Who doesn't enjoy a really good ghost story?

Cuba

I WAS FORTUNATE in writing Rebels on the Mountain, to find a ghost story that fit well with my main character, Nick Andrews. A spook himself, in the modern sense of being a spy, Nick roams the same mountains of Cuba as the ghost of Hatuey. I stumbled upon the legend of Hatuey while reading Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause by Tom Gjelten. Bacardi, better known as the distillers of “the rum that made Cuba famous,” adopted the name to serve as the brand for its beer.

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Hatuey was a cacique (chief) of the Taino tribe on Hispaniola. He fled to Cuba in 1511, accompanied by four hundred canoes full of his warriors and their families. Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar followed with his forces to conquer the island known to the natives as Caobana (Cuba). Hatuey tried to warn the Caribs of Cuba about the cruelty and avarice of the Conquistadores. His descriptions were true but too lurid for the Caribs to believe. Hatuey then led his people into the interior and prepared to fight a guerrilla war against the Spaniards.

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The Tainos and the few Caribs who joined them succeeded in eluding the Conquistadores for about a year. When finally caught, Hatuey was burned at the stake. However, before his death, a Catholic priest offered to baptize Hatuey so that he could attain salvation and spend eternity in heaven. Hatuey thought about this offer for a moment, then asked, “Will there be Spaniards in this heaven?” 

When the priest responded in the affirmative, Hatuey declined the offer without hesitation stating that he preferred hell, where there would be no Spaniards. His ghost is purported to roam the Sierra Maestras to this day.

Hatuey burned at the stake (click to enlarge)

Shortly after being commissioned as an officer in the United States Army, I met a friend of a friend, a Marine who had spent time skulking inside Communist China, observing military deployments, installations, and maneuvers. This was the first time that I learned that special forces of the United States performed long range reconnaissance missions inside the territory of belligerent nations. They were not James Bond-like spies. Their role was to infiltrate, observe, and exfiltrate without being detected. That is the role that I chose for my hero, Nick Andrews. Such a fictional person allowed me to narrate the events of the Cuban Revolution without interfering in them. I did not want to write alternative history.

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However, I couldn't resist the idea of Nick's presence in Cuba being noticed, even being mistaken for the ghost of Hatuey. Indeed, a scene wherein he rushes into a village to warn its inhabitants of an impending attack, and usher them to safety, fairly wrote itself. I couldn't help being amused that a well-tanned Caucasian, painted in camouflage as though wearing war paint, could be mistaken for the ghost of an ancient warrior.