Originally published in 1966, Miguel Barnet’s Biography of a Runaway Slave provides the written history of the life of Esteban Montejo, who lived as a slave, as a fugitive in the wilderness, and as a soldier fighting against Spain in the Cuban War of Independence. A new introduction by one of the most preeminent Afro-Hispanic scholars, William Luis, situates Barnet’s ethnographic strategy and lyrical narrative style as foundational for the tradition of testimonial fiction in Latin American literature. Barnet recorded his interviews with the 103-year-old Montejo at the onset of the Cuban Revolution. This insurgent’s history allows the reader into the folklore and cultural history of Afro-Cubans before and after the abolition of slavery. The book serves as an important contribution to the archive of black experience in Cuba and as a reminder of the many ways that the present continues to echo the past.
Originally published in 1966, Miguel Barnet’s Biography of a Runaway Slave provides the written history of the life of Esteban Montejo, who lived as a slave, as a fugitive in the wilderness, and as a soldier fighting against Spain in the Cuban War of Independence. A new introduction by one of the most preeminent Afro-Hispanic scholars, William Luis, situates Barnet’s ethnographic strategy and lyrical narrative style as foundational for the tradition of testimonial fiction in Latin American literature. Barnet recorded his interviews with the 103-year-old Montejo at the onset of the Cuban Revolution. This insurgent’s history allows the reader into the folklore and cultural history of Afro-Cubans before and after the abolition of slavery. The book serves as an important contribution to the archive of black experience in Cuba and as a reminder of the many ways that the present continues to echo the past.
Biography of a Runaway Slave: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
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Biography of a Runaway Slave: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
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Overview
Originally published in 1966, Miguel Barnet’s Biography of a Runaway Slave provides the written history of the life of Esteban Montejo, who lived as a slave, as a fugitive in the wilderness, and as a soldier fighting against Spain in the Cuban War of Independence. A new introduction by one of the most preeminent Afro-Hispanic scholars, William Luis, situates Barnet’s ethnographic strategy and lyrical narrative style as foundational for the tradition of testimonial fiction in Latin American literature. Barnet recorded his interviews with the 103-year-old Montejo at the onset of the Cuban Revolution. This insurgent’s history allows the reader into the folklore and cultural history of Afro-Cubans before and after the abolition of slavery. The book serves as an important contribution to the archive of black experience in Cuba and as a reminder of the many ways that the present continues to echo the past.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810133419 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/15/2016 |
| Edition description: | First Edition, Revised, First Edition, Revised |
| Pages: | 232 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
W. NICK HILL has translated a number of Spanish American authors, most recently Mexican poet Jorge Fernández Granados. Hill’s latest book of poems is And We’d Understand Crows Laughing.
WILLIAM LUIS is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Spanish at Vanderbilt University and editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review. He has authored, edited, and coedited fourteen books, including Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative; Looking Out, Looking In: Anthology of Latino Poetry; and The AmeRícan Poet: Essays on the Works of Tato Laviera. Luis was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2012. Born and raised in New York City, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on Latin American, Caribbean, Afro-Hispanic, and Latino U.S. literatures.
Read an Excerpt
Biography of a Runaway Slave
By Miguel Barnet, W. Nick Hill
Northwestern University Press
Copyright © 2016 William LuisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8101-3341-9
CHAPTER 1
First Memories
There are things in life I do not understand. Everything about nature seems obscure to me, and the gods even more. They're the ones who are supposed to give birth to all those things that a person sees, that I seen, and that do exist for sure. The gods are willful and ornery. That's why so many strange things have gone on around here. I remember from before, during slavery, I spent a lot of time looking upward, because I've always really liked the sky — it's so full of color. One time the sky turned into a glowing ember, and there was a terrible drought. Another time there was an eclipse of the sun. It began at four in the afternoon and was seen all over the island. The moon seemed to be fighting with the sun. I began to realize everything was going backward. It was getting darker and darker and then lighter and lighter. The chickens perched on the tops of posts. Folks were so scared they couldn't talk. Some died of heart attacks, and some were struck dumb.
I seen the same thing other times but in a different place. And I wouldn't ask why it happened for anything in the world. The long and short of it is that I know everything depends on nature. Nature is everything. Even what you can't see. And we men can't do those kinds of things because we're subjects of a God — Jesus Christ is the one most talked about. Jesus Christ was not born in Africa. He came direct from nature herself because Mary was a virgin. The strongest gods are the ones from Africa. I tell you it's a fact they could fly. And they did whatever they wanted with their hexes. I don't know how they allowed slavery. Truth is that I set myself to thinking about it, and I can't get it. In my opinion it all began with the red kerchiefs. The day they crossed over the wall. The wall was very old in Africa and went along the whole coast. It was a wall made out of palm fronds and wicked bugs that bit like the devil. They scared off the whites who were trying to get into Africa for many years. But it was the color scarlet that ruined all of them. And the kings and all the rest surrendered to it like nothing at all.
When the kings saw the white men, I think it was the Portuguese who were the first, pull out their red kerchiefs as if they were waving hello, they said to the blacks, "Go get one of those scarlet cloths, go on." And the blacks, excited by the red, ran like little lambs to the boats, and they were caught right there. Black men have always really liked red. That color is to blame for putting chains on them and sending them to Cuba. And then they couldn't return to their homeland. That's the reason there was slavery in Cuba. When the English discovered that business, they wouldn't allow more blacks to be brought, and then slavery ended and that other part began, the free part. It was around the '80s.
For me, none of that is forgotten. I lived through it all. I even remember my godparents told me the date I was born. It was the twenty-sixth of December, 1860, San Esteban's day, the one on the calendar. That's why my name is Esteban. My family name is Montejo, for my mother, who was a slave of French origin. My middle name is Mera. But that one hardly anyone knows about. Anyway, it's not right, so why use it? My real middle name is Mesa. What happened was that they put it down wrong in the records, and I left it that way. Since I wanted to have two names like everybody else, so I wouldn't be called jungle baby, I took that one, and there it was. The name Mesa came from a certain Pancho Mesa in Rodrigo. That seems reasonable, since he raised me after my birth. He was my mother's master. Of course, I never seen him, but I know the story is true because my godparents told it to me. And I've never forgotten anything they ever told me.
My godfather was named Gin Congo, and my godmother, Susana. I was to get to know them around the '90s, when the war hadn't really started up yet. An old black man who was at the same mill they were, and who knew me, gave me details about them. He himself took me to see them. I gradually got into the habit of visiting them in Chinchilla, the district where they lived, near Sagua la Grande. Since I didn't know my parents, I asked about them first. Then I learned about their names and other details. They even told me the plantation where I was born. My father's name was Nazario, and he was Lucumí from Oyó. My mother, Emilia Montejo. They also told me my parents had died in Sagua. Truth is that I would have liked to meet them, but because I saved my skin, I was unable to. If I had come out of the woods, they would have caught me on the spot.
Because I was a runaway slave, I never met my parents. I never ever seen them. But what is true can't be sad.
Like all children of slavery, the criollitos, as they were called, I was born in the infirmary where they took the pregnant black women to give birth. I think it was at the Santa Teresa plantation, though I'm not real sure. What I do remember is that my godparents talked to me a lot about that plantation and its owners, people by the name of La Ronda. That's the name my godparents had for a long time, until slavery left Cuba.
Blacks were sold like piglets, and they sold me right off — that's why I don't remember anything about that place. I do know that the plantation was near where I was born, which is in that northern region of Las Villas, Zulueta, Remedios, Caibarién, all those towns on down to the ocean. Then the picture of another plantation comes to mind, Flor de Sagua. I don't know if that's the place where I worked for the first time. What I am sure about is that I ran away from there once. I rebelled, by God, and I ran away. Who wanted to work! But they caught me like a little lamb, and they put some shackles on me that I can still feel if I really think about it. They tied them on me tight and put me to work and all of that. You talk about this kind of thing now and folks don't believe you. But I experienced it, and now I've got to talk about it.
The owner of that plantation had one of those long, strange, connected names. He was a million bad things, a blockhead, grouchy, stuffy ... He drove around through the cane fields in the carriage with his buddies and his wife. He would wave with his kerchief, but he wouldn't come up close on a bet. The masters never went into the fields. This one's case was strange. I remember he had an elegant black, a first-rate driver, with an earring and all. All those coachmen were ass kissers and snitches. They were what you call colored dandies.
At Flor de Sagua I first began work with the wagons carrying bagazo. I would sit in the driver's seat and steer the mule. If the wagon was very full I would stop, get down, and lead him by the reins. The mules were stubborn, and you had to pull them very hard. Your back would start to get humped. A lot of those folks walking around sort of humped over is because of those mules. The wagons went out full, right up to the top. They were always unloaded in the batey, and you had to spread out the bagazo to dry. You pulled the bagazo down with a hook. Then you took it bunched up and dry to the ovens. That was done to get the steam up. I think it was the first job I had. That's what my memory tells me anyway.
All the parts inside the mill were primitive. Not like today, with lights and fast machinery. They were called cachimbos because that word meant a tiny mill. In those cachimbos, cane sugar was made into muscovado. There were some mills that didn't make sugar, just molasses and raspadura. Almost all those mills had a single owner and were known as trapiches. In the cachimbos there were three kettles. The kettles were big, made out of copper and wide mouthed. In one, the raw cane juice was cooked, in another the cachaza was beaten, and in the third the cane syrup reached the graining point. We called cachaza what was left of the cane juice. It came out like a hard crust that was healthy food for the pigs. After the cane syrup was ready, you took a trough, and with a big ladle attached to a stick, you poured the syrup into the trough, and from there to the crystallizing pan, which was standing a short ways from the boiler. There the muscovado set up, which was the unrefined sugar. The best part of the molasses remained in it. In those days that thing you call a centrifuge didn't exist.
Once the fresh sugar was in the cooling room, you had to go in there barefoot, with a pick and a shovel and a hand barrow. One black always went in front and another behind. That hand barrow was to carry the hogsheads to the draining room, a large depository with two boards where the barrels were placed so that the sugar would drain. The molasses that leaked out of the barrel went to the batey and was fed to the sheep and the piglets. It fattened them up right quick.
To make refined sugar there were some big funnels where the muscovado was put to be refined. That sugar was like sugar nowadays, like white sugar. The funnels were known as molds.
I know this part of making sugar better than most folks, who only knew about the cane out in the fields. And to tell the truth, I prefer the inside work, because it's more comfortable. In Flor de Sagua I worked in the cachimbo's cooling room. But that's after I was experienced with the bagazo. That was a pick-and-shovel job. To my mind, even cutting cane was better. I must have been about ten, and that's why they didn't send me to the fields. But ten years of age then was like saying thirty now, because children worked like oxen.
If a little black boy was pretty and lively, they sent him inside, to the master's house. There they began to sweeten him up, and ... what do I know! The fact is that the little black boy had to spend his time shooing flies because the masters ate a lot. And they put the little boy at the head of the table while they ate. They gave him a big long fan made of a palm frond. And they told him, "Shoo, so those flies don't fall in the food!" If a fly fell on a plate, they scolded him severely and even whipped him. I never did this work because I never liked to be near the masters. I was a cimarrón from birth.
CHAPTER 2Life in the Barracoons
All the slaves lived in barracoons. Those living quarters are gone now, so nobody can see them. But I seen them, and I never had a good thought about them. The masters sure did say that barracoons were little boxes of gold. The slaves didn't like living in those conditions because being closed in suffocated them. The barracoons were big, although there were some mills that had small ones. It depended on the number of slaves in the workforce. About two hundred slaves of all different colors lived at Flor de Sagua. The barracoon was in the form of two rows that faced each other, with a big door in the middle and a thick padlock that locked the slaves in at night. There were barracoons made of wood and others made of cement with tiled roofs. Both kinds had a dirt floor and were filthy as hell. There certainly was no modern kind of ventilation inside. A little hole in the wall of the room or a little tiny window with bars was all there was. So the place swarmed with fleas and ticks that gave the entire workforce infections and sickness. Those ticks were witches. And so the only thing to get rid of them was hot lard, and sometimes even that didn't work. The masters wanted the barracoons to look clean outside, so they painted them with whitewash. The blacks themselves were given that task. The master would say to them, "Get some whitewash and spread it evenly." The whitewash was prepared in big buckets in the barracoons, in the central patio.
Horses and goats didn't go into the barracoons, but there was always some fool dog sniffing around looking for food. People had to stay in the rooms of the barracoons, which were small and hot. Rooms! In reality they were furnaces. They had doors with latchkeys so nobody would get robbed. But watch out for the little criollos, who were born rascally, with a thieving instinct. They would get out from under the covers at night to go around stealing like the dickens.
In the center of the barracoons, the women washed their husband's clothes, their children's, and their own. They washed in washtubs. Washtubs during slavery weren't like the ones today. Those then were more rustic. And you had to take them to the river so they would swell up to hold water because they were made of codfish boxes, the big ones.
Outside the barracoon there weren't any trees, nor inside, either. The barracoon was bare dirt, empty, and lonely. A black man couldn't get used to that. Blacks like trees, woods. Maybe the Chinese could! Africa was full of trees, ceibas, cedars, banyan trees. Not China. Over there they had plants that grew along the ground, creepers, purslane, morning glories ... Since the rooms were tiny, the slaves did their business in a latrine, as they called it. It was in a corner of the barracoon. That's a place everybody went to. And to dry your fotingo, afterward, you had to use plants like feverfew and corncobs.
The mill's bell was at the gateway. It was struck by the assistant overseer. At four thirty in the morning they rang the Ave María. I think there were nine strokes. You had to get up right away. At six in the morning they struck another bell, which was the lineup bell, and you had to form up on the dirt in front of the barracoon. The men on one side and the women on the other. Then into the fields until eleven in the morning, when we ate beef jerky, taters, and bread. Then, at sunset, came the prayer bell. At eight thirty they rang the last bell for bed. It was called silence.
The assistant overseer slept in the barracoon and kept watch. In the batey there was a white night watchman, a Spaniard, who kept guard. Everything was based on leather and vigilance. After some time had passed, and the slaves' clothing was worn-out, they would give the men a new set made of Russian cloth or canvas, a thick fabric, good for the fields. Tambor, which were field pants with big open pockets, a shirt, and a wool cap for the cold. Shoes were generally rawhide, low cut, with two straps to tie them. The old men wore house slippers or chacualas, which had a flat sole with a thong for the big toe. That has always been an African style, though now whites wear them and call them slippers or mules. The women were issued a blouse, a skirt, a petticoat, and when they had a conuco, a small garden, they themselves bought the kind of white petticoats that were prettier and stylish. They wore gold or pearl earrings in their ears. Those items could be bought from the Moors or Turks, who came right up to the barracoons once in a while. They carried boxes slung from their shoulders on a thick leather strap.
Lottery-ticket vendors also got into the barracoons. They cheated the blacks, selling them the highest-priced tickets, and when a ticket came out a winner, they never showed up again. The guajiros came around to trade milk for beef jerky. They sold it for four centavos a bottle. Blacks bought it because the master didn't supply milk. Milk cures infections and cleans you out. That's why you had to drink it.
But it was the small gardens that saved many slaves. They provided them real nourishment. Almost all the slaves had their conucos. They were little strips of dirt for gardening. They were real close to the barracoons, almost right in back. They grew everything there: sweet potato, squash, okra, corn, peas, horse beans, beans like limas, limes, yuca, and peanuts. They also raised piglets. And so those products were sold to the guajiros, who came straight from town. Truth is that the blacks were honest. Since they didn't know much yet, being honest just came naturally. They sold their things very cheap. Full-grown pigs were worth an ounce or one and a half ounces in gold, which was the money back then. But they never liked to sell their taters. I learned from the old-timers to eat taters, which are very nutritious. During slavery the main thing was pig meat. They were given taters for food. Pigs at that time produced more lard than they do nowadays. I think it's because they lived a more natural life. You had to let the pig wallow around in the pigsty. That lard of theirs was sold in twenty-two-pound batches. Every week the guajiros would come for their supply. They always paid in silver half pesos. Later on, that coin dropped to a quarter, or half a half. The centavo was unknown because Alfonso XII hadn't been crowned yet. It was after the coronation that the centavo came. King Alfonso wanted to change even the money. The copper calderilla, which I think was worth two cents, came to Cuba with other new money on account of the king.
Strange as it may seem, blacks had fun in the barracoons. They had their pastimes and their games. There were also games in the taverns, but those were different. One of the ones they played the most in the barracoons was tejo. You put a corncob, split in half, on the ground. You placed a coin on top of it. You drew a line on the ground a short distance away, and you threw a stone from the line toward the corncob. If the stone hit the corncob, and the coin fell on the stone, the man took the coin as his. If it fell close to the corncob, no coin. Tejo caused great disputes. In such cases, you had to measure with a straw to see if the coin was closer to the player than to the corncob.
That game was played in the patio like the game of bowling. But bowling wasn't played much. I seen it no more than two or three times. There were some black coopers who made the sticks in the shape of bottles and the wooden balls for playing. It was an open game, and everybody could join in. Except for the Chinese, who were pretty standoffish. You rolled the balls along the flat ground to try to knock down the four or five sticks at the other end. It was the same game as the one that's played today in the city, but the difference is that with the older one, there were fights over the bets. That surely didn't please the masters. That's why they prohibited some games, and you had to play them when the overseer wasn't looking. The overseer was the one who told the news, news and gossip.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Biography of a Runaway Slave by Miguel Barnet, W. Nick Hill. Copyright © 2016 William Luis. Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
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Table of Contents
Translator's Preface and Post-PrefaceMemory, Counter Memory, Politics, and Writing the Auto/Biography of a Runaway Slave by William Luis
Biography of a Runaway Slave:
SLAVERY
First Memories
Life in the Barracoons
Life in the Woods
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
Life in the Sugarmills
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Life during the War
Afterword
Footnotes
Glossary