This book tells the extraordinary story of a village of peasants and miners in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Cuba who were slaves belonging to the king of Spain and whose local patroness was a miraculous image of the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre. In reconstructing this history; the book reveals that in Cuba’s eastern region; slavery to the King became a very ambiguous form of slavery that evolved into forms of freedom unprecedented in other colonial societies of the New World. The author studies the relations that developed between the Virgin; the King; and the royal slaves as the enslaved villagers imagined and negotiated social identity and freedom in this Caribbean frontier society. In the process; she examines several dimensions of the royal slaves’ daily and imaginary lives. Drawing on a range of cultural; social; political; and economic sources; this book presents a multisided history of enslaved people as they remade colonial spaces and turned them into a new homeland in El Cobre. As they produced social memory and appropriated popular religious traditions centered on the Virgin of Charity; they reinvented their past and present as a new people within the structures and strictures of Spain’s colonial world.
#1260174 in Books University of Nebraska Press 1999-04-01Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.00 x .67 x 5.25l; .69 #File Name: 080329266X270 pages
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. In The Mind of a Japanese SoldierBy Brice Petit-JeanThis account of some of the battles of the Russo-Japanese War is astonishing for its immediacy and as an insight into the spirit of self-sacrifice in the Japanese soldier of the day; a prelude to a similar attitude in the First and Second Sino-Japanese and the Pacific Wars; and a reminder of the self-same vigour with which British Empire and American troops of the First World War wanted to "show the world what they were made of"...4 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Finally A ReprintBy Dr YBefore the Internet; I searched in used book stores for almost 15 years trying to find this gem. I got a used first edition in about 3 minutes when I Googled. I don't like to touch it because it is in delicate condition; so this reprint allows me to read this unforgettable story time and time again. HUMAN BULLETS is the best memoir to come out of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The translation from Japanese is quite good. I still can't put it down.3 of 4 people found the following review helpful. I Will Die Beautifully Today!By Michael L. ShakespeareIn his memoir; Tadayoshi Sakurai takes readers to places they rarely venture: a death-dealing world of machine guns; grenades and swords -- The Russo-Japanese War.Sakurai; a Japanese Army Lieutenant; shows a keen sense for detail in chronicling his role in Japan's siege of Port Arthur -- Imperial Russia's most important Far Eastern Naval Base -- from the landing of the Japanese forces in Manchuria until his wounding while storming the fortress.The personal anecdotes and graphic details about how he copes with life in camp and on the battlefield draw the reader in even when the writing is very poetic. He writes his memoir in the self-sacrificing traditional Japanese military spirit. It's fanatical; close-minded and very intolerant; but it's never stale."Human Bullets: A Soldier's Story of the Russo-Japanese War" was first published in Japan where it became somewhat of a literary sensation.
