The path of disobedience , by the poet, narrator and psychologist from Bayamón Evelio Traba , is the title of the fictionalized biography of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes (1819-1874), the Father of the Nation, published by the Madrid publishing house Traba (Raíces Collection) , and prefaced by Dr. Eusebio Leal Spengler (1942-2020), historian from Havana, who had the proverbial kindness to present me with that jewel of Cuban historical-social literature.

In this volume, the author carries out an exhaustive historiographic and historical investigation, the findings of which make it easier for him to weave the threads that weave the hazardous existence of the former President of the Republic of Cuba in Arms, deposed by the "rodents of intelligence and the "foreign talent", as the genius of Marti described them, and that they were hidden in the ranks of the Liberation Army that fought against the Spanish troops.

Traba (psychologist at last!) Mixes reality and fantasy to offer us —from an objective-subjective perspective par excellence— not only the wealthy landowner and lawyer by profession, who abandoned fame and wealth, to give himself body, mind and soul to the struggles to break the umbilical cord that linked the largest island of the Antilles to the Hispanic metropolis, but also the human being with virtues, defects, weaknesses, inconsistencies and needs of all kinds (including psychosexual ones, which he satisfied as young people from your age).

Don Carlos Manuel de Céspedes passionately loved the freedom of Cuba, as well as the women, with whom he had intimate relationships whenever the occasion presented itself. Something very natural in a man during adolescence, youth and adulthood, which Traba does not hide with the marked objective of desecrating the image that some scholars of the life and work of the pro-independence hero try to offer to those who are interested in knowing the true human dimension of who starred in the Grito de Yara; armed uprising that started the 10-year war against the European metropolis.

Now, Traba goes much further and reflects in that text the opinions expressed by the detractors of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, as well as the negative judgments and errors that he allegedly committed during the period in which he held the first magistracy of a country at war. against the peninsular enemy.

On the other hand, the vate, writer and professional of the science of the spirit revisits the picturesque places of the city of Bayamo, where he spent the childhood, adolescence and youth of this exceptional man who died vilely assassinated by the Iberian soldiers in the San Lorenzo farm , where he had been confined, and probably betrayed and abandoned by those who - what beasts lurking in the dark of night - paved the way to seize the presidency from him, and consequently, compensate petty benefits of a personal or sectarian nature.

A separate paragraph deserves the predilection manifested from the earliest childhood and adolescence by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes towards European and Eastern cultures; cognitive and spiritual avidity that goaded his mind and soul and prompted him to undertake a long journey through Spain, Paris, London, Greece and Turkey; A journey that put him in contact with the dissimilar ways of thinking, feeling and acting of the inhabitants of the nations visited by him.

One aspect that should not be left out of this review is the sui generis relationship he established with his father, who was a furious defender of the interests of the Motherland in the Pearl of the Caribbean. However, this was not an obstacle for him to feel for the old Don Chucho (as he was known in Bayamo) a great admiration and respect, mixed with great affection and affection towards the one who, together with his venerated mother, had given him the be. With his mother and brothers he established a solid affective-spiritual bond, as well as his wife and mother of his older children, which only Thanatos (death in the orthodox psychoanalytic vocabulary) could interrupt, but not destroy.

I end with some eloquent words from Dr. Eusebio Leal Spengler , which I make my own because of the emotional impact caused by the serene and thoughtful reading of The Path of Disobedience :

I cannot deny [writes one of the best Latin American speakers] that awe has made me stop on several occasions when, tearing the veil of convenience, masked so many times in the discourse of prudence, the novel takes us to the scene of the contradictions and disagreements, as well as the Homeric drama of the hero, whose wide culture and understanding of the world - and in particular of his land - led him, by his own early daring, to become the perfect disobedient that he was [is and will be, I would add].