The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America - autonomous ...

j6 Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
to paying rents while at the same time other groups arrived here in
Puerto Tejada; from the sides of Seraflna—a senor Balanta; from
the side of Guachene—a senor Santiago; from Sabanetas—some
other senor; and so successively. So the groups formed to deliberate
amongst the wisest blacks. They were self-defense groups aimed at
liberating the tenants so that they wouldn't be thrown off and so
that cattle wouldn't be put into their farms and so that people could
keep what they had had before." Through this organization the peasants
were largely able to revoke the rents imposed on cocoa trees. To
have their customary use-rights and mejoras made rentable was to
them the final straw.
Mina was a powerful sorcerer. He could change himself into an
animal or plant to elude the police and the hacienda guards, and he
was impervious to bullets. He did this through his knowledge of the
ciencia cabalistica—the Jewish mystical doctrine of the Cabbalah,
which entered into Renaissance thought and magic via the Hermetic
tradition. Hidden deep in the woods, he lived on his large farms
with many concubines. An old peasant dotes on his legend.
When they began to tear down the peasants' trees around the
veieda of Palito the people called on Cenecio Mina to defend
them because all the lawyers for miles around were with the
Holguins and none would help us. Thus, as he was a Negro,
they called on him. The Holguins tried to raise rents by charging
rent on each tree of cocoa; four pesos per tree. The people
wouldn't stand for that because it was they who had planted
those very same trees. They would pay for the right to use the
land, but for the trees, no! And so the people got together and
said they would do nothing.
Cenecio Mina wasn't educated in the university, but he was
a man of natural talent, gifted with science; natural science.
He hadn't had even a week in the school. He was a colonel in
the War of One Thousand Days. The people around here loved
him a lot and he had a band of over 100 men. Thus he came to
defend us against the hacienda of Periconegro, the Holguins'
hacienda, and those who were defended went with him to defend
other blacks in trouble way over in Ortigal.
They captured him and took him prisoner to the capital,
Popayan, but as he was a man of means, I guess he bribed the
police, because he got away soon after that. That man could
break open mountains and go wherever he wanted to and nobody
knew how he did it or where he was. The day he broke