# The slave uprisings: historiographical perspectives  
In 1728, there was an uprising of enslaved people in the mining areas of Tadó and Nóvita. Barule, one of the leaders of the uprising, claimed that 'to kill whites is a good thing, and then Chocó will be finished [...]' (Colmenares, 1979, p. 101; Leal, 1998). This incisive statement calls into question whether uprisings of enslaved people in the Afro-Colombian Pacific were central and fundamental to the construction of maroon societies. This theme has been touched upon by historiography from different angles and perspectives, and with differing degrees of emphasis. The importance of Afro-Colombian Maroonism in the Pacific has been recognized since the 1960s, but it was possibly of even greater importance than the earlier development of Maroonism in the Colombian Caribbean, where the arena of San Basilio de Palenque constituted a kind of historiographic icon.