her knees and through her arms.  I had seen an image of a slave restrained like this, once in a book on slavery.  Virginia, being an accomplished actress herself, and knowing my passion for this subject matter, began to intrinsically cry.  Tears for our ancestors fell from both of our eyes, as I photographed Virginia in this pose. 

There was a White British poet named Richard Robert Madden (1798-1886) who translated (from Spanish to English) the autobiography of Cuban slave and poet named Juan Francisco Manzano (1797-1854).  Madden opens Manzano's autobiography with Madden's own poetry of his reflections on slavery, particularly in Cuba and the Caribbean.   In one poem Madden empathized with the plight of the slave mother.  He wrote:

"Think you, for us there's pleasure in the groans
Of mothers, listening to the piteous moans
Of wailing infants, stretched before their eyes,
They dare not leave the hoe, to hush those cries,
Nor ask the driver for a moment's rest,
To sooth the child, that's screaming for the breast?"

It was in Madden's poems in which I found mention of the initials JG, which I reference above. Madden wrote,

" . . . the well-written brand, J.G.; In letters bold, engraved on flesh you see . . ."

The orange flowers I painted on the trees are called Flamboyantes and are readily found throughout Cuba and the Carribbean.  They are Puerto Rico's national flower.  The white flowers in the painting are Cuba's national flower and are called Mariposas (for "butterflies")