El Camino del Cimarron
Camino del Cimarron Map
Just a quick picture worth a thousand words. This is a map of the route that I walked to create the Camino del Cimarron. And here is a link to the University of Miami GIS page where the Camino first appeared, thanks to the assistance of Abe Parrish, the GIS guru of the UM libraries, and Dr. Martin Tsang, the facilitator of so many things in my life.
El Purio-Puente de Pavon
Five o’clock arrives unusually early but I need no alarm. By 4:30 the soreness of my body makes itself known, squeezing my leg and shoulder muscles patiently, not like the rhythmic squeezing and releasing of a massage, but more like the relentless compression of a python or a maja, Cuba’s native constrictor. The body’s memory of the first day always presents itself as a heaviness and a soreness the next morning. There is a thick fatigue that lingers inside the body, as if your blood has turned into heated condensed milk, thick and totally disinterested in carrying out its task of supplying enough oxygen to the muscles to spark movement. Can’t think about it. Just do it. I peel off the silk sleeping sack and swing my legs off the bed. The soles of my feet touch the cold tile. I have to pee.
My telephone shows no signal bars in the room but still holds enough of a charge for me to call Fabiana.
I am spending the night at a training center for mill workers; La Casa del Azucarero. The sleeping quarters of the training center consists of three or four bunk filled rooms strung along a cement walkway. My room has six sets of bunk beds in close quarters jutting out from the walls left and right. At the far end of the room the only door other than the entrance leads to a bathroom with one shower.
Night has arrived when I finish my shower and step outside to find that magical spot where something that would pass for a signal exists.
I listen intently to Fabiana, trying to get an update of the happenings on the home front. A quick hello and she cuts to the chase.
"Your mother is going downhill. She’s calling the dog Sasha.”
Sasha is my daughter’s name. My mother does not have dementia. On the contrary, her lucidity makes her very aware of her body’s decline. At ninety-five, she has stretched thin the resiliency of her body. Walking, painting, reading; all the activities she had once enjoyed daily are now things of the ever growing past, never again to be performed. Her remaining time is a slow crawl to the finish line, but she is doing all within her power to be tortoise-slow about it.
Guillermo brought me this gallo all the way from Sagua!
The indoor activities finished and I thought my time had come. The next stop would be a shower and a bed. I was wasted. But the best part was yet to come. The promotora from Sagua takes my arm and leads me to the center of the park.
“Just one more thing,” she says almost apologetically. A stage overlooked a flat cement area; a dance floor or a good space for an audience. In the middle of the area is a lone folding metal chair. She walked me to the chair. I look at her, “no jodas,” I says. You are shitting me.
“For favor,” she says, eyes pleading, “They have prepared so much.”
In a daze, I sit and immediately, as if my ass touching the metal flipped a switch, a voice booms from the loudspeaker welcoming "el caminante Guillermo Grenier doing the Camino del Cimarron!"
Two youngish comedians take control of the cement stage, their banter stereotypes the Cuban güajiros and their problems. I become a character in their narrative. The heavy set güajiro, wearing a straw hat and red plaid shirt accuses the other of stealing his rooster. The accused objects strongly.
El Purio: Walking in, Sitting down, Shaking hands
Walking into town, the spewing smokestack of the Central Perucho Figueredo dominates the skyline. This is the Central, known then as El Purio, where Esteban first worked as a free worker, selling his labor for room and board, hard work and something resembling a wage.
The work and working conditions hadn’t changed much from his slave days and the mentality of his brothers in sugar hadn’t changed much either, according to Esteban. Being now free-men did not change their habits, honed and developed under the lash and the yoke. They were accustomed to life holed up in the barrancones, “that’s why they didn’t go out to eat. When lunchtime came, they went into their rooms with their women and ate lunch. The same at dinnertime. They didn’t go out at night. They were afraid of people; said they were going to get lost. They were convinced of that” (47).