It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right.
Bio: Esteban Mesa Montejo was a runaway Cuban slave. He told his story to the Cuban ethnologist Miguel Barnet in taped interviews carried out in 1963. Barnet edited the transcripts and published them in 1966, as Biografía de un cimarrón.