‘A story that needs to be told’: the Manacillos festival of Colombia – photo essay
Ever Andrés Mercado won a World Press Photo award for his work on the Manacillos festival, which takes place among the Afro-descendant community of Yurumanguí. He talks about the ancestral ritual and why it’s so important
Every year, hundreds of Afro-Colombians climb into wooden boats and set sail down the Yurumanguí River. They navigate dense rainforest, scramble through mangroves, and battle charging river currents, to disembark about 12 hours later in the remote village of Juntas.
It is here that they reunite and gather for an ancestral ritual: the Manacillos festival.
“It’s a story that needs to be told,” says Ever Andrés Mercado, a local photographer. “It’s a story about peace, about resilience, about resistance.”
The Afro-descendant community of Yurumanguí traces its roots to enslaved Africans who were brought to mine gold between the 17th and 19th centuries. They have lived there ever since, working in the fields and artisanal mines, caring for the land, and fishing for food.
“It’s a small paradise,” says Mercado. “There is no exploitation, only the river and the forest.”
People living in the Juntas village of Yurumanguí use the festival as a way to unite and attract more people who, for years, had to flee the territory.
Yet while the 13 settlements scattered along the river remain home to approximately 4,000 people, in recent decades thousands more inhabitants have fled, driven away by economic instability and state neglect, or escaping violence inflicted by armed groups. Local people fear that if they do not take a stand, their way of life will vanish.
“We have lived here for more than 350 years, and this has been the most difficult time ever experienced,” said Delio Valencia Rentería, 36, leader of the Yurumanguí River Basin Community Council. “Multinationals and armed groups come to the territory to plunder, to undo what we have taken care of.”
This practice enabled Juntas to bring together about 1,500 people in 2025 who had not seen one another for years because of violence, according to Valencia Rentería. For a community with no more than 800 inhabitants, it was the highest number of people in the village in recent years.
Despite facing intimidation, each year families return to this vast, inhospitable region of the Colombian Pacific, to reaffirm their claim to the land and their ancestral traditions.
“They return home because they want to send a message that, despite the problems they have faced, they will always come back to the territory to protect it. They say they are the only ones who can,” says Mercado.
Most of those who have migrated live in the cities of Buenaventura and Cali, and so the celebration – which takes place during Holy Week and is planned over several months – begins first and foremost with grand family reunions. The streets are adorned with palm leaves, and hand-woven costumes are donned. Slogans painted on walls read “our territory is not for sale”, while each person commits to not working, resting or sleeping for three nights.
Kilinito, pictured, is carried by two people due to exhaustion. The four-day celebration is so demanding that no one rests, especially the female singers and the Manacillos, who begin to fall asleep while singing and dancing in the streets of the village as they wait for each day’s activities to begin.
During the celebration, no one rests. The local people’s resistance throughout the four days is proportional to their resistance to the threats they experience in the territory.
The people dressed in white represent the souls of their ancestors and loved ones who gave their lives for the lands. Every element of the Manacillos’ clothing is crafted with great attention to detail. The men, young and old, build custom-made masks with wood from local trees.
A group of 40 men known as the Manacillos – said to represent the spirits of those who punished Jesus – secure their custom-made masks and tie whips to their waists. They stage a symbolic clash, attacking the community who seek to protect Jesus.
“This is the first act of resistance,” says Mercado.
The whipping game is based on rivalry between the Manacillos (representing the soldiers who helped capture Jesus) and the community (who are on Jesus’s side and do not want him to be captured and die on the cross).
The whipping game also mockingly represents enslavers who whipped their ancestors who came to the Colombian Pacific rainforest during the slavery period.
Afterwards, the celebration turns to traditional preservation methods and defending the geographically isolated territory. Songs, passed down generation to generation, are sung outside each house, celebrating abundance, denouncing violence, and calling for protection of the land. Beating drums reverberate down the streets.
Women from the community walk along part of the Yurumanguí River while singing traditional songs and carrying leaves as a way of fencing off the celebration.
Today, the community is being forced to defend the territory “tooth and nail”, says Valencia Rentería.
Alongside illegal loggers and goldminers, narco-traffickers are vying for control of the land, drawn by its geostrategic location – the river runs straight to the Pacific Ocean. With no state presence, the land is also coveted for coca cultivation, the plant needed to make cocaine.
“The territory is the backbone of a people, it is our life, and life is not for sale; it is loved and defended,” says Valencia Rentería.
A man poses and shows the chains he carries with him: among them, a gold weapon that has worn away, a cross and a red-and-black necklace used for prayers, although some people associate it with the colour of an armed group.
That defence comes at a cost. In November 2021, two community leaders, Abencio Caicedo and Edinson Valencia, were kidnapped and disappeared, prompting two years of mourning and a pause in the festival. It returned in 2024, tentatively. Last year, attendance surged to an estimated 1,500.
“They were disappeared because they weren’t afraid. They fought against the use of psychoactive substances, illicit crops, and illegal mining,” said Valencia Rentería.
An important part of the celebration takes place during the first nights of the festival, when the residents of Juntas and visitors spend the night away from their homes, with the community sleeping in the village church.
A painting on the side of the church honours the two leaders, and reads: “We will die on the day we remain silent in the face of injustices.”
Mercado says he feels an “enormous responsibility” in covering the event and the community. “For years, only our problems have been reported,” he says. “We, as people from the Pacific, as Afro-Colombians, have not been able to tell our own narratives. This story changes that. It is a symbol of resistance.”
Eider Calimeño is one of about 33 men – ranging from 10 to 60 years old – who have inherited the legacy of being Matachines. Tradition dictates this responsibility can only be received if the parents, grandparents, uncles, or other close relatives were Manacillos and decide to pass on their position to the next generation.
Even babies play an important role during the celebration. Pictured above is a baby who had just been taken from their mother to be shared with the Manacillos.. The mother, in order to recover her child, must make a financial contribution to the community fund. Below, the new generations of residents assume the role from a young age.
Valencia Rentería remembers a time when the community was invisible. “We weren’t even on the map of Buenaventura,” he said. Now, he hopes the celebration becomes a shield – a living declaration of presence.
Even before forming a community council, Black communities along the Yurumanguí River suffered episodes of violence.
“These photos protect us,” he said. “With them, even those who are not here in the territory, those who can’t come, can see there is a community that fights for collective wellbeing, for its traditions, its customs. We are telling the world, especially the Colombian state, that we still exist.”