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ISSN 1443-5799 |
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The Guajiro Who Killed a Güije
By José Barreiro
(Camagüey, Cuba, c. 1956) Aunt Lilina sat on her rocker facing the patio and open sky. I sat at her feet, with two or three other boys. Just before naptime in her makeshift school, where she taught us to read and write, she was obligated to tell us a story. One story was about the old, ornery man who once killed a güije. That one always got our attention. The güije are the little people of Cuba. In Camagüey, the word is güije; farther east in the Oriente, the word reverses to jigüe. The güije live in lagoons and river shores, and in our oldest tradition are the spirit helpers of the old cemies of the Taino. Güijes can appear as half person-half fish; they can be brown with somber features and long hair - indito; they can be black and African - negrito; or they can be Canarian “duende” or Gallician -- "draga." The güije are often guardians of water sources and are relatives and sometimes helpers of the “Madre de Aguas” or mother of waters (a mottled snake). They are also associated with the Virgen of Cobre, the Catholic matron of Cuba. “Most guajiro men will respect a güije,” Aunt Lilina began, as she froze suddenly on her rocker to concentrate. “But Felipe Tunas was an ornery cuss. He was what they call a ‘pellejo grueso’ (thick skin). And he was on the side of the Spanish Army.” Aunt Lilina placed this story three generations back, between our two major Cuban wars of independence, somewhere around 1890. Camagüey and Oriente (the East) were always the two provinces most in rebellion. The rebels were fighting for independence and the end of slavery. The "guajiros," then and now, were the natural people of the monte -- farmers, hunters and herbalists. “The young boys called him ‘el Manati,’ that was his nickname. The thick hide of that mammal that lives in the ocean is good for making oxen whips! Remember, too, that’s the leather they used to whip the Africans here ... during the colony,” Aunt Lilina told us. “They used it on Africans and on the rebels when they caught them.” El Manati was an overseer of sugar mill crews. Such men were called, “capatáz,” in Spanish. El Manatí would ride his horse long distances. He was mean and tough, and had killed men in quarrels. At the sugar mill, he rode herd over enslaved Africans when cutting sugar cane. The Manati had good weapons, including a shotgun with long barrel that he used to bring down high-flying ducks and to shoot runaways slaves in the legs from far-away. He loved to hunt and to show off his kills to the main men at the mills. Aunt Lilina always told this story like this: “El Manatí liked his rum and when he drank he hunted men to fight. Many hid or ran away. The ones who did not stood a good chance to lose life or limb. Machete style, the Manati fought. And with the other hand, he used that deadly whip of his. “Don Felipe, the “Manati,” rode long distances at night on his horse and he was never afraid. It was the world, he said, who had to be afraid of him. He claimed to be meaner than anything alive. He was a bad guajiro, that old manati hide. And he knew how to use that manatí whip, overseer of slaves that he was. “We the guajiro people, we have good men and bad men. Many good, hard-working, hard fighting men we have, many who fought in the wars against the Spanish. But our bad ones are also truly so. El Manati was a bad one. El Manati, they said, once whipped a slave woman, a woman straight from Africa. They said she was a Yoruba princess and her people looked to her when he gave orders. He accused her of rebelliousness. So he beat her. He whipped so hard her back was raw meat. Then he tied her to a tree and poured molasses on the wound to attract flies, and left her to rot and die like that.” Aunt Lilina would pause on that story. It was a recurrent theme in her stories, the whipping and brutalizing of slaves in the colonial times just before her youth. She came from a mambí family and fifty years later would still proudly condemn the cruelty of the Spanish colonial regime. “One night, el Manati was returning from a long ride to Bayamo, where he had sold a horse. A couple of hours from his small rancho, he came to the enchanted lagoon. This was a lagoon on the Tínima River that later disappeared. With the turn of the century and the cutting of the shoreline trees, there was flooding on the river, and that lagoon eroded,” Aunt Lilina said. “But back then, it was calm, deep and beautiful, surrounded by trees, and, of course, it had a güije. That güije, the old, old people always said, was friendly with the rivershore people, the Camagüey Indians. Especially the pregnant women would leave him flowers and fruits for him to take into the deep waters. Yes, the Güije on the Tínima; it was a famous one in my childhood.” Lilina was a Catholic beata, devoted as were her other two sisters, to the Virgen of Charity at Cobre. But she had a great liking for the old guajiro things and always broke with the priests when they tried to dismiss or suppress the old customs. “There was a priest, who did not like it that the people still talked about that güije. They say he had talked to el Manati, and asked him to hunt for the güije or any animal living near that lagoon. The priest hoped it would turn out to be a lagoon rat or a jutía, or a big lizard, so that the people would quit believing in the güije, which he claimed was ignorant nonsense. “And so it was that night, don Felipe, el Manati, was returning on horseback from Bayamo, where he had sold a mare. A strong moon lighted the night as the old guajiro was coming onto the area of the lagoon. He followed the river bank and he had covered all metal well and made little noise, beginning his stalking, even on horseback as he went. He moved slowly along a thin, well-worn cattle trail, riding just to the side in the green grass that made little noise. At the bend of the river, cutting over an arroyo, some distance away from the lagoon, he reigned his horse lightly. The well-trained steed squared himself. On the opposite bank of the arroyo, el Manati thought he spotted a child or an animal of some kind sitting on a log, looking toward the water. The thing he watched was very still for the longest time, as the Manati pulled his shotgun and peered down the long barrel. Very slightly, the thing turned his head. El Manati saw the face of a little Indian, long-haired, a güije. The güije rose to jump at the water; the old cuss fired his shotgun, striking the güije full in the back. Old Felipe, nostrils flaring, jumped from his horse and hopped across the arroyo over two flat rocks. The güije was squirming silently, face to the ground; it was trying to crawl to water. Old Felipe stood back and shot it again in the back. The güije was flattened by the blast and was still. The Manati unrolled his horse blanket and knelt by the güije. He would say later that he could not bear to turn him over and look at the face. The whole of nature quickly changed, he said. By the time he had reached the güije and shot him the second time, he said, the moon had darkened. He wrapped the dead “little beast” in the dark, never looking again at his face. Mounting his horse, el Manati tied the bundle at the back of his saddle and headed for home, happy to anticipate the reward he might get from the old priest. On the way, several times, he heard loud rustling in the bush. Then he could hear steps behind him, like children, but when he turned there was no one there. In the bush, he could hear what sounded like a large snake winding through the grass. It scared him and in his fear, the hunter pressed his back against the bundle. A few times he felt the wetness of the blood, but the güije did not move. By the time he got home, el Manatí was doubled in pain. He had to be carried into the house. His children saw the bundle that was stuck on the Manati ‘s back; it made a suction sound when they pulled their father off the saddle. In the confusion of carrying the ailing man, the family said later, the “little beast” dropped to the ground and crawled away. It disappeared, they said, although the next morning, the dogs were fighting over something in a corral and the family found something like a pig’s hide, with pellet holes in it. El Manati, Felipe Tunas, slayer of the güije on the Tínima, lived for some months but he could no longer stand. He took on a fever and was delirious for days on end, crying against a nightmare of snakes that pulled him into water. The small of his back, was red and raw from what seemed a burning. Soon, this wound began to ooze a putrefied gel that would not dry, no matter what they did for him. The old priest came to pray for him, even more than once, but it did no good. Gangrene set in. The stink carried for miles and he died in horrible pain.” Aunt Lilina would stop here. She would go prepare our cafe con leche, having, as usual, taken up our naptime with her story. We would doze a few minutes on our chairs, smelling the sweet, pungent coffee with milk she made for us kids. Finally, she would return. “I should tell you,” she said, serving our merienda. “Years later, his oldest son was killed, too, in a fight. He was hacked in the back with a cane machete. Bled and bled, they said.” By then we boys would be shuddering. “Even his great niece, in my generation was cursed,” Aunt Lilina said. “I was around fourteen years. The girl was a couple of years older than I was. An ox tore free of his yunta and gored this girl from behind. Imagine. She lived, but she never walked well again, and she never had children.” We were ready for the reading lesson by then. Aunt Lilina reached for her book of historical anecdotes that she would pass around for us to read from. But she capped the story with a whispered lesson. “Never hurt a güije, or even a chipojo (lizard). It will stay with you. You are supposed to feed a güije, leave tobaco seeds for him, leave an open guayaba, ask for his good luck. Then water will run through the life of your generations, much, much water, fish, nutrients, all kinds of good things will be yours.” Issues in Caribbean Amerindian Studies (Occasional Papers of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink) Vol. VI, No. 1, Aug 2004 - Aug 2005. Friday, 12 August, 2005 |
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