Esteban Montejo (en Cuba). A man AGAIN.

"…hands were swollen.  I camped under a tree.  I stayed there no more than four or five days.  All I had to do was hear the first human voice close by, and I would take off fast.

I came to hide in a cave for a time.  I lived there for a year and a half. . ..I was careful about all the sounds I made, And of the fires.  If I left a track, they could follow my path and catch me.  I climbed up and down so many hills that my legs and arms got as hard as sticks.  Little by little I got to know the woods.  And I began to like them.  Sometimes I would forget I was a Cimarron, and I would start to whistle.  Early on I used to whistle to get over the fear.  They say that when you whistle, you chase away the evil spirits.  But being a Cimarron in the woods you had to be on the lookout.  I didn't start whistling again because the guajiros or the slave catchers would come.  Since the Cimarron was a slave who ahd escaped, the masters sent a posse of rancheadores after them.  Mean guajiros with hunting dogs so they could drag you out of the woods in their jaws.  I never ran into any of them.  I never seen any of those dogs up close.  They were trained to catch blacks…  When a slave catcher caught a black, the master or the overseer gave him an ounce of gold or more.

Truth is that I lived well as a cimarron, very hidden, very comfortable.  I didn't even allow other cimarrones to spot me: "cimarron with cimarron sells a cimarron."  For a long time I didn't speak a word to anyone.  I liked that tranquility.  …You live half wild when you're a cimarron.

I found out about the end of slavery from all the people shouting. . . They shouted, "We're free now."  But I wasn't affected.  To my mind, it was a lie…  When I came out of the woods I started in walking, and I met an old woman with two children in her arms.  I called to her from a distance, and when she came up to me I asked her: "Tell me, is it true that we're no longer slaves?"  She answered me: "No, son, now we're really free."  And, with that, as quickly as I became a cimarron… I stopped being a cimaroon.  And became myself…a man…again."

[In 1963 at the age of 103, Estaban Montejo recounted his experiences to Cuban writer and ethnologist Miguel Barnet.  Montejo had suffered the lash and toiled as a slave.  He had escaped into the wilderness and lived for years as a Cimmaron/Maroon, and had fought as a soldier in the Cuban war of independence.  His story is a rare and remarkable window into the history of Cuba.]