Carabali
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Slavery, one of man’s most demonic and despicable institutions, was not introduced to the Americas by the conquering Europeans. It already existed among the native population in a more cruel and degenerate form, due to their hideous practice of sacrificing human souls to their blood-thirsty gods. Indeed, some of the stronger and more advanced nations periodically would go to war against their less powerful neighbors just to capture young men and women to replenish their pools of slaves and sacrificial humans.. The Incas, the Aztecs and the Mayans, the most highly developed cultures of the New World were notorious slavers, who maintained well trained, powerful armies, specifically to periodically raid their neighbors in search of flesh for their depravity. The Spaniards, who were notorious slavers, were the first Europeans to arrive at the shores of the New World, under the apt name of "Conquistadores" and in the name of the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, who also approved of slavery as an institution, met with many an aboriginal societies, who practice slavery as a means of punishing their vanquished enemies. Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, a famous or infamous early Conquistador and his Negro slave Estebanico were forced into Slavery for several years by a Southeastern Indian tribe, who treated them with terribly depraved bestiality. Europeans can not be accused of introducing slavery to the New World, but rather they were guilty of approving of the evil institution, practicing it there and introducing Negroes to replace the natives, who were not too cooperative. Slavery has existed as an institution since biblical times. The Judeo-Christian bible mentions it, in what could be considered favorable terms. Even today, at the end of the twentieth century, the evil institution exists in various parts of Africa, being approved by the Moslem religion. The Portugese, as they gradually moved down the west African coast during the sixteenth century, were the first to introduce African Negro slaves into medieval Europe. Their ships carried slaves to Spain; and after the New World was discovered, descendants of these slaves were brought to Haiti to work in the mines. At first the Spaniards tried to use the local natives in the mines and on their plantations, but the natives were not easily adapted to such labor and were nearly exterminated by the harsh conditions and by imported diseases to which they had no immunity. Slave ships were a regular sight on the ocean routes between Africa and the New World. The great ship companies of Europe bid against one another for the fortunes to be made in this trade. By the treaty of Utrecht (AD 1713), England secured the sole right to supply black slaves to the Spanish colonies. In AD 1739, when Spain tried to revoke the agreement, England went to war to keep it. The demand for Negro labor soon passed from the West Indies to North America, where it increased by leaps and bounds. It was the need for cheap labor for the sugar cane, tobacco and cotton plantations that established the slavery in the New World. A minority of slaves were used as house servants or in trades. The treatment that slaves received depended on the type of work that they performed. Those who were household servants became relatively comfortable, while the field workers had to endure the harshest conditions. The tale of Carabalí is all about slavery in the Caribbean or the Antilles. It started with an innocent looking gigantic grass, native of New Guinea, that contains a sweet, light amber colored liquid in the stems. The sweet liquid and its products, sugar, molasses and rum, produced immense wealth for a few Europeans. It was introduced into Europe and Africa by the conquering Arabs and into the Antilles by Christopher Columbus. Prior to its introduction into Europe it was taken to India by its merchants where they processed it into a syrupy substance that they named "Gur."
Sugar cane (saccharum officianarum), is a giant, thick, perennial grass cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide for its sweet sap. The plant grows in clumps of solid stalks and has graceful, sword shaped leaves that resemble those of the corn plant. Mature canes may be ten to fifteen feet tall and two to five inches in diameter. Carabalí and his twin were captured African Negroes. Carabalí who refused to be a slave, fought with might and determination to keep his dignity and freedom. Sold to the Arab slave merchants in Africa by his own father, who in a prior raid had raped his mother, Carabalí managed to get loose temporarily and kill him. During a significant part of his life he struggled constantly to escape from his masters and to stay away from the arm of the implacable Spanish colonial police and army. He was successful and eventually after his death he became a legend as an apparition that supposedly haunted a natural cave, occasionally appearing to some of the most imaginative natives of the area.
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About the Book
The tale of Carabalí is about slavery in the Caribbean isles. It is also about twin Negro brothers, who were the sons of a Ghanian business lady, daughter of a tribal chief. In their youth the boys lived in freedom and were tutored by a Spanish priest, who succeeded in giving them an excellent European education. Talented and intelligent, the boys learned Spanish and became virtuosos of the Andalusian guitar. Their happy days by the Congo river came to a tragic end when their, unknown to them, father, a large and brutish warrior type African Negro, who had forced his attentions upon their virginal mother during a slave trapping raid against her village, captured them, their mother and all the young men and women of their village. Out of that horrible rape the identical twins were born, Lathela, who the first by 5 minutes, and Popó the younger. In spite of being identical twins, their personalities were entirely different. Lathela tended to be more of a warrior, adventurous and was given to be an implacable avenger. Popó was more studious and preferred to be a farmer rather than a hunter. Both were extremely tall, over six and one half feet in height and massively muscular. In his implacable fury Lathela managed to escape from a large compound, where the future slaves were waiting for a caravan to take them to the sea, killed his own father, to avenge his mother, and freed her. He returned to the compound to help Popó escape, but to no avail. He could not open nor break the shackles, so he chose to stay with his twin brother. On to the sea the shameful caravan went, in a march of horrors and pain, tortured by the mounted black Arabs and dark Mandingos, who forced them to march rapidly with stinging and lacerating whips. Plagued by the rain and the tropical sun, that seemed to take turns making them uncomfortable, the prisoners of greed went. They arrived at the ocean shore, where they were fed, bathed and chained into the fetid holds of the slave, three masted sailing vessels. The horrors continued all through the voyage to the flesh markets of the New World. Nearly thirty percent of them died during the ocean trip. The slave auction was an inhuman display of cruelty. Lathela was sold to a sugar baron. In the process he knocked out the servant who wanted to see his teeth. From then on he was destined for the most horrendous treatment by Zavalas, the sugar baron, and from his servant and half breed son Cindo. His destination was Puerto Rico, or Borínquen, as the natives called the beautiful island. Popó went to the de Ardanáz Plantation, also in Puerto Rico, as payment for a gambling debt. There he was treated well and rose to become the plantation manager and best rum distiller in the Caribbean archipelago. Eventually the brothers meet under a very strange set of circumstances. Lathela lived to reap vengeance upon those who had mortified his flesh and cruelly mistreated him. He eventually became a legend, in the form of an apparition that, even today the natives of the island believe, comes out of the cave of his death during certain nights of the year. They, the brothers, lived to full maturity, one died in his sixties and the other lived to be close to one hundred years old. The thread of life of the twins was intertwined with that of the De Ardanáz clan and eventually, in a most contorted set of events, their bloods ,of master and slave, mixed.
About the Author
Horacio Estrada was born in Puerto Rico in the mid 1920s of European parentage and studied engineering in California, after returning from serving in the Unites States Army during W.W.II. He practiced engineering for several years in the aerospace and the nuclear industries. During his grammar school and high school years in Puerto Rico he spent many a vacation at the old parental family farm, where sugar cane was the main product. While there he met and socialized with many of the Negroes of the area, some who had been born in slavery or were the children of them. It was great learning experience listening to their tales, enjoying their humor, Afro-Antillean music and partaking of tasty their food. The author has written several other stories and poems based on the Antillean folklore and their Euro-African and Indian cultural mix.