"…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.]
