Esteban Montejo

Esteban Mesa Montejo (1860–1965) 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. An English translation was published as Biography of a Runaway Slave and The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave.

Montejo and Barnet's book includes descriptions of Afro-Cuban religious expression and of Montejo's life as a fugitive slave, along with recollections of the Cuban war for independence from Spain, which ultimately involved the United States. The book ends in 1905, following the US occupation of 1898–1902.