Biohó declared himself King Benkos, and his palenque of San Basilio attracted large numbers of runaways to join his community.

Therefore, the Spanish Crown issued a Royal Decree (1691), guaranteeing freedom to the Palenque de San Basilio Africans if they stopped welcoming new escapees.

Eventually, the Spanish agreed to peace terms with the palenque of San Basilio, and in 1772, this community of maroons was included within the Mahates district, as long they no longer accepted any further runaways.

[5] The village of San Basilio is inhabited mainly by Afro-Colombians which are direct descendants of enslaved Africans brought by the Europeans during the Colonization of the Americas and have preserved their ancestral traditions and have developed also their own language; Palenquero.

In the village of Palenque de San Basilio most of its inhabitants are black and still preserve customs and language from their African ancestors.

In recent years people of indigenous ancestry have settled at the borders of Palenque, being displaced earlier by the Colombian civil war.