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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.9164
EAN num: 9780807854792
ISBN number: 0807854794
Label: The University of North Carolina Press
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: September 29, 2003
Publishing house: The University of North Carolina Press
Release Date: December 09, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 1434812
Studio: The University of North Carolina Press
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Combining archaeological and historical methods, Gabino La Rosa Corzo provides the most detailed and accurate available account of the runaway slave settlements (palenques) that formed in the inaccessible mountain chains of eastern Cuba from 1737 to 1850, decades before the end of slavery on the island. The traces that remain of these communities provide important clues to historical processes such as slave resistance and emancipation, anticolonial insurgency, and the emergence of a free peasantry. Some of the communities developed into thriving towns that still exist today.
La Rosa challenges the claims of previous scholars and demonstrates how romanticized the communities have become in historical memory. In part by using detailed maps drawn on site, La Rosa shows that palenques were smaller and fewer in number than previously thought and they contained mostly local, rather than long-distance, fugitives. In addition, the residents were less aggressive and violent than myth holds, often preferring to flee rather than fight a system of oppression that was even more effective and organized than generally supposed. La Rosa's study illuminates many social and economic issues related to the African diaspora in the Caribbean, with particular focus on slavery, resistance, and independence. This translation makes the book available in English for the very first time.
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La Rosa Corzo, Gabino (translated by Mary Todd) [1988] 2003 Runaway Slave Settlements in Cuba: Resistance and Repression University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill
This is an excellent book, but not unflawed. One can be a little put off by the author's acerbic criticism of previous authors' use of oral histories especially since he uses such in his own book. However one must also recognize the need of the author given his location and circumstance to occasionally mouth the official Castro "socialist" line, and take the approved side in the African-Indigenous Cuban Siboney conflict. Such a stance is necessary to allow him acess to Cuban government archives, and keep his job. Below I discuss some other minor quibbles of mine.
Mary Todd's translations are at times a little in accurate, e.g. apparently translating "guano" frond palm roofing as fan-palm thatch. However, as in the case of the author Dr. Todd has done an excellent job and as such should be congratulated.
Overall this is a very valuable book, and it has taught me much. I did not know about Cuban history.
All this aside
Figure 15, pp. 94-95 in paper back edition, show a detailed map of Don Benjamin's holdings between the Bayamo and the Guisa Rivers. This figure illustrates the 1848 "escaped slave hunting" raids of Eduardo Busquet and Antonio Lora.
One can note, all though I did not see it in this book, that in the Cuban güajiro vernacular palenque can also be the enclosure, the arena or cockpit, inside the valla the cockfighting hut, where the gamecocks fight (Lionel Daley, personal communication 2005). This of course relates to the karst rock "cockpit" country in Jamaica where the Maroons, or groups of escaped slaves of Jamaica held corresponding sway. Maroon of course is derived from the Spanish Cimarrón.
I can interpret this map to show a "palenque'' (escaped slave settlements that were to fortified variable extent and are considered African in Origin) indicated as open square on the map and placed in a postion corresponding to the height of a cliff of the west side of the Guamá River (the one that flows south the join the Bayamo River) perhaps a few hundred yards from Paso Caimanes; another coming up what is now El Banqueo del Oro as closed triangle supposedly at the height of the Bayamesa. However, since this very first site is too close to the house of Don Benjamin, it is very possible that the site of the very first camp was a few miles further south, up the Arroyón Valley which has a hidden stream (Tío Mingo Stream). Even so the relatively close location of either of these sites implies a relationship between these Cimarrón and Don Benjamín Ramírez.
The third camp (closed triangle) is at the origins of the Guamá del Sur Torrent, however this map does not show that the Guamá River also rises further south than the Guamá del Sur Torrent. This location is approximately the place where Great grandfather Mambí Colonel Don Benjamín Ramírez (Rondón) prefect of the zone in the Ten Year War held camp. And if this is so this is place where Great Grandmother Leonela Enamorado Cabrera met about 1873 Mayor General Calixto Ramón García-Iñiguez and conceived grandfather Mambí (War of 1895) Brigadier General to be Calixto (García-Iñiguez) Enamorado [...]. It may also, with less certainty, be the place where Carlos Manuel de Cespedés was deposed as President of the Cuban Independence Movement.
Notice with great care the rivers at the head of the Bayamo, El Oro, La Plata y los Diablos. The Bayamito and Guamá Torrents to the South, once marked the south western and so eastern boundaries of Don Benjamín's land. Notice this map also shows Arroyón, the largest tributary of the lower Guamá, not the Tio Mingo Stream) and the Chorrerón or Salto de Guamá (unlabelled) and the Los Horneros (also unlabeled) where Francisco Maceo Osorio died of fever soon after the Céspedes trial.
This could be taken to indicate that the Cimarróns or escaped slaves had strong connections to the Siboney of the area, and fits the known fact that many members of both ethnicities participated in the Wars of Independence against Spain. The author on the other hand while he does mention some links and allows inference of other, perhaps because of ideological reasons does not tie the Cimarrón as close to the Siboney (Taíno, Island Arawak) as is indicated by Jose Barreiro's photographs of modern Taíno might justify.,
The book also mentions the tradition of dispersion of rural housing in the area, some tactics and the use of what are now known as "punji": sticks in guerrilla defense.
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