Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom
Margarita Engle
Henry Holt and Company
New York
For Curtis, Victor, and Nicole, with love
AND
in memory of my maternal great-grandparents, Cuban
guajiros who survived the turmoil described in this book:
PEDRO EULOGIO SALUSTIANO URÍA Y TRUJILLO
(1859–1915)
ANA DOMINGA DE LA PEÑA Y MARRERO
DE TRUJILLO
(1872–1965)
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
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Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright © 2008 by Margarita Engle
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Engle, Margarita.
The surrender tree / Margarita Engle.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8674-4
ISBN-10: 0-8050-8674-9
1. Cuba—History—1810–1899—Juvenile poetry. 2. Children’s poetry, American. I. Title.
PS3555.N4254S87 2008 8II'.54—dc22 2007027591
First Edition—2008
Book designed by Lilian Rosenstreich
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. ∞
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
a handful of Cuban plantation owners freed their slaves and declared independence from Spain. Throughout the next three decades of war, nurses hid in jungle caves, healing the wounded with medicines made from wild plants.
On February 16, 1896, Cuban peasants were ordered to leave their farms and villages. They were given eight days to reach “reconcentration camps”near fortified cities. Anyone found in the countryside after eight days would be killed.
My great-grandparents were two of the refugees.
Yo sé los nombres extraños
De las yerbas y las flores,
Y de mortales engaños,
Y de sublimes dolores.
I know the strange names
Of the herbs and the flowers,
And deadly betrayals,
And sacred sorrows.
—JOSÉ MARTÍ,
from Versos Sencillos
(Simple Verses), 1891
PART ONE The Names of the Flowers
1850–51
PART TWO The Ten Years’ War
1868–78
PART THREE The Little War
1878–80
PART FOUR The War of Independence
1895–98
PART FIVE The Surrender Tree
1898–99
AUTHOR’S NOTE
HISTORICAL NOTE
CHRONOLOGY
SELECTED REFERENCES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Names of the Flowers
1850–51
Rosa
Some people call me a child-witch,
but I’m just a girl who likes to watch
the hands of the women
as they gather wild herbs and flowers
to heal the sick.
I am learning the names of the cures
and how much to use,
and which part of the plant,
petal or stem, root, leaf, pollen, nectar.
Sometimes I feel like a bee making honey—
a bee, feared by all, even though the wild bees
of these mountains in Cuba
are stingless, harmless, the source
of nothing but sweet, golden food.
Rosa
We call them wolves,
but they’re just wild dogs,
howling mournfully—
lonely runaways,
like cimarrones,
the runaway slaves who survive
in deep forest, in caves of sparkling crystal
hidden behind waterfalls,
and in secret villages
protected by magic
protected by words—
tales of guardian angels,
mermaids, witches,
giants, ghosts.
Rosa
When the slavehunter brings back
runaways he captures,
he receives seventeen silver pesos
per cimarrón,
unless the runaway is dead.
Four pesos is the price of an ear,
shown as proof that the runaway slave
died fighting, resisting capture.
The sick and injured
are brought to us, to the women,
for healing.
When a runaway is well again,
he will either choose to go back to work
in the coffee groves and sugarcane fields,
or run away again
secretly, silently, alone.
Lieutenant Death
My father keeps a diary.
It is required
by the Holy Brotherhood of Planters,
who hire him to catch runaway slaves.
I watch my father write the numbers
and nicknames of slaves he captures.
He does not know their real names.
When the girl-witch heals a wounded runaway,
the cimarrón is punished, and sent back to work.
Even then, many run away again,
or kill themselves.
But then my father chops each body
into four pieces, and locks each piece in a cage,
and hangs the four cages on four branches
of the same tree.
That way, my father tells me, the other slaves
will be afraid to kill themselves.
He says they believe
a chopped, caged spirit cannot fly away
to a better place.
Rosa
I love the sounds
of the jungle at night.
When the barracoon
where we sleep
has been locked,
I hear the music
of crickets, tree frogs, owls,
and the whir of wings
as night birds fly,
and the song of un sinsonte,
a Cuban mockingbird,
the magical creature
who knows how to sing
many songs all at once,
sad and happy,
captive and free…
songs that help me sleep
without nightmares,
without dreams.
Rosa
The names of the villages where runaways hide
are Mira-Cielo, Look-at-the-Sky
and Silencio, Silence
Soledad, Loneliness
La Bruja, The Witch….
I watch the slavehunter as he writes his numbers,
while his son,
the boy we secretly call Lieutenant Death,
helps him make up big lies.
The slavehunter and his boy agree to exaggerate,
in order to make their work
sound more challenging,
so they will seem like heroes
who fight against armies with guns,
instead of just a few frightened, feverish, hungry,
escaped slaves,
armed only with wooden spears,
and secret hopes.
Lieutenant Death
When I call the little witch
a witch-girl, my father corrects me—
Just little witch is enough, he says, don’t add girl,
or she’ll think she’s human, like us.
A pile of
ears sits on the ground,
waiting to be counted.
This boy has a wound,
my father tells the witch.
Heal him.
The little witch stares at my arm, torn by wolves,
and I grin,
not because I have to be healed by a slave-witch,
but because it is comforting to know
that wild dogs
can be called wolves,
to make them sound
more dangerous,
making me seem
truly brave.
Rosa
The slavehunter and his son
both stay away during the rains,
which last six months, from May
through October.
In November he returns with his boy,
whose scars have faded.
This time they have their own pack of dogs,
huge ones,
taught to follow only the scent
of a barefoot track,
the scent of bare skin from a slave
who eats cornmeal and yams,
never the scent of a rich man on horseback,
after his huge meal of meat, fowl, fruit,
coffee, chocolate, and cream.
Lieutenant Death
with pictures drawn by artists,
pictures of men with filed teeth
and women with tribal scars,
new slaves
who somehow managed to run away
soon after escaping from ships
that landed secretly, at night,
on hidden beaches.
I look at the pictures
and wonder
how all these slaves
from faraway places
find their way
to this wilderness
of caves and cliffs,
wild mountains, green forest, little witches.
Rosa
After Christmas, on January 6,
the Festival of Three Kings Day,
we line up and walk, one by one,
to the thrones where our owner and his wife
are seated, like a king and queen
from a story.
They give us small gifts of food.
We bow down, and bless them,
our gift of words freely given
on this day of hope,
when we feel like we have
nothing to lose.
Rosa
The nicknames of runaways
keep us busy at night,
in the barracoons, where we whisper.
All the other young girls agree with me
that Domingo is a fine nickname,
because it means Sunday, our only half day of rest,
and Dios Da is even better,
because it means God Gives,
and El Médico is wonderful—
who would not be proud
to be known as The Doctor?
La Madre is the nickname
that fascinates us most—
The Mother—a woman, and not just a runaway,
but the leader of her own secret village,
free, independent, uncaptured—
for thirty-seven
magical years!
Lieutenant Death
My father captures some who pretend
they don’t know their owners’ names,
or the names of the plantations
where they belong.
They must want to be sold
to someone new.
They must hope that if they are sold here,
near the steamy, jungled wilderness,
they will be close to the caves,
and the waterfalls,
and witches.
My father brings the same runaways back,
over and over.
I don’t understand why they never give up!
Why don’t they lose hope?
Rosa
People imagine that all slaves are dark,
but the indentured Chinese slaves run away too,
into the mangrove swamps,
where they can fish, and spear frogs,
and hunt crocodiles by placing a hat on a stick
to make it look like a man.
The crocodile jumps straight up,
out of the gloomy water,
and snatches the hat,
while a noose of rope made from vines
tightens around the beast’s green, leathery neck.
I would be afraid to live in the swamps.
People say there are güijes,
small, wrinkled, green mermaids
with long, red hair and golden combs…
mermaids who would lure me
down into the swamp depths…
mermaids who would drag me into watery caves,
where they would turn me into a mermaid too…
frog-green, and tricky.
Rosa
The slavehunter comes
with an offer.
He wants to buy me
so I can travel
with his horsemen
and his huge dogs
and his strange son
into the wild places
where wounded captives
can be healed
so they won’t die.
The price
of a healed man
is much higher
than the price
of an ear.
Rosa
My owner refuses.
sick slaves
in the barracoons.
After each hurricane season
there are fevers, cholera, smallpox, plague.
Some of the sick can be saved.
Some are lost.
I picture their spirits
flying away.
I sigh, so relieved that I will not
have to travel with slavehunters
and the spies they keep to help them,
the captives who reveal the secret locations
of villages where runaways sneak back and forth,
trading wild guavas for wild yams,
or bananas for boar meat,
spears for vine rope,
or mangos for palm hearts, flower medicines,
herbs….
Lieutenant Death
The weapons of runaways are homemade,
just sharpened branches, not real spears,
and carved wooden guns, which, I have to admit,
from a distance look real!
We catch cimarrones with stolen cane knives too,
all three kinds,
the tapered, silver-handled ones used by free men,
with engraved scallop-shell designs,
and the bone-handled, short, leaflike ones,
given to children,
and the fan-shaped, blunt ones,
used by slaves
for cutting sugarcane
to sweeten the chocolate and coffee
of rich men.
Rosa
Secretly, I hide and weep
when I learn that my owner
has agreed to loan me
to the slavehunter,
who brings his hunter-in-training,
his son, the boy with dangerous eyes,
Teniente Muerte,
Lieutenant Death.
Rosa
Spears and stones rain down on us
from high above
as we climb rough stairs
chopped into the wall of a cliff
somewhere out in the wilderness,
in a place I have never seen.
Sharp rocks slice my face and hands.
I will be useless—without healthy fingers,
how can I heal wounds
and fevers?
When the raid is over, many cimarrones are dead.
I try to escape, but Lieutenant Death forces me
&n
bsp; to watch as he helps his father
collect the ears
of runaways.
Some of the ears come from people
whose names and faces
I know.
Lieutenant Death
I hate to think
what my father would say
if he knew that I am scared
of dogs, both wild and tame,
and ghost stories,
real and imaginary,
and witches,
even the little ones,
and the ears of captives,
still warm….
Rosa
After the raid,
I tend the wounds
of slavehunters
and captives.
Some look at me with fear,
others with hope.
I tend the wounds of a wild dog,
and the slavehunters’ huge dogs.
All of them treat me like a nurse,
not a witch.
The grateful dogs make me smile,
even the mean ones, trained to follow the tracks
of barefoot men.
They don’t seem to hate
barefoot girls.
Hatred must be
a hard thing to learn.
The Ten Years’ War
1868–78
Rosa
Gathering the green, heart-shaped leaves
of sheltering herbs in a giant forest,
I forget that I am grown now,
with daydreams of my own,
in this place where time
does not seem to exist
in the ordinary way,
and every leaf is a heart-shaped