HISTORY FROM BELOW
TEACHING WITH THE NARRATIVE OF AN EX-SLAVE *
James W. Russell, Eastern Connecticut State University
Estaban Montejo began life as a slave in 1860, escaped to spend a number
of years in hiding until Abolition came, then returned to the sugar plantations
as a free laborer and worked there until going off to fight for Cuban independence
in 1895. As slave, cimmarón, sugar worker, and independence fighter,
he witnessed from within and participated in the transformation of Cuba's
economic, social, and political structure in the decades leading up to
this century.
Miguel Barnet, found him in 1963, when he was 103 years old and living
in a Cuban nursing home, and recorded his story in Biography of a Runaway
Slave. Primarily known as a leading figure in Latin American testimonial
fiction, Barnet seeks to give voice to the heretofore voiceless in the
historical record--illiterate ex-slaves such as Montejo, for example--who
participated in the making but not the telling of history. To accomplish
that, he not simply records their voices but also uses the techniques of
novel writing to bring them out to their fullest effect--making his works
closer to historical novels than oral histories or ethnographies. He used
the first rather than third person to narrate Biography of a Runaway
Slave and made no attempt made to grammatically or stylistically alter
his subject's speech pattern. Indeed, it is that speech pattern which the
author tried to capture. It is also the reason why W. Nick Hill, the translator,
thought it necessary to bring out a new translation, criticizing a previously
published one for flattening out the rich texture of Montejo's narration.
The result is a testament of uncommon interest. Esteban Montejo never
achieved fame or fortune in his life. He was never a leader and certainly
not an intellectual since he could neither read nor write. But he observed,
often very acutely, what went on around him and that is what makes this
valuable.
First and foremost it is a testament about Caribbean slavery, one of
the three major centers of New World slavery--Brazil and the U.S. south
being the other two. In this respect, one of the most intriguing differences
between Latin American and U.S. slavery is that the African cultural remnants
in language, music, and religion survived much more in the former than
the latter and that is clear in Montejo's narrative.
The first major reason for this post slavery cultural difference is
that the slave trade ended much earlier in the United States than in Latin
America, primarily because the slave population reproduced itself more
in the former than the latter and hence new infusions of slaves to replenish
the supply were not as needed (see Fogel and Engerman).
Slaves who had been brought up on African soil--both physical and cultural--were
continuing to come into Latin America as late as the middle of the nineteenth
century, long after they had virtually ceased to be coming into the United
States, where the slave trade was officially banned in 1808.
Esteban Montejo was in 1963 still able to remember and describe the
differences between Congos, Mandingos, Gangas, CarabalÕs, Musungo
Congos, and LucumÕs. I am quite sure that it would have been impossible
to find an ex-slave in the U.S. in this century who would have been able
to do the same simply because those differences were quickly washed away
within a generation of arrival on this soil.
This raises the second reason for why African culture survived much
longer in Latin than North America. Slaves in the U.S. south appear to
have had better physical conditions of living--hence, their greater reproduction--than
did Latin American slaves. However, Latin American slaves appear to have
enjoyed greater cultural autonomy than did those of the South. A large
part of the explanation for this lies with the respective attitudes of
the Catholic and Protestant churchs toward the preexisting African religious
and other belief-systems of the slave as well as those of the Indian populations.
The Catholic priests, like their Protestant counterparts, were horrified
at the religious beliefs and customs of Africans and Indians and sought
to replace them with their own. But they continued to exist side by side.
"Right now," Esteban Montejo observes, "if you up and go
to a Catholic church, you see no apples, no rocks, no rooster feathers.
But in an African household those are the first things you see. The African
is more down to earth." But--and this is the key difference--the Catholic
church was much more tolerant than the Protestant churches and willing
to compromise in its evangelical mission. It could allow and even partially
adopt the indigenous Day of the Dead in Mexico, for example, and in Cuba,
"All the religions have become mixed up together in this country,"
Montejo observes. "The African brought his, the strongest, and the
Spaniard also brought his, though not so strong. They all have to be respected.
That's my way of doing things."
Initially though, according to Montejo's recollection, Catholicism took
hold most among the house slaves because the priests were afraid to enter
the prison-like quarters of the field slaves. It was among the more numerous
field slaves that African belief systems and other cultural traditions
were most strongly carried.
Slave living conditions were particularly harsh in Cuba--long work days
in the blazing sun, sleeping at night in prison-like barracoons in which
each slave was locked in a suffocating room designed so that he could not
communicate with others, and facing the whip for infractions. Twice, as
a boy, Montejo tried to escape. The second time he succeeded and lived
in hiding in the woods until Abolition came. He then returned to the sugar
mills to work, but this time for wages, however meager, and to live in
barracoons again, but this time with the locks removed and holes punched
in the walls for ventilation.
Abolition, unlike in the rest of Latin America, came in a colonial context
in Cuba, as in Puerto Rico. The two Caribbean islands remained as colonial
outposts for seven decades after the rest of Spain's Latin American colonies
freed themselves through the independence wars of the 1820s. One reason
for the difference was that the native-born Cuban upper class, unlike its
counterparts in other parts of Latin America, had little interest in independence
so long as slavery existed, fearing that an independence revolution would
turn into a Haitian-like revolution against slavery which it would be ill
equipped to control.
But after Abolition yearnings for independence began to grow stronger,
resulting in the 1895-1898 war. Montejo, the ex-slave now sugar worker,
was swept up in it and enlisted immediately when it broke out. He recalls
that his own understanding of why the war was necessary: "It wasn't
fair that so many jobs and so many privileges happened to fall into the
hands of the Spaniards alone." But it is not purely nationalist resentment
that drove his participation. There was also an initial belief that colonialism
was responsible for racial discrimination: "You never saw a black
lawyer because they said that blacks were only good for the forest. You
never saw a black teacher. It was all for the white Spaniards." He
acknowledges though, in the nationalist vein, that "even the white
criollos were pushed aside."
Montejo joined up with the Mambises, the fiercest of the independence
soldiers. They road into battle bareback and naked wielding machetes with
which they literally chopped the heads off of Spanish soldiers.
Once the war--in which over 400,000 died--was over, white Cubans who
supported the Spanish side, according to Montejo's bitter observation,
ended up with more opportunities than blacks who were on the independence
side. Montejo blamed U.S. intervention for being at least partially responsible.
During the four years that the U.S. governed the island from 1898 to 1902,
it restricted jobs in the police force it was creating to whites. But he
was quite aware that the problem of racial discrimination went deeper than
the U.S. intervention. "You have to remember," he says, "that
the white Cubans were just as much to blame as the Americans because they
let themselves be order around in their own country."
The U.S. solidified patterns of racial discrimination in post-colonial
Cuba at a time when there may have been other options. A little over two
decades earlier the U.S. army occupied the South during Reconstruction.
Then it served as a bulwark against--as opposed to promoting--racial discrimination
until it withdrew in 1877, allowing the dominant classes to disenfranchise
blacks and institute segregation. The U.S. army that later occupied Cuba
in a similar post-slavery period though was coming from a country that
had chosen not to carry through black freedom but rather to institutionalize
segregation and racial discrimination. If two or three decades earlier,
the U.S. Army had the opportunity to ensure a social revolution in the
South, now it was simply content to solidify the racial status quo ante
in Cuba.
This is a book to be read not so much as basic history but rather to
complement and round out a basic understanding. It is history as remembered
by a very old man and interpreted by a very young man eager to be respectful.
At the same time, it is a book not without faults. In the preface, W.
Nick Hill quotes Barnet (from a Post Scriptum to the 1987 Argentine edition)
as stating that Montejo "died the 10th of February 1973 at 113 years
of age. That same year marks the 100th anniversary of the Abolition of
slavery in Cuba and also in the Americas, since Cuba was the last country
to overcome this affront to the human condition." Barnet here though
committed a double error: the abolition of slavery in Cuba was in 1886,
not 1873; and Brazil, not Cuba, was the last country to abolish slavery
in the Americas--in 1888. Since the text does not tell the reader exactly
when or at what age Montejo escaped and since it is unclear when either
he or the author thought that slavery ended, it is impossible to know how
long he spent as a runaway.
While it is true that there is not a hard and fast line between fiction
and nonfiction--much creative imagination on the part of the authors of
historical and testimonial novels must of necessity be employed--it is
also true that a reader can always suspect that the author went too far
in reconstructing his subject's narrative for literary or other motives.
I have no doubt that the U.S. Army during the occupation either promoted
or did nothing to stop the development of segregation and discrimination.
But was that a salient memory of Montejo or did he serve as a vehicle for
the author's concern? I do not know the answer to this except that many
readers might find Montejo's comments about the U.S. occupation to be a
little too convenient given the political context of intense anti-U.S.
sentiment in Cuba in the early 1960s when the book was written.
Regardless of these points though, this is a very valuable book to have.
As Dale Graden points out, it is one of the few accounts that exist of
Latin American slavery from the point of view of the slaves, whereas several
thousand such accounts exist of slavery in the U.S.
Teaching with Biography of a Runaway Slave
Everyone knows that what teachers think of a book and what students
think are not necessarily the same thing. Teachers can think that a celebrated
book is wonderful and then wonder why students were not similarly impressed.
Teachers can also assign a book with one motive in mind and then find that
students have entirely different experiences in reading it.
I have assigned Biography once, last fall, in a general introductory
class to Latin American studies. The book fit neatly in with two goals
that I have for the class. First, for historical background, I teach about
colonialism, slavery, capitalism, and feudalism in Latin American history.
Thus, Biography provided good reading background for my discussions
of colonialism and slavery.
A second major theme in my course is to emphasize the shift from the
original Spanish colonial domination of the Spanish-speaking countries
to their domination now by the United States. Biography proved to
be useful in this respect both because of Montejo's experiences with the
War of Independence and his comments on the role of the United States Army
during the 1898-1902 occupation in encouraging racial discrimination.
A third major theme in my course concerns revolutions in Latin America,
from the independence revolutions to those of Central America in the 1980s.
One of the strongest parts of Biography concerns Montejo's experiences
in the Cuban War of Independence. This fit well into my course sequence
because I then followed it with John Reed's Insurgent Mexico which records
his direct observations of several of the campaigns of Pancho Villa in
1913. Part of my motives for assigning this book is that it serves as an
antidote to the Hollywood portrayal of Pancho Villa largely as a buffoon.
Reed's portrait captures well the outstanding leadership qualities of Villa
and allows students to understand why he remains a hero for good reasons
to most ordinary Mexicans. At the same time it is not hero worship since
Reed also records Villa's limitations as when he asks him what he thinks
of socialism and Villa responds that he does not know what it is--this
coming from a leader of one of the two major revolutions of the early twentieth
century! I also had students read Rebel Radio, which is the wonderful
recording of the collective experiences of working with the FMLN's Radio
Venceremos during the war in El Salvador. All three thus are accounts from
different angles of what it is like to be a participant in revolution.
Most of my students, as revealed on their blue book examinations, got
out of the books the human aspects of what it is like to participate in
a revolution--the danger, being scared, the bravery, etc. These aspects
especially came through in Rebel Radio. In the case of John Reed's
book, most of the students came away with a much more accurate and respectful
understanding of the charisma of Pancho Villa.
While I never asked students to directly compare the accounts and points
of view, one did in a particularly insightful way on two blue book exams.
On the second examination, after the students had read Reed's Insurgent
Mexico--they had read Biography for the first examination--this
student wrote:
Not unlike the biography of a runaway slave, Reed's point-of-view is
from the direct inside of the revolution. However this scenario is peculiar
in that he is an outsider. In essence it can be said that this book is
the point-of-view of an outsider on the inside. To extend the comparison,
Biography. . . is the point of view of an insider on the inside.
On the third examination, after reading Rebel Radio, the same
student continued:
At the risk of sounding redundant in my tests, the key issue in this
book is the point-of-view we get--the insider point-of-view. . .Rebel
Radio through a new wrinkle is the insider point-of-view. Runaway
Slave gave us one insider's recollections. Insurgent Mexico gave us
the outsider on the inside point-of-view and Rebel Radio went a
step further and gave us the many insiders' view. Rebel Radio went
an extra step in that it gave more life to the revolution, by showing different
recollections. . .
Clearly this student had anticipated that the question would call for
a comparison and prepared accordingly. The student's writing also indicated
to me, that if I had wanted to, I could have pursued further the issue
of point-of-view in historical accounts. Barnet attempts to present an
unfiltered account of a participant--albeit reconstructed with him acting
as an editor to bring it out in all of its authenticity. John Reed in his
role as a political journalist was indeed an outsider recording and presenting
the daily reality of one part of the Mexican Revolution. Vigil collected
all of the stories and anecdotes from the Radio Venceremos staff and then
presented them in the first person as if they had been experienced by one
person. That is, perhaps to keep with the socialist values of the staff,
he created a collective first person.
My teaching experience with Biography of a Runaway Slave has
thus been good and I intend to assign it for future classes. However, I
do not think that it is a book that stands alone. It must be supplemented
by considerable discussion on the part of the instructor in order to fill
in the necessary background historical and cultural context as well as
to sensitize students to the issue of point-of-view.
REFERENCES
Aching, Gerard. "On the Creation of Unsung National Heroes: Esteban
Montejo and Armas's Julian del Casal. Latin American Literary Review,
pp. 31-49.
Barnet, Miguel. Biography of a
Runaway Slave, translated by W. Nick Hill. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone
Press, 1994.
Fogel, R.W. and Engerman, S.L.. Time on the Cross:
The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Boston: Little, Brown &
Company, 1968.
Graden, Dale. (n.d.) "Miguel Barnet's Biography of a Runaway Slave:
Testimonial Literature as History, unpublished.
López Vigil, José Ignacio.
Rebel Radio: The Story of El Salvador's Radio Venceremos, translated
by Mark Fried. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1994.
Reed, John. Insurgent Mexico. New York: International Publishers, 1969.
* Presented at the 1997 Congress of the Latin American
Studies Association, Guadalajara, April 17, 1997. Contact: Department of
Sociology, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT 06226,
U.S.A.; tel. 860-465-4631. E-mail russellj@ecsu.ctstateu.edu
