Juan Francisco Manzano

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Juan Francisco Manzano (* 1797 in Havana , Cuba ; † 1854 or 1853 there) was a poet and writer . As a mulatto , he experienced firsthand the injustices of the slavery system .

Life

Manzano was probably born in 1797 as the son of the slaves Toribio de Castro and María del Pilar Manzano, who was the favorite slave of the Marquesa Beatriz de Jústiz de Santa Ana. Although he was her slave, she raised him like her own son, which gave him a privileged childhood and was allowed to attend school at the age of six. After the death of his mistress in 1803 he got a new owner, María de la Concepción, the Marquesa del Prado Ameno, who from now on made him feel the harshness of slavery and did things to him that were in stark contrast to the treatment during his childhood stood. It was here that Manzano first became aware of his status as a slave, although as a house slave he had a better position than the other slaves. During this time he began writing and reciting poetry from memory. He also developed other skills that were previously unknown to him and through his artistic skill he became the favorite slave in his mistress' household until he finally managed to escape in 1817. When he met Domingo del Monte around 1830 , the latter encouraged him to write down his life story. This was published in 1835. In 1845 he was finally freed from slavery after having been incarcerated in prison for a year. He was accused of participating in the "Conspiración de la Escalera", a movement to combat slavery. Now he had to earn his own living and worked as a baker.

“The slave is a dead soul before the master,” he wrote in his biography in 1835 , probably the only one in Spanish that was written before the abolition of slavery.

literature

  • Richard Robert Madden: Poems. T. Ward and Co., London 1840, OCLC 65263974 . (Poems, english)
  • Edward J. Mullen: The life and poems of a Cuban slave. Juan Francisco Manzano, 1797-1854. Archon Books, Hamden 1981, ISBN 0-208-01900-6 . (English)
  • Abdeslam Azougarh: Juan Francisco Manzano, esclavo poeta en la isla de Cuba. Ediciones Episteme, Valencia, Spain 2000, ISBN 84-8329-035-9 . (Spanish)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carmen Cañete Quesada, Michelle Strasberg: The Antislavery Discourse in the Autobiography (1840) of Juan Francisco Manzano (1797-1853), and the Novel Sab (1841) by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814-73) on journals.fcla.edu , accessed on May 21, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Manzano, Juan Francisco
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban slave and writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH Havana , Captain General Cuba , Viceroyalty of New Spain , Spanish Colonial Empire
DATE OF DEATH 1853 or 1854
Place of death Havana , Captain General Cuba , Spanish Colonial Empire