a resurgence of braided hairstyles in Colombia in recent years.

“Instead of being diminishing, it is becoming more and more common,” she says. “The women are not doing it because they want to send a message. . . . They get their hair braided because it is pretty.”

It’s also a matter of pride. “It’s a movement not to forget what our ancestors brought with them when they came over,” she says. “It’s a movement to honor them. People are braiding hair and wearing headpieces and more traditional dress to honor their ancestors. People dress in African tunics and headpieces. We are keeping that tradition alive.”

These days, Asprilla Garcia says, braiding has become a way of communicating pride and freedom from oppression. A way of saying that black hair is strong enough to hold this message.

She holds up a colorful bird figure to which she has attached braided yellow, red and black acrylic strands. The bird represents a species that is on the verge of extinction in Choco.

Asprilla Garcia braids black and red strands into women’s hair and then uses acrylic thread to attach the headpiece so that the bird sits like a crown.

“I find it beautiful,” Asprilla Garcia says. “It is a hairstyle no one taught me how to do. It was like it was born in me.”