IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 2 ENGLISH | Page 87

Ceferino Phinney Morales, an illegitimate, Cuban, mulatto descendant of the U.S. Phinney family (1843-1918), endured the evil of slave owners,
even of his own father, and inflicted his own on
his six children (Antero, Enrique, Candita, Victoria, Agustín and Caridad), who he did not claim
as his own. He deprived them of a surname that
beyond symbolizing a fortune represented for him
the mark of slavery’s evil legacy.

This likeness of painter William Condón (grandson of Theodore William Phinney) with Cubanmulatto Agustín Phinney (the youngest of Ceferino Phinney’s children) suggests a resemblance and
genetic relationship between the two in a racially mixed context.
This Afro-Cuban-American branch of the Phinney family, which has always silently despaired
regarding this legacy, still needs a distant assurance of its history, a source of strength to transform its sensibility.
The life of the Mayflower’s Cuban descendants is
the long story of a line of people with miserable
lives who were powerless to change their lot.
They have survived like that legendary zombie
figure associated with slavery and representative
of all the many pasts from which we flee. Each
zombie is like a memory fighting to be unearthed,
come back and settle the pending score. Anyone
could imagine a dance of secrets on the ruins of
the Phinney’s Cuban plantations, where a great
many, resuscitated slaves, dead folks living in
memory, sing and dance praying for recognition,
to not be the forgetful oblivion they already are.

(*)Rodolfo R. Bofill Phinney heads a research project with a Copyright in the U.S. Library of Congress
that seeks to acknowledge the Cuban descendants of
the Mayflower.

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