Mariana Grajales: The old Flor de Sagua

Only a few ruins remain of the Mariana Grajales mill, (named in the late 1990s after the mother of the Cuban patriot Antonio Maceo), as is the case for most of the mills that roared during the heyday of sugar production on the island. A park now stands where the heart of the old mill stood. The smokestack juts skyward, a white monolith that begs for some 2001: A Space Odyssey background music. The ruins of the barrancones are visible to the east of the smokestack. It’s from here that Esteban escaped his slave life. He ran twice. The first time he tried they caught him.. He threw a rock at the head of the overseer, dazing him sufficiently to get a running start, and managed to avoid the crowd that responded to the screams of the overseer. He ran into the woods but, he remembered, “they caught me like a little lamb, and they put some shackles on me that I can still feel if I really think about it. They tied them on me tight and put me to work…” The second time around, he left the overseer in a heap of his own blood and hit the hills. He walked nonstop, making sure he was in the clear. He kept walking.