Ricardo Batrell’s Para la historia: Apuntes autobiográficas de la vida de Ricardo Batrell Oviedo appeared in Cuba in 1912, a year of great conflict in the republic. The government responded to an uprising of the Partido Independiente de Color (PIC) with exemplary violence, murdering thousands of its citizens suspected of involvement with the party and the rebellion. Batrell himself was an Afro-Cuban from Sabanillas in Matanzas, a region where the slave plantation flourished for most of the nineteenth century and the scene of tremendous destruction during the War of Independence (1895 – 98). Batrell was a veteran of the war. He was active in politics, and though he criticized discrimination against Afro-Cubans after independence, he remained aloof from the PIC and loyal to the Partido Liberal, one of whose leaders was his patron Juan Gualberto Gómez. Nonetheless, during the repression, he was arrested. Though he was a visible figure in...
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