米格尔·巴尼特在读报时被一张照片吸引了注意力，照片相关文章介绍了一位104岁的非洲后裔老人，他名叫埃斯特万·蒙特霍，是19世纪中叶最后一批被运送到古巴这个加勒比岛国的非洲奴隶的后代。蒙特霍做了十几年奴隶后，逃入古巴中部山区的森林中，获得了自由。他是最后一个逃亡黑奴。
米格尔·巴尼特当时在哈瓦那大学主修社会学，因此立即意识到，蒙特霍的证词具有重要意义。他来到退伍军人中心，见到了这位身材高大、目光炯炯、神采奕奕的老人。在20世纪60年代，在古巴还能找到逃亡黑奴似乎是天方夜谭，更别说找到一个出生于西班牙殖民时期，历经古巴独立战争、1898年美国入侵古巴等事件，一直活到菲德尔·卡斯特罗（Fidel Castro）领导的社会主义革命时期的逃亡黑奴了。
巴尼特花了三年时间采访写作，最终于1966年出版了西班牙语版《逃亡奴隶传》（Biografia de un Cimarrón），并于1968年出版了该书的英文版（The Autobiography Of A Runaway Slave）。故事以第一人称叙述，在古巴国内外均产生了巨大影响。米格尔·巴尼特的助手拉萨罗·卡斯蒂利亚（Lázaro Castilla）称，该书被译为多种语言在多国发行，据最新数据统计，共有64个版本，还不包括非官方出版物。
© 马克·丹尼奥（Marc Daniau）为联合国教科文组织《信使》所作的作品。
怀疑和猜忌
蒙特霍的故事与古巴悠久的文学传统一脉相承。早在19世纪初，古巴智识思考先驱费利克斯·巴雷拉（Félix Varela，1788–1853年）及其弟子何塞·安东尼奥·萨科（José Antonio Saco，1797–1879年）的文章中就出现了奴隶制主题。在人们尚对非洲人为古巴的西班牙文化传统所做贡献持轻慢态度的历史时期，国家人类学先驱、巴尼特的老师费尔南多·奥尔蒂斯（Fernando Ortiz，1881–1969年）便敢于断言，在这个安的列斯群岛最大的岛屿上，从非洲被掳掠而来的黑人及其后裔已经完成了与当地的“文化泯化”。1763—1845年间，数十万人来到古巴，主要是进入糖料种植园劳作。
“从非洲被掳掠至古巴的黑人完成了与当地的‘文化泯化’”
自由！
作为给后人的证词，书中描述了奴隶们所住简陋棚屋（barracones）的恶劣环境、在萨瓜之花（Flor de Sagua）糖厂从事的繁重劳动，以及对奴隶（包括儿童）的体罚，让人对奴隶制下的暴力行径有了极为具体的认识。书中还描写了蒙特霍年轻时在山中独处、觅食、采药的情景，以及沉浸在观察鸟类、蝙蝠和爬行动物中的沉思时刻。
从蒙特霍的故事中，我们也能获得关于19世纪末古巴日常生活、非裔古巴人宗教活动（尤其是萨泰里阿教的习俗），以及古巴舞蹈、传统医药和游戏的珍贵信息。
在1886年颁布黑人解放法令之前，蒙特霍一直隐居在洞穴和树林中。有一天，种植园里一片骚动。“从人们的呼喊声中，我知道奴隶制结束了……我离开山林一路前行，遇到一位抱着两个孩子的老妇人。我问她，‘快告诉我，我们真的不再是奴隶了吗？’她回答，‘是的，孩子，现在我们自由了’。”米格尔·巴尼特在他的书中这样写道。
“从人们的呼喊声中，我知道奴隶制结束了……”
巴尼特称《逃亡奴隶传》是一部“见证小说”，灵感来源于人类学家里卡多·波萨斯（Ricardo Pozas）1952年出版的一本书，讲述了墨西哥印第安人的生活，名为《胡安·佩雷斯·约洛特，一个佐齐尔人的传记》（Juan Pérez Jolote, Biografía de un tzotzil）。《逃亡奴隶传》为第一人称叙事作品，为读者直接呈现主角的口头陈述，既有古巴农民的口语表达方式，又融合了些许非洲和加勒比-印第安语言的特点，同时，巴尼特对文本进行了改编，赋其以文学性。
独一无二的证词
在关于古巴和拉丁美洲奴隶制的史料中，《逃亡奴隶传》拥有独一无二的地位。这本书在出版后产生了深远的影响，成为诸多艺术作品的灵感源泉，德国作曲家汉斯·维尔纳·亨策（Hans Werner Henze）以蒙特霍的生平经历为灵感创作了一部歌剧，德国诗人兼散文家汉斯·马格努斯·恩岑斯贝格尔（Hans Magnus Enzensberger）对该书进行了改编，法兰西喜剧院演员兼导演让·维拉尔（Jean Vilar）则创作了一部朗诵作品。
巴尼特没有停下撰写个人叙事式书籍的脚步，继续创作了歌颂西班牙西北部移民工人的《加利西亚人》（Gallego）等作品。1997年，他获得联合国教科文组织的支持，在位于非裔古巴人文化摇篮——古巴马坦萨斯港的一座17世纪西班牙城堡内建立了国家奴隶之路博物馆。
古巴诗人南希·莫雷洪（Nancy Morejón）说：“对巴尼特来说，古巴文化中的非洲元素非常重要。”她还记得巴尼特有一首诗，名为《奴隶的净化》（Ebbó para los esclavos，“Ebbó”在约鲁巴语中意为“净化”），认为“这首诗体现了以反殖民主义直面自我出身的精神，以口语化的风格写成，又不失形式之美”。
莫雷洪还记得米格尔带她去见埃斯特万·蒙特霍的那天。“他已经110岁了，躺在床上对我们说，‘我只需要一把砍刀’。”这句话是传记的结尾，概述了他作为一名士兵、砍蔗工和高山林地中的逃奴的一生。
Esteban Montejo, the story of Cuba’s last Cimarrón slave
In the early 1960s, Cuban writer and ethnologist Miguel Barnet collected the testimony of 104-year-old Afro-descendant Esteban Montejo. The hugely influential account he drew up is a unique document on the condition of captives and the violence of the slavery system.
Guillermo G. Espinosa
Journalist and historian, Havana, Cuba
While reading the newspaper, Miguel Barnet came across a photo that caught his eye – an article about a 104-year-old Afro-descendant, the son of captives brought to this Caribbean island during the last shipment of African slaves in the mid-19th century. His name was Esteban Montejo, and he had been a slave before fleeing as a teenager into the forests of Cuba’s central mountains to gain his freedom. He was the last Cimarron.
Suspicion and mistrust
This story is part of an already well-established literary tradition in the country. The theme of slavery appeared in the early 19th century in the essays of Félix Varela (1788-1853), considered a precursor of Cuban intellectual thought, and his disciple José Antonio Saco (1797-1879). At a time when African contributions to Cuba’s Hispanic heritage were viewed with a certain amount of condescension, Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969) – the pioneer of national anthropology and a Barnet scholar – dared to assert that, on the largest island in the Antilles, there had been a “transculturation” by the black people who had been brought by force from Africa, and by their descendants. Between 1763 and 1845, hundreds of thousands of people arrived on the island to work, in particular, on the sugar plantations.
“In Cuba there was a ‘transculturation’ by black people forced to come from Africa”
Free!
A testimony for posterity, the book depicts the miserable condition of the barracones – the basic shacks where the slaves lived – the back-breaking work in the Flor de Sagua sugar mill, and the corporal punishment meted out on slaves, including children, giving a very tangible vision of the violence of the slave system. The book also describes the young man’s solitude in the mountains, foraging for food and medicinal herbs, and the more contemplative moments spent watching birds, bats and reptiles.
The story is also an invaluable source of information on daily life on the island at the end of the 19th century, on the practice of Afro-Cuban religions – particularly Santería – as well as on dances, traditional medicine and games.
Montejo lived hidden away in caves and groves until the day Black emancipation was decreed in 1886. There was a great commotion from the plantations. “From the cries of the people, I knew that slavery had come to an end... When I left the mountain, I started walking and came across an old woman with two children in her arms. ‘Tell me,’ I asked her, ‘is it true that we are no longer slaves?’ She replied: ‘No, son, now we’re free’”, recounts Miguel Barnet in his book.
“From the cries of the people, I knew that slavery had ended...”
Barnet describes his work as a “testimonial novel”, inspired by an account of the life of a Mexican Indian, entitled Juan Pérez Jolote, Biografía de un tzotzil (Juan the Chamula), published in 1952 by the anthropologist Ricardo Pozas. Biografia de un Cimarrón is a first-person narrative that confronts the reader with the orality of a man who mixes Cuban peasant oral expressions with bits of African and Caribbean-Indian language, adapted to give the text a literary feel.
A unique testimony
The Autobiography Of A Runaway Slave is unique in the historiography of slavery in Cuba and Latin America. Its impact was such that, after its publication, Montejo’s life inspired an opera by the German composer Hans Werner Henze, an adaptation by the German poet and essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and a reading by the actor and director Jean Vilar of the Comédie française.
Barnet went on to write other books of personal accounts. One of them, Gallego [The Galician], pays tribute to the migrant workers of north-west Spain. In 1997, he obtained UNESCO support for the creation of a National Slave Route Museum in a 17th century Spanish fortress in the Cuban port of Matanzas, the cradle of Afro-Cuban culture.
“For him, the African component of Cuban culture is crucial,” says Nancy Morejón, a Cuban poet who remembers the poem entitled Ebbó (“purification” in Yoruba) para los esclavos. “It’s an anti-colonial approach to our roots, which he wrote in a colloquial style, without sacrificing formal beauty.”
The writer remembers the day when Miguel took her to see Esteban Montejo. “He was 110 years old. He was lying down. And he said to us, ‘A machete is all I need’”, the phrase that ends the biography, referring to his life as a soldier, cane-cutter and fugitive in the high forests.
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