Word of the Day: Palenque

Palenque can mean any number of things in Spanish, from a fence post (or tethering post) to a cockfight. My first exposure to the word was when I was studying slavery in the New World, in which context it means a society of marooned (escaped) slaves.

In Costa Rica, however, palenque is almost exclusively reserved as a generic term for indigenous reservations.

In Costa Rica:

Palenque = reserva indígena