Prieto

Yorùba Kingship in Colonial Cuba During the Age of Revolutions

By: Henry B. Lovejoy

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Hardcover | 4 February 2019

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240 Pages

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This Atlantic world history centers on the life of Juan Nepomuceno Prieto (c. 1773–c. 1835), a member of the West African Yoruba people enslaved and taken to Havana during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Richly situating Prieto's story within the context of colonial Cuba, Henry B. Lovejoy illuminates the vast process by which thousands of Yoruba speakers were forced into life-and-death struggles in a strange land. In Havana, Prieto, and most of the people of the Yoruba diaspora, were identified by the colonial authorities as Lucumi. Prieto's evolving identity becomes the fascinating fulcrum of the book. Drafted as an enslaved soldier for Spain, Prieto achieved self-manumission while still in the military. Rising steadily in his dangerous new world, he became the religious leader of Havana's most famous Lucumi cabildo, where he contributed to the development of the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. Then, he was arrested on suspicion of fomenting slave rebellion. Trial testimony shows that he fell ill, but his ultimate fate is unknown.

Despite the silences and contradictions that will never be fully resolved, Prieto's life opens a window onto how Africans creatively developed multiple forms of identity and resistance in Cuba and in the Atlantic world more broadly.

Industry Reviews

In his detailed biography of the life of Juan Nepomuceno Prieto, Henry B. Lovejoy takes the story of one enslaved Yoruban in Cuba to reveal the broader context of the transatlantic slave trade and colonial life on the island. . . . In presenting Prieto's story, Lovejoy opens up the broader history and narrative of identity and its construction in terms of both race and religion. . . . Prieto adds to [the] conversation, providing us with another window onto the world of enslaved and freed slaves in the nineteenth century.--New West Indian Guide

Lovejoy not only immersed himself in Pietro's historical record but also in the other scholarly reconstitutions of the diverse cultures in the Americas and especially those in Cuba. . . . The incorporation of this wideranging investigation gives the reader a fuller picture not only of Prieto's life but also of the lives of the peoples in his world and a notion of how his world evolved into ours.--Nova Religio

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