Sagua la Grande straddles the Sagua river in the north central region of the Villa Clara province. The river, the second longest in Cuba (the Cauto is number one) used to be navigable in the 19th century.

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.

Fernando is a strong man. Tall and solid like the grey boulders behind us. Dressed all in brown from head to toe, with dark brown waterproof boots, and a straw hat the shape of a cowboy hat but with frayed edges.

This was the sugar mills where Esteban first worked as a free man. While the work was not much different than what he suffered as a slave–“The difference being that they didn’t hit you as much as during slavery.”

Esteban remembered Vueltas as the home of a certain bandit name Menendez who led the Spanish volunteer militia during the war against the Mambís.

Remedios, properly named San Juan de los Remedios is one of the most beautiful cities in Cuba. It is probably the third settlement, behind Baracoa and Bayamo, established by the Spaniards in the 16th Century.

I came to hide in a cave for a time. I lived there for a year and a half.

We walk the line built by the Julian Zulueta in 1877 to carry his sugar from his mill, Zaza, in Placetas to the port of Caibarien.

Esteban worked near Zulueta for years. He would take trains into town from the Ariosa or from El Purio looking for a good time.

Placetas is not a metropole but with 72,000 people, it can sustain a more diverse social life than the smaller towns encountered on the route.

The town is known as the “geographic center” of Cuba. At the center of the center grows an ancient Ceiba tree.

The town was founded in 1868, the year of Esteban’s birth. The aboriginal name was changed to Palma Sola in the late 19th Century but reinstated around 1904.

A bridge over the Caunao River leads into Potrerillo. The town buzzes with activity.

Cruces is the birthplace of Martin Dihigo, the Immortal, the Maestro; the baseball player who excelled at all nine positions while playing in the U.S. Negro League, the Mexican League, the Cuban league, the Dominican League and other Latin American leagues.

Esteban settled in Santa Isabel de las Lajas after the war. Here he began to criticize the injustices he found in the newly independent Cuba.

Ciego Montero is a small town, but it is known throughout Cuba because of the spring which produced the most popular bottled water and soft drinks on the island, the Ciego Montero brand.

Palmira is well known for its Afro-Cuban religious traditions. Three cabildos and two temples to the Orishas crowd the town.

Cienfuegos is a captivating city. La Perla del Sur (the Pearl of the South) has the longest urban promenade in Cuba, El Paseo del Prado.

On December 15, 1895, rebel troops, headed by Maximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo, entered the region of Cienfuegos. Esteban joined the group further east, sometime around the third or fourth of December.

“I stayed at the Ariosa for a long time. When I arrived there, the workers asked me, “Hey, where you come from?”

Esteban worked in this area after leaving the Ariosa near Zulueta. Paradoxically, he spoke well of the notorious slaver and international capitalists Tomas Terry.