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Arts and Literature of Cuba
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interview led to another, and then another, and then another
still. Gradually, Barnet teased out Montejo’s life story.
In 1966 Barnet published
Biografría de un cimarrón
(
Biography of a Runaway Slave
). It was a pioneering work in a
literary genre that would be dubbed
testimonio
. Now popular
throughout Latin America,
testimonio
, or testimonial narrative,
seeks to tell the stories of voiceless or marginalized members of
society.
As Barnet did with Esteban Montejo, the author of a testi-
monial narrative typically starts by carefully gathering the
View over Manaca Iznaga, a large sugar plantation near Trinidad. During the Spanish
colonial era, slave labor was an important part of Cuba’s agricultural economy.