Rethinking the Independence of Cuba from Miguel Barnet’s Biography of a Runaway Slave

The testimonial novel Biography of a Runaway Slave by Miguel Barnet is one of the pioneers of the narrative genre and has attracted the attention of critics from the moment of its publication. Scholars see the testimonial novel as a text that allows the reader access to a "genuine" episteme, safeguarded by a witness of historical events. The main objective of this article is to demonstrate that the narrative of the maroon and former mambí Esteban Montejo opens new ways of reading and analyzing historical events. In particular, I will focus on Montejo’s statements on the Cuban War of Independence. For this purpose, I will use the theory of the Subaltern Studies as a methodological tool. The analysis will show the denial of Afro-Cuban agency in the official history of independence in Cuba, and will offer a reading of the events that recognizes the important Afro-descendant contribution.

Repensando la Independencia de Cuba a partir de Biografía de un cimarrón de Miguel Barnet

El relato testimonial Biografía de un cimarrón de Miguel Barnet es uno de los pioneros del género narrativo y ha llamado la atención de la crítica desde el momento de su publicación. La novela-testimonio es vista por investigadores como un texto que permite el acceso del público lector a una episteme “genuina”, salvaguardada por un testigo de eventos históricos. El objetivo principal del presente artículo es demostrar que el relato del cimarrón y exmambí Esteban Montejo abre nuevos caminos de lectura y análisis de momentos históricos. En especial, nos enfocaremos en sus declaraciones sobre la guerra de la Independencia Cubana. Con este propósito, utilizaremos como herramienta metodológica la teoría de los Estudios Subalternos. El análisis pondrá en evidencia la negación de la agencia afrocubana en la historia oficial de la época independentista en Cuba, y ofrecerá una lectura de los eventos que reconozca el importante aporte afrodescendiente.

Forgotten Histories of the Audiobook

This article investigates the different affordances of magnetic tape and print as they are entextualized in various co(n)texts by writers, ethnographers, and musicians throughout the Americas in the late 1960s. I analyze printed books made from tape recordings—Cuban anthropologist Miguel Barnet and his interview subject Esteban Montejo’s Biografía de un cimarrón (Biography of a Runaway Slave, 1966), Rodolfo Walsh’s true-crime denunciation ¿Quién mató a Rosendo? (Who killed Rosendo?, 1968), and Andy Warhol’s experimental a: a novel (1968)—to ask why these writers transduced their recordings into print rather than release them as audiobooks, how or if listening to those tapes would alter the meaning of their printed entextualizations, and what musical interactions with the same media in the same contexts can tell us about the limits both of print and of symbolic musical notation. Tracing the intersection of musical and literary works, the article argues that a writerly ethics of distortion, rather than fidelity, arises from this mutual encounter with sound on tape, and ponders how dialogic audiobooks might contest older issues of power and representation for those writers, North and South, who worked in support of marginalized (Afro-Cuban, working class, and queer) subjects.