former slave, who was 103 years old. As a young man he had escaped from slavery to live as a maroon in the Las Villas wilderness (el monte). He later served as a soldier in the Cuban War for Independence in 1898. When Barnet met him, Montejo was living at the Veterans’ Home. Barnet conducted numerous interviews with him, following anthropological methods of inquiry and analysis. For example, he used an electronic voice recorder to capture the nuances and tones of Montejo’s talks, so that he could more accurately convey it in writing. In 1966, Barnet published Montejo’s story as Biografía de un cimarrón (Biography of a Maroon). It was also translated into English and published that year in the United Kingdom and Australia as Autobiography of a Runaway Slave. It was later translated and published in the United States in English in 1994 as Biography of a Runaway Slave. Barnet initiated what is now known as a testimonial narrative tradition with his Biografía de un cimarrón. Both as anthropological study or literature, it draws its authority from the perceived authenticity of the eyewitness account. The protagonist of Barnet’s work, Esteban Montejo, comes to represent not only the collective psychology of Cuba’s former slave class, but also the collective historical conscious of the entire Cuban population. Such authenticity is complicated by the translator's own inherent bias and motives—in this case Barnet—who is from another ethnicity and class. But Barnet was a staunch supporter of the Revolution, and his work satisfies political emphases in its focus on and recognition of the former slave class of Afro-Cubans. In the prologue to the work, Barnet says that "nuestro trabajo no es histórico. La historia aparece porque es la vida de un hombre que pasa por ella" (our work here is not history. History appears in it because it is the life of a man who passes through history). Also, “sabemos que poner a hablar a un informante es, en cierta medida, hacer literatura. Pero no intentamos creer un documento literario” (we know that referring to testimonial is, to a certain degree, creating literature. But our intentions are not to create a literary account). Barnet’s work is widely considered a synthesis of history and literature, as it is informed by the imaginative approach he demonstrates in his poetry. Some commentators classify his books as novels. He has created a unique representation of Cuban history