CubaPLUS Magazine

Sacrifice and freedom are two of the words that express the essence of the maroon, that slave who centuries ago, tired of the mistreatment to which he was subjected, escaped to dignify his life, even in very difficult conditions.

This is how they were called in various Latin American countries, runaway or maroon (cimarrón), a voice that the Dictionary of the Spanish Language also collects in that sense, although its first meaning was that of a domestic animal that flees to the field ... wild.

To Cuba, where the word par excellence identifies escaped black slaves, Africans were brought in to replace the rapidly dwindling aboriginal labor force employed by Spanish colonizers upon arrival.

According to statistics cited by historians, the presence of slaves in Cuban society rose from 30.8% of the population in 1792 to 43.3% in 1841. In intricate places throughout the island, the villages of runaways (so-called palenques) appeared, communities that constituted groups of black maroons who subsisted by gathering, hunting, growing various products and exchanging with nearby residents or smugglers.

Those places, where families were formed and children were born, were tenaciously defended by their inhabitants and have been considered by scholars as the first free territories of Cuba.-

The rancher, sadly famous for persecuting and escaped slaves displayed notorious cruelty, armed, very well paid and generally accompanied by fierce dogs.

A fundamental work of Cuban literature deals precisely with these issues of slavery and emancipation: the novel-testimony Biografía de un cimarrón (Biography of a maroon), by ethnologist and writer Miguel Barnet, based on stories by Esteban Montejo, who was a slave, maroon and mambí (Cuban independence fighter), common to many men with the same life history.

For Barnet, transcultured African slavery was the greatest crime of humanity and its contradictions marked the destiny of Cuba.

The slaves left an invaluable legacy in the culture of the island, a fabulous popular imagination and a lesson in ethics and emancipation, says the writer who assures that "maroons are the true grandparents of the Cuban Homeland."