A Black Soldier S Story The Narrative of Ricardo Batrell and The Cuban War of Independence 1st Edition Ricardo Batrell

Full download ebook at ebookname.
com
A Black Soldier s Story The Narrative of Ricardo

Batrell and the Cuban War of Independence 1st
Edition Ricardo Batrell
https://ebookname.com/product/a-black-soldier-s-story-the-
narrative-of-ricardo-batrell-and-the-cuban-war-of-
independence-1st-edition-ricardo-batrell/
OR CLICK BUTTON
DOWLOAD NOW
Download more ebook from https://ebookname.com

More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
It s Just a Plant a Children s Story of Marijuana 2nd

Edition Ricardo Cortes
https://ebookname.com/product/it-s-just-a-plant-a-children-s-
story-of-marijuana-2nd-edition-ricardo-cortes/
The Fight to Save Juárez Life in the Heart of Mexico s

Drug War Ricardo C. Ainslie
https://ebookname.com/product/the-fight-to-save-juarez-life-in-
the-heart-of-mexico-s-drug-war-ricardo-c-ainslie/
Ricardo s Theory of Growth and Accumulation A Modern

View 1st Edition Neri Salvadori
https://ebookname.com/product/ricardo-s-theory-of-growth-and-
accumulation-a-modern-view-1st-edition-neri-salvadori/
The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation

5.12.2004 Edition David Ricardo
https://ebookname.com/product/the-principles-of-political-
economy-and-taxation-5-12-2004-edition-david-ricardo/
Dualisms The Agons of the Modern World 1st Edition
Ricardo J. Quinones
https://ebookname.com/product/dualisms-the-agons-of-the-modern-
world-1st-edition-ricardo-j-quinones/
Robust Statistics Theory and Methods 1st Edition

Ricardo A. Maronna
https://ebookname.com/product/robust-statistics-theory-and-
methods-1st-edition-ricardo-a-maronna/
The Auditory System in Sleep 1st Edition Ricardo

Velluti
https://ebookname.com/product/the-auditory-system-in-sleep-1st-
edition-ricardo-velluti/
Political Graffiti in Critical Times The Aesthetics of

Street Politics 1st Edition Ricardo Campos
https://ebookname.com/product/political-graffiti-in-critical-
times-the-aesthetics-of-street-politics-1st-edition-ricardo-
campos/
Archaea molecular and cellular biology 1st Edition

Ricardo Cavicchioli
https://ebookname.com/product/archaea-molecular-and-cellular-
biology-1st-edition-ricardo-cavicchioli/
A Black Soldier’s Story
The Narrative of Ricardo Batrell

and the Cuban War of Independence
-
ricardo batrell
Edited and Translated by Mark A. Sanders
University of Minnesota Press

Minneapolis
London
This text is a translation of Para la historia: Apuntes autobiográficas de la vida de Ricardo
Batrell Oviedo, by Ricardo Batrell Oviedo, published in Cuba in 1912. The frontispiece
photograph is from this publication.
The map of Matanzas was drawn by Philip Schwartzberg for Meridian Mapping.
Copyright 2010 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press

111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Batrell, Ricardo, b. 1880.

[Para la historia. English]
A black soldier’s story : the narrative of Ricardo Batrell and the Cuban War of
Independence / Ricardo Batrell ; edited and translated by Mark A. Sanders.
p. cm.
Translation of Para la historia : apuntes autobiográficos de la vida de Ricardo Batrell
Oviedo. Habana : Seoane y Alvarez, impresores, 1912.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-5008-8 (hc : acid-free paper)
ISBN 978-0-8166-5009-5 (pb : acid-free paper)
1. Batrell, Ricardo, b. 1880. 2. Cuba—History—Revolution, 1895–1898—Personal
narratives. 3. Blacks—Cuba—Biography. 4. Soldiers—Cuba—Biography. I. Sanders,
Mark A., 1963– II. Title.
F1786.B3313 2010
972.91'05—dc22
2010026454
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedico este libro a mis hijos,
Isaiah Anthony Wallace Sanders
y Joshua Allen Wallace Sanders:
que siga yo descansando debajo de la sombra de sus sonrisas . . .

Province of Matanzas, Cuba, circa 1896.
conte nts
Ricardo Batrell and the Cuban Racial Narrative:

An Introduction to A Black Soldier’s Story ix
mark a. sanders
A Note on Translation and Editing lxvii

Chapter I 3
Chapter II 53
Chapter III 121
Epilogue 195
Looking for Ricardo Batrell in Havana:

An Appendix Essay 207
Acknowledgments 223
Translator’s Notes 227
Works Cited 231
Index 235
This page intentionally left blank
r i car d o b atre ll and t h e
cuban racial narrat ive
An Introduction to A Black Soldier’s Story
Mark A. Sanders
Antes que la paz quiero la libertad de la patria y la conservación de los ideales

revolucionarios; y si para defenderlos contra los agresores hay necesidad de
combatir en las calles o aspirar el aire puro de las montañas, sabré cumplir con
mi deber . . .
Before peace, I want liberty for the country and the preservation
of its revolutionary ideals; and if in order to defend them against
aggressors, it is necessary to fight in the streets or to take to the
mountains and breathe its pure air, I will do so knowing that I have
served my country . . .
—Juan Gualberto Gómez
La República es la realización de las grandes ideas que consagran la libertad, la

fraternidad y la igualdad de los hombres: la igualdad ante todo, esa preciada
garantía que, nivelando los derechos y deberes de los ciudadanos, derogó el
privilegio de que gozaban los opresores a título de herencia y elevó al Olimpo
de la inmortalidad histórica a los hijos humildes del pueblo . . .
The republic is the realization of the grandest ideas that consecrate

the liberty, fraternity, and equality of all men; equality above all else,
that precious guarantee, makes equal the rights and obligations of
all citizens, revokes the privilege that the oppressors enjoyed as titled
inheritance, and elevates our humble native sons to the Olympus of
historical immortality . . .
—Antonio Maceo, El Pensamiento Vivo de Maceo
ix
Introduction
On February 2, 1896, an illiterate black field hand, just five days shy of
his sixteenth birthday, went to war for the independence of Cuba. Though
poor and uneducated, Ricardo Batrell (he would add Oviedo after the
war) fully understood the broader implications of his contributions to the
rebellion. He believed in Cuba Libre, a vision of a democratic and egali-
tarian Cuba, and thus he believed in the full participation of Afro-Cubans
in the national struggle for independence and the creation of a new repub-
lic. Indeed, for Batrell and his compatriots, Cuba’s fight for independence
was an intensely racial one, a struggle not simply to throw off the yoke
of colonial rule but to replace its social and political hierarchy, largely de-
fined by race and caste, with a society founded on Enlightenment ideals:
liberty, fraternity, equality.
Yet by the time Batrell published his manuscript in 1912 ( just ten
years after the founding of the republic), he was acutely aware of how far
short the young democracy had fallen in achieving these ideals. Political
corruption was rampant; economic resources and political power were
concentrated in effectively the same hands as before the war; the prom-
ise of land reform had been reneged; blacks were largely excluded from
private schools and social clubs; black veterans found it increasingly dif-
ficult to reap the same benefits for their military service that their white
counterparts did; racist stereotypes were still commonplace in popular
culture; and perhaps worst of all, blacks who criticized the government
or the society at large for its assaults on black civil rights were called
racists themselves, a devastating manipulation of José Martí’s vision of
a society free of racial discrimination.
Despite this increasingly hostile political and social environment for
Afro-Cubans, Batrell entered the fray, continuing his struggle for racial
equality. Soon after the war, he taught himself to read and to write, and
began to compile notes for his autobiography: Para la historia: Apuntes auto-
biográficos de la vida de Ricardo Batrell Oviedo. Also, he wrote letters to govern-
ment officials and coauthored a manifesto protesting discrimination and
calling for a return to the ideal of Cuba Libre. In a sense, Batrell exchanged
his gun and machete for literacy, thus arrogating to himself the power
to recount the birth of the nation in a new rhetorical battle over the defi-
nition of the state and therefore over its future. And it was the narrative
x
Introduction
of his own experiences in the war that served as his most potent weapon
in the struggle for racial democracy. Indeed, in the Liberation Army,
which was between 60 and 80 percent black,1 he was the only black sol-
dier, as far as we know, to write and publish his own narrative account.2
In a context of postwar memoirs, written almost entirely by white offi-
cers, the interjection of this black voice is of enormous significance.
Where the other narratives either minimized the issue of race or ignored
it altogether, Batrell placed it at the center of this memoir, indeed at the
center of the national narrative, and ultimately judged the success of
Cuba Libre by it. That Batrell focused on race in his account of the final
war for Cuban independence was by no means a distortion of the his-
torical record or a manipulation of the facts. Part of his argument, in fact,
is that to ignore race, either in politics or in historical accounts of the
war, is a crime against the nation. Or, put another way, his text asks us
what happens to Cuban history if we posit race as its very engine. Here,
race means more than the mere presence of Europeans, Africans, Native
Americans, and their respective and collective descendants, but the racial
categories—white, black, Indian, mulato, mestizo, and so on—wielded in
the ongoing struggle over resources, wealth, and power. What happens
to our understanding of Cuban society if the African slave trade, slav-
ery, and race relations figure as pivotal elements of Cuban history from
its earliest moments, and particularly across all three wars of indepen-
dence? How is the history of the entire region ultimately transformed if
we take the implications of Batrell’s narrative at face value—that black
Africans and their descendants have played crucial roles in the greater
history of the Caribbean and the Americas, indeed laying the founda-
tion of democracy perhaps for the entire hemisphere?
This introduction addresses the central roles Batrell and the larger
concept of race play in Cuba’s struggle toward democracy, first by re-
viewing the history of race in Cuba through the colonial period, the three
wars of independence, and the early years of the republic leading up to
Batrell’s publication. The introduction will then consider Batrell as author
and historical protagonist in order to examine his specific role in Cuba’s
early history as a republic, to assess his political and literary legacy, and
to read his text in light of extraordinary political circumstances.
xi
Introduction
Race and Revolution in the Late Colonial Period
Although the history that concerns us most begins in the late eighteenth
century, needless to say, phenotypic, cultural, and linguistic differences
were of central importance at the first moment of European contact with
the indigenous population of what would become Cuba. Columbus and
his Spanish cohorts immediately identified the indigenous Arawak, Taino,
and Sub-Taino groups as populations ripe for domination and exploita-
tion. They were the first groups to be enslaved, and when their numbers
plummeted as a result, they were replaced by black Africans at a mod-
erate yet steady rate through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries. By the last decade of the eighteenth century, the enslaved
African population had exceeded fifty thousand, and the black popula-
tion overall amounted to approximately 42 percent of the island’s total
population.3
It is at this point that the Haitian Revolution set in motion the titanic
changes in Cuban economic and political history that led directly to Ba-
trell and the overwhelmingly black racial makeup of his Liberation Army.
In 1791, the beginning of the rebellion, the French colony was the eco-
nomic gem of the Caribbean, as far as Western European moneyed inter-
ests were concerned. Saint-Domingue generated more revenue through
the production of sugar, coffee, indigo, and cotton than did any other
Caribbean colony; as for sugar, Saint-Domingue produced more than
did Brazil, Jamaica, and Cuba combined, accounting for 30 percent of
the world’s production.4 When the French Revolution erupted, the Jaco-
bins were in a quandary as to the extent to which the Rights of Man
should be applied in the colonies. Would the Revolution abolish slavery
in the colonies, or should the new republic continue to profit from slave
labor? While scholars still debate whether the Haitian Revolution was
fomented first by small landowners seeking to wrest power from grands
blancs (wealthy whites) or by enslaved Haitians themselves, it is quite
clear that blacks striking for freedom quickly took up the rhetoric of
the French Revolution and sought to claim the newly won freedoms in
France for themselves.
As testament to the Haitian revolutionary resolve, one of the insur-
gents’ chief strategies was a scorched-earth policy in which they burned
xii
Introduction
cotton fields and sugar and coffee plantations to the ground, forcing mod-
erates on the island to choose sides and depriving France of the revenue
necessary to promote the war to reconquer the colony. As a result, by
mid-decade Haitian sugar, coffee, and cotton production had plummeted,
creating an opportunity of which Cuba took full advantage immediately.
Because of late-eighteenth-century transformations in Cuban society,
the island was well positioned to fill the production void created by the
Haitian Revolution. The larger Cuban population in general, the rap-
idly growing free and enslaved black population in particular, and the
modernization of sugar production set the stage for the events of the last
decade of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. Spe-
cific to sugar, Cuba’s newly modernized plantations were able to increase
production dramatically. For example, in 1790 Cuba exported only 15,423
tons of sugar; by 1829 it was exporting 84,187 tons (Pérez, Cuba, 77).
New lands were cleared for greater sugar production; former tobacco
and coffee plantations were also converted to sugar; and more and bet-
ter railroads lowered the price of transportation. Indeed, the entire Cuban
economic profile shifted; where, in the eighteenth century, farms had
produced foodstuffs and supplies for domestic consumption primarily,
by the turn of the nineteenth century, sugar had replaced a major per-
centage of domestically produced materials. In the span of barely twenty
years, Cuba had gone from a relatively self-sufficient colony with healthy
exports to one fully committed to the production of sugar (and thus one
dependent on the importation of basic foodstuffs) (ibid.).
Needless to say, slave labor was the engine that drove Cuban eco-
nomic expansion. As the world demand for sugar continued to rise in
the wake of the Haitian Revolution, and as Cuban planters tried to keep
pace, the demand for slave labor increased as well, and thus the popu-
lation of free and of enslaved blacks. Between 1763 and 1862, approxi-
mately 750,000 Africans were imported for slavery; by 1827, more than
half the population was black (roughly 56 percent), a combination of
free and enslaved black Cubans. And though the percentage of blacks
in the greater population began to decline by the 1830s, by 1862, just six
years before the first war for independence, the black population was
still slightly more than half, approximately 52 percent (85–87).
xiii
Introduction
At the same time, the general population of the island grew expo-
nentially. Where in 1791 the total population was only 272,300, by 1862
it was well over one million: 1,396,470 (85). Spaniards emigrated from
Florida after its sale to the United States in 1819, while planters and
displaced military personnel came from newly independent countries
across Central and South America. Consequently, these white immi-
grants tended to have a vested interest in Spanish colonial rule and thus
its chief moneymaking institution: slavery. At the same time, white crio-
llos (native-born Cubans, usually of Spanish descent)—planters, farm-
ers, shopkeepers, laborers, artisans, merchants, and so on—chafed under
the privileges new Spanish émigrés enjoyed, particularly their control
over finance capital and access to peninsular markets. Tensions between
Cuban growers and Spanish mercantilists over pricing, financing, and
access to global markets continued to increase throughout the period, an
element that would play a major role in all three wars for independence.
Yet, while Cuban economic and social elites resented Spanish colo-
nial rule, they continued to invest in slave labor, even as prices for slaves
rose dramatically as a result of the banning of the slave trade, first in
1817, again in 1835, and in 1845. These elites invested in a particularly
brutal form of slavery, in a region known for working slaves to death.
Enslaved blacks often worked eighteen-hour days and six-day work-
weeks, first under the tropical sun cultivating and harvesting sugarcane,
then in overheated boiler rooms to complete the sugar-refining process.
They were beaten and tortured in efforts to coerce them into greater
productivity; many collapsed and died of exhaustion. Indeed, prior to
the great rise in prices, planters debated the economics of working slaves
to exhaustion and death over a relatively short period of time, or of car-
ing for them and thus extending their lives and productivity over time.
Either way, the death rate for enslaved blacks exceeded births. Disease,
epidemics, malnutrition, and backbreaking work contributed to a life
expectancy for blacks of less than seven years after their arrival on some
plantations (98). And although the majority of enslaved blacks suffered
under brutal conditions on plantations, often slaves hired out to work in
urban centers fared little better. Subject to the whims of their owners or
employers (or both), they too had little choice over working conditions,
and no defense against physical abuse. Also, taking into account the
xiv
Introduction
separation of families by sales at the master’s whim, and the omnipresent

threat of sexual abuse for both female and male slaves, it becomes clear
that Cuba’s was one of the most oppressive forms of slavery in the long
history of human bondage.
In response to such conditions, enslaved Afro-Cubans engaged in
numerous forms of resistance throughout the eighteenth and the nine-
teenth centuries. Men and women committed suicide; women aborted
pregnancies; and black workers slowed the rate of production by break-
ing tools, burning crops and buildings, hobbling animals, and feigning
sickness. Furthermore, large numbers escaped to the rugged mountains
in the interior of the island where they formed communities ( palenques),
grew their own crops, and even staged raids on nearby plantations to take
livestock and to free family members.5
Also, enslaved Africans and their descendants staged outright rebel-
lions against planters and eventually against colonial authorities. During
revolts in 1812, 1826, 1830, 1837, and 1840, blacks fought to take pos-
session of the specific plantations on which they were enslaved. Such
rebellions erupted across the island on sugar, tobacco, and coffee planta-
tions alike, but because blacks had limited arms, organization, and sup-
port, these insurrections were quickly and brutally suppressed, most
often by local authorities and property owners.
At the same time, blacks undertook more sophisticated and wide-
spread revolts with the ultimate goal of abolition in mind. For example,
in 1812, a free black carpenter named José Antonio Aponte organized a
slave uprising based in Havana, but involving slaves as far away as
Puerto Príncipe and Oriente province. Some whites and free blacks par-
ticipated as well, inspiring well-founded fear on the part of both criollo
planters and Spanish-born financiers. Although the rebellion was crushed
in relatively short order, it was followed in 1825 by another large-scale
revolt in the province of Matanzas, resulting again in the destruction of
plantations and in the execution of slaves and collaborating whites alike.
In 1843, hundreds of slaves from more than fifteen plantations in
Matanzas effectively formed an insurgency but were eventually defeated
by Spanish armed forces; and later that same year, again in Matan-
zas, the largest and most famous Cuban slave conspiracy took place.
xv
Introduction
Authorities claimed that hundreds of slaves and thousands of whites

and free blacks from across the island were in on the plot, later dubbed
“La Escalera” for the ladders used to torture suspected conspirators.
Accusing thousands of plotting rebellion, the Spanish implemented wide-
spread repressive measures, including censorship of the press, and exe-
cuted nearly a thousand slaves and free blacks.6 In fact, Cuba’s most
famous black poet, Gabriel Concepción Valdés (Plácido), was executed
as a conspirator; Juan Francisco Manzano was also accused, though later
exonerated.
La Escalera, in particular, both reflected and exacerbated the criollo
planters’ and the Spanish elites’ fears of the growing black population
and its portents for Cuba. For the landed gentry, the Haitian Revolution
already loomed as specter—the threat of unbridled black rage and retri-
bution, and the resulting black nation erected on the bodies of white
slave owners. True enough, Toussaint Louverture had gone to consid-
erable lengths to secure the property and the personal safety of grands blancs
willing to stay in Haiti and lend their agricultural and manufacturing
expertise to the newly reformed colony. Nevertheless, upon Napoleon’s
invasion and Louverture’s subsequent death in prison in 1803, the emerg-
ing regime took a decidedly different approach to landed whites. Reports
of massacres of grands blancs quickly traveled to Jamaica and Cuba, as
Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s legendary philosophy for black insurrection—
“Koupé têt, boulé kay!” (Cut off their heads and burn their houses!)7—
became the ultimate nightmare for slaveholding whites across the Carib-
bean, not to mention North America.
La Escalera also helped to spawn in whites an antiblack hysteria that
would shape Cuban history well into the twentieth century. The wide-
spread reprisals against free and enslaved blacks revealed an underlying
paranoia that blacks were not simply inferior human beings, but a real
threat. Prevailing sentiment associated discernible African cultural traits
with being at best uncivilized, if not essentially savage. Blackness was
often associated with bestiality, unbridled sexuality, and criminality; and
thus African-derived cultural practices and their practitioners were deemed
suspect relative to requirements of civilization and citizenship.
More specifically, African-derived religions, such as Santería or Palo
Monte, were regarded as prime examples of black atavism. Religious
xvi
Introduction
rituals that involved chanting and singing in African or African-derived

languages, energetic if not frenetic dance, African drumming, spirit pos-
session, and animal sacrifice appeared to the outsider often as throw-
backs to a precivilized era. It followed that the babalao or santero/a (a
priest or priestess who presided over religious ceremonies) was regarded
as deviant, if not clearly evil. In fact, they were more commonly referred
to by the general public by the Spanish pejorative brujo (witch doctor or
warlock), and their strange practices were referred to as brujería (witch-
craft or Satanism). In reality, babalao helped to organize and maintain the
ñáñigos (religious and ethnic self-help organizations) and abakwás (Afro-
Cuban secret societies specific to African ethnic groups), again viewed as
sources of alien, quasi-deviant cultural practices. And even though Span-
ish and Cuban elites encouraged the formation of ñáñigos as a means of
dividing enslaved blacks along ethnic lines, these organizations helped
to solidify and promote religious identity and to sustain cultural connec-
tions from one generation to the next. As a result, throughout the late
eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, African-derived religions and
religious practices were able to grow along with the ever-increasing black
population.
In the eyes of most whites, this ever-growing black population, with
its alien languages and strange religious habits, was clearly unfit, indeed
incapable of civilization, and thus was best kept under the supervision
of slavery. This fear of blacks—black savagery, black revenge, and the
consequences of black freedom—would be used by Spain across all three
of Cuba’s wars for independence and would play a major role in the
early republic’s struggle over Afro-Cuban civil rights. Ironically, at the
very moment when almost all of Latin America struck for independence,
and with it the abolition of slavery, Spain and its loyalists in Cuba
sought to exercise even greater control over the island. By imposing cen-
sorship, regulating commerce to increase profits for Spain at the expense
of Cuban planters, and passing laws to control even further the free black
population, Spain sought to ensure the fidelity of the allegedly “ever-
faithful island.”
But by midcentury, the contradictions defining Cuban society helped
to foment revolution, just as Spain sought to forestall it. Although Cuba
continued to enjoy steady economic growth, because of peninsular control
xvii
Introduction
over financing and markets, Cuban planters grew more and more frus-
trated over their relatively small portion of the growing profits. So too,
as the enslaved population increased after 1820, the date at which
Spain’s 1817 treaty with England to prohibit slave trading went into effect,
those Africans imported illegally (some 350,000 between 1821 and 1860)8
were technically free, if in fact the treaty were enforced. Thus, the insta-
bility of the slave system itself, a growing free black population, and
increasing frustration with Spain’s mercantile system worked to arouse
revolutionary sentiments and activities.
Indeed, well prior to the 1868 uprising beginning the Ten Years’
War, several annexationist groups had rebelled—in 1848, 1850, and
1851—in an attempt to wrest Cuba from Spanish control and to deliver
the island to the U.S. South, where slavery seemed much more secure.
Although this attempt to preserve slavery lost much of its allure after the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, the efforts demonstrated the wide-
spread and long-standing discontent with Spanish rule. Subsequent and
effective rebellion on the part of white criollos would not move toward
annexation but toward independence, yet an independence that would
have to incorporate the rights and interests of Afro-Cubans, both free and
enslaved, in a radically reconceived and reconstructed national vision.
The Wars for Independence
The first war for Cuban independence, the Ten Years’ War (La Guerra
Grande), 1868–78, began with an eastern criollo planter’s discontent with
Spanish rule and his strategy to win the support of blacks for Cuban
independence by championing emancipation. On October 10, 1868, Car-
los Manuel de Céspedes addressed his slaves, declaring them free and
imploring them to fight with him for the independence of Cuba.9 Later
known as “El Grito de Yara” (the Cry of Yara), this proclamation of
Cuban sovereignty effectively wed Cuban independence and black free-
dom. Although fraught with tension and contradictions, this comingling
of Cuban national identity and black civil rights would persist across all
of Cuba’s revolutions. Other eastern planters quickly joined Céspedes,
freeing their slaves, recruiting enlistees, and, by the early 1870s, garner-
ing close to forty thousand supporters.10
xviii
Introduction
Yet, despite the rhetoric of universal liberties, planters were deeply

divided over the amount of freedom to be accorded blacks. Unable “to
reconcile their need to attract slaves, so as to have the soldiers necessary
to wage war, with the need to attract slaveholders, so as to have the re-
sources required to finance the war,”11 planters fomented a decidedly
reformist rebellion, one committed to the protection of property and the
reestablishment of economic and social hierarchy. Relative to blacks and
slavery, for example, the provisional government and army command-
ers in effect defended slavery, at least in the short term, arguing for grad-
ual emancipation and indemnity for slave owners, both to take place
after Cuban independence. Often when former slaves enlisted in the
insurrectionist army, for example, they were granted emancipation but
pressed into service roles; many African-born enlistees, in fact, were sent
back to the fields to work.
In particular, eastern planters sought to allay the fears of their west-
ern counterparts in the provinces of Matanzas, Havana, and Pinar del
Río, where the largest and most lucrative sugar plantations were located,
and thus a higher concentration of blacks. In order to woo western sup-
port, eastern planters strove to limit freedoms for blacks and to guarantee
property rights. Indeed, across the decade of warfare, factions argued and
fought over the meaning of freedom and citizenship for blacks. Vacillat-
ing between an absolutist position of immediate abolition and full citi-
zenship on the one hand, and limited rights for blacks on the other,
white insurrectionists confronted the historical fear of black retribution
and the example of Haiti. Particularly as the infantry ranks swelled with
blacks, whites feared a full-scale race war. For their part, the Spanish also
understood the importance of the west, not simply that greater numbers
of blacks would join the insurrection, but that profits from sugar produc-
tion were dramatically higher there. Thus, confining the war to the east
would preserve the source of revenue necessary for waging war on the
insurrectionists. To that end, the Spanish dug a trocha (a fortified ditch)
across the width of the island at its narrowest point near Puerto Prín-
cipe, in order to prevent the insurrection from spreading to the west.
Within insurrectionist ranks, debate continued over the strategy to
attack the west, ultimately a debate between reform and revolution. Sty-
mied by internal division and a buildup of nearly a hundred thousand
xix
Introduction
Spanish troops,12 the rebellion remained largely confined to the east, and
by the late 1870s had fizzled to isolated guerrilla maneuvers. By 1878,
the majority of the insurgent leadership welcomed negotiations and
signed the Pact of Zanjón on February 10. The provisional government
agreed to local rule similar to that granted Puerto Rico, namely, amnesty
for insurgents and legal freedom for former slaves and Chinese laborers
who had joined the rebellion. Because the agreement fell far short of
Cuban independence and immediate island-wide emancipation, com-
manders such as Antonio Maceo viewed Zanjón as a betrayal of Cuba
and chose to continue fighting. In what was known as La Guerra Chi-
quita (the Little War), Máximo Gómez, José and Rafael Maceo, Gui-
llermo Moncada, and Quintín Bandera (all of whom would be heroes in
the War of Independence) resumed fighting in August 1879 and fought
well into 1880. But finally, as a result of casualties, desertions, and lack of
arms and popular support, the forces disbanded, many leaving Cuba and
vowing to return to renew the battle under more favorable conditions.
Although the two wars for independence ultimately failed to deliver
the full range of rights hoped for by so many Afro-Cubans, they did pro-
duce moderate yet important gains in black civil rights. Chief among
these gains was a plan for abolition. Passed in 1870, the Moret Law, or
free womb law, mandated that all blacks born after 1870 were free,
regardless of the status of the mother. The law also implemented the
patronato system in which enslaved Afro-Cubans were made apprentices
and obligated to work for a designated number of years for their patrón.
As a means of indemnifying hacendados (plantation owners), the system
would gradually replace slave labor with contract labor. According to the
original plan, the last patrocinados were to be freed by 1888, but because
there were so few left by the mid-1880s (approximately fifty-three thou-
sand),13 slavery was officially ended by royal decree in 1886.
Yet, despite the legal end of slavery, colonial Cuban society in the
1880s remained extremely hierarchical, with blacks, poor whites, and
newly immigrated Chinese laborers sharing in few of the benefits of an
expanding postwar economy. Indeed, Afro-Cubans still faced pervasive
discrimination in access to education, higher-paying jobs, public transpor-
tation, housing, theaters, restaurants, and parks. Even after antidiscrim-
ination laws passed, largely because of protests led by Juan Gualberto
xx
Introduction
Gómez, discrimination remained rampant in education, in labor sectors,

and in public accommodations. Perhaps most acute was the fact that
chronic unemployment and the lack of access to education rendered
many blacks—particularly the still landless former slaves and their chil-
dren—frustrated, destitute, and in desperate search of immediate and
palpable remedies.
So too, the period between wars was one of reflection on the mean-
ing of the Ten Years’ War and its impact on national identity and aspi-
rations for independence. Again, with race at the heart of the issue,
black, white, and mixed-race intellectuals and writers debated the mean-
ing of the Ten Years’ War, as its significance would have a tremendous
impact on the hoped-for republic. As Ada Ferrer recounts, such discus-
sions worked to construct a narrative of redemption for the country.
Prior to the war, as the narrative goes, Cuba was stained by the sin of
slavery. Although lucrative, the institution, in its oppression and inhu-
manity, had compromised the morality of whites, had assaulted the
humanity of blacks, and thus had corrupted the nation as a whole. But
white slave owners were able to achieve redemption by freeing their
slaves and by fighting alongside them for abolition. For their part, blacks
shed the stigma of slavery by fighting for their own freedom and for the
independence of their country. Thus, the war washed away the stain of
slavery and restored whites and blacks to just fraternity.
Ferrer notes another phenomenon of the period, one that would be
particularly important for black mambises (insurrectionists) after the War
of Independence: the figure of the loyal and trustworthy black insurgent.
In response to historical and ongoing fears of black retribution against
whites and the creation of another Haiti, José Martí, Juan Gualberto
Gómez, Rafael Serra, and others wrote extensively about the black vet-
erans who recognized their former masters’ sacrifice and were steadfastly
devoted to their former masters and to the country, thus making racial
warfare an impossibility. Ultimately, the narrative cast the war as a trans-
forming event through which “blacks and whites became brothers.”14
Fighting and dying together, the former slave and the former slave owner
achieved true racial fraternity, a unity that might serve as the foundation
of the new Cuban society.15
Simultaneously, a much larger set of Cubans, both on and off the
xxi
Introduction
island, were becoming increasingly unhappy with post-Zanjón Cuba,

and began to renew efforts to secure Cuban independence. Later lionized
as the father of a free and independent Cuba and as the chief architect of
Cuba Libre, José Martí began to organize separatist groups in the United
States, the Caribbean, and Central America. Born in 1853, in Havana, to
Spanish and white Cuban parents, Martí was nonetheless an outspoken
critic of colonial rule, so much so that he was imprisoned for seven
months during the Ten Years’ War and then deported to Spain. After-
ward, he traveled across Latin America and the United States, writing for
various North American and Latin American periodicals on a number of
cultural and political subjects. By 1880, he was in New York City writing
propaganda for the Cuban Revolutionary Committee (CRP) and work-
ing to organize the disparate groups invested in Cuban independence.
In April 1892, Martí created the Cuban Revolutionary Party that
helped to unite the previously fragmented revolutionary community. Vet-
erans of the Ten Years’ War and La Guerra Chiquita, Cuban expatri-
ates in the United States and across the Caribbean, wealthy whites, poor
blacks, and working-class blacks and whites were all resentful of pro-
longed Spanish rule; but it was through Martí’s tireless work through
the 1880s and early 1890s that these disparate groups could unite under
a common goal, not simply of an independent Cuba, but of a new soci-
ety, a new Cuban nation shaped by the vision of Cuba Libre.
In stark contrast to the social and economic hierarchy under colo-
nial rule, Cuba Libre promised a truly egalitarian society, not simply a
“change in forms but a change of spirit.”16 A country, in Martí’s words,
“con todos y para todos” (with all and for all), the new Cuba would
eliminate racial and economic oppression, unearned privilege, and con-
centrated wealth; it would guarantee equal political rights for all Cubans,
and promote economic egalitarianism through land reform. Ultimately,
Cuba Libre would replace social and economic hierarchy with a society
of small landowners and farmers, all roughly equal in their ability to
compete, to participate, and to prosper.
Of the burgeoning numbers of separatists, two Afro-Cubans are of
particular importance in the larger history of race in Cuba and for Batrell
personally: Juan Gualberto Gómez and Antonio Maceo. As we have seen,
Maceo was a hero of the Ten Years’ War and a chief voice of dissent in
xxii
Introduction
the Protest of Baraguá that rejected the Zanjón pact. Affectionately known
as the “Bronze Titan,” by the mid-1890s he had come to embody the
cause of a free and egalitarian Cuba. After the end of the Ten Years’
War, Maceo had traveled throughout the Caribbean, Central America,
and the eastern United States soliciting funds and support for a new
insurrection. In New York City, he met with African American writer
Frank Webb and conferred with Martí over the activities and progress
of the CRP; and in Key West, he won the support of poor and wealthy
Cuban expatriates eager to advance the final struggle for Cuban inde-
pendence. Equally important, Maceo shared with Martí a vision of racial
equality for Cuba, a society that would transcend racial differences and
forge a new unified identity (una alma nacional ). Indeed, his often-quoted
proclamation—“aquí no hay blanquitos, ni negritos, sino cubanos” (here
there are no petty little whites nor petty little blacks, only Cubans)—suc-
cinctly collapses racial identity (expressed with the diminutive) into a race-
neutral national identity, one decidedly free of the condescending “ito.”
The journalist and activist Juan Gualberto Gómez also played a
large role in shaping Cuba Libre and prewar politics, but with impor-
tant ideological distinctions and with different tactics. The son of slaves,
Gómez nonetheless received an advanced education in both Havana
and Paris. He wrote extensively for black periodicals of the day, such as
La Fraternidad and La Igualdad, advocating for equal rights for blacks.
Indeed, Gómez’s career as both journalist and activist began during a
period of growing Afro-Cuban political activity. The post–Ten Years’
War period was marked by a flourishing of the black press in which new
periodicals engaged the debate over the evolving Cuban national iden-
tity and the role of Afro-Cubans in that evolution. New mutual aid soci-
eties and black schools, all supported by a growing black middle class,
also contributed to a growing sense of political self-awareness and enti-
tlement. And while Gómez was in accord with both Martí and Maceo
concerning racial fraternity under Cuba Libre and the image of the loyal
black insurgent, he argued that blacks and mulatos should create their
own organizations and institutions in order to address the specific needs
of Afro-Cubans.
For example, in 1892, Gómez created Directorio Central de las Socie-
dades de la Clase de Color (Central Directorate of Societies of Color) to
xxiii
Introduction
coordinate the efforts of smaller black and mulato organizations in their

push for civil rights. One of the Directorio’s first efforts was to press for
the enforcement of civil rights laws enacted in 1885 and 1887, laws that
sought to redress the chronic discrimination of the day, particularly in
public education.
Despite the fact that both Maceo and Martí were openly critical of
exclusively black organizations and their public criticism of racial dis-
crimination, Gómez’s leadership and dedication to Cuba Libre were duly
recognized; in fact, Gómez was chosen to lead the rebellion in Ibarra at
the beginning of the War of Independence. Ultimately, within and be-
yond black communities, Gómez was regarded as a leading patriot, and
to Batrell he served as a symbol of the race through his devotion to
equality and to a free and independent Cuba.
While Martí, Maceo, and Gómez represented the leadership fram-
ing and guiding efforts for Cuban independence, Batrell was also very
much a part of a larger social and political transformation that helped to
set the stage for the 1895 war. By the early 1890s, growing frustration
and resentment of Spanish rule were deeper and more widespread than
in previous moments of political unrest. Whereas both the Ten Years’
War and La Guerra Chiquita ultimately addressed the concerns of plant-
ers and their interest to preserve their class privileges, the new insurrection
promised real social revolution. Now dispossessed peasants, poor blacks,
working-class expatriates, displaced urban professionals, and small shop-
keepers looked to the coming revolution as a means of dismantling the
social order that historically had ensured their economic and political
subordination. Despite the fact that Cuba experienced an economic boom
through the early 1890s, in late 1894 and early 1895 the economy virtu-
ally collapsed when Spain severed Cuba’s lucrative economic ties with
the United States, Cuba’s largest trading partner by far. Sugar prices in
particular plummeted, triggering a recession that pushed the few remain-
ing fence-sitters over to the separatist side. For stakeholders of all political
stripes, not only was Spain unable to protect Cuban economic interests,
Spain proved to be the source of Cuba’s economic ruin.
By early 1895, Martí and the CRP had made sufficient plans for re-
bellion to break out simultaneously across the island. Accordingly, on
February 4, “el Grito de Baire” (the Cry of Baire) was sounded, inciting
xxiv
Introduction
insurrections in Baire, Ibarra, Bayate, and Guantánamo. And although

the leaders for the western rebellion were captured in Havana before
they could incite their local uprising, the revolution quickly took hold in
the east. Throughout the month of March, insurgents staged skirmishes
and raids, mainly in Oriente province, while awaiting reinforcements
and the arrival of the acknowledged leadership. José Martí was still in
the United States, while Maceo and Máximo Gómez were on their way
to Cuba from Costa Rica and Santo Domingo, respectively. Maceo
landed near the town of Baracoa on March 31; Gómez and Martí, after
having met up in Santo Domingo, arrived at Cajababo on April 10.
Thus, with the leadership on the island, the insurgency grew quickly. By
April 30, Maceo reported that he had six thousand men under his com-
mand;17 and by the end of 1895, Liberation Army forces had swelled to
fifty thousand.
Although the rebellion began in the east, in order for it to be suc-
cessful—indeed, for it to become a revolution—Gómez et al. would have
to take the war to the western provinces, a strategy that failed in the Ten
Years’ War. The provinces of Matanzas, Havana, and Pinar del Río still
possessed the largest and most lucrative sugar plantations, whose pro-
duction was essential for Spain’s financing of the war. Equally important,
the hacendados of the west, still the wealthiest and most powerful of Cuban
elites, perpetually sought protection of their privileges either from colo-
nial rule or perhaps through U.S. annexation. The revolution had to
attack their privilege directly. And, more practically, because there was
such a dense population of Afro-Cubans in the west, the Liberation
Army would swell its ranks through a western invasion. Indeed, as Ba-
trell attests, thousands of local plantation workers joined the Liberation
Army as it marched westward.
Accordingly, in December 1895, Maceo led 1,500 men across the
Spanish trocha near Puerto Príncipe and into the west. Running from
Júcaro to Morón, the trocha was supposed to have been impenetrable, but
Maceo crossed it within forty minutes without losing a single soldier.18
Maceo’s brigade was followed by Quintín Bandera, another black gen-
eral, and Máximo Gómez’s divisions; they engaged in largely diversion-
ary skirmishes with the Spanish, allowing Maceo to continue his march
to the western tip of the island. And all three generals led swelling bands
xxv
Introduction
of Cuba’s poor and disaffected. In terms of the racial makeup of the

army, as we have seen, estimates assert a minimum of 60 percent black.19
In a country that at this point was approximately 60 percent white and
35 to 40 percent black or mixed race, the overrepresentation of Afro-
Cubans in the Liberation Army was of enormous significance. Given the
historical fear of black rebellion and retribution, much of the white pop-
ulation in the west waited with considerable trepidation for this invading
black army, an anxiety that Maceo had to address on an ongoing basis.
But equally, if not more importantly, for blacks fighting in the Lib-
eration Army and for blacks like the young Batrell awaiting its arrival,
the revolution was the means by which to enter the country, if you will,
to advance from disenfranchised seasonal employee to voting landowner,
to move from margin to center. For black men in particular, the revolu-
tion was ultimately a fight for personhood, citizenship, and country; for
Batrell, clearly, and his fellow black mambises (insurrectionists), all three
were inseparable, and relied entirely on the destruction of the colonial
social order.
Thinking of the war in a strategic sense, insurrectos used an array of
guerrilla tactics in order to prolong the fight. Vastly outnumbered by the
Spanish (at one point by more than two hundred thousand), the Liber-
ation Army merely strove to stay intact and to keep fighting. Thus the
insurgency tried to avoid head-on confrontations with larger Spanish
columns. Instead, insurgents waged smaller attacks, ambushes, and so
on as a means of perpetual harassment without full-pitched battles. For
example, the rebels often sent a smaller unit to open fire on a larger col-
umn. After a short engagement, the smaller troupe would retreat into a
grove of trees or into a mountainous area where a larger force of mam-
bises awaited to ambush the pursuing Spanish.
In the case of larger battles, the Cubans were always outnumbered.
Therefore, they seldom tried to win such battles outright, but instead
attempted to inflict as much damage as possible through frontal assaults
and flanking maneuvers; then they would retreat. On occasion, as Batrell
recounts with great pride, mambises used machete charges to strike fear
in the hearts of their enemies. Facing a Spanish regiment, Cuban revo-
lutionaries occasionally charged into the Spanish lines with machetes
raised, killing and maiming with the blade rather than the gun—a sign of
xxvi
Introduction
valor and steadfast dedication to the cause of Cuban liberation. Recall-

ing a crucial battle at Mal Tiempo, Esteban Montejo recounts:
They [the Spanish] went crazy when they saw us, and they threw
themselves into the thick of it, but the fight didn’t last long
because at almost the same instant, we started to chop off their
heads. But really chopping them off. The Spaniards were
scared shitless of the machete. They weren’t afraid of rifles but
machetes, yes. I raised mine, and from a distance said: “You
bastard, now I’m going to cut your head off.” Then the starched
little soldier turned tail immediately and took off.20
The chronic shortage of guns and ammunition also forced the Cuban
forces to employ guerrilla tactics. A U.S. filibuster prevented the impor-
tation of arms from the States, while funds were scarce for buying guns
from other Caribbean or Central American countries. Therefore, insur-
gents relied heavily on arms and ammunition taken from fallen Spanish
soldiers and from prisoners of war. Thus, not only outnumbered in the
field, but also usually having insufficient ammunition to sustain a pro-
longed fight, a given unit often fought until its ammunition ran out, then
retreated to meet another unit that might be able to resupply it.
In addition to such tactics against the Spanish army, insurrectionists
attacked the means of financing the war: sugar production. Soon after
his arrival, Máximo Gómez declared a moratorium on the production of
cash crops, particularly the cultivation and refining of sugar. Any plan-
tations found harvesting or processing sugar would be destroyed; using
the strategy often called la candela (literally “the candle”),21 he ordered the
torching of numerous sugarcane fields and the razing of sugar process-
ing plants in both the east and the west.
In fact, the seizing and destruction of estates looked forward to more
radical land-reform policies after the war. In July 1896, the provisional
government issued a land-reform decree, declaring all confiscated lands
property of the Cuban Republic, to be reapportioned among its defenders:
All lands acquired by the Cuban Republic either by conquest

or confiscation, except what is employed for government pur-
poses, shall be divided among defenders of the Cuban Republic
xxvii
Introduction
against Spain, and each shall receive a portion corresponding to

services rendered as shall be provided by the first Cuban Con-
gress, after Cuban Independence has been recognized by Spain.22
The land-order decree and Gómez’s scorched-earth strategy were ulti-

mately emblematic of the larger aim of Cuba Libre. These were not sim-
ply attacks on Spain’s financial means to wage war; they served to attack
the entire social order upon which the Spanish rule was predicated.
In response to the devastating success of the western invasion and
the very real threat it posed to Spanish hegemony throughout the island,
Madrid quickly replaced its hero of Zanjón, Arsenio Martínez Campos,
with a new, more aggressive governor: Valeriano Weyler. Arriving in
early 1896, along with fifty thousand new troops, Weyler vowed to meet
“war with war,” and so implemented a policy of “reconcentration,” one
that would prove disastrous for Cuban peasants and ultimately for the
Spanish campaign itself.
Prior to Weyler’s arrival, pacíficos in the countryside, most of whom
were deeply loyal to the insurgency, helped the campaign by supplying
food, medicine, shelter, and intelligence concerning Spanish numbers and
movements. Free to travel between town and country, they often in-
formed mambises of Spanish locations, their strengths, and possible plans
for attack.
In response, Weyler implemented his reconcentration policy—the
evacuation of the countryside—forcing civilians into fortified towns
and cities, and thus cutting off support for the insurgency. Also, Weyler
banned all subsistence agriculture, the trade between towns and the
countryside, and decreed that all livestock be moved into fortified loca-
tions or be slaughtered. Furthermore, reconcentration focused on the fam-
ilies of insurgents, often razing their houses and harassing and murdering
family members.
Some three hundred thousand men, women, and children were re-
moved from their homes and held in what amounted to concentration
camps. The lack of adequate food and sanitation resulted in rampant
malnutrition and disease; and, quite predictably, reconcentrados died by
the thousands. Estimates ranged between 102,469 and 170,000 civilian
deaths as a result of the policy.23 Reconcentration, in fact, amounted to
xxviii
Introduction
war against the civilian population, one with unintended consequences

for the Spanish. Deprived of homes and a means of making a living, men
(and not infrequently women) chose the Liberation Army over almost
certain starvation in the reconcentration camps. With mounting casual-
ties and Weyler’s failure to put down the insurrection quickly, reports
of reconcentration atrocities only served to erode Weyler’s support in
Spain more quickly. As this January 1897 communiqué aptly illustrates,
public opinion in Madrid had turned against him within a year of his
arrival in Cuba:
It is impossible to remain silent any longer. Spain has clearly

suffered a failure in the war in Cuba.
. . . Let’s confess it although it wounds our pride to do so:
we do not know how to defeat the insurrectionists.
Who is to blame for this disaster?
. . . the reality is that we have failed and we know that we
are obligated officially to declare our failure.
. . . The situation is unsustainable and critical.24
The campaign went so badly for Weyler that by the winter of 1897 the
Spanish were confined to fortified cities and towns, and the insurgents
roamed the countryside virtually unmolested. By late 1897, insurgents
began to take strategic cities, and by April 1898, Calixto García, head of
the Liberation Army in the east, began to prepare an assault on Santiago
de Cuba, Cuba’s second-largest city. For insurrectos, Cuban independence
seemed to be simply a matter of time.
Unfortunately for Afro-Cubans and all Cubans who pursued the full
realization of Cuba Libre, Cuban independence was anathema to U.S.
political and financial interests in the region. Long coveted, first by ante-
bellum Southern planters hoping to expand slave territories into the
Caribbean, then by post–Civil War industrialists and sugar producers,
Cuba loomed as a lucrative prize newly made available by what North
Americans regarded as Spanish weakness and mismanagement. Need-
ing authorization to intervene, President William McKinley gained tacit
approval from Congress through the Teller Amendment. Passed in April
1898, this amendment authorized North American troops to intervene
in order to “pacify” the country, and once pacification was achieved, the
xxix
Introduction
resolution stipulated that the troops were “to leave the government and
control of the island to its people.”25
But well before arrival, most civilian and military officials regarded
Cubans as a mongrel horde, largely unfit for self-rule. The military gov-
ernor, General Leonard Wood, wrote back to McKinley dismissing the
concept of Cuban independence out of hand, describing Cubans as “a
race that has steadily been going down for a hundred years and into
which we have to infuse new life, new principles and new methods of
doing things.”26 As far as Wood was concerned, Cubans were little bet-
ter than children in need of constant supervision. Needless to say, North
American attitudes would profoundly shape the postwar occupation and
Cuban efforts to form a republic; but even before the end of the war,
North American disregard for Cubans and their cause was manifested
in the first appraisals of conditions on the ground. With the war largely
at a standstill, North Americans arrived and reported that Cubans were
not fighting. Three years of warfare were quickly dismissed, as U.S. troops
took on the final offenses on Santiago de Cuba and other major towns,
all of which fell in quick succession. What was quickly dubbed in the
United States as that “splendid little war” proved to be so much adven-
ture for the U.S. military, and a boon for North American businesses.
Indeed, the North Americans claimed victory over Spain, negotiated bilat-
erally with Madrid for cessation of hostilities, and in turn took responsi-
bility for shaping the Cuban government. What had been the Cuban War
of Independence was quickly transformed into the “Spanish-American
War,” a transformation that would undermine any real sense of Cuban
independence.27
Moving quickly to check the populist thrust of Cuba Libre, the U.S.
occupation, beginning on January 1, 1899, backed white criollos and Span-
ish elites, a class historically cool to Cuban independence.28 The North
Americans also sought to restrict voting rights, requiring voters either to
own a minimum of $250 worth of property, to be literate, or to have
served honorably in the Liberation Army. As a result of the restrictions,
two-thirds of Cuban men and all Cuban women were denied the vote,
limiting the franchise to 5 percent of the adult population.29 These restric-
tions were not corrected until the ratification of the Cuban Constitution,
xxx
Introduction
and even then, U.S. officials campaigned aggressively against universal

male suffrage.
Furthermore, the United States insisted on provisions allowing for
future interventions, in order to protect North American investments.
Senator Orville H. Platt wrote what would be called the Platt Amend-
ment, which, among other things, restricted and defined Cuban foreign
relations, and authorized U.S. military intervention in order to protect
U.S. business interests. When the amendment was met with stiff oppo-
sition, the United States threatened a prolonged occupation; as a result,
the Platt Amendment was ratified into the Cuban Constitution in 1901.
Thus, the early history of Cuba’s independence from Spain began not
with full sovereignty, but with Cuba as a quasi protectorate of the United
States.
The Early Republic, 1902–12
Although the end of the war brought relative peace to Cuba, the North
American occupation, Cuban moneyed interests, and long-standing cul-
tural biases against blacks largely prevented the young republic from real-
izing the promise of equality for all citizens. In a sense, the United States
attempted to export to Cuba a post-Reconstruction model of American
democracy, one that secured white privilege at the expense of black dis-
franchisement and economic deprivation. Thus, North Americans favored
white Cuban pacíficos and Spanish volunteers for government positions
and for access to U.S. investment capital. Whites who had sat out the
war, who had openly campaigned for annexation, or who had remained
loyal to Spain often found well-paying jobs in government service sectors
or were able to return to their plantations and revive their production of
sugar, tobacco, cotton, or coffee. By contrast, the exclusion from govern-
ment jobs and the failure of land reform had devastating effects on black
veterans and Afro-Cubans more generally.
The North American occupation also inaugurated a longer period
of intensified foreign investment in Cuban utilities, manufacturing, and
agriculture. By 1905, nearly 60 percent of all rural land was owned by
North American individuals or firms. The American Sugar Company, the
United Fruit Company, and the Taco Bay Commercial Land Company,
xxxi
Introduction
for example, bought vast tracts of land for the production or cultivation
of sugar, bananas, coffee, tobacco, indigo, and other crops. Furthermore,
North American firms bought controlling interests in mines, railroads,
and electric and telephone companies, and took control of the banking
industry. Further jeopardizing black political and economic inclusion, the
Platt Amendment served as a convenient lever for Cubans and North
Americans alike to destabilize Cuban politics.
All in all, by the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century,
peasants—black, white, and Asian—returned to the land, not as owners
but as renters or seasonal laborers. The majority of black mambises were
again poverty-stricken, struggling to find gainful employment. “When
the army was disbanded,” Montejo recounts, “the black revolutionaries
were unable to remain in the city [Havana]. They returned to the coun-
try, to the cane fields, tobacco fields, to whatever, except to the offices.
The partisans had more opportunities, even being traitors all.”30 Batrell
also documented the situation in a 1906 letter to Juan Gualberto Gómez
in which he complained that the only employment he could find was as
a policeman in Bolondrón, and that his salary allowed him to do little
more for his family than to secure food and shelter.31
In addition to the failure of land reform, more racially specific
attacks further threatened the promises of Cuba Libre for black Cubans.
As we have seen, they were largely barred from government jobs, and
were increasingly shunned from civil society. White social clubs began
to exclude them, while some public parks were designated for whites
only. And while publicly funded education remained open to all, private
schools began to exclude blacks. Many American-owned restaurants and
shops refused service to blacks, to which public officials responded not
with protest but with appeals to blacks to respect American prejudices,
so as not to threaten the tourist industry.
The federal government conspired as well, implementing an immi-
gration policy to “whiten” the country. By restricting immigration from
other Caribbean nations and by promoting immigration from Europe,
particularly Spain, the Estrada Palma administration sought to increase
the number of whites dramatically and thus to dilute black political and
cultural influence. This policy had widespread support on both the Left
xxxii
Introduction
and Right, where most Cubans (including many blacks) felt that Cuban
society should be shaped primarily by European cultural influences.
Furthermore, just as in the colonial period, many white Cubans
still felt that blacks were not yet fully civilized. Racist attitudes toward
African-derived religions persisted, as did assumptions of black sexual
excess and savagery; the increased popularity of comparsas—public cele-
brations often featuring raucous music (often son), bawdy lyrics, sexu-
ally suggestive dancing, and public drunkenness—seemed to underscore
blacks’ backwardness. Cuban popular cultural representation of blacks
again marked their distance from cultural norms, and thus raised the ques-
tion of citizenship. Advertising, cartoons in newspapers, literature, and
theater all traded on well-recognized stereotypes forged in the colonial
period. For example, the bembón or negrito bembón (thick-lipped darkie)32
served as a prevalent feature of Cuban poetry and fiction. Poor, un-
educated, of limited intelligence, and semantically grotesque, the bembón
served as the antithesis of culture and refinement, and lacked the acuity
necessary for self-improvement and progress in the modern world. He
further marked his backwardness through jitanjáforas, “nonsense words
of highly onomatopoetic and rhythmic effect”33—a broken Spanish some-
what analogous to African American dialect of the plantation tradition.
The bembón’ s female counterpart, the negrita or mulata, emphasized
black female sexuality as a sign of black inferiority. Young, attractive,
fair-skinned—usually of mixed European and African descent—poor or
working-class (and thus economically vulnerable to the sexual advances
of white male elites), the mulata used her sexuality as a means of economic
and social advancement. A temptress of sorts, she lured rich white men
for material gain.
While these two figures were almost ubiquitous across Cuban pop-
ular literature of the second half of the nineteenth century and into the
twentieth, the popular stage offered additional black stereotypes. In par-
ticular, the teatro bufo (the comic stage) offered spoofs and burlesques
that often traded on exaggerated black figures. In addition to the bembón
and the mulata, the teatro bufo featured the bufo cubano or the negrito, a white
actor in blackface, rendering a comic depiction of black life and speech.
With its origins in early-nineteenth-century Cuban culture, negritos “sang
and danced in the style of their nation,”34 signifying black contentment
xxxiii
Introduction
and happiness under slavery. Furthermore, the negrito spoke the language
of bozal or dialect, a corrupted form of Spanish again marking black dif-
ference and inferiority.
The teatro bufo also featured the catedrático, the black professor, or
more generally an urban dandy, with airs and social ambitions beyond
his station and education.35 This figure feigned erudition, but uttered
malapropisms, comically portraying the absurdity of black intellect. And
finally, another urban figure, the candela—the “streetwise, sexually potent
black male”36—dramatized the threat of blackness through violence or
unbridled sexuality. All in all, these stereotypes, much older than Cuba
Libre and the rhetoric of racial fraternity, perpetually questioned black
preparedness for citizenship, and, at heightened moments of racial con-
flict, effectively sanctioned attacks on political rights. By 1912, they would
sanction state-sponsored murder.
In reaction to the assault on Afro-Cuban political rights during
Estrada Palma’s first administration, expectedly, blacks became increas-
ingly frustrated. Largely excluded from government jobs, competing for
work with new Spanish immigrants, confronting new forms of social dis-
crimination in the public square, Afro-Cubans blamed the Palma admin-
istration for deteriorating circumstances and thus opposed his reelection.
By August 1906, a campaign year, both blacks and whites, under the
command of José Miguel Gómez, staged a liberal rebellion to overthrow
Palma’s administration. In what was dubbed the August Revolution,
Independence War veterans, some twenty-five thousand strong, formed
the Constitutional Army, in which Batrell was an officer. And just as with
the Liberation Army, the Constitutional Army too was overwhelmingly
black. In response to black dissatisfaction, Gómez promised soldiers that
if he became president, they would receive officer commissions in the
Rural Guard and that he would specifically reward Afro-Cuban veter-
ans.37 Although the August Revolution did succeed in bringing down the
Palma government, it also prompted a second U.S. occupation, which,
like the first, thwarted most of the hopes for Afro-Cuban advancement.
Yet, while U.S. political and financial interests partially succeeded in
undermining many of the original goals of Cuba Libre, the constitutional
convention of 1901 did ratify universal male suffrage (women would win
the vote in 1924), guaranteeing “electoral rights to all males regardless
xxxiv
Introduction
of race, literacy, or income.”38 Thus, in an era of eroding black politi-

cal rights, Afro-Cubans would continue to exercise some influence on
electoral politics. As Alejandro de la Fuente points out, because of the
franchise, both the Liberal and the Conservative parties had to address
Afro-Cuban concerns to some extent; both recruited blacks for member-
ship, and both claimed Martí’s vision of racial equality as their own leg-
acy.39 As a result, blacks continued to have high hopes for the fulfillment
of Cuba Libre, as many worked primarily through the major parties to
reverse the trend toward deteriorating conditions.
Nevertheless, by 1908 many blacks began to search for additional
avenues for the pursuit of equal rights. Frustrated that the Liberal and
Conservative parties did not push black civil rights far enough, Evaristo
Estenoz, Pedro Ivonnet, Batrell, and other officers from the Liberation
and Constitutional armies began to discuss the creation of a black polit-
ical party. On August 7, 1908, group leaders formed the Agrupación Inde-
pendiente de Color, soon renamed El Partido Independiente de Color
(the Independent Party of Color, or PIC). With a membership of between
ten and twenty thousand,40 the PIC immediately introduced its periodi-
cal, Previsión, in preparation for the 1908 election, and planned to offer a
slate of candidates for municipal, provincial, and national offices. The
party’s stance was one of patriotic inclusion—“Cuba for the Cubans”—
advancing a platform relevant to blacks and to the country as a whole:
land reform; an eight-hour workday; priority given to Cubans over im-
migrants in the labor market; expansion of compulsory education from
eight to fourteen years; free technical, secondary, and university educa-
tion; and the abolition of capital punishment. Specific to Afro-Cubans,
party members demanded black access to diplomatic service and other
public-service positions, the end of racial discrimination, and an end to
the ban on immigration from other Caribbean islands (in effect a ban on
immigrants of color).41 All in all, the party advocated Afro-Cuban inte-
gration into “mainstream” Cuban society, and pursued that integration
by directly attacking the race- and class-based barriers that prevented
black advancement.
Elaborating on the party’s platform, Previsión focused on issues and
themes specific to Afro-Cubans across the island. Concerning politics,
the periodical attacked the Platt Amendment and called for its repeal; it
xxxv
Introduction
directly refuted the claims that the party sought to create a new Haiti in
Cuba, and it rejected the pseudoscientific claims of innate white superi-
ority and innate black inferiority, instead insisting on the theological and
scientific truth that all humans were of the same species.42 The newspa-
per also stressed the record of black patriotism and overrepresentation
in the Liberation Army.
Addressing culture, Previsión rejected African dance and drumming
or other forms of “African atavism” (148), again attempting to promote
blacks’ entrance into the mainstream. On the other hand, the newspaper
promoted racial pride, stressing the African origins of mankind (150).
Indeed, as Aline Helg points out, letters to the editor expressed pride in
being black, as the newspaper pressed a nationalist message combining
blackness and cubanidad (ibid.). Emblematic of its agenda, the party’s logo,
an unharnessed horse rearing up with its mane swept back by the wind,
was not simply a nod toward the romance of the War of Independence
but a reference to Changó (ibid.), the Yoruba god of lightning and thun-
der and an orisha in Santería’s system of deities. Thus, the party appealed
to the specificities of Afro-Cuban culture and addressed Afro-Cuban–
specific political issues, while claiming and promoting black access and
inclusion in the greater Cuban body politic. Ultimately, the party’s “polit-
ical message,” according to Helg, “profoundly challenged the dominant
ideology, including the myth of racial equality. And last but not least, it
comprised a nationwide independent structure capable of competing with
mainstream political parties” (159).
Despite the PIC’s position of inclusiveness, the response to the
party’s focus on race and its platform was quick and vociferous; both the
Left and the Right attacked the notion of a party devoted to the redress
of racially specific grievances as an affront to Martí’s vision and as threat
to Cuban polity and civil society. White government officials and liberal
and conservative newspapers spread rumors of a black conspiracy to
attack whites and to foment a Haitian-style revolution in Cuba. Editorials
castigated blacks and the party as racist, antiwhite, and thus unpatriotic.
Indeed, liberals and conservatives reiterated the myth of racial equality,
insisting that through the war racial equality had been achieved, and
thus, to cite racial discrimination and to promote race-based remedies
was to be in fact racist.
xxxvi
Introduction
Perhaps more to the point, as a third party the PIC represented a

threat to both the Liberal and the Conservative parties, attracting potential
members, revenue, and votes from both. Consequently, both parties sup-
ported Senator Martín Morúa Delgado’s amendment to the electoral law,
“establishing that any group composed of individuals of a single race or
color would not be considered a party.”43 Such a composition, according
to Morúa, amounted to racial discrimination, a violation of the Constitu-
tion. Despite the fact that the PIC claimed black, mixed-race, and white
members, the Morúa Amendment was ratified. In January 1910, El Par-
tido Independiente de Color was outlawed, Previsión seized, and Estenoz
imprisoned. Although he was quickly released, because of widespread
protests, mainstream newspapers and official government rhetoric again
spread rumors of conspiracy and black revolution, helping to inflame
antiblack hysteria. By April, Estenoz was arrested once again, along with
more than two hundred party members from across the country, inaugu-
rating a larger government crackdown on the party and its members. This
campaign of repression lasted for the rest of the year, resulting in Ba-
trell’s detention in April 1910, even though he was not a party member.
By March 1911, the PIC reasserted itself by holding a national assem-
bly in Havana and calling for a repeal of the ban; and throughout the
year, members continued to pressure Gómez to repeal the ban so that the
party could participate in the 1912 national elections. In February 1912,
frustrated with Gómez’s unresponsiveness, the party issued an ultima-
tum: if the Morúa Amendment were not repealed, party members would
stage massive demonstrations. Receiving no reply, Estenoz and Pedro
Ivonnet led armed protests across the country, choosing May 20, 1912,
the tenth anniversary of the founding of the republic, as the date to begin
their protests.
Concentrated in Oriente province, but visible across the island, pro-
tests first simply consisted of a show of force and threats to American-
owned properties. By the early summer, when tensions had escalated even
further, independientes resorted to isolated acts of arson. Yet, the protests
were largely peaceful, and those that did turn destructive were few and
did not threaten lives.
That fact notwithstanding, the response on the part of the govern-
ment, foreign companies, and private citizens was swift and brutal. Days
xxxvii
Introduction
after the May 20 protest, both liberal and conservative newspapers pub-
lished editorials that again used long-standing racial prejudices and stereo-
types to denounce the protests and to inflame antiblack hysteria, and
both sanctioned reprisals on the part of the government and private cit-
izens. Led by José de Jesús “Chucho” Monteagudo, a Liberation Army
veteran, government troops marched on independiente protesters in Ori-
ente province; concurrently, private companies, many foreign-owned,
hired and deployed their own militias to protect crops and manufactur-
ing equipment, and private citizens formed their own militias.
By late May, repression and reprisals were widespread. As Gómez
suspended constitutional rights in Oriente province, government troops
and private militias attacked blacks across the country, as most were sus-
pected of being independiente sympathizers and so were subject to arrest,
beatings, and murder. In the province of Havana, for example, black sug-
arcane workers were arrested on suspicion of being sympathizers, while
black mambises were arrested and accused of inciting a race war. In Ciego
de Ávila, blacks were banned from public parks on weekends. Haitians
and Jamaicans were prohibited from landing at Cuban ports. In Holguín
and Nipe Bay, black bodies were left hanging in trees or lying by the
side of the road as a warning to would-be protesters; and in Boquerón
in Guantánamo Bay, a captain and militia regulars beheaded a black
policeman and killed five black soldiers for allegedly conspiring with
Jamaicans.44 Perhaps the worst atrocity was the massacre at Hatillo, where
approximately 150 Afro-Cubans—unarmed men, women, and children—
were gunned down in their homes in a display of military aggression
against independiente protesters.
As the repression continued to intensify, officials hunted the PIC
leadership. On June 27, Estenoz was captured and killed; just three weeks
later, on July 18, Ivonnet was captured and shot to death while allegedly
trying to escape. The deaths of the two leaders marked the effective end
of the protests and served as the crushing blow to the party. Final esti-
mates of casualties of the 1912 massacres ranged between two thousand
and six thousand dead.45
According to the Constitution and to national mythology, Afro-
Cubans were full citizens, free to participate in Cuban social and politi-
cal life as they saw fit. Yet the quotidian political reality was far different
xxxviii
Introduction
in the early republic. Beyond the general cultural predisposition that

valued all things European and tended to denigrate all things African-
derived, Afro-Cubans faced real and palpable discrimination in educa-
tion, housing, public accommodations, and access to gainful employ-
ment. Furthermore, the myth of racial equality made mobilization along
racial lines and protest of racial discrimination extremely difficult in that,
according to the myth, blacks could easily be branded as racist them-
selves. Or, as Helg puts it:
Cuba’s combination of a myth of racial equality with a two-tier

racial system confronted Afro-Cubans with an unsolvable di-
lemma. If they denied the veracity of the myth, they exposed
themselves to accusations of being racist and unpatriotic. If they
subscribed to the myth, they also had to conform to negative
views of blacks. Indeed, the myth made it blasphemous for Afro-
Cubans to proclaim both their blackness and their patriotism.46
In short, the period of the early republic was a dire one for Afro-Cubans.
The August Revolution to protest discrimination and corruption was
met with fear of black retribution and thwarted by U.S. occupation; inde-
pendiente protests, largely confined to the single province of Oriente,
were met with nationwide repression and brutality, resulting in the deaths
of thousands of blacks. While the atrocities raged across the island, few
white citizens protested; in fact, the vast majority approved of the assaults
either through silence or through active participation. Furthermore, this
decade-long period of eroding black civil rights played out against the
backdrop of long-standing fears and racial prejudices. The fear of black
reprisal and of African cultural roots, coupled with popular cultural rep-
resentations of black buffoonery and sexual excess, gave license to these
more brutal and overt forms of oppression. Such was the context in which
Para la historia was published; indeed, such were the conditions Batrell
hoped to reverse through his account of the war.
Ricardo Batrell and the Cuban Jeremiad
Born in 1880 in Sabanilla, on the Santísima Trinidad de Oviedo planta-

tion in the province of Matanzas, Ricardo Batrell grew up in the center
xxxix
Introduction
of the province literally at the heart of the island-wide struggle over

Cuban nationality. Set between the provinces of Havana and Santa Clara,
Matanzas was by far Cuba’s largest sugar producer, accounting for more
than half of the entire island’s sugar production. The two major bays of
Matanzas and Cárdenas provided important trading ports, strategic for
the economic development of the province and the island as a whole.
Just south of the rolling hills near the northern coast, the terrain flattens
into a lush green plain that stretches south all the way to the marshes of
Zapata and the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast. With some of the
island’s richest soil, the central plain proved crucial for the expansion of
sugar, tobacco, and coffee plantations from Havana. Havana had been
the original site of Cuban agricultural production, but by the end of the
seventeenth century its productivity had decreased measurably owing
to deforestation, exhausted soil, and the scarcity of new land for cultiva-
tion. Drawn by Matanzas’s flat terrain, forests, rich soil, uncultivated land,
and navigable bays, planters began to move east into the new territory.
Indeed, as the farming population grew and agriculture production in-
creased, planters sought a port market closer than the city of Havana.
And in 1693 a group of Canary Island émigrés founded the settlement
of San Carlos y Severino de Matanzas. (The bay and surrounding area
had already been dubbed Matanzas [massacre], most likely because of
the 1513 killing of twenty-seven shipwrecked Spaniards by the Amerin-
dian locals.)
Just as Cuban sugar production increased through the eighteenth
century, so too did Matanzas’s production, and with the collapse of the
Haitian sugar market, Matanzas met the turn of the nineteenth century
with accelerated cultivation and production that far outpaced that of the
rest of the island. Of course, with this increased production the black
population, both free and enslaved, increased as well. For example, from
1817 to 1841 the enslaved population went from 49.5 percent of the total
population to 62.7 percent,47 while the free-black population doubled in
the same period of time.48
Because of Spain’s ability to contain the Ten Years’ War to the east-
ern half of Cuba, Matanzas had emerged from the conflict with its infra-
structure intact and well positioned to take advantage of the postwar
economic boom of the late 1880s and early 1890s. Thus, Batrell was born
xl
Introduction
into a sugar-producing province that both before and after the Ten Years’
War drove the national, sugar-dependent economy. Nevertheless, work-
ers under the new patronato system and local merchants resented the rad-
ically inequitable distribution of wealth and Spanish control of the local
economy.
Known as “little Africa” because of its high concentration of enslaved
Afro-Cubans and their descendants,49 the area of Sabanilla in particular
was known historically as a site of political unrest. In November 1843,
for example, a slave rebellion broke out on the Triunvirato sugar plan-
tation, and Esteban Santa Cruz de Oviedo discovered a conspiracy on
his Santísima Trinidad plantation. So too the conspiracy of La Escalera,
later the same year, implicated many blacks in Sabanilla. And though Ba-
trell was born free (thanks to the free-womb law of 1870), his early life is
indicative of the persistent racial hierarchy and economic deprivation that
fueled ongoing unrest. Batrell’s mother may well have been enslaved in
the area; at the very least, she took her name from the Oviedo family.50
We have no record of Batrell’s father, but by the 1850s the Santísima
Trinidad plantation had become notorious for breeding slaves. Esteban
Oviedo “appeared to have run his three plantations like a Simon Legree,”
Robert Paquette writes. Oviedo was charged by area planters “with sex-
ual abuse of his female slaves,” and he fathered “at least twenty-six mu-
latto children.”51 Indeed, Batrell himself went by either Ricardo Batrell
or Ricardo Oviedo until approximately 1906 when he began to sign let-
ters and public documents with both names.52
Because Batrell’s mother was too poor to send him to school, he
worked from early youth on the Santísima Trinidad plantation as a field
laborer. When the Liberation Army finally arrived in Matanzas in the
winter of 1896, Batrell and his brother Bernabé enlisted. (In chapter II,
Batrell mentions another brother only once, Sixto Oviedo, though he pro-
vides no additional information about him.) Both fought in the First Divi-
sion of the Fifth Corp of the Liberation Army, then in General Pedro
Betancourt’s escort squadron.
The war in Matanzas was the bloodiest and most devastating of any
Cuban province. Both Spanish and rebel forces pinned success on occu-
pying the province; thus, when Máximo Gómez and Maceo invaded in
December 1895, the province effectively became the entire war; whoever
xli
Introduction
won Matanzas won the war. The rebels quickly took towns and villages,
but were unable to hold them indefinitely. When the Spanish retook ter-
ritory, they often retaliated against the civilian population, using their own
scorched-earth tactics, reconcentration, and at moments outright murder.
In Sabanilla, in fact, just weeks before Batrell enlisted, Cuban forces
were forced to withdraw from the area; and according to the U.S. consul
report, when the Spanish retook the region, over a two-day period they
murdered a number of civilian blacks and mulatos in retaliation for their
earlier losses.53 The Spanish, though, pursued warfare against the civil-
ian population more extensively through reconcentration, as we have
seen, a policy that resulted in the deaths of sixty thousand civilian mata-
ceros, between 24 and 34 percent of the civilian population. Adding fatal-
ities through combat, the province lost well over one-third of its popu-
lation during the war.54
In short, the war in Matanzas simply devastated the entire province.
At the war’s end and through 1899, the drop in population, the lack of
livestock and farm equipment, overgrown fields, crippled infrastructure,
and the absence of investment capital brought economic activity to nearly
a complete halt. Elites and poor alike struggled to survive, while rebuild-
ing the province in the wake of the war seemed unimaginable. Making
matters worse, banditry—robberies, kidnapping, and extortion—became
a viable means of survival for men made destitute by the war. Although
1900 and 1901 showed signs of significant economic recovery, the severe
economic inequalities that had fueled the war persisted, and even inten-
sified after the war.
The irony of the postwar reality was not lost on Batrell, who also
struggled to find work that would support him and his family. In 1898,
he found employment as a police officer and later as a night watchman
in Bolondrón, Matanzas. As part of his job was to ensure the security of
the area, he hunted bandits who preyed on the local population, and in
1905 was charged with murder after killing one. Although the charge
was dropped, he was imprisoned twice that same year for “delitos de
injuria a la autoridad” (offenses of abuse against the authorities).55 The
following year, the record finds him living in Havana, and as we have
seen, he became an officer in the Constitutional Army during the August
Revolution of 1906. Equally, if not more importantly, it was during these
xlii
Introduction
early years of the republic that Batrell sequestered himself in his house,
as he says, and taught himself to read and write.
After the August Revolution, Batrell emerged as an even more active
public figure. As a former officer in the Constitutional Army and now as
a protégé of Juan Gualberto Gómez, Batrell garnered considerable recog-
nition as a radical liberal in the Liberal Party. For example, on March
16, 1909, La Lucha reported that he presided over a meeting between
black liberals and José Miguel Gómez in which a list of pressing con-
cerns were presented to the president;56 he worked closely with Estonez
and Ivonnet, the future leaders of La Agrupación and the PIC; and al-
though he never became an official member of either group, he contin-
ually agitated for many of the same rights and causes for which these
groups were known.
It was during this period, too, that he wrote a number of political
tracts advancing black civil rights and leveling criticism at officials, poli-
cies, and practices that stood in the way of black progress. In 1907, for
example, he published “Manifiesto al Pueblo de Cuba y a La Raza de
Color” (Manifesto for the People of Cuba and for the Race of Color);
he distributed a different leaflet titled “Al Pueblo de Cuba,” and in 1912
lectured in Pinar del Río on his leaflet.57 On August 21, 1908, Batrell sent
a letter to Juan Gualberto Gómez describing problems and providing solu-
tions for a failed election in which he was a candidate, and Batrell was
arrested and incarcerated in 1910 and in 1912, largely for his political
activities. By 1910 he had completed his memoir,58 and by early 1912 he
was circulating individual chapters59 and was jailed for their critical con-
tent. During this period, Batrell was also under surveillance by both the
U.S. and Cuban secret services.60
After the massacre of 1912, Batrell virtually disappeared from public
life, perhaps, as Blancamar Rosabal suggests, because of the ongoing per-
secution of blacks and because of the critical nature of his narrative.61 Ba-
trell’s book seems to have disappeared just as he did. The volume was
published by Seoane y Alvarez Impresores, but we know little about this
publishing house—the kinds of books it published, its institutional mis-
sion and philosophy, or why it chose to publish Batrell’s memoir. Further-
more, critics have been unable to find any extant reviews or any other
accounts of the book’s reception or impact. We do know that there are
xliii
Introduction
still several copies in Cuba in private hands, and one copy is housed at
la Biblioteca Nacional José Martí. The copy with which I have worked,
bought from a private library, passed through several hands, as the mar-
ginal notes indicate. Thus the book did enjoy some circulation within
Cuba. And according to WorldCat, four copies are owned by libraries
in the United States, indicating a broader, international awareness of the
book’s historical importance. Yet, despite these modest indicators of ex-
posure and circulation, we still know very little of the volume’s publica-
tion history; indeed, subsequent critical addresses of Batrell will need to
unearth this crucial information.
Further contributing to the book’s obscurity, Batrell never published
a second volume as he said in the first that he would; and his life in politics
seems to have come to an abrupt end. In fact, the last extant letter, dated
1922, is one that solicits financial help from Juan Gualberto Gómez.62
After this communiqué, Batrell does not appear again in the public record.
Nevertheless, the larger cache of documents—letters, essays, mani-
festos, and unpublished episodes of his memoir—helps to shed consider-
able light on his life and the political work he hoped Para la historia would
do. As we have seen, Batrell was incarcerated during the nationwide
repression of 1912. Upon his arrest, authorities searched his house on
June 12 and found “a sea of papers”—some one hundred pages of what
appeared to be the second volume of his autobiography, titled “La Paz”
(The Peace), another set of papers titled “Fatalidad. Para la historia”
(Fate: For the Record), yet another set called “Pautas Políticas” (Political
Directions) addressed to General Ernesto Asbert, numerous letters and
telegrams, and a certificate of delegation to the Liberal Party assembly.63
In both the literal and the figurative sense, the unschooled farm boy
became indeed a man of letters. The Liberation and Constitutional Army
veteran had traded in his gun for a pen in the ongoing struggle for Cuban
democracy and for Afro-Cuban equality. As Omar Granados points out,
Batrell’s transformation invokes Cuban cultural mythology concerning
male leadership and national identity, a symbolic transformation in which
men of letters ultimately take up arms, become men of action, and lead
the nation into its glorious future. In the classic sense, intellectuals such
as José Martí and Juan Gualberto Gómez conceive and promote a new
vision of Cuban society, then lead the armed struggle for its realization.
xliv
Introduction
Reversing the trajectory while retaining the symbolic arc, Batrell, the free-
dom fighter, lays down his guns, learns to read and write, then devotes
his life to letters as a means of leading his country.64 “I weighed all of
the sacrifices and hardships that I endured in the war,” Batrell recounts
toward the end of his narrative, “and I realized that in order to be truly
respected in our society, it was imperative that I learn how to read and
write.” Thus, his status as man of letters should accord him the author-
ity to criticize the nation and to call on it to return to its founding ideals.
Fernando Martínez Heredia notes that a recurring set of themes and
issues runs across the bulk of Batrell’s writings. First and foremost, race
looms central for Batrell, manifesting itself in several important ways.
In his view, the black struggle for equality and citizenship is ultimately
emblematic of the larger national struggle for Cuban democracy, justice,
and equality. He asserts quite frequently that black freedom fighters in
the War of Independence (and in the Ten Years’ War) were the most
patriotic, brave, and heroic, and that it was their sacrifices that made the
republic possible. So too, Batrell argues on several occasions that the
Afro-Cuban, as a political entity, is a product of the War of Indepen-
dence and the subsequent struggles for black equality leading up to 1912.65
Indeed, it is precisely their sacrifices that justify the contemporary Afro-
Cuban claim as a political group to equality and full citizenship. For
Batrell, the black struggle for inclusion should remind the republic of its
highest ideals, that the point of the War of Independence was not mere
independence, but the fullest realization of Cuba Libre.
As an activist, he articulates strategies for furthering this struggle,
particularly the organization of black-specific social clubs to promote black
causes. For example, in 1907 he argues that efforts for black mobilization
should be more closely united, and thus he proposes the organization of
a kind of Ateneo de Color (cultural club), a social club in which blacks
would meet to discuss pressing racial issues and find solutions for them.
It would “transcend” the political parties and the larger political system
to advance a “decisive social battle” for the higher ideal of “reciprocidad
humana” (human reciprocity).66
Furthermore, Batrell’s papers criticize people, practices, and institu-
tions that thwart the advancement of racial equality. Heredia notes that
Batrell often comments on the disheartening discrepancy between the
xlv
Introduction
original ideals of Cuba Libre and the sobering reality of contemporary

politics. In this context, Batrell derides racism and is pointed in recalling
examples of racial discrimination; accordingly, he attacks whites who dis-
play prejudice, particularly liberal whites who supposedly share the orig-
inal vision.67
Batrell’s correspondence pursues the same themes. For example, a
number of his letters to Juan Gualberto Gómez and other government
officials decry the state of contemporary politics as an unqualified failure
in comparison to the original ideal. Too often for Batrell, those in power
are avowed enemies of equality and democracy, and he must continually
struggle against them for the survival of these ideals. For instance, in a
1909 letter to the Secretario de Gobernación, complaining of the surveil-
lance and harassment on the part of the Cuban secret service, Batrell
writes that the agents who were unable to match his valor in the War of
Independence are now monitoring his movements as if he were a threat
to peace. But ironically, these agents work for a government that he
helped to create (through the August Revolution) to secure his own peace
and well-being.68 In a collection of unpublished accounts of the war, he
lambastes the current leaders of the country, accusing them of being worse
than the despised Cuban guerrillas who fought for Spain. “Cuba . . .
after so much political intrigue,” he laments, “has been so trampled upon
that now the guerrillas of yesteryear are worth more than the saints and
fathers of the country!”69
Perhaps Batrell’s 1907 manifesto, coauthored with Alejandro Nenin-
ger, more fully articulates the political aim of his writings. In “Manifiesto
al pueblo,” Batrell again couches political crisis in terms of race. He crit-
icizes the fact that the lofty ideals of the republic have been traduced by
contemporary politics, and the most obvious sign of betrayal is the polit-
ical plight of the Afro-Cuban. “In the war of 1868,” Batrell begins, “there
were many black officers with ranks higher than many white officers and
the black officers always treated their white counterparts fairly, reward-
ing them, like equal citizens, with the merits they deserved. This was
very different from today’s situation where whites treat blacks with a
cruelty that rivals the odious days of slavery.”70 He insists that heroes
such as Antonio Maceo, José Martí, and Guillermón Moncada died to
make “a republic of Cubans and for Cubans” (echoing Martí’s famous
xlvi
Introduction
phrase), and to “establish democracy and fraternity.” He proceeds to

indict Cuba, whites in particular, for racial discrimination, a violation of
Article 11 of the Constitution guaranteeing equality to all Cubans. Batrell
and Neninger charge that white liberals particularly—War of Indepen-
dence veterans no less—had betrayed blacks, using the excuse of Ameri-
can prejudice to garner for themselves rights and privileges that were the
birthright of all. Furthermore, the manifesto lambastes white liberals for
denying black veterans government jobs owed them by virtue of their
service in the war. The authors note that whites, many foreign born, hold
better government positions in the Rural Guard, the municipal police
force, government administration, and so forth, and that blacks are rou-
tinely excluded. Batrell and Neninger also sharply criticize whites for
supporting the “whitening” immigration policy that promoted immigra-
tion from Spain; finally, they take whites to task for forming all-white
social clubs, the Ateneo and Unión Club in particular.
The manifesto gives little quarter to blacks either. For Batrell, Afro-
Cubans have failed to live up to Maceo’s example and have tarnished
his legacy through their silence and unwillingness to protest. In particu-
lar, black public officials in league with whites to the detriment of black
civil rights bring shame to a group that can no longer call itself a “patri-
otic race.”
In general, in this call to redress the political crisis threatening the
republic, Batrell and Neninger approach the conclusion of their manifesto
imploring blacks not “to live like pariahs but to be on the political move
and to push forward the progress of our epoch.”71 Such a call presages
the rhetorical strategy and overarching aim of his autobiography.
Within this larger context of writing, Batrell’s autobiography—his
longest and most complex work—takes center stage, articulating more dra-
matically and more fully the major arguments found across the corpus
of his life’s writings. And, like his political tracts, Para la historia addresses
a contemporary audience and contemporary politics, using his war ex-
perience as both example and dramatic contrast. Although we receive
his text through the invaluable work of historians who have used it to
document events and conditions in the war,72 his text seeks to work more
in figurative terms—as national allegory no less—than as historical docu-
mentation. In this sense, his text uses his experiences in the war as a means
xlvii
Introduction
of commentary on postwar conditions. Very similar to the North Amer-

ican jeremiad tradition, Batrell cites the ideal, decries current political
conditions that fall short of the ideal, and calls on the nation to return
to the original promise of Cuba Libre.
Thus, episodes in his narrative, loosely connected through his pro-
tagonist, function as didactic tales, lessons for a contemporary audience
that has forgotten the meaning of the war. In a more practical sense, Ba-
trell divides his account into three chapters, each covering a single year:
1896, 1897, 1898. He recounts a series of personal experiences and re-
flections that provide a rich, detailed sense of wartime conditions and life
in the Liberation Army. In a topical sense, Batrell describes the marches
and daily activities of his regiment, pitched battles with Spanish forces,
and conditions for civilians resulting from Weyler’s reconcentration pol-
icy. He describes in detail his fellow mambises, the hardships they endured,
the victories they won; and equally as important for him, he provides a
record of the fallen.
But Batrell reshapes these events and experiences to function meta-
phorically by placing them within an allegorical framework in which the
central struggle between good and evil animates the entire narrative.
Indeed, his allegorical world is entirely Manichaean—Cuba versus Spain,
liberty versus tyranny, la patria o muerte—in which diametric opposites
collide and seek the other’s destruction. In this sense, Batrell’s moral
landscape is populated by “damned birds of prey” such as the guerrillas
of Matanzas, the villainous Governor Weyler, and the “bloodthirsty”
Colonel Molina, against whom Batrell’s regiment fights constantly. These
“enemies of liberty” and “defenders of tyranny,” as he often calls them,
are the embodiment of evil. And equally as important, Cuban soldiers
who waver in their devotion to the cause help to illustrate, by negative
example, the level of self-sacrifice truly necessary to serve the country
and thus to defeat evil. These men invariably lose their honor and die
ignoble deaths. On the other hand, devoted compatriots fight with cour-
age, and either die with honor (and so are immortalized through Batrell’s
tributes) or live to see the triumph of good over evil.
Yet, despite the implications of continuity that the notion of allegory
overtly implies, Batrell’s narrative is much more episodic than develop-
mental. Figures do not change or grow over the course of the account;
xlviii
Introduction
rather, in order to make transparent its symbolic import, Batrell creates

each episode so that it nearly stands alone as a rhetorical strategy. In
short, each episode strains to perform as great a metaphoric effect as pos-
sible, and while these meanings are multiple and various across the text,
major themes do recur, suggesting their overriding importance. At the
risk of oversimplification, I suggest that Batrell focuses on five major
themes or arguments: black masculinity, racial democracy, racial discrim-
ination, black valor, and dedication to the cause of Cuba Libre.
Given the text’s concern for strength and valor, it is no coincidence
that it is a deeply male-identified text, and thus one preoccupied with
masculinity and manhood. From the first page, Batrell reminds his read-
ers of his youth, his small build, and his frail appearance. Almost as a
refrain, he tells the reader that he was a boy of sixteen or seventeen
among fully grown men; yet he is able to lead and to sacrifice for Cuba
Libre in a manner that far surpasses his compatriots. He also reminds
the reader of the youth of his regiment, particularly his closest friends—
a youthfulness that at moments further underscores his claims to black
valor and exemplary citizenship.
The conspicuous absence of women in his narrative further empha-
sizes Batrell’s preoccupation with maleness and masculinity. Aside from
the occasional appearance of an officer’s wife or a female civilian, only
the mother in the episode of the stolen goat (chapter I) receives enough
attention to function metaphorically—this, despite the fact that historically
the role of female insurrectionists (mambisas, if you will) is well docu-
mented. Women accompanied their husbands in the army, living with
them in ranchos (makeshift huts) and helping to maintain the camps; they
created and staffed field hospitals, and they worked in talleres (workshops),
providing crucial support for the war effort. Hidden deep in the moun-
tains, talleres produced weapons, saddles, and horseshoes; and, whenever
possible, women there tended cattle and raised crops for the campaign.
A significant number went into battle as well, fighting alongside their male
rebel counterparts.73 Also, by 1896 Mariana Grajales, José and Antonio
Maceo’s mother, had become a national icon, indeed, a “mother” to Cuba
Libre because she had given birth to two of its greatest heroes, and,
in Antonio’s case, had given her son as a sacrifice for the cause.74 All in
all, “women’s contribution to the war effort was exceptional,” as Teresa
xlix
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
koe, det hja wiste, hwet al dit bitsjutte en dy-t him ornaris stjûre koe
as in laem, det wie syn lyts wyfke, syn pipenútsje en hja siddere, as
hja der om tochte, hwa nou yntkoart syn wrake treffe en ho-t dy
útfalle scoe. Hwent dit op him sitte litte, noait! En as se him
ûnderstie oer ien en oar, den lake ’r, de brede geve tosken bleat en
hâldde hjar pleagjend fen him ôf en sei, hiele lytse wyfkes mei sokke
moaije eagen moasten net sokke domme dingen freegje oan greate
manljue.
Nou wie hy den wer better, mar hy bleau sa stiif as in peal. Do
moast Gajus de Filder, wiidforneamd om syn wriûwkinst, komme en
dy kaem der deis trijeris oanhompeljen op syn knolfoet en knypte en
striek en aeike him den sa gemiene goed, det Haeije Trompetter
flokte him heas fen pine en tankberens. Mar it holp, it dûrre al net sa
bare lang, as mei syn help en it biproefde middel fen âlde Betteke út
it gasthús, hynstemoanjefet, griene oalje en brandewyn, fielde
Haeije Trompetter him op ’t lêst wer sa linich as in baleinen swipe yn
jongfeinte hânnen.
Do hiene se op in joune in wûndere ontmoeting. Hy siet hwet to
pluchsnijen for de skoenmakker en pluze der in jounbrogge by op en
it wiif siet der by to fesje forsetten for de jonge, do waerde de doar
op dien en der stie me dy rike minhear Josua de Metz fen
Amsterdam foar hjar noas. Hy koe him wol.... al sont jierren koft ’r it
bêste fé fen ’t merk op en de minsken setten him allegear heech,
hwent hy scoe nin earmen driûwer om in sint bikrinke en tingje him
’t hert út it liif en hy bitelle graech goed jild for goed gûd.
Hja rekken allebeide hwet fen ’e wize, hy en ’t wiif en stiene rjucht
oerein de bisite oan to sjen. En waerliken, efter him oan kaem âlde
minhear Ripperda ek noch en minhear Baerdt. Hy, Haeije Trompetter
wie bang for nin divel noch donder, nou waerd it him dochs
krappernôch en for ’t earst yn syn hiele trouwen seach ’r, ho lyts en
earmoedich syn keammerke wie, ho sober it húsrie, ho rikkerich it
skiûwdefjûr! Mar skjin! skjin! Gjin wiif yn hiele Ljouwert koe tsjin syn
Dúfke út!
„Joun!” seine de hearen, de rike Josua de Metz it earste en
alderdanigste frjeonlik en hy kaem op him ta en stiek de hân út. Nei
him! nei him! nei Haeije Trompetter, trijeris gisele, earme
forskoppeling yn in steechje! stiek in ryk minhear, stiek minhear
Josua de Metz fen Amsterdam de hân út, in moaije skjinne wite lytse
hân fol ringen en kostlikheit. En hy krige him foarsichtich yn syn
forile knúst fol barsten en groeden, mar ek goed skjin, en hja
fûsken. Mar hy waerde suver raer fen dit gefal, syn skonken trillen
der him fen en hy seach skean nei ’t wiif om help. Frouljue binn’
redsum, hwer in man, stadich fen bigryp, net in mûzzegat fine kin,
sjogge hja noch wol in skûrredoar iepen.
„Gien sitten, hearen!” sei se en det wie mar hânsum trije stoellen
by ’t bedsket wei en om ’e hird hinne, hwer yn ’t moai opstoelle
skiûwdefjûrrountsje de houtsjes knapten. En alsa sieten de hearen
en hja ek, mar op in earbiedige distânsje en diene it swijen der ta en
biskammen hjar djip yn it hert oer hjar needrigheit. O dit
holderhúske! dy toskeinde reauwkes, dy âld tafel, hwer gjin drip
farwe op siet! Mei hokker nidasserigge eagen seagen se it joun!
Minhear Josua de Metz naem in snufke út syn goudene snúfdoaze
en mei in swierige bûging noege ’r de oare hearen ek to priûwen. Do
brimde ’r ris en sette fen ein mei syn petear, wylt ’r frege: „Wer
hielendal de âlde, Haeije? Ik hearde sa fen ien en oar....”
„Det scoe ’k sizze, minhear”, andere dy, bliid, det ’r de mûle
opdwaen koe, hwent dy finnige lytse eachjes fen dy Amsterdammer,
der hie hy it einliks mar neat op stean. Dy seagen him tróch en der
wie wol ris in skûlherntsje yn syn hert, hwer hy ljeafst mar nimmen
ta ’n yn loere litte woe. En hy strûpte de mouwe fen ’t baitsje op oer
’e earmtakke en minhear Josua de Metz seach de sterke earm en der
skean oerhinne de reade groeden fen ’e wrede striemmen. De
wounen wierne hiel, mar de groeden? dy scoene der noch jierren
bliûwe! En hy tochte om ’e sterke rêch fen dizze reus en ho dy wol
lykje scoe! En hy riboske ûnder syn waerme tichte mantel.
En minhear Josua de Metz knypte de lippen stiif op inoar en
makke yn dizze amerij in birekken, in nuvere birekken, hwer selst
minhear Ripperda en minhear Baerdt, âlde, bitûfte rekkenmasters
fen wit hofolle saken en affysjes gjin flau bisef fen hiene.
„En ha jou al wer wirk? Nei ’t sin?”
De brede mûle fen ’e reus waerde noch greater fen in glimke. „’t
Is by de runmounle en fjouwer goune wyks. En jouns noch learsnije,
hiele lapen. De learloaijers leanje net al to ryklik. Den noch
pluchsnije. En yntkoart wer de bisten.”
„Dos jy ha al wer bisten dreauwn?” en minhear Josua de Metz
seach skerp. Wist ’r al, det in patty him de bisten ûnthâlden, omt se
bang wierne for de Frânsken? Det ’r al twa kear op ’t merk west hie
en gjin oanslach krije kind hie? Der loek him in flau biwyske read oer
’e meagere, biklonkene wangen.
„Noch net, minhear”, andere hy hwette mismoedich, „yn nije wike
scil ’k it ris wer bisykje. Myn fêst plak wer ynnimme.”
„Hwer is det?”
„Op de hoeke fen ’t steechje, det nei de Nijested ta giet. As
minhear ek ris hwet for my hat....”
„Det ha ’k”, sei minhear Josua de Metz der ynienen flotwei
oerhinne, „en der komme wy hjir om. Wy Israëliten binn’ Oranje ek
tagedien en wy ha heard, det jou it ek binne en ’t biwys levere ha. It
biwys fen de dingen, Haeije.... der komt it op oan. Jou ha nou alle
patriotten tsjin.... as ’t kin scoene se jou wol fen honger krepeare
litte wolle, omt jou it for Oranje opnaem ha yn ’e persoan fen jonker
Ripperda. En sjoch, der scille wy nou ris in stokje foar strike. Ik moat
in nije preamfarder ha for myn bisten nei de sted fen Amsterdam ta.
Der sit gâns jild ûnder, sims tûzenen en derom, ik moat in man ha,
dy-t ik yn alle stik bitrouwe kin. En dizze hearen hjir neamden jou....
„Minhear!” rôp Haeije Trompetter en koe hast net mear stilsitte op
’e stoel. Mar Dúfke skodholle stoef en Haeije Trompetter siet wer as
in laem, alhowol hy trille oer al syn lea, sa raer waerde ’r fenbinnen.
Giseljen wie neat by dit.
„Hja neamden jou”, gyng minhear Josua de Metz troch mei syn
praet, „en dy-t fen sokken in goed getúgenisss mei kriget, dy kin ik
wol yn myn tsjinst nimme. De nije pream, in bêst iken-ien mei izeren
bânnen bislein en in roefke for ’t gerief, is al ûnderweis hjir hinne en
scil klear lizze yn ’e Snitser feart. En der farre jou op nei Amsterdam
for myn rekken alle wiken. En der binne jou baes mei twa feinten
ûnder jou. Dy kinne jou sels wol hiere. En for kosten is hjir noch
fyftich goune.” En hy krige it pongkje út de bûs en telde it jild op ’e
earmtlike tafel út. Dy hie noch noait it gerinkink heard fen tsjien
goune, lit stean fen fyftich! fyftich!! In kaptael, in takomst, in
jildwinning, in eigen húske, in douwehok, en simmers sims to fiskjen
nei de mar ta, Dúfke en de jonge mei, in hearlike lange sinneskyn
dei!
Hy wie sa forslein, det hy sei gjin wird en liet it jild stil op ’e tafel
lizze. Hy seach fen Josua de Metz op Baerdt en den wer op
Ripperda, it wie him allegear to great, om dit leauwe to kinnen.
Jister noch yn ’e slimste druk en nou ynienen yn ’e folop! En hy
fielde him as de skoaijer út it mearke, dy-t sliepende wei yn ien
nacht kening waen is.
„Nei de Reade Sé fen binauwinge komt der altyd in Kanäan fen
hearlikheit,” sei minhear Baerdt hiel plechtich mei syn swier lûd,
hwer it lytse keammerke noch lytser fen waerde. „Krij mar oan,
jonge en wêz bliid mei ’t wyfke. It lot is keard, Haeije.”
Do bigoan Haeije Trompetter einliks to praten, hiel stadich, krekt
as moast ’r de wirden ien foar ien ta de kiel útwringe. „Minhear scil
net bidroegen mei my útkomme.... ik bin der.... tige bliid ta.... ’t
aldermeast for ús.... jonge.” En hy stiek de greate hân út en rearde
yn ien taest al dy skoane gounen nei him ta. Do seagen syn wrede,
earlike eagen yn ’e lichte en sochten it antlit fen ’e lytse âlde joad en
der yn de snoade swarte giteagen, glinsterjend as kralen en de
loaitsen fen dy eagen troffen inoar en elts for oar lies der yn, hwet ’r
witte woe en ’e bifestiging fen inkelde oare dingen.
Seis dagen letter stie Haeije Trompetter yn ’t rountsje fen al syn
getrouwen op ’t wykmerk. Hy hie him ’t hier knippe litten en
fetsoenlik skeard, hy hie in nij buis oan, in lekkense pet op en
prachtige nije klompen, gleon op glânze, mei greate bosken strie der
yn, oan ’e foetten. Dúfke en ’e jonge stiene fen fjirrens mei in optein
sin dit alles oan to sjen. Gol wonk ’r Brike Lubbert, Gajus de Filder,
Gosse Ketsje en Kaeije Klapdermarop en hja fandelen it fé for him
fen ’t merk, det minhear Josua de Metz dizz’ kear koft hie. En it wie
gâns in poarsje.
En sels krige ’r de âldermoaijsten by ’t hoarntou, in pear fen dy
alderkostlikste bistkes, suver siden fen fel en fyn fen kop as jifferkes
en der in pear hoarnen op, as wierne se bislipe, der wie nou suver
gjin wryt noch slyt oan! pronkjes wierne it! en hiel stadich kuiere ’r
net troch ’t steechje nei de Nijested, né, hja gyngen ’t hiele merk
lâns, de Wirdumer Dyk op en sa nei ’t Breed fen ’e Nijested ta. Alle
âlde getrouwen der efteroan en alle Ljouwter bern en hounen fen
fjirren. Der hat noch nea in kening sa yn top fen gloarje stien as
Haeije Trompetter dy moarne.
En by de Waech, der lei de nije, greate pream klear, sines. Der
stiene de feinten to wachtsjen, der hy baes oer wie, der stie minhear
Josua de Metz op him to wachtsjen, nou syn breahear en hokfoar
ien! En hja biseagen en bitûmken de kostlike bistjes noch ris en do
hearde ’r as in moai mesyk it bossen fen hjar poaten oer ’e barte yn
syn pream!
En foar ’t finster fen ’e soosjeteit, der stie âlde fen Rhé to smoken
en ’t wykmerkfortier oan to sjen. Sûnder erch seach ’r sa nei it folk,
nei it fé, nei dy greate kearel, dy-t boppe alles útstike. Haeije
Trompetter, dy smycht! wie dy det? Op syn Sneins! suver yn ’t brat
as in riken rintenier? En hwet moast dy der by dy pream fol bisten?
Hastich liet ’r de skel rinkelje yn ’e hân. Sibren, de jonge út it
Wetterlân, al sont tiiden syn hantsjemoaisknecht en neisneuper fen
alle ding, hwer greate jonges de noas mar ynstekke doare, kipe om
’e hoeke fen ’e doar. En dy al gau, wiis fornim der op út.
It wie Haeije Trompetter, ta eare en oansjen kleauwn. En fen Rhé,
âlde bitûfte foks, bignúvde det spultsje fen fjirren. Ripperda kaem en
fûske mei dy joad en Falentijn en Hopperus.... Do wist ’r genôch....
Haeije scoe de ôfgesant wirde twisken Ljouwert en Amsterdam fen
dy oranjerazers. De brieven rekken wei.... nou founen se der dit op.
Hy gnyske húnsk en forflokte lûd de dei, det hy dy dogeneat giselje
litten hie. Det skreauwde wech en der wear. Min moast folle stilder
wraek nimme kinne.
Hjir setten se him nou pyk mei. Scoe hy oan ’e koartste ein lúke
moatte? scoe ’r?
Hy koe wol gûle fen spyt.—
IX.
Oan ’e âld Harstewei tichte by Iestrum en hielendal forside yn ’e

beammen, stie in húske. Brekfallich wie ’t, de lûken hingen mar heal
mear op ’e hekken en de measte rútsjes, nou der blies de wyn troch.
It stie der sa forlitten en iensum, nimmen liet syn each der oer gean
as op in joun in man, dy-t der stadich oantrêdzjen kaem, sims
foarsichtich om him hinne seach en do mei ien sprong oer it sleatsje
wie op it hiem en him tomûk nei de hússide joech, hwer in lytse
útdoar yn ’t brike kosyn hinge. Hy fielde ris ûnder it tek en ja
waerliken, de kaei wie ’r en sûnder in bult geskermesear krige ’r de
doar op en gyng yn ’e hûs. Binne-yn like it hiel hwet better as bûte-
om. De liemen flier fen ’e keamer wie skjin oanfage en mei wyt sân
bistruid, der stiene in pear banken en in stikmennich stoellen en yn
’t foarmidden in greate trijepoatige klaptafel. It forwûnderlikste wie,
op ’e hird barnde in lyts fjurke, nochlik glimkjend mei lytse biwyskes
fen in lôge en derby stie in greate swartrikke tsjettel. De man hifke
him ris en hinge him do oan ’t hael.
Do gyng ’r stil foar ’t fjûr sitten en wachte op ’e dingen, sa ’s hy
wiste al op kommenswei. Mar al ringen bigoan him det wachtsjen to
forfélen, hy diich de útdoar ris yn ’t kear en seach om him hinne, alle
kanten út. Neat oars as bosken en beammen, hege diken en op ’e
groun it toarre, noch wintereftige gêrs. Der flonkeren al in pear
stjerren.... yn stúdzje wei kúrde hy der nei.
De stiltme bineare him suver hjir yn dit iensume hûs. De fûgels
wierne al stil, in flearmûs tûmmele om twisken de beammen as in
biwjukke tsjamme en nei de kant fen ’e mar skreauwde in reiddomp.
In oaren ien trompettere der tsjin yn: Kom ris op, ast doarst. It
wyfke scoe wol yn ’t onlân tahâlde, hiel yntkoart bigoan der wer
ljeafdetiid en ljeafdestryd. Sels fielde ’r ek al de hearlike nije kreft
fen it jier yn syn jong sterk lichem.... hy doarst ek wol, moed hie ’r,
ja det sikersonk!
Der krêken in pear tokjes op de dyk en do ’r omseach, liet in âld
man him stadich by de steile kant delglide, de hân oan in stevige
hazzenúttetokke en wie mei ien sprongkje oer ’e dyksgoate en by
him.
„Foppe-om!” sei de jongste bliid.
„Wiestû der al lang, Wibe?” frege dy.
„In skoftsje. ’t Is noch betiid, mar ik koe tomûk foartkomme
efterút en do de âld Dyk del en oer ’t Heechsân en sa wer oer ’e
lânnen hjir hinne. De wei om is net bitroud. Strúnders planteit en yn
elts hûs Frânske ynkertiering.”
„Soksoartige útfenhûzers ha ik fjouwer,” forkleare Foppe-om. „Twa
fen Eadske hjarres hie ik al en nou noch twa der by. It soppet rûm
yn oarremans petyljen, tinke dy Frânsken grif, mar myn miellen
wirde lyts, jonge. As ’t sa troch giet, rekket Foppe-om oan reapsein,
den moat de stôk yn ’e hals, der is sa gjin fordidigjen mear oan. It
libben wirdt stadichoan it Fryske folk ta ’t lichem útknypt.... O Wibe,
det it sa komme moat mei ús, ús Stedhâlder, ús folk....!” en Foppe-
om balle de âlde stramme fûsten.
„Stil,” sei Wibe Lubberts.... „hark!.... der is hwet!”
It waerde al skimerich, de moaije folle moanne kleau, in sulveren
bal oan ’e loft, mar de jounglâns wie ek noch net alhielendal wei en
as in skynsel seagen se út ’e fierte in great swart ding oankommen,
noch swarter as de joun. It blykte in âld hynsder to wêzen en hy
droech in steil en meager man en der waerde bliid fûske mei dizze
nij-oankomling, master Marten Joukes fen Driesum. It hynsder
waerd nei in hokje brocht efterhûs, der hea en hjouwer en wetter to
finen wie, alles nei de eask en hja gyngen trijersum yn ’e hûs en
diene de doar op ’e skoatel en de blinen alhiel ticht.
„Hearst net fluitsjen, Wibe?” sei Marten Joukes. Dy mei flugge
stappen nei de doar en efkes letter roan de keamer ynienen fol. Der
wierne me Schotmans fen Boerum, Bindert Japiks Cloosterman fen
Bouwekleaster en syn soan Wytse, jonker fen Scheltinga fen
Stynsgea, Rienk Reinders, de skoalmaster fen Optwizel en Romke
Piters, great eigenerfde ek derre, Jan Binnes fen Aldwâld, Gjalt
Botses fen Mûntsjessyl, Else Louwes Siccama, dy ’t efter de Collumer
tsjerke wenne mei Eelke Meinderts, de wiidforneamde skriûwer fen
Aagtsje Ysbrandts en forskate moaije dichten, biselskippe fen Boate
Eskes. Op ’t âlderlêst kaem der noch in kearel oanstappen en dy
naem ek de guit nei ’t húske ta. Sa ’n Collumersweachster
tsiiskeapman like it wol, to sjen oan syn greate wite pûdden, dy-t
him, ien foar ’t boarst en ien op ’e rêch bingelen. Hy swaeide der
oer, krekt as hie ’r in stik yn ’e kraech, de hoed hinge him op ien ear
en syn hiele antlit gyng hast skûl yn in lang swart bird. Sûnder mis
ien, dy-t min ljeafst net moet op iensume wegen en as min him al
moet, den ljeafst mar oan kant gean en slûpende wei foarby. De
sutelder seach ris nei it húske, nei in âld wylgenmoes oan ’e
sleatskant en der in einekoer yn, do wie ’r yn in omsjoch oer it
haechje, by de hússide lâns, yn ’e hûs. Flap, de doar ticht en de
beide skoatels der op.
„Jonker!” sei Wibe Lubberts sunich en allegearre fleagen se bliid
oerein op him ta.
Ja, it wie jonker Ryklef Ripperda, de dea en finzenis ûntkaem, nou
yn ’t foarmidden fen it boerefolk, like trouwe Oranjemannen as hy,
de man fen hege steat. En nou hokken se mei inoar om ’e tafel to
rieplachtsjen, ien op ’e útkyk foarhûs yn ’t tsjuster, as der ek onrie
kaem. Mar hwa tocht der om, det hjir ea hwet útheefd wirde koe,
hjir midden yn ’t forlitten lân, der gjin wei, gjin paed roan en
simmers selst noait oaren kamen as bisteforweiders en ris in inkelde
krûdesiker om wjirmkrûd en honnebeistal?
Hiel ienfâldich wei, sûnder ophef, sûnder gelekskoai, diich ’r it
forhael fen syn bifinings yn ’e lêste wykmennich, in tiid, for altyd mei
onútwiskbere markteikens griffele yn syn oantinken. De hollen
foardel, harke it omsittend laech nei him, ho biwarren se elts wird yn
hjar hert!
Hy siet ticht by ’t bedsket, der wie ’t it feilichst, as der al ris onrie
kaem en ’t tichst by de útdoar nei ’t efterhûs, hwer de doar fen yn ’t
kear stie, om de wyk spylje to kinnen it lân yn, it tsjustere, iensume
nachtlân en in flauwe wjerskyn fen it fjûr skynde op syn moai
drystmoedich antlit. De measte patty fen syn harkers wierne âlder as
hy, allegearre goedwillich om mei gean to wollen en to stibelearjen,
mar onmachtich om foaroanman wêze to kinnen. Wibe Lubberts
scoe ’t licht noch al kind hawwe, as ’r mar mear leard en yn ’e wrâld
forkeard hie. Mar syn skipke hie likemin as det fen Marten Joukes ea
op ’e greate wieling fen ’e bûtewrâld omtoarke en dobbere, hjar
wrâld syn grinzen wierne it Ljouwter fémerk en de Liike winters en
oars dei yn, dei út it eigen boerehiem. Sa tocht Eelke Meinderts yn
him sels, wylt hy om him hinne seach nei syn mannen en jonker
Ryklef der middenmank, de jonge kening mids syn trouwe folk, mar
ek.... de sterke stoarmer en syn folchsum ploechje. En de greate
mennichte wirdt it bêste laedt fen immen, dy-t heger stiet. Gelikens
jowt gelikens nea gesach.
De jonker swijde.... hy wie útpraet op dit stuit. Der foel in swiere
stiltme. Nimmen sei in wird, min hearde allinne it knappen fen ’e
houtsjes op ’t fjûr en it kofjewetter, det bigoan to razen yn ’e âld
tsjettel.
„It wachtsjen is op jou, master,” sei Wibe Lubberts en stompte
Marten Joukes efkes oan.
Master greatsk! sa útforkoaren to wêzen fen al dizze forstânnige
mannen, eigenerfden de measten en floreenplichtingen allegear,
hwer hy mei syn tractemint fen hûndert fjirtich goune jiers neat oars
by wie as in earmlike penneforsnijer, raspe de kiel ris in kear twa
trije en do sei ’r:
Frjeonen en Oranje-tagedienen! Alvorens wij deeze saek verders
útspinne, mut it my fen ’t hert, ho-t de saken der voorstane yn de
Wouden. Niet te best of wûndre goed, al naar ’t woord hewwe mag.
Niet te best voor de blauwhozen, want om so te seggen staat de
lonte aan ’t krúd toe. Der hoecht niet feul noadich te wesen, as wy
hewwe in oproer fen wer bin je my”....
„Det kin mâldernôch wirde”, foel Foppe Lieûwes him yn ’e reden.
„Jou kinne my eerst prate late, Foppe-om en segge dan jou
bifining”, fjurre Marten Joukes finnichjes fen him. „En as wy dat
oproer den ris kregen en se deden allegaer so, Oostergo, Westergo
en de Sevenwouden, den konnen wy ons dy skapetiken fen in
Frânsen wel ris gau fen ’e húd ôf skudde. As ik noch dúzend gulden
hadde for myn folk, alleenich for krúd en load, dan súdde it niet so
’n sware hys wirde. Hwet seit it omsittend laech.... om so te seggen
de jonker fen dizze tiding?” en mei in soarte fen bûgingkje draeide
hy him nei de jonker ta, wylt alle oaren der oandachtich by sietene
en boe noch ba kikten.
Nou joun gyng ’t der hjir om.... de bislissing hiel yntkoart scoe ’t
útwize, as Fryslân noch wer út de niten komme koe ef doemd wêze
scoe ta ûndergong, in diel fen Frankryk wirde ûnder in hollânsk
regear, in melke kou for in frjemd gesach. Det noait! det noait! Kin in
wylgentien net bûge oan ’t brekken ta, sûnder dochs ea earne in
brek to krijen, det him kniest yn ’t mark? Driûwt ’r der letter gjin
soune, nije loaten wer by? lit ’r syn krúntokken net rûzje yn ’e wyn,
maitiids syn pûskes net spegelje yn ’e sleat?
„Frjeonen!” sei jonker Ripperda en yn syn lûd klonk in soarte fen
birêsting, mingd mei de greate earnst fen dizze amerij, hwent hy
wist mar al to goed—histe ’r oan, den gyngen se him efternei, selst
yn ’e dead, wie ’r to lau, den scoene se him licht for in skermman
forslite, dy-t, ast der op oankaem, syn libben net jaen doarst en woe
for de goede saek. „Frjeonen!” sei ’r noch ris wer en hja allegearre
kearden him hjar stoefe, forware antlitten ta. „Hwet master Marten
Joukes, in man fen gesach yn ’e Wâlden, ús nys krektsa fortelde,
forbjustert noch forbaest my. It moast sa komme. It is de wet fen ’e
macht, dy-t yn machtsmisbrûk ûntaerdet—fen it forset, det opkomt
en to ’n langelêste dizze macht wer brekt, det hja to niete giet. Dizze
tiid komt ienkear for Fryslân.... mar ik leau net, det hy der nou al is.
Wy binn’ to minmachtich. Wy ha to krap jild. De Frânsken ha de
ponge al tofolle plondere en ús Stêdhâlder is net sa ’n ryk man, om
lykme allinne in leger útrisse to kinnen. Ingelân wol ús wol helpe,
mar dy-t fen frjemd oannimt, rekket yn rare liendersskild. Fryslân sit
oan ’e kop ta fol Frânsken en ûnder ús eigen folk skûlje selst noch
forrieders, dy-t for in baentsje ef sa ’n hûndert goudgounen selst wol
in frjeon de hakbile fiele litte wolle. Witt’ jimm’, ho-t it de frelle fen
Dordt tot Medler forgien is, do-t se opstie? Fen fjirtsjin kûgels troffen
is se stoarn en hwet hat hjar dead bidijd? Neat.—By hwet wy
bigjinne, moatt’ wy ek om de ein tinke.—Bij wat gij doet, let op het
einde,—seit de spreuk.
„Mar ast nou al sa fier ris kaem—it folk bigoan—. Ho scoe de
jonker der den ûnderstean, as ’r hjir noch tahâlde?” sei foarsichtige
Banjer stadichwei mei syn fluensk frouljueslûd.
„Is ’t for Oranje, den bin ’k op myn post”, sei Ripperda fol fjûr. It
klonk as de reveille fen de tromslagger, de oprop for libben, sege ef
dead. „Mar dizze saek leit der oars ta. Der binn’ noch gjin feiten, ik
wit noch fen neat oars as fen feronderstellingen.”
„In tastân wizigt him sims yn in tel twa”, foel master yn. „Hwa is
der mei my foar, om de kat de skel om to binen? ’t Der ris op
oankomme to litten? It folk stiet klear, jonker. It wachtsjen is noch
mar op it Ljouwter jild.”
„Der hoecht it net om oer to gean, it sit yn goede pongen yn myn
pûdden”, sei Ripperda in bytke stoef. „Ik ha myn sin der oer sei, ek
as man bikend mei kriichsbidriûw liket it my net goed ta, ien man
tsjin seis ef saun oer to setten. Det is de forhâlding. En soks neam ik
moardzjen. It lottet ornaris raer út, as min it gefaer net biächtet op
hope fen in onwisse sege. Komme wy bikaeid út, den scill’ der offers
falle, master, net sunich ek. It frânske gesach is in wrede hear.”
„As ’t der mei to heljen is, litt’ se my den mar as offer nimme”,
spatte master op. „Lit se my mar giselje en brânmarke.”
„Hja scoene jou libben easkje kinne, master”, sei de jonker
earnstich.
„Hark ris”, sei Gjalt Botses fen Mûntsjesyl, „lit ús nou earst ris jild
sjen. Binnen is binnen.” En al moi gau rôllen de gouden en sulveren
riderkes oer ’e tafel, waerden optaest op heapkes. Collumerlân,
Achtkarspelen, Dantumadiel wiisde it briefke út, det ’r by lei. It foel
hjar allegear hwet ôf, der lei mar in bytke, foaral de âlderen hiene
hjar moed net. Foppe-om, de hiele joun al hwet mismoedich, suchte
en Wibe Lubberts telde sa út ’e rûchte wei de rychjes. Der wie gjin
iens twatûzen goune en wapens, krûd en lead piperdjûr.
„Ik hâld my oan de jonker”, sei ’r ynienen stadichwei mei in
neidruk, hwer elts fen opharke. „Nou de saek sa stiet, bin ’k net sa
dolkoppich, om ús folk mei yn ’e dead jeije to wollen”, en Foppe-om,
Romke Piters en Else Louwes Siccama, en mear fen dy âlden, foelen
him by. Mar der wierne ek oaren.... en do se it jild mar seagen,
riisden der gouden bergen yn hjar oermoedich brein.
„De jonker hat in skalk each op ús plannen”, smeulde Jan Binnes
fen Aldwâld, „omt hy hat it altyd to dwaen hawn mei hierde
soldaten. Mar ús folk docht it net for jild ef for eare, det docht it for
syn gelove en det is hjir ien mei Oranje! en Oranje sit ús hjir, jonker”,
en hy sloech him by dizze wirden mei de flakke hân op ’t boarst en
hy loerde skean ta de eachshoeken út nei de jonker. Nou scoe dy
wol opspatte en tasizzings dwaen! As min sa ferge en nite wirdt, den
ûnthjit min wol.
Mar Ripperda bleau bidaerd. Yn ’t Osnabrückske hie hy ek wol ris
rare breaïters ûnder syn folkje hawn en it altyd klearspylje kind. Jan
Binnes krige ’r ek wol stil.
„Frjeon Jan seit dingen, hwer wy allegear akkoard mei giene”,
andere ’r droechwei. „Der hoege wy net op to anderjen. It liket my
goed ta, wy scille der oer stimme strak ansens, as wy oer alle oare
dingen útpraet binne”, en hy liet by it bytsje gleonte fen ljocht út ’e
pyptsjettels Foppe Lieûwes, Boate Eskes en master Marten Joukes it
briefke teikenje, det se it jild ûntfongen hiene. Sadwaende hokken
de fjouwer foaroanmannen yn ien herntsje by inoar en flusterjende
wei praettene se oer it nijs fen ’e lêste wykmennich en oer it
aldernijste, hwet se in dei ef hwet lyn yn Ljouwert mei bywenne
hiene.
„Hwet?!” rôp Ripperda moi lûd, „Haeije sa tramtearre? En der wie
gjin biwys ommers, det hy krekt it wie, dy-t my lossnien hat. Is der
hwet foarlêzen, Foppe.... Wibe? Siz op, jou ha jonge earen. Hat de
gerjuchtichheit hjar bislach hawn?”
Hast onwillich wei sei Wibe Lubberts heallûd: „Der is in
wirdmennich foarlêzen, jonker, do wonk dy âlde minhear fen Rhé....”
„Wie dy der?” Det koe ’r hast net leauwe.
„Hy siet foar ’t finster yn ’e keamer, tichte by de Blokhúsdoar mei
monsieur Poppéus.... en al dy oare hearen. Dit wie in feest for hjar
en Haeije hat in wan krige.... nou, as ’r it redt, den falt it my ta....”
Foppe-om skodholle. „Hja giselen him de rêch iepen”, suchte ’r. De
grize gyng him noch oer de grouwe, as ’r it him tobinnen brochte.
„Hwet sei it folk der fen?” pinfiske Ripperda. It hert diich him sear
om hjar, dy-t sa for him lit hiene.
„Hastû ek hwet heard, Wibe?”
„It folk wie stil, mûskestil. Wy hearden de Nijetoer spyljen.... twa
ûre, sa stil wie ’t. Allinne....” Sa ’t like, bitocht ’r him wer en farde net
foart mei praten.
Sêft trune de jonker him oan: „Ho fierder, Wibe? Jimm’ kinn’
bigripe, ho nei my dizze saek oan ’t hert giet. O myn earme
frjeonen....!” en der blonken triennen yn syn eagen en rôllen oer syn
wangen, mar hy biskamme ’r him net oer.
„Siz dû ’t mar Wibe”, joech Foppe-om him frij.
„Nou, do kaem me der in fromminsk midden út it folk weisetten....
in jongen ien en dy skodde de fûst tsjin de greate-ljue foar ’t finster
en dy raesde ’t út: „Ik winskje dy smycht alle ellinden ta, dy der mar
op ’e wrâld to finen binne! Lit dyn soan krolje fen pine as Haeije
nou!” en hja bearde sa raer, det hja tochten, hja wie dûm waen”.
Ripperda syn earnstige eagen fregen, smeken om mear.
„Do kaem fluch minhear syn heit, ús âlde jonker Ripperda út it folk
wei en dy lei hjar de hân op ’e earm. En do is se stil meigien. It
alderslimste hat se net sjoen.”
„Mei Heit foartgien?”
„En do hat in wyfke út in gasthús hjar wetter brocht en lodderein
krige se fen in forname dame út ien fen ’e huzen.... It diich bliken, it
wie Dúfke, Haeije syn wiif.... En optlêst is se werom kaem en hat
Haeije meinaem nei hûs.”
„Koe ’r noch gean?” frege Ripperda, dy-t to faken dizze toanielen
meimakke hie yn ’t bûtelân, om net to witten, ho-t immen mei in
britsene lea der oan ta wie.
„Kwalik”, suchte Foppe-om, goeman en seach de reus noch ris wer
foar him, deawyt en stuiterich, krekt as miste ’r it bilul, om mear
rjucht gean to kinnen.
It waerde oproerich yn Ryklef Ripperda syn hert. Forstân en gefoel
bigoanen in stryd derre, hwer nimmen weet fen hie. O hie ’r nou
tûzenen om him hinne en den nei Ljouwert gean to kinnen en der op
to slaen! man tsjin man en skerp tsjin skerp; it lân skjinfeije fen it
gespús en it âlde, ljeave, hillige gesach wer yn eare en oansjen! Koe
’r? Scoe ’r?
Scoe ’r as in goed chirurgyn it mes yn ’e swolm sette doarre, it
lichem suverje litte? Mar ek de kâns wie der, de matearje kaem yn ’t
bloed en de dea scoe den de ein wêze kinne. Sá wrakselen dy twa
greatmachten der danich om yn syn harsens, dy beide sterke maten,
oan inoar weage. Hokfoar scoe ’t winne?
Foppe Lieûwes en Wibe Lubberts sieten der nou mar stil by en
bigoanen stadich hjar broggen to biplúzjen en dronken der in kûmke
kofje by, rounbrocht fen Wytse Binderts, fluch jongfeint fen
njuggentsjin jier en joun for ’t earst yn ’t rountsje fen ’e
Oranjemannen bihelle.
—Ek al great—tocht Foppe Lieûwes, do-t hy him sa by de rige lâns
gean seach, yn ’t healtsjuster fen ’t barnende fjûr en de sêft ta de
keamer yn kypjende moanne in jong, linich skaed fol biweechlikheit
en libbenskreft. Syn folk wie Oranje wakker tagedien en hy skaeide
grif ek dy kant út, ien fen de seis jonge loaten op de âld stamme fen
Bindert Japiks en Anty Wytses. Mear as alle ierdske goed sa ’n seine
fen seis fikse, fleurige jonges en Foppe Lieûwes, âldfeint, suchte....
Hy hie neat ta freugde yn syn libben en treast yn syn âlderdom, it lot
hie him net dy kant út ha wold.
Aldmannich dûkte ’r wei yn syn buffeltsjekraech en hinge roungear
op syn bankje to iten. Hy fielde him âld en min optheden, al dy
jonge minsken om him hinne, dy jonge plannen doarsten to
meitsjen, oanfjurre fen it soune, trúnjende bloed. Scoe ’t him noch
barre meije, der de blide útkomste fen to sjen, it waeijen fen ’e
Oranjeflagge wer op de âld toer fen Eastemar. Scoe ’t? Ef scoe de
klok him al earder bilet hawwe?
Schotmans smiet in pear houtsjes op ’t fjûr en in stik planke,
ynienen wie de keamer fol gloed en it stûke petear bigoan him wer
grânzjende wei to forheffen.
„Ast mei ’t wolnimmen fen de jonker is, súdde ik noch wel in
woordmennich segge wille,” frege master Marten Joukes op syn
heal-Dokkumers.
„Gien jou gong, master”, noade dy.
„So ’t jimm’ allemaal wel wete scille, he ’k it forpoft om it stamhús
fen Oranje ôf te sweren en my to foegen na det frânske gesach. It
sal my myn baentsje fen master en ook fen dorpsrechter wel koste.
Mar ik he wel in paer duiten, om mysels bedrippe te kennen. Mar der
benne ook anderen.—Is it de jonker te kennisse komen, ho min
tegenwoordig it folk wapent tegen Oranje? As ’t dus aan ’t fechten
toe komt, den mutte se skiete op hur eigen doarpsljue miskien, dy ’t
it wel met Oranje houde. Yn de grietenijen om Dokkum hene he se
der niet feul sin aan, se komme niet op. Earstens wille de luijden niet
fechte en bilieven niet teugen eigen folk en se hoeve ook niet te
tellen, hoveul jongkearels der yn in dorp benne....
„Om ’e divel net!” spatte der ien op. „Tinke se, det ús jonges foar
’t kenon set wirde scille om hjar?”
„Stil nou”, susse in oaren, „lit master prate”.
Master neamde nou tal fen nammen op, hwer it fen fêst stie, hja
stieken de hoannen yn ’e wâl en steurden hjar net oan ’e oprop. „It
giet net goed sa.... earst ús frijheit, do ús jild en nou lizze ús jonges
oan ’e sintinzje”, hime hy, „mar nou mut de houwdegen mar ris op ’e
slypstien en ’t krûd ris rûggelje yn ’e hoarntsjes.”
„Ha se det?” tantte de jonker him stadich mei neidruk.
„Mear as de jonker tinkt”, sei master, „en dit jild”.... en hy wiisde
op de pûdtsjes.... „is ek gau omset yn hwet oars. Der hoecht neat by
to kommen, as it wirdt ien great forset en den....”
„En den?” sei de jonker him nei, swiere neidruk op elts wird.
„Den scill’ wy sjen, hwa ’t gelyk kriget, jou twivel ef myn
drystmoedichheit!” en de eagen fen Marten Joukes flikkeren by ’t
ljocht fen ’e lôge fen hillige strydkreft, krekt as wie hy in krúsfarder
en seach yn ’e fierte it leger fen ’e Saracenen al oankommen. Hy
neamde himsels in mathematicus, tocht Ripperda sa foar him hinne,
mar der doochde ’r noch net al to goed for, koelbloedich birekkens
meitsje, plannen teikenje, om útwegen to finen út in bihyplike
tastân, der wie hy to hjithollich en to rimpen ta, scoe ’r op ynfleane
as de bolle yn ’e reek op, de dea tomjitte. Allinne de koel-forstânnige
hearsket oer túzenen. En hy sels? Och, hy fielde him ek noch
stoattelich en wankel, om nei de died taeste to doaren, al markbite
’r, det dy al folryp as in frucht yn ’t birik fen ’e taestfiem fen syn
earm en hân hinge to lokjen.
„Lit ús stimme, frjeonen”, wynde hy him der út en liet sa oan it lot
de bislissing, om útring to jaen om hwet der yn hjar binnenst woelde
en wraemde. „Lit ús stimme, hwa ’t for in diedwirkelik forset is ef for
in stilswijend. Elts meij bitinke, det hwet ’r nou biwirkstelligt, it kin
him syn libben kostje, as it ta ’n útfier brocht wirdt ef ek.... der kin
miskien in goed ein fen komme....”
„Dos de jonker is der noch tsjin?” hifke Foppe Lieûwes súntsjes.
„Ik bin der tsjin”, sei Ripperda lûd. „Ik acht de tiid noch net ryp for
de died”. Hy gyng einliks tsjin syn eigen hert yn, hwent det trille en
langhalze just om dy died to sjen, dy died, om wraek to nimmen om
alles hwet der oan it Oranjefolk misdien wie dizze lêste tiiden.
Efkes wie it stil, min hearde it sêfte jounrûzjen fen ’e beammen
om it hiemke en it doffe gestap fen ien fen ’e jonge maten op it
sânpaedtsje, de skildwacht for onrie.
„Ik bin der foar”. It swiere lûd fen master Marten Joukes foel yn dy
stiltme as in klok, dy-t bigjint to lieden.
„Ik ek! En ikke!! Schotmans is der foar! Jan Binnes fen Aldwâld!
Tsjibbele fen ’e Wygeast! Bindert Japiks der foar! Eelke Meinderts
der fûl op tsjin—Gjalt Botses der foar!” It waerde in lawaei fen
bilang, elts skreauwde en bearde en rôp.
„Stiltme!” rôp Ripperda der twisken. „Ik scil de nammen opteikenje
en foarlêze en elts ropt den „foar” ef „tsjin”. En hy skreau stadich de
nammen op by it flikkerjen fen in eintsje kjers op in flesse en rôp
den de nammen ôf. It hagele fen der foar, it hagele op syn moed as
heilstiennen yn Maeije op ’e jonge bloei fen it jier. Toalve der foar en
mar fiif der tsjin, derûnder hysels, Foppe Lieûwes, Wibe Lubberts,
Eelke Meinderts en Boate Eskes. De saek wie forlern.... it folk winske
iepentlyk forset.
„Wit hwet jimm’ dogge”, warskôge ’r yetteris. „It kin in stryd wirde
op libben ef dead. Ik siz it noch ris: wy binn’ to minmachtich”.
„Ast slim komt, stiet de jonker ús den by?” ûnderstie Schotmans
him.
„Ja, ho scoe ’t den wêze kinne”, hifke foarsichtige Banjer, „as ’t sa
wêze koe, det wy de jonker syn help fennoaden hiene, sjoch.... den
moatte wy dochs witte, hwer wy de jonker fine kinne yn dizze
contreinen”, liet hy der tokjende wei op folgje, it iene fen syn
plúrjende eagen net fen ’e jonker ôf en in fyn gnyske.... o sa ’n finen
ien, om de holle mûle.
„Det ’s ommers....” bigoan Marten Joukes, mar fen in freeslike
slach op ’e tafel, hwer de kjers fen omfoel en de flesse fen op ’e
groun keile, skrilde ’r sa, det hy hâldde him stil en bisefte do earst,
hokfoar flater hy wol net bigean scild hie.
„Hwer ik bin, Banjer, is net nedich, det jou witte”, sei Ripperda
heech. „It is net iens nedich det mear as ien it wit, mar hjir witte twa
it, master en Wibe Lubberts. Det binn’ gjin forrieders. Ik set se
allebeide heech. En jou Banjer, ik scil lêst jaen, jou gongen nei to
gean. Towille fen mysels acht ik it nedich, jy bliûwe hjir mei twa
oaren en scill’ net earder foartgaen kinne as trije ûre letter as ik.”
Hy gyng oerein en socht de wiide tsiisdragerskyl wer op en ’e âlde
breedskade hoed. Hy fielde it, syn posysje stie wrantelich optheden,
gjinien fen ’e foarmannen foel him by, allegear hisen se him oan op
it doel, det hy skou wie, nammentlyk forset, iepentlyk forset fen man
tsjin man en det easke earst in fynútwirke plan en in goed tal
oersten, birekkene for hjar wirk, fierder, o slim kânsspel! rûch jild by
de rûs en de stipe fen ’e Ingelskman, om wapens to krijen, slûkjende
wei by Nije Silen en to Harns en de stille havens fen ’e Sudersé.
En hwet woe dit hantsjefol den noch? Der op ’e dolle roes
ynfleane as de wylster yn ’t net? syn eigen ûnk fen finzenis tomjitte?
Hy wie steurd, det syn wirden sa min oerwicht hiene, om hjar ta oar
ynsicht to bringen en hwette stoef joech hy him ôf, biselskippe fen
Wibe Lubberts, dy-t hy yn alles syn bitrou joech.
It wie nou nacht. Yn ’e fierte by in hûs op ’e Iesten blafte in houn,
oars wie it stil. Ek gjin forweech fen wyn mear yn ’e keale beammen,
dy hjar tokken fol fyn gerank dochs al wer de teare skiente fen ’e
poarjende bledknop droegen. Der sweefde ek al in frjemde, fine
geur fen hwet nijs oer it gea. Tynde dy heimsinnich út ’e âlde poel
yn ’t skaed fen ’e wylgenmoezen, hwer it glimhout yn glinstere?
Kaem it fen ’e winterfrucht, tear sykheljende mei tûzenen fen
gêrslongkjes yn ’e reine foarmaitiidsloft?....
Dy loft stie sa blau en stil boppe de ierde en de stjerren fonkelen
der oan, heldere kleare himeleagen, noait fen ierdske tins ef dream
bismodzke. Ryklef Ripperda seach der nei.... nei dy moaije kleare
himel fen syn Fryslân. Syn eagen dwaelden ôf nei it heldere paed fen
’e Môlkwei.... Der ynienen foel in stjer.... noch ien.... en noch ien....
In rein fen frjemde hearlikheden.... En stil foar him sels hinne sei ’r
syn winsk folgens it âlde sechje.
Hjir kruste de Harstewei in foetpaed.... en der wie de brede
hearrewei fen Ljouwert op Grins. Nou gyng ’t it Wyldpaed op.... it
wylde paed, ja wol det. Gjin hûs to sjen, ûren fier net, heide! heide!
en boskstruwellen, spûkeftich fen foarm, elzenbosken, den wer hege
sânbulten, bigroeid mei ikenkreil ef keal en aeklike wyt yn
ljochtmoanne waer. Sims in greate poel, it djippe swarte wetter as in
droef geheim weikrûpt yn in slinke. It wie in min paed, dizze âld
sânwei, mar it wie ek in feilich paed.
Tichte by Hanenboarch gyngen se by inoar wei, Wibe Lubberts de
Wedze del nei hûs en Ripperda joech him nei ’t âlde Fogelsanghstate
ta by ’t Feankleaster, hwer in keammerke him wachte yn ’t
ôfgelegenste hoekje fen ’t greate slot. Sa stil as ’r koe, slûpte ’r yn ’e
hûs en by de âld trap op nei de souder. Hjir húsmanne ’r nou al sont
wiken, sont syn twadde flucht út Ljouwert ûnder it gastfrije dak fen
’e fen Heemstra’s, like greate Oranjefrjeonen as hysels. Hjir wie rêst
en feilichheit. Mar for ho lang noch? Hy hie dy Banjer trochsjoen....
dy wikel ûnder de mosken. As ’r koe, scoe hy se allegearre wol
forriede wolle en gnize, as se oan ’e galge bingelen.
’t Slimste eigentlyk, hwer de skoech knypte, wie de jildkrapte. Jild
joech hjir ek al wer macht en as ’r planteit wapens wie en sok spul,
wie alles folle better to weagjen. Hy siet der noch in set oer to
mimerjen en kaem optlêst ta ’t bislút, Porter noch ienkear wer to
skriûwen om jild, Archibald Porter, de earsume Ingelskman, dy in
traensiederij hie yn ’e sted fen Harns en in goed en needrich boarger
wie fen dizze âld sted, mar yn wierheit.... o ho inkelden wisten det
mar! in ôfgesant fen it machtige Ingelân en in great frjeon fen ’e
Stedhâlder, hwer ’r wol for troch ’t fjûr fleane woe.
Hy ouwele it brief soarchsum en segele him yn ’e midden mei it
wapen fen ’e Ripperda’s.
De dage gyng oer ’e loft, de dage foar in moaije sinneskyn iere-
maitiidsdei en syn hân trille, do-t hy dit syn brief oerjoech oan in
feint, dy-t him nei Ljouwert bringe scoe en kaem ’r al yn need, him
opbarne oan ’e gleone pipe en ’t boadskip wol mei de mûle
oerbringe oan heit, dy ’t wol soarge for de fierdere reis.
Noch gjin wike letter kaem it andert bihâlden oer. It wie mar in
wirdmennich, mar genôch. Archibald Porter skreau koartwei.... de
greate letters gniisden him suver út der op it wite pompier: It wie al
ienkear sei, nóch Ingelân nóch de Stedhâlder sels koe mear jild
biskikber stelle. It hie allegear al skatten koste en ’t bidijde neat.
Alhiel forlegen litte scoene hja hjar dochs ek net en derom waerden
der dizzer dagen noch in pear skippen fol wapens stjûrd nei Collumer
Ald Syl en lei der by minhear Ripperda noch in pong fol goud.
De brief wie sadanich, det hja waerden net foargoed ôfkonfoaid
en doch wie ’t Ripperda, as ’r op in moaije greate barnende kjers
ynienen in swiere domper set waerde. It ljocht snokte noch efkes nei
yn in hael ef hwet.... nou waerde de wrâld ynienen tsjuster.
Ja wol det.... ek syn wrâld. En singulier!.... nou, nou krekt! nou ’t
alles him by de hânnen om ’t ôfbriek, bigoan eat yn him út alle
macht in forwar, sa heftich, det it him meisleepte yn fûle foasje selst
tsjin better witten yn. Hwerom scoe ’r dochs ek net dy stryd
oanbine? jong, hjithollich, doldryst frege hy it: hwerom einliks net?
Hwet wie ’r mear by to forliezen? It libben? Syn felle hearlike soune
jeugd kende ’r noch net de waerdij oan ta, dy-t it hawwe scoe, as
ienris de fyftich efter de rêch wie en stadichoan de deadswetters
tichter op him oan bigoanen to streamen en sa nou en den ramende
al ien fen syn kinden meinamen. De libbenstsjilk stie noch sa fol fen
alle hearlikheden preauklear to pronkjen en hokker feest is der
greater for it hert, as den stride to kinnen for in ideäel, bilichame yn
hokfoar foarm den ek. En hjir hie ’t de foarm oannaem fen hwet wol
elts it hillichst is op ierde, it gelove, it heitelân en it âlde, ljeave
Oranjehûs, for him en al syn foarsaten troch ieuwenlange tradysje
biknotte yn in fêste bân.
Al taende de gloarje, al wie de opperhear nou ek in banling yn in
fier lân, dit bleau sa, krekt sa lang oan syn deasnok ta. En hwet
nóch it húnsk gepraet fen Jan Binnes, nóch it petear mei master
biwirkstelligje kind hiene det diene nou dizze lêste onforskillige
wirdmennich fen Porter. Hjar lauwens makke him hjit. Hja trunen
him oan ta de died.
Sá skouwde it lot him al njonkenlytsen foarinoan op it skaekboerd,
om it spul to spyljen, de iensume helt yn it greate, frjemde lân, de
lytsmoedige skare fen fjirrens efter him oan, bang en dryst fen
beiden.
En swak yn al syn kreft, knibbele ’r dy joune yn in hoekje fen syn
keammerke del en frege om stipe, om sterke stipe en great forstân,
om dizze saek ta in goed ein bringe to kinnen. It wie in stryd for de
goede saek en it wettich gesach, mar wie de tiid fen druk al foarby?
Mocht it lân nou al hoopje op in bliide útkomste, op in jubeljier nei
de dagen fen Job? Och, hy wiste it net. Hwet wit in minske? Net
iens, as ’r de dei fen moarn it ljocht wer sjen scil en ho folleste
minder, hwet syn foarlân wêze scil yn takommende dagen. Derom
net, hy wie biredt.—
In joune ef hwet letter hast neare nacht al, it aeklik gespûk fen
greate mistfluesen oer ’e greiden en twisken de keale beamtokken,
in onrêstige wyn syn gegûl út it Westen, dy-t hy lokkich yn ’e rêch
hie, sette hy de stap der ûnder nei Jan Binnes ta to Aldwâld, him
oanwiisd as immen, dy-t tige gesach hie yn dizze contrein, en
miskien hwette ûnfoech en rûch yn dwaen en litten, dochs in earlike
en rjuchtúte kearel. Hy wie lyts boer en genierker derre en bidijde in
sober stikje brea op syn lyts steedtsje. Ienris hie hy him moet by
heites to Ljouwert op in forgearringe fen stedtsjers en gealjue en
nou langlêsten yn ’t húske by de Harstewei. Syn antlit stie him noch
altyd foar de geest as hiel appart to wêzen: greate, donkere eagen,
hwer min in frjemd fjúr fen drystens, moed en ek ûnforsetlikens yn
barnen seach, in smelrêgige noas mei fine biweeglike noasters en
derûnder de fynlippige mûle, fêstbiret ticht, in smelle reade skreef yn
’e bislettenheit fen ’e blekens fen it frjemdsoartige antlit, troch it
fjouwerkantige kin en syn breed trutsen dobke deryn hast wreed.
Dizze man socht ’r op, dizze man, fielde ’r, scoe min goed dwaen to
rieplachtsjen, bikend as ’r wie mei gea en ljue fen bern ôf oan.
Hy trof him thús, foar ’t fjûr, drok dwaende mei ien fen ’e lytse
bern op ’e knibbel, om douwebeantsjes poffe to litten op in âld têst.
In heftige, gleone loaits fen syn eagen trof de gast, de frjemde en
dochs om syn war dwaen for ien en diselde saek ek al wer de
bikende.
„Joun jimm’”, sei ’r mei syn foars lûd en dûkte him yn ’e doar fen
’e sobere wâldtsjerswente.
.... „Joun.... werom, jonker”, andere Jan Binnes stadich en liet it
jongkje fen syn knibbel glide. „Gien sitten”, en hy skouwde in foech
bankje by ’t fjûr en lei der in kjessen op, alles net onwillich wei en
dochs ek net botte oansjitsk. Eat as ienfâldige greatskens spriek út
syn hiele dwaen en litten, wie der om syn hiele persoan.
Mei in wirdmennich bisocht Ripperda, om oan ’e slach to kommen,
mar it woe net bûtterje. It petear forsânne fen it doel ôf yn
nietichheden, hy woun der him út en flustere einliks: „Der is tofolle
kriel om ’e tafel en efter de bedsdoarren, wy giene noch efkes yn ’t
bûthús to ôffûrjen.”
En hja joegen hjar ôf nei ’t bûthús en biseagen it fé, it ryk bisit fen
him, lyts frij man en bisteande út twa bistjes, ien skiep, ien geit en in
spallinkje op ’t hok. Mei ho ’n ljeafde liet ’r der syn eagen oer gean!
Der sieten se nou by de tútlampe syn walmige reskepiid en
bikoezzemoezzen in bulte, ho-t der de lêste nachten skippen fol
wapens lost wierne by Collumer Ald-Syl en by ’t wyt brechje yn ’e
Ald Swemmer, ho hy, Jan Binnes de hiele souder folloeid hie en by
Joege Innes to Boerum, Wibe Lubberts to Twizel en Bindert Japiks
Cloosterman yn ’t Bouwekleaster fen ’t selde en hy liet in list sjen fen
mannen, dy-t yn gefal fen need op it earste klippen fen ’e klokken
komme scoene en de wapens opnimme for Oranje.
Ripperda bisoude! Der stiene se fen East en West, Súd en Noard!
Lyklama fen Aldeboarn! De Kempenaer fen ’e Limmer! syn frjeon
Rengers fen Ysbrechtum, fen Hambroek fen Ljouwert en al mar
mear, mar mear!! Fornamen en nederigen, mar allegear Friezen, dy-t
it opnamen for it fordrukte heitelân!
Ho skoarren se him optheden, sûnder it sels to witten en as yn
ljeafde aeide syn hân oer it knûkerige fodsje pompier.
„De lonte leit oan it krûd ta.... deun der oan,” sei Jan Binnes
stadich, syn gleone eagen fêst en lyk yn Ripperda sines, krekt as
hâldden dy loaitsen de siele fêst yn sêfte twang troch in heimsinnige
oermacht, „it is mar mear ien spjeldeknopsbreedte en den....”
„Ja, den....” suchte Ripperda.
Efkes bleau it stil. „It is altyd on ef even. Licht lûke wy oan ’e
koartste ein. De tiid scil útwizing dwaen. Us saek stiet faei, derom is
weagjen de wei. ’t Izer smeije, ast hjit is. En det is ’t optheden. Oan
’t kroljen ta as ’t ein izer yn ’e smid syn hân. En bûgt ’r it den net nei
syn wil?”
„Jou ha moed”, miende Ripperda, „mear as ik.”
„Hark ris,” andere Jan Binnes en prate mei oandrang. „Ik ha moed,
det ’s wier. Mar det is net in moed út myselme. Ynwindich trillet myn
herte fen eangstme en freze om hwet komme kin as ús alles
mislearret. Licht den it Blokhús ef de galge. En as ’k sa tink, den
wird ik bang.... En as ’k der den wer yn kom, for hwa it giet.... sjoch
jonker, den doar ik, ja den nim ik it op tsjin tûzenen, tsjientûzenen
as ’t moat.... hwent ik stien yn it fêst bitrou, ik doch it for in goede
saek. En al lang ha ’k my mei hert en siel oerjown oan dy macht, dy
sterker is as iksels.... ja, der jow ik my oan oer.... sa alhiel as in lyts
bern oan syn sterke heit.... Ik kin net oars....”
In hiel skoft bleau it stil. Swijende holpen se inoar troch hjar
tinsen en ienriedigens. Mocht Jan Binnes den al in fanaticus wêze,
hwet syn dieden noch útwize moasten, howol syn wirden der wol op
wiisden, hy hie de kreft en de moed ta de stryd en kaem dy ienkear,
den scoe hy mei foarenoan yn ’t gelid stean en syn plak skjinmeitsje,
like it Ripperda ta.
Ho wûnderlik wie ’t altyd yn ’e wrâld! Hwerom wie dizze net berne
yn in hege steat en him gjin macht jown oer tûzenen, det him grif
goed ôfgean scoe? Hwerom siet hy hjir yn in lyts holderhúske en
molk syn kij en bouwde hiel njúd syn fruchten en biskripte it brea for
wiif en bern, wylt de hiele wrâld soksoartigen, doarders! dwaenders!
en oermacht oer oaren habbenden brek wie? dy hiele wrâld, dy-t
optheden op ’e kop stie?
Sa mimere hy der yn it stille bûthús by de wjerkauwjende kij en ja
wol wûnderlik! wierne dizze syn tinsen.
Yn ’e neinacht gyng ’r wer foart, biselskippe fen Jan Binnes, de
Mûntsjewei by de Mûntsjebosk lâns, mei syn achthûndert ikene
beammen, nei ’t Jan Binnes him fortelde, in prachtich forskûl for
immen, dy-t miskien yntkoart ris fluchte moast, mar nou yn ’e
tsjustere nacht in reuseftige klobbe fen noch tsjusterder swart tsjin
de loft, hwer moanne noch stjer mear oan to bikennen wie. Net lang
mear scoe hjir syn honk wêze kinne, Jan Binnes achte it to noedlik
en hja founen út, by Bindert Japiks Cloosterman yn ’t Bouwekleaster
by Stynsgea, it haeddoarp fen ’e gritenij, scoe ’t better wêze, mear
yn ’e flank, as de greate slach slein waerd. Hjir leine de greate
heiden efterút en bosken fol wyld, rûch beamt, hwer min feilich yn
fluchte koe, as ’t ris knypte. Hwent de tsjoede kâns is ek in kâns en
net ien, dy-t wei to siferjen is.
En sa forfarde Ripperda den in dei ef hwet letter geandefoet fen
Feankleaster nei Bouwekleaster, bleau to jounbroggeïten dy deis by
Wibe Lubberts en gyng dy joune mei him skeanoer de lânnen op it
oerset by Mûntsjetille yn en sa nei syn nij thús. Hwet wie it him der
eigen! De hege geast, al bisjiddde mei in nije frucht, de âlde
beammen, de sterke earms rikkende nei it goudene jounljocht,
Wolmoet hjar wite douwkes, hjir en der delsaeijende út it hege blau,
fen froast noch helderder as oars en hiel heimsinnich op it tsjerkhôf
it klokhús, nou heal weikrûpend yn ’t oanwinnende tsjuster.
En as in bern fen ’t hûs waerde ’r der ûntfongen by Bindert Japiks
en syn wiif Anty Wytses. Hy moast yn ’e briedstoel yn ’e hirdsherne
en ’t nije goezzeplûmmene bêd yn ’t binhús, der kaem in têst mei
fjûr ûnder en twa hjitte krûkjes der yn en in nij hynstetek foar ’t
sydfinster om ’e sigen, det hy foel der yn as yn side. Suver as in
skipper, dy-t mei syn skip binnefalt yn in feilige haven nei de stoarm!
Syn útfenhûzjen scoe der oars wol net sa lang dûrje, hie Bindert
Japiks fol neidruk profetearre en dochs.... sims winske hy wol, elts
minske hat ommers syn swakke riten! det it noch in deimennich, in
wykmennich dûrje mocht! Hy fielde him oansterkjen nei lichem en
siele yn dizze rêst fen it iensume boerehûs by minsken, dy him
tagedien wierne en mei him to stek stiene, him heech setten, al
seine se it net yn tal fen moaije wirden. Hjir yn ’e hiele omkrite
hâldden se it mei Oranje, lyk as hy, hjir gyngen se ek noch net mei
de stream, dy los fen Bibel en wet, neat oars preke as lichamelik
geniet, tajaen oan alle lust fen it sounige fleis, hwent der is dochs
gjin forjilding, straf ef lean, gjin himel ef hel! Libje as in dier en mar
as in dea dier yn ’e groun!
In skare fen njuggen, sieten se jouns om ’e tafel, de boer, de frou
en de seis jonges en hy allinne as frjemde der by. It miel wie
ienfâldich, mar hja mochten it skoan en as heit it tankgebet sei hie,
gyngen de jonges der út to ôffûrjen ef op bêd. Guont wierne al jong-
great, guont gyngen noch op skoalle, twa hiene al as heit de kant
keazen fen Oranje en Ripperda hie hjar nammen lêzen: Wytse
Binderts Cloosterman en Ritske Binderts Cloosterman.
It jonge geslacht, fen hwaens dwaen en litten, fen hwaens tinsen
en dieden it ôfhingje scoe, ho-t de wrâld der oer in fiif en tweintich
jier foarstean scoe.... it jonge geslacht, by tractaet fen de 17e fen
Maeijemoanne 1795 ek foarbistemd, om Frankryk by to stean yn syn
oarloggen! Koe ’t fornéderjender det forboun syn foarwaerden: net
allinne hûndert millioen goune brânskatting! Venlo en Staets
Flaenderen kwyt en 25.000 soldaten op kost en klean, mar dit wol it
aldertergjenste, it mes op ’e kiel, om twong to wirden dit Frankryk,
dizze Moloch ek noch it alderdierberste bisit, it lân syn jeugd to
offerjen?
Derfendenne nou tsjinwirdich de wapentelling, it opskriûwen fen ’e
nammen fen alle warbere jongkearels. Hwer it hinne moast, hy wist
it net. En as ’r den dizze seis fleurige jonges om ’e tafel sitten seach,
krige hy der bikrûping oer. Hwer waerden se for greatmakke? Hokker
dis scoe ienkear hjarres wirde? Op hokker pôle hjar libben de
bifestiging en hiemfestens fine? Ef scoene se allinne great en
feardich wirde moatte om as slachtoffer falle to kinnen fen in
oarloch? Dit geslacht makke de woelings fen in tiid mei, hwer hy
troch syn jierren al hast bûten stie. Scoe ’t in geest fen forset kweke
ef slappens en meigeanders mei it nije, de frjemde tsjoen fen it
heimsinnige út ’e frjemdte hjar yn ’e maling nimme en swak meitsje?
En hy seach fen ’e iene op ’e oare en den wie der altyd ien ûnder,
hwer hy it measte mei op hie. En det wie Wytse Binderts, de âldste
soan.
De dagen forgyngen sa stil en moai as sêfte wolkens oan in kleare
einder en dochs...?
Hwet hie Jan Binnes sei?
„Der is mar mear ien spjeldeknopsbreedte, sa ticht leit de lonte
oan ’t krûd....”
En den...?
X.
It wytfêrzen lân lei yn rêst. De toarre, stive reiden stiene deastil yn

it boomiis, de greiden glinsteren witich fen in tin laechje snie. Sa nou
en den krôke it hwet.... in sniewolken glied stadich foar de moanne
lâns, in breed wrâldskaed oer in oneinige himelklearte.
Der skynde de moanne wer, fol, breedglimkjend as in âlde wize,
dy-t wit fen mennichten fen moangongen en ieuwen. Jupiter
flonkere, de Môlkwei syn blinkjende slinger teikene him dúdlik ôf
tsjin it djipkleare blau fen ’e froastige winterloft.
Der wie eat yn ’e frede fen dizze joun, det net mear fen dizze
ierde wie, sa ’s der yn it minskelibben ek ûren wêze kinne, dy-t ivich
stiene boppe al de rin fen deiske dagen....
Yn ’e fierte skimeren flau en tear de ljochten fen ’e bûrsterhuzen
en de man, dy-t de hulterige paden delkaem, stapte nou flugger
oan. ’t Loek kâld, syn hânnen priken him yn ’e broeksbûsen en ’t
forlangst nei in smûk sit yn in waerme keamer foar in hiel great fjûr
krige sa ’n fat op him, det hy draeide earst noch efkes lofts om, do-t
hy Boerum ynkaem, om by hospes Germ in healfeantsje op to
nimmen, eart hy nei de snider ta gyng, om him in nije jas oanmjitte
to litten.
„Jonge, jonge!” sei Germ en wreau him yn ’e hânnen, „ha wy dy
der Abele? Det meij wol oan ’e balke!” En tsjinstich brocht ’r him al
in romerfol, eart Abele der om frege en ek in pear triedtsjes toeback
for de trochroker. ’t Wie Abele, as foel ’r yn side. In hiele gânske
wike wrotte en wrame as boerefeint om in lyts lean, nou ris in
amerijke ek minhear.
De stoeltsjeklok sloech krekt saun. Dos noch in ûrke tiid, hwent
foar achten birg de snider jelnestôk en kryt dochs net op. Hy nussele
him noch hwet tichter by ’t fjûr, djip yn ’e stoel, hy siet der, as scoe ’r
nea wer foart. En it dûrre al net sa bare lang, do kaem de polletyk
op it aljemint en hospes Germ, in âld speurhoun yn frânske tsjinst,
spitste de earen. Wenne Abele Reitses net by Joege Innes en hope
hy net al syn libbensdagen, dy Oranjerazer noch net ris in goede loer
draeije to kinnen?
Ongemirken wei kaem der mear folk, de tapkeamer rekke fol,
Abele Reitses krige partij ef foun oanhang, foaral do ’r op ’e tekst
kaem fen ’e boargerwapening. Ja! der hie elts it mier oan, koe ’t
slimmer, as om twongen to wirden, fjuchtsje to moatten, licht wol
tsjin eigen doarpsljue? De healfearntsjes makken de ljue hjithollich
en mûlrap en do-t op it lêst hospes Germ it net litte koe en smeulde
op Oranje, stiene se as nite hoannen foar inoar oer, prinsman en
patriot. En Abele Reitses[1] raesde der yn om, sûnder omtinken,
hwette tizich fen tofolle healfearntsjes yn ’t folle gelach wei fen
„Oranje boven! Oranje boven!”
[1] Abele Reitses wie yn 1795 ek al ris oppakt om syn
„Oranjebaldadigheden”, to Fisfliet útheefd en deswegen nei East-
Fryslân útband.
Der kaem in greate stiltme op dizze deadsoune. Hy stie allinne yn

’t foarmidden fen ’e tapkeamer en seach binijd om him hinne. Dy-t it
nys sa mei him hâlden hiene en oanfjurre, hwer wierne se? Hja
rôpen net mei, taelden net iens mear nei him, mar sieten mei-inoar
to mûskopjen yn in herntsje.
„Nou”, sei ’r spitich wei, „den ik allinne mar: Oranje boven!”
Hospes Germ stie fen fierrens to gnizen as in pinksterfoks, foaral do
’t ’r de blinkende sabels seach fen ’e gens d’armes en noch ien en
noch ien, wol fiif om it hoekje fen ’e doar. Hast onmirkber wei wonk
’r en eart Abele in flau bisef hie, hwet der úthinge, hiene se him de
hânboeijens al oan en dreauwne him foar hjar út.
Dit gyng guont fen ’e oaren den dochs to bot. „Abele wit net mear,
hwet ’r seit,” sei ien út it omsittend laech en gyng oerein, hiel
stadich. Germ koe him.... it scoe de lêste kear wol wêze, det baes
Schotmans in foet oer syn drompel sette.
„Boarger Schotmans, kin ik der nou foar, det dy man raest en
opstiet tsjin ’t gesach? Ha ik him der ta oanset altomets? Myn foet
stiet ommers ûnder allemans tafel.”
Schotmans naem de pong, smiet in hantsjefol lyts jild op ’e tafel.
„Der.... for Abele en my!” sei ’r koelwei en gyng. En Albert Hindriks
en Oeds Geales fen ’e Collumerterp en Doeke Idskes fen Boerum en
Louwe Cornelis gyngen mei. De tapkeamer wie nou Oranje-skjin.
„Handich lapt,” prize ien.
„’t Hie Joege Innes wêze moatten, mar dy âld rat is dy to
goochem, Germ-om,” stikele in oaren-ien.
„Dy-t de goes net oan kin, sjit de tjilling. Mar mis is ’t, hospes. ’t
Wirdt dyn skea,” sei in tredden-ien, bitelle it gelach en joech him ek
ôf. De minne wize fen dwaen fen ’e hospes hage him net.
De klok sloech acht. De snider wachte om ’e nocht.
De gens d’ armes mei Abele yn ’t foarmidden lânnen yn ’e bûrren
oan. Hy warde him nou danich, om him los to skûrren.... hy kaem yn
’e frisse reine jounloft wer hwet ta him sels en fielde as by ynjowing,
hjir to Boerum wie noch in lytse kâns om los to kommen en hy krige
in flau besef, hwet him wachte, as hy to Collum yn ’t hounegat
smiten waerd’. „Help! help!” raesde ’r ynienen yn ’e stiltme fen ’e
winterjoun. De lêste klanken wierne noch net forstoarn, as de
doarren fleagen wiid-wach op en alle huzen liken wekker to wirden
út ’e dod. Lûken rattelen, klompen bosten en de bûrren roan yn in
omsjoch fol. Mar nimmen doarst it oan en helpe him, ek al omt se
net rjucht wisten, hwer it om gyng en sa rekken hja al sparteljende
wei de kant út nei Collum, earst noch in hiele smite der efter oan,
mar al njonkenlytsen wei forsjillen se, do-t se de kjeld fielden fen it
iensume, onbibouwde fjild. It geskreau en gejammer fen Abele
hâldde ek op. Hy tocht om syn faem derjinsen tichte by de Lauwers
yn in lytse poeskoken, hwer hy joun ek noch efkes kypje scild hie, as
’t net to let waerd en it moed waerde him fol. De triennen rôllen him
oer ’e wangen en hy forflokte de drank, dy-t him ta dizze steat
brocht hie. Sei Joege Innes altyd net: „In slot op ’e mûle, astû in
blauhoaz sjochste.” En hy, hy ezel! yn ’e hoale fen ’e lieu hie hy der
útflapt, âld en nij!
Lang om let lânnen se to Collum oan en smieten him yn ’t
hounegat fen ’t rjuchthús, de boeijens oan en ’e foetten yn ’e
twangstôk. It waerde tinken. Der wie net folle folk mear op ’e
lappen.... de loft stie spits en kâld. Hwa siket den net syn hael by de
hird, hwer it moai houtfjurke stiet to glûrjen en in feardich boekeblok
op leit to knappen en in maklike briedstoel noadet ta in knipperke ef
in smûk petear?
De oare moarne ier en betiid.... de dage gyng noch mar krekt oer
de loft, diich Joege Innes in nije toppe strie yn syn klompen, stiek de
knyft by de broeksbân yn, hinge de snaphaen oer ’t skouder en
treau in swiere pong yn ’e bûs en joech him op in paed, de hirde
klaeireed del op Boerum yn, op in distânzje folge fen syn soan en de
lytsfeint. Hy wie noch net sa ’n ein op reis, as hy moete Schotmans
en Louwe Cornelis en Doeke Idskes en in hiele heap oare getrouwen
en bipikele Oranjeljue, der min huzen op bouwe koe en dy-t ek wol
safolle splint hiene, om penningtellender wize sa ’n akkefytsje
útsjonge to kinnen.
„Hwer scil dit hinne?” sei ’r en seach fen de iene op de oare,
heimlike blydskip yn ’e skrandere eagen.
„Lyk as jou de Oranjehoanne fen ’e matte helje, det ’r wer
fiktoarje kraeije kin,” andere Schotmans snedich.
„Den mar mei,” sei Joege Innes. Der kamen al mar mear de
klaeireden delklossen, in inkelden ien it gewear op ’t skouder, oaren
de gripe ef de heaplôke heal ûnder de jas, allegear stevige knapen
mei hânnen as slaeijen, dy-t hjar man stean scoene, as ’t wêze
moast. Hwet der bard wie, moast wol as in diggelfjûr oer ’t gea flein
wêze.... al mar oan groeide it tal en hja waerden roerich ûnder
hânnen wei. Joege Innes, great en stoef, roan mar stil foarop. De
wyn waeide yn syn lang bird.... de earste skimer fen ’e reade
winterdage joech syn antlit de wûndere gloed fen in âld-
testamintyske profeet.

A Black Soldier S Story The Narrative of Ricardo Batrell and The Cuban War of Independence 1st Edition Ricardo Batrell

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Black Soldier S Story The Narrative of Ricardo Batrell and The Cuban War of Independence 1st Edition Ricardo Batrell

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Black Soldier S Story The Narrative of Ricardo Batrell and The Cuban War of Independence 1st Edition Ricardo Batrell

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Full download ebook at ebookname.

A Black Soldier s Story The Narrative of Ricardo

Download more ebook from https://ebookname.com

It s Just a Plant a Children s Story of Marijuana 2nd

The Fight to Save Juárez Life in the Heart of Mexico s

Ricardo s Theory of Growth and Accumulation A Modern

The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation

Robust Statistics Theory and Methods 1st Edition

The Auditory System in Sleep 1st Edition Ricardo

Political Graffiti in Critical Times The Aesthetics of

Archaea molecular and cellular biology 1st Edition

The Narrative of Ricardo Batrell

University of Minnesota Press

Copyright 2010 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota

Published by the University of Minnesota Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Batrell, Ricardo, b. 1880.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

que siga yo descansando debajo de la sombra de sus sonrisas . . .

Ricardo Batrell and the Cuban Racial Narrative:

A Black Soldier’s Story

Looking for Ricardo Batrell in Havana:

Translator’s Notes 227

Works Cited 231

Antes que la paz quiero la libertad de la patria y la conservación de los ideales

La República es la realización de las grandes ideas que consagran la libertad, la

The republic is the realization of the grandest ideas that consecrate

Race and Revolution in the Late Colonial Period

separation of families by sales at the master’s whim, and the omnipresent

Authorities claimed that hundreds of slaves and thousands of whites

rituals that involved chanting and singing in African or African-derived

The Wars for Independence

Yet, despite the rhetoric of universal liberties, planters were deeply

Gómez, discrimination remained rampant in education, in labor sectors,

island, were becoming increasingly unhappy with post-Zanjón Cuba,

coordinate the efforts of smaller black and mulato organizations in their

insurrections in Baire, Ibarra, Bayate, and Guantánamo. And although

of Cuba’s poor and disaffected. In terms of the racial makeup of the

valor and steadfast dedication to the cause of Cuban liberation. Recall-

All lands acquired by the Cuban Republic either by conquest

against Spain, and each shall receive a portion corresponding to

The land-order decree and Gómez’s scorched-earth strategy were ulti-

war against the civilian population, one with unintended consequences

It is impossible to remain silent any longer. Spain has clearly

and even then, U.S. ofﬁcials campaigned aggressively against universal

The Early Republic, 1902–12

of race, literacy, or income.”38 Thus, in an era of eroding black politi-

Perhaps more to the point, as a third party the PIC represented a

in the early republic. Beyond the general cultural predisposition that

Cuba’s combination of a myth of racial equality with a two-tier

Ricardo Batrell and the Cuban Jeremiad

Born in 1880 in Sabanilla, on the Santísima Trinidad de Oviedo planta-

of the province literally at the heart of the island-wide struggle over

original ideals of Cuba Libre and the sobering reality of contemporary

phrase), and to “establish democracy and fraternity.” He proceeds to

of commentary on postwar conditions. Very similar to the North Amer-

rather, in order to make transparent its symbolic import, Batrell creates

Oan ’e âld Harstewei tichte by Iestrum en hielendal forside yn ’e