Esteban Montejo and the Cuban Revolution

Miguel Barnet’s project, which he has elsewhere called the “documentary novel,” has been criticized for its manipulation, which makes sense on reading the introduction. To some extent the ethnographic project feels dirty, almost violent: “Al principio Esteban se mostró algo arisco. Más tarde, al identificase con nosotros, se percató del interés del trabajo, y con su colaboración personal, pudimos lograr un ritmo de conversación normal, sin las anteriores interrupciones banales” (10) -- which reminds me of Doris Sommer’s comment that Rigoberta Menchú’s repeated insistence on maintaining secrets points not only to her own strategy but at the same time to a reaction to Elisabeth Burgos’ questioning. In any case, in terms of genre, Barnet writes that “Sabemos que poner a hablar a un informante es, en cierta medida, hacer literatura. Pero no intentamos nosotros crear un documento literario, una novela” (12).

He outlines the interview process and makes clear from the start what the project is about: it’s a political treatise produced from within the ideology of the Cuban revolution. One clue is the way Barnet reconciles Esteban’s strong and explicit individualism with the Revolution’s collective nature. Barnet frames it in this way: that Esteban’s personality is characterized by

Un firme sentimiento individualista que le dirige a vivir aislado o más bien despegado de sus semejantes, pero que no ha sido obstáculo para su integración a hechos colectivos como la Guerra de Independencia. Sentimiento que ha contribuido a confirmar una personalidad voluntariosa y rebelde. (13)

As if it weren’t already explicit enough, Barnet continues:

El espíritu revolucionario se ilustra no sólo en el propio relato sino en su actitud actual. Esteban Montejo, a los 105 años de edad, constituye un buen ejemplo de conducta y calidad revolucionaria. Su tradición de revolucionario, cimarrón primero, luego libertador, miembro del Partido Socialista Popular más tarde, se vivifica en nuestros días en su identificación con la Revolución Cubana. (14)

In other words, although Montejo’s narrative only goes through the War of Independence, it’s still framed by Barnet as a revolutionary trajectory, in such a way that Montejo becomes an “exemplary” figure or model of (and for) Cuba’s revolucionary society. In this sense, it might be interesting to think about Montejo next to Che’s description of Camilo Cienfuegos.

The narrative itself is divided up into different themes and organized in chronological order. The brief opening section, “La esclavitud,” is basically a description of the process of sugar production. It ends with Esteban’s reflections on those slaves who worked inside the master’s house. He says he didn’t do that work because he didn’t like mixing with the whites. This all fits into a narrative of Esteban’s loyalty (to what? his people? a particular cause? which will later be linked back to his criticism of Máximo Gómez who, it appears, didn’t do enough to push back against the Americans at the end of the War of Independence) and his revolutionary nature: he finishes this opening chapter by declaring, “Yo era cimarrón de nacimiento” (22).

Other statements attest to his individualism, particularly his description of being a cimarrón in the “monte”: “Como a mí siempre me ha gustado gobernarme, me mantenía aislado de ellos. De todos” (57); “A mí siempre me ha gustado la independencia . . . Yo estuve años y años sin conversar con nadie” (62). This is problematic, especially for the revolution narrative trajectory, when his independence gets in the way of his solidarity. He doesn’t hang out with other cimarrones, for example, because of the risk involved:

La verdad es que yo vivía bien de cimarrón muy oculto; pero cómodo. Ni de los propios cimarrones me dejaba ver: “cimarrón con cimarrón vende cimarrón.” (52)

With the abolition of slavery, things changed but not much: “a mí me consta que seguían los horrores” (66), and there continued to be barracones (if a bit better ventilated) (65). This is the context in which the revolution begins fermenting. Esteban’s friend Lucas tells him a story about the Conde Moré, a big Spanish landowner, who had conflicts with the Spanish government. He treated his black workers (not slaves, but not much different) with cruelty. According to Esteban, “el rey de España se enteró de ese trasiego y mandó al governador a que investigara bien.” So the governor goes in disguise and documents everything, sends a message to Moré ordering him to come to Havana, and Moré responds “La misma distancia hay de su casa a la mía. Venga usted.” So the governor sends the guardia civil to bring him, and jail him. “Entonces los condes y vizcondes buscaron la forma de vengarse del gobernador. Se amistaron con el médico de Salamanca [the governor] para que él lo envenenara. Y Salamanca fue envenenado como en el año noventa por una nacencia que tenía en la pierna. En vez de curarlo, el médico le echó veneno y el gobernador murió a los pocos días” (89). What’s interesting here is that Esteban is reproducing the Bolivarian discourse of criollo priviliges in the face of a “repressive” (or at least meddlesome) Spanish government. I don’t know how much it really matters that Moré is Spanish (or is he actually a white criollo?), at the very least his commercial interests put him in the opposing camp. What’s interesting is the way Montejo later continues the argument retrospectively:

Hacía falta la guerra. No era justo que tantos puestos y tantos privilegios fueran a caer en manos de los españoles nada más. No era justo que las mujeres para trabajar tuvieran que ser hijas de los españoles. Nada de eso era justo. [Up til here, the usual argument.] No se veía un negro abogado, porque decían que los negros nada más que servían para el monte. No se veía un maestro negro. Todo era para los blancos españoles. Los mismos criollos blancos eran tirados para un lado. Eso lo vide yo. (159-60)

In a way, race here becomes the metaphor used to explain Peninsular/Criollo difference (I’m thinking of Ilona Katzew’s argument that race was the most used metaphor for explaining all class differences in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mexico). It’s a black thing, but the white criollos are incorporated into the black project of revolution. So what’s the difference here between the Conde Moré’s cruelty vs. black agricultural workers who were protected by the Spanish government and the “criollos blancos” who were “tirados para un lado” by the injustice of the colonial system?

One more thing: in the very last section Esteban articulates a critique from within the War of Independence and this argument I was outlining earlier about loyalty. It has to do with a differentiation between Antonio Maceo and Máximo Gómez.

Un día llegué a La Habana y ya se había muerto Máximo Gómez. Cuando un hombre se muere la gente se olvida rápido de él . . . Pasé por un parque y vi que lo habían montado en un caballo de bronce. Seguí para abajo y como / a la media legua tenían a Maceo en otro caballo igual. La diferencia estaba en que Gómez miraba para el norte y Maceo para el pueblo. Todo el mundo tiene que fijarse en eso. Ahí está todo. (204-5)

His critique of Gómez has to do, I think, with his lack of action, lack of resistance against the American intervention in the war (200). The Cubans who didn’t resist are those who are most to blame (202-3). This, I think, is the trajectory that crystallizes around Barnet’s narrative line, the way Barnet is able to appropriate Esteban into the revolutionary ideal despite his individualism and his reluctance to band together, for example, with other cimarrones. His individualism is subjected to his loyalty to the Cuban pueblo, to his patriotism, and in this sense is actually engulfed by it -- this is why, as Barnet asserts in the introduction, Esteban, while strongly independent, has no problem with certain “hechos colectivos como la Guerra de Independencia.”