Cartagena connects the Americas: the region's presidents and prime ministers will gather in a fortified city that was a crossroads of the hemispehere from its very beginnings.

• Author: Conaway, Janelle
• Position: Cover story

Its only fitting that Cartagena de Indias--that jewel of a city on Colombia's Caribbean coast--will be the setting for the Sixth Summit of the Americas, which takes place in April. The leaders of the 34 countries that make up the Organization of American States (OAS) will focus on the theme "Connecting the Americas: Partners for Prosperity," and Cartagena's history is rooted in connection.

Spanish colonizers first settled on the spot in 1533, drawn by its strategic location and sheltered bay. Cartagena soon became the prime gateway to what the Spanish called Tierra Firme; in fact, according to historian Leon Trujillo Velez, in the first two centuries of colonial rule, "Cartagena was the most important port in South America."

As an intercontinental nexus for trade, Cartagena in a sense was a product of early globalization. It was the main distribution point for Spanish convoys bringing clothing, manufactured goods, and other merchandise--most infamously, African slaves--to South America. Ships returning to Spain left Cartagena laden with gold, silver, and other treasures.

"Because Cartagena was important, privateers, admirals, and captains from the English, Dutch, and French crowns made it a target," said Trujillo Velez, president of the Cartagena de Indias Academy of History. Repeated attacks by the likes of John Hawkins and Francis Drake gave rise, over the course of two centuries, to the massive fortifications that today make the city's colonial center so distinctive.

Trujillo Velez notes that Cartagena played a pivotal role in the history of the Western Hemisphere on at least two occasions. In 1741, Spanish forces defeated a formidable English fleet--the largest that had been amassed to date--in the Battle of Cartagena de Indias, thus ensuring continued Spanish dominance of the continent. Then in 1812, Cartagena helped shape the region's independence movement by giving refuge to Simon Bolivar after his first defeat in Caracas, and supporting his subsequent revolutionary efforts. A statue of Bolivar in the colonial center quotes the independence hero's paean to the city: "Cartagenians, if Caracas gave me life, you gave me glory."

Cartagena, at the time an autonomous province, had declared its own independence from Spain on November 11, 1811, proclaiming itself a "free, sovereign, and independent state." It went on to draft a constitution that Trujillo Velez notes was republican and progressive for its time. While it did not abolish...