Finca Simona

She carried the blood of two conquered peoples. Born of African and Taíno indigenous descent, Simona entered the world in a land already broken by colonization — Hispaniola, where the Spanish and French colonization as well as previously unknown diseases had erased the Taíno, even as colonizers continued to build fortunes, utilizing African slaves shipped across an ocean. She was seven years old when someone decided she had a price.

The bill of sale is handwritten. It lists her purchase alongside "other slaves, carts, animals and farm implements." Her name appears in ink — not as a person, but as an item. That document, stained by nearly two centuries, still exists. It is in the family's possession today. We do not hide it. We hold it, because everything that came after began on that page.

When her enslaver died, Simona was freed. With her freedom came something else: a surname — Figuereo. In the Dominican Republic of the early 1800s, this was no small thing. The Haitian occupation of Santo Domingo from 1822 to 1844 had formally abolished slavery across all of Hispaniola, ushering in an era of legal freedom for thousands who had known only bondage. Simona stepped into that new world carrying nothing but her name, her history, and a will that had survived the unspeakable.

She did not emerge broken. She emerged with intention.

Her name was Figuereo. His was Objio — and that name carried weight. Captain Teofilo Objio came from a family historically tied to Dominican military and political circles, a lineage with standing in a society where standing meant everything. His family objected to the union. A freed enslaved woman was not the match they had in mind.

He chose her anyway. More than that — he surrendered his name. He became Teofilo Figuereo. In a society built on hierarchy, bloodline, and the careful management of reputation, a man of his stature voluntarily erasing his surname to take that of a formerly enslaved woman was not a quiet gesture. It was a declaration. Their love was not whispered between them. It was announced to the world, and the world had to accept it.

Simona and Teofilo's son was born in San Juan de la Maguana in 1834. His name was Wenceslao — known to his countrymen as "Mano Lao." He joined the Dominican military at fourteen years old, fighting to defend his nation against Haitian threats. He could not read. He could not write. A fellow soldier taught him both, during a campaign, between battles.

That boy — the son of a freed slave and a captain who gave up his name for love — climbed every rung available to him. He served as Minister of the Interior. He became Governor of Azua. He rose to Vice President of the Dominican Republic, serving under President Ulises Heureaux from 1893 to 1899. And then, on July 26, 1899, when Heureaux was assassinated, Wenceslao Figuereo Cassó was sworn in as the 27th President of the Dominican Republic.

He governed until August 30, 1899 — 35 days, cut short by the political storms of the era. But the record stands. The name stands. He died in Santo Domingo on January 10, 1910, a man of 76 years who had traveled from the battlefield classroom of a soldier to the highest office in his nation. His story is not family legend. It is archived in the official presidential record of the Dominican Republic.

The woman listed on a bill of sale alongside farm animals gave the Dominican Republic its president. Her name — Figuereo — is etched into the presidency of a nation.

Generations passed. The Figuereo family spread across the Dominican Republic, carrying with them the memory of Simona and the dignity she had carved out of nothing. One of her great-grandsons — Uncle Flavio Figuereo — came to the mountains of San José de Ocoa, to the hillsides above Rancho Arriba, and built a well with his own hands. He built it on 400 acres of mountain earth. He did not know, perhaps, that those same 400 acres would one day be purchased by his own family's descendants.

When we bought this land, we found the well. We didn't know yet what it meant. When we traced the history — when we connected Flavio to Simona, and Simona to this soil — we understood that we had not discovered a property. We had come home. Four generations after a seven-year-old girl was sold alongside carts and animals, her family's hands had already touched this earth and drawn water from it.

We named this finca after her. Not as a tribute to the past, but as a promise to the future.