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Slave hunter’s diaries are a first hand information treasure about slave resistance |
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Author of the book: Cazadores de esclavos. Diarios (Slave Hunters. Diaries), tell us the researches revelations written in the book
November 26th, 2004/ UNESCO-Havana
Mirtha T. González and Gabino La Rosa have worked hardly during more than seven years in the study, research and transcription of the slave hunter’s diaries, texts that now come to light in the book Cazadores de esclavos. Diarios, as part of the collection “La Fuente Viva” from the Fundación Fernando Ortiz. For the publication of these interesting, raw and painful testimonies two more years were needed. The book deals with the deeds made against cimarrones (fugitive slaves) and apalancados (fugitive slaves living in a community) in different Cuban regions from 1815 to 1848.
UNESCO Regional Office for Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean sponsored the publication: Cazadores de Esclavos. Diarios, and it was the venue of its presentation last November on the context of the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition. Together with the safeguarding and recuperation of documents, the book reveals with the reading of its 11 diaries, the reach and relevance of “cimarronaje” and “apalencamiento” as ways of slave resistance in Cuba.
UNESCO: Which has been Fundación Fernando Ortiz aim with the book: Cazadores de esclavos. Diarios?
Gabino La Rosa: To rescue a first hand source, the “rancheadores” (slave hunters) diaries to disseminate the slavery phenomenon, and more than slavery, the slave resistance in Cuba. We affirm that these rancheadores diaries are exceptional documents for the knowledge of the slave resistance, they are a first hand information treasure; besides, they picture the society, the daily life from the time, where the meeting between the persons that persecute slaves and fugitive slaves and their reactions are registered.
U. Which have been the main revelations of the diaries?
GLR. We could determine that the defensive tactics of fugitive slaves varied from one region to another as well as the different way of representing this resistance.
U. What differences are you talking about?
GLR. We specialists have classified two ways of resistance: passive and active. The first one was the suicide, the abortion, the equipment breaking. And the other was the active resistance, which manifested in three ways: one was the simple cimarronaje, the fugitive slave that runs away, lives close to the plantations because they eat from the same sources of the plantation and it has a temporary character. Then there was the cimarrones crew or gang, they were armed and very brave and lived from one place to another and they could be very dangerous for farms. And a third way that corresponded to the apalencado, they do not assault plantations because this is the group of cimarrones that live in isolated places, they start to plant, they build their houses, they start to develop a subsistence economy, it creates the settlement and there they start to develop their lives, their family ties. We realize of these differences through the diaries.
U. And regarding the differences by regions?
GLR. In the Western region of Cuba it predominated the simple cimarrón or the cimarrón gang, because there was a high development of the slave plantation. The only areas that lasted as marginal areas of the plantation were the small elevations of Los Órganos, in Pinar del Río, Havana elevations –Matanzas, or la Ciénaga del Sur. But those are physically reduced spaces that a group of men could go through quickly in one day. It was not the case of the eastern mountains that are big mountain ranges. The geography of the place favours the settlement of the palenques.
U. From your side as author, what answer do you expect from the readers?
GLR. That the book could trigger in the public the same that provoked those documents to us, that feeling of men hunting scenes, which are incredible. We sometimes see this things in films and we think, well, maybe there is a bit of fiction, but here you are reading a historical document, we are talking about a cruel reality lived by population sectors.
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Related Link(s): The Slave Route, Cultural Policies, Intercultural Dialogue |
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