Rancheador
Item
Title / Título (Original)
Rancheador
Title
The Slave Hunter
Director
Release Date / Fecha de estreno
1976
Language / Idioma
Spanish / español
Country / País
Production Company / Compañía de Producción
Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficas - ICAIC (Cuba)
Description / Descripción
El Rancheador era un mercenario al servicio de los esclavistas para capturar a los negros esclavos en fuga y devolverlos a sus amos. Francisco Estévez no se detiene ante nada y reprime incluso a los campesinos blancos, pero su meta es Melchora, incapturable líder de los negros fugados. Esta historia está basada en el "Diario del Rancheador", obra del escritor cubano Cirilo Villaverde. (Film Affinity ES)
Rancheador is similarly based on a literary source, Diario de un rancheador (Diary of a rancher) by Cirilo Villaverde. [...] Cast in the form of an orthodox but ingeniously crafted narrative, Rancheador pictures [Francisco] Estévez as one of the bloodiest and most ambitious of mercenaries. He not only hunts down slaves in their palenques, hidden communities in the hills, but he employs his henchmen in repressing outbursts of rebellion, black or white, slave or free. His behavior threatens to expose the maneuvers of the sugar landowners who employ him, in their factional conflicts with the smallholding coffee growers. He tries to vindicate himself by setting out to hunt for the legendary woman leader of the runaway slaves, Melchora. But Melchora is a mythological personage, a symbol to the slaves of their freedom, a psychological weapon of combat. In his blind and obsessional fury, Estévez commits a series of crimes that begin to contradict the class interests he serves, and his employers, ever ready to sacrifice their bloodiest servants when necessary, abandon him to his destruction. (Source: Chanan, Michael. Cuban Cinema. University of Minnesota Press, 2002, p. 328)
Category / Categoría
Subject Coverage / Tema
Cinematic Period / Periodo cinematográfico
Collection
Citation
“Rancheador,” Cinegogía, accessed April 20, 2024, https://cinegogia.omeka.net/items/show/544.