The church had been shipped in from Alabama and rebuilt here, in May Mount, says the pamphlet I find on the seat – to lift up the congregation and expand it into the world from the infinite vista of the lookout in the bell tower. Something like that.

The building is made of wood that a true emancipator transported to San Andrés in 1844: the man in the photo, Philip Beekman Livingston, Jr. I look up again at the transcendent-eyed man hanging first in a line of succession. From his place above the corridor and to the right of the altar, he fixes posterity with what I’d describe as a helpless gaze. He has a beard like Abraham Lincoln’s and the high collar of his black suit brings out his angular features. The pamphlet continues: Philip Jr. studied in London. In the United States, he was christened in the new Baptist creed. It was his mother – a Providencia-born woman with the surname Archbold, daughter of the islands’ then governor – who charged him with his mission on these islands. Was it normal for people to have photos of their messiahs, to look them in the eye? Catholic saviours exist in paintings, in subjective representations, not in photos. Livingston isn’t just any pastor: he stares ahead with sombre tranquillity, with the air of someone who’s made perfect historical sense of his life. He’s firm and steady, as if he knew that behind the enormous camera, behind the flare of the flash, we, his heirs, would find him. Following his own image are photos of his son and grandson, his successors, and then of other more recent men, filing almost all the way to the entrance.

Despite the hour, it’s hot inside the church, and I take out my wooden fan; I must look like one of the local old ladies. I’ve started to sweat. As I wait for Juleen, I imagine a young man distributing his mother’s letters of introduction, speaking with plantation owners – old curmudgeons no doubt – and persuading them to obey the law, to free their slaves. Livingston, exceeding his mandate, didn’t stop at emancipation; he also taught the freemen to read and write, and he mapped out educational opportunities for them so they’d learn to manage the land and market their products.