MADAME KALALÚ: FROM HAITI TO PUERTO RICO

Legends are exaggerated truths, and when it comes to Madame Kalalú, all we have left are the word of mouth stories, Rafael Cortijo’s plena, interpreted by his combo, and later on by Willi Colon/Rubén Blades’s salsa, a rather academic and “de salón” version. She is also mentioned in several Puerto Rican fictional tales, and poems. To my knowledge, no documents have been found that can prove her existence. 

The story goes like this: Madame Kalalú was involved in the revolution that ended the French occupation of Sainte Domingue, Halti, and, consequently, abolished slavery completely. Once Haiti was liberated, she took upon herself to travel throughout the Caribbean to continue her revolutionary work, freeing slaves, and to start the creation of new countries in the region. In one of the versions of the song she is transplanted to contemporary Puerto Rico, working as a spiritual medium who is asked by the narrator of the story. singer, to answer very difficult questions regarding her work and about some not so easy to handle events. The lyrics begin telling her that the singer does not speak Quimbo nor Quimbiembo; to be straight forward and clear. What is very obvious is that Madame Kalalú is a powerful figure.

Cortijo places the interaction between the singer in an area of Santurce, known today as a Barrio Obrero, which when Madame Kalalù -had she been there- visited Puerto Rico was part of the town known as San Mateo de Cangrejos. It was founded in 1760, the first one of its kind in Puerto Rico, by black peoples, the land given to them by the king of Spain in compensation for fighting the pirates that were trying to take over San Juan. Santurce is an island divided by channels that separate it from Old San Juan and the rest of the island; and they blocked the ships, so they could not get in; cutting off the delivery of fresh water to the ones who already had taken over Old San Juan. The Spanish “naval” was fighting them in the bay, though the pirates had already taken over the old city. 

What is known today as Santurce was mostly populated by blacks during the centuries prior to the mid 1800s, working in farms, many of them were runaway slaves that had gotten away from the islands east and south of Puerto Rico. In order to destroy the plantation economies of the Dutch, English and French islands, the King of Spain offered them small plots of lands, freedom if they moved to Puerto Rico, settled in specific areas and accepted the Catholic faith. 

After keeping off the pirates, the king granted them the right to have their own town, and in 1760 San Mateo de Cangrejos was born. Had Madame Kalalú truly existed, visited Puerto Rico, she most probably lived in that area. But kings change and power struggles can dismiss history, and in 1862, the category of town was eliminated, most of the land taken away from its inhabitants and given to European settlers and the area was renamed Santurce. In one of the tales about Madame Kalalú she continued her revolutionary work, was caught by the French in New Orleans and killed. 

The area known today as Barrio Obrero is populated mostly by immigrants from the Dominican Republic. One of them, a robust young woman owns one of the vegetable and fruits shops in “La Placita de Santurce”, the market around the corner from my apartment, where I often go to buy papayas, mangos, guanábanas, parchas, mafafos, yautías, aguacates. Whenever she sees me, she greets me with a big smile and says to me, “Amorcito, qué te vendemos hoy?”, bathing me with the the same love, I am sure, drove Madame Kalalú’s work.