[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item and all related links to our attention.] “Una historia de gallegos esclavizados en Cuba, el fenómeno soterrado de la literatura española” [A History of enslaved Galicians in Cuba, the buried phenomenon of Spanish literatura] by Paula Corroto (El Confidencial) focuses on a guide primarily based on intensive analysis by Bibiana Candia Becerra, Azucre: Una epopeya (fifth version printed in June 2022).
The story of the 1,770 Galicians enslaved in Cuba within the mid-nineteenth century is horrible in two acts. The primary, as a result of it’s actual; it occurred. And lots of of these rapaces—kids, in Galician—have been 14, 16 years outdated, or 20 on the most. The second, as a result of hardly anybody remembers it, not even in Galicia. Sure, it was a scandal on the time, there have been press articles, however that went down the drain of collective reminiscence, that organ that’s so delicate and so liable to remembering solely what it needs (or what “they” need).
Bibiana Candia (A Coruña, 1977) ran throughout this historical past by likelihood. She lived in Berlin, the place she had moved for private causes and with the agency need to turn into a author, after having studied Hispanic Philology and having labored as a civil servant on the College of A Coruña. And there, in that “amusement park for adults,” as she describes the German metropolis, a good friend instructed her about these Galician younger individuals who, seeking a greater life, virtually went to die on the Cuban sugar plantations.
It might have turn into a journalistic report, since Candia used to work as a cultural journalist, “nevertheless it tightened a spring that led me to an obsession, not solely as a result of I used to be touched by the story, however what intrigued me was that it had not reached the Galicians, a minimum of by widespread reminiscence. It was not a hidden story, it was there, however after I requested round me, no one knew it and it appeared like a lie. So, if I needed to exorcise this story, I used to be going to have to put in writing it and I used to be going to do it within the tone of fiction, as a result of what touches the human levers and makes the characters keep in our reminiscence is fiction,” she tells El Confidencial by telephone. That is how ‘Azucre’ (Pepitas de Calabazo) took place, some of the profitable novels in current months—by Sant Jordi Day it had already bought 20,000 copies, a unprecedented quantity, particularly for a small writer—, and which has simply received the Espartaco award for Historic Novel within the Black Week [Espartaco de Novela Histórica en la Semana Negra] in Gijón.
[. . .] Certainly, the story was there. Right now it may be discovered on the web site xenealoxia.org, the place we are able to discover Urbano Feyjoó-Sotomayor, the son of a noble household, deputy within the Cortes for Ourense and proprietor of the Patriotic-Mercantil Firm, the corporate that organized the expeditions to Cuba and whose precept was: “A Galician has to do the identical work as two black males and on the worth of 1 slave.” Additionally on the checklist, there seem the names of all of the emigrants who participated within the eight expeditions that came about in 1854. A lot of them died inside just a few months of being in Cuba, harking back to the German focus camps.
With all this knowledge, how is it potential that it’s such an unknown historical past past the work of historians, archivists, and documentalists? For Candia it has one thing to do with the picture that was created of the emigrant, which is the one that continues to be right now. “The thought we now have of somebody who went to make a residing within the Americas is that of the native who triumphs and returns. Nonetheless, till just lately it was taboo to inform your folks that you simply had not managed to turn into wealthy. And way more so a narrative like this one, during which they’d enslaved you. Then again, a lot of those that went there, died within the first months from dysentery, fever… Those that survived, most likely didn’t need to inform anybody about what occurred, and it appears logical to me as a result of it was one other period; and what they needed was to overlook all the pieces that had occurred,” she argues.
It didn’t solely occur with the Galicians of Cuba within the nineteenth century, nor are the tales of emigrants from the twentieth century very seen, for instance, for those that left within the 50s and 60s, as a result of Spain was, after all, not one of the best place to dwell. “In most households there’s an official model of emigration: our grandfather went to Switzerland, labored in a watch manufacturing unit after which got here again and purchased a home. That’s what was instructed. However, should you dig somewhat, it seems that the grandfather lived in barracks subsequent to the manufacturing unit and ate from a can of sardines,” says Candia. [. . .]
Disgraced in America
The historical past of ‘Azucre’ has not solely been lined by the disgrace of the emigrants. What occurred with the slave dealer Feyjoó-Sotomayor (nothing to do with the present chief of the PP, Feijóo is a quite common surname in Galicia) additionally helped. In different phrases, nothing. “It was a scandal, however he stated that it had all been a political maneuver. He continued as a deputy, was unpunished and suffered no main penalties,” provides Candia. To at the present time, the household nonetheless has its nation home in Viana do Bolo (Ourense), the place, by the way in which, Isabel II spent an evening on her go to to Galicia (after the slavery occasion had ocurred), and the household’s tableware, with illustrations from Cuba, is within the Museum of Romanticism. [. . .]
Excerpts translated by Ivette Romero. For full article (in Spanish), see https://www.elconfidencial.com/cultura/2022-07-24/bibiana-candia-azucre-gallegos-esclavos-cuba_3464073
Additionally see:
Azucre: Una epopeya
Bibiana Candia Becerra
Logroño: Pepitas de Calabazo, junio 2022 (quinta edición)
144 páginas
ISBN 978-84-17386-82-5
https://www.pepitas.web/libro/azucre
‘Azucre’, gallegos esclavos en Cuba
Héctor J. Porto, La Voz de Galicia, 9 diciembre 2021
https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/cultura/2021/11/13/azucre-gallegos-esclavos-cuba/0003_202111G13P34993.htm
Los esclavos gallegos de Cuba
Sabela Corbelle, El Progreso, 12 junio 2018
https://www.elprogreso.es/articulo/lugo/historias-de-lugo/201806121430361317667.html