Written in Spanish "Labradores y Desbandados 1898" is a chronicle of the Puerto Rican Spanish lineage in the later years of the nineteenth century when fundamental changes lead to local and international trading struggles early on into the twentieth century. The peasantry of the coffee, sugar and agricultural industry of the mountainous range of the Cordillera Central exerted for its survival following drastic changes in trading partners. The long established European commerce vanished being replaced by the ever growing needs of the North American economy for produce and manpower eventually leading to a massive pre WWII migration to the United States of mostly farm workers. This intense historical period affected the lives of a population exceeding 950,000 by the year of 1898 as Puerto Rico faced changes in the socio-political structure of two distinctly different cultures coming together after the Spanish-American war in the old colony. These chronicles are set within the roots of the massive mobilization of Spanish military forces sent to protect the last colonies in the Caribbean over a twenty five year period. Eventually the struggle of the Cuban independence move is flanked by the Ten Years War leading to the Spanish-American War which subsequently culminated in the Cuban independence of 1902. The annexation of Puerto Rico as a territory resulted as a consequence of this 1898 conflict where the island was purchased in the treaty of Paris by the United States while Puerto Rico still remains in an unresolved colonial status. This fundamental change by annexation, the toppled Spanish parliamentary laws, early on conditional status of the Caribbean colonies and the mindset of the Puerto Rican population is the heart of the action and scenario of this chronicle. It is here where our story takes place as references and family are revisited in the provincial life of the peninsular Spanish labrador forcefully drafted into the Spanish military. The ever increasing exploitation by the Spanish crown over its Puerto Rican residents brings Gervasio Torano Rojo a Spanish soldier and Francisca Reboiras Roman, a farmer's daughter into marriage as did thousands of others during the black gold rush of the Cordillera Central, my grandparents, my family. Randle Sloan Torano (author)"