The objective of the article is to describe Afro-rurality as a historical category corresponding to a rural world that has been invisible until now in the flatlands of Northern Cauca, Colombia. Methodologically, this historical analysis uses secondary sources and is enriched by the author’s direct experience of Afro-rural territoriality in that region. This work falls in the theoretical category of black ethnogenesis, as approached in the works of Oscar Almario García, Giselle Invernon Duconge, Menara Lube Guizardi and others. Four topics are addressed: slavery and haciendas-cimarrones and palenques; ethnogenesis and Afro-rurality in the northern Cauca during the nineteenth century; dispossession of Afro rural lands in the twentieth century and the traditional farm as the symbol of northern Cauca Afro-rurality and its current context. One important outcome of this work was to give visibility to historical and territorial Afro-rurality as the product of ethnogenesis based on ethnic-cultural identity, the struggle for freedom and the traditional farm as the current reference point.