Esteban Mesa Montejo (1860-1973) was born a slave in Cuba in 1860. He escaped from his master and lived as a runaway. Cuban ethnologist Miguel Barnet conducted and recorded interviews with him in 1963 and then edited and organized them into a slave narrative entitled The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave first published in 1966. In Cuba, some slaves acquired access to the materials necessary to produce beef jerky which they stored in their quarters. Apparently, they had large enough quantities of it to eat and sell it to nearby tavern operators. “There were more taverns than tics” says Montejo and they served as rural general stores where “you could buy everything.” Depending on one’s master, the enslaved obtained permission during the day and sometimes at night to go to the taverns where they sold the jerky and bought rum, food staples, and sweets with cash or on credit.
