Photos: Courtesy of the interviewee
"Years ago I heard some songs of La Tumba Francesa related to the massacre of the Independientes de Color and we were motivated to rescue those three songs that only the teacher Bertha Armiñán Linares, knows ", says via WhatsApp the young filmmaker Yasmani Castro Caballero (Santiago de Cuba, 1992), about his latest work inspired by the tragic events in the summer of 1912.
"In the republic-according to Cuban essayist Fernando Martínez Heredia-blacks and mulattos continued to suffer from the very disadvantaged social situation in which slavery and the colonialist system left them, plus the harsh mark of racism."
In August 1908 a political grouping was founded, soon to become the Partido Independiente de Color (PIC), which set out to organize the struggle for effective equality and specific rights. Its main leaders were the veteran Evaristo Estenoz, Colonel Pedro Ivonnet, Gregorio Surín, Eugenio Lacoste, among others.
"Harassed and prevented from using the electoral route, they finally opted to launch an armed protest on May 20, 1912. During June and July of that year Estenoz, Ivonnet and some three thousand non-white Cubans were assassinated, most of them in the Oriente province," wrote the intellectual.
To make the video clip, Castro Caballero and his team set out from Pinares de Micara (Santiago de Cuba) where Evaristo Estenoz was killed, passing through La Maya where Pedro Ivonnet was murdered.
"In addition to meeting Arquímedes Hodelín, son of Francisco Hodelín Montalvo-one of the members of the Partido Independientes de Color who died as a result of being shot during the events of 1912-. We ended at the tomb of Pedro Ivonnet in the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery. This year 2022 is the 110th anniversary of the events of the Independientes de Color war and its subsequent massacre, that's why we are making this audiovisual to remember that tragic event in national history", says Castro Caballero, a graduate in Education and student of Audiovisual Communication, also director of Massamba Producciones, who has been dedicated to investigate anthropological issues of artistic and literary culture, as well as issues of identity and gender.
"Cantos de Tumba Francesa a los Independientes de Color" will premiere on May 20 in eastern Santiago de Cuba and will later be exhibited at the II International Colloquium on Afro-American Studies, to be held June 15-18 this year within the framework of the International Decade for People of African Descent: Recognition, Justice and Development, declared by the United Nations General Assembly.
