As my family and I were making our way to this new world on the ship that brought us from Africa. The men that took us and put us on these ships, were practicing this weird and kind of interesting voodoo or ritual that we were not accustomed to. They were praying to a certain God and they were saying his son Jesus. And on this journey, they also had these men who they called a priest. Before we were put on the ships these men who were called priests came to our village and taught us all about what the Catholic faith was all about. They converted us and said that we were part of their country because we became Catholic. As we got to the new world we began practicing the Catholic religion and it was very different to us. We come from a place where we had many of different gods and deities that we prayed too and different ceremonies for them, but now we only celebrate mass and while we were in our homeland they came to us and told us that this is the right religion and the religion that we were practicing was the incorrect one. Then they told us that Catholicism is the correct one and told us that since we are part of this colony we need to practice the right religion. As we arrived in the new world we became more prominent in the Catholic faith. We started practicing the Catholic religion. As time goes on the country of Cuba began to become a Roman Catholic practicing country and it all started when the Europeans came to our country in Africa and they converted us and then brought us to the new world. As time went on Cuba became predominantly Roman Catholic but also as time went on some of the people came over with me, they revolted and they kept their religion and practiced it. This did not make the men happy and some of my friends who revolted were never seen again. They tried to tell us that the Catholic faith is the only religion and that anyone who did not practice it would be punished.

My name is Graham and I have been in the slave trade as a slave and this world has been very scary. I have had people who I care very much be taken away from me and I have been separated from half of my family. I have been bought and sold from many of people do to the lack of workers in the new world. This all began when I was taken out of my country of Africa, and was put on a ship and then was not told where I was being taken. But then I was brought to this new world where I met some people who lived in what they call Cuba. They told me that these new men came into their country and took them and moved them off of their own land and then put them to work. They were very furious with these new men that came into their country due to the fact that they were forced into slavery on their own land. This led them to start fights and began to revolt. This also led me to find out from some of the natives that they had friends who started to die off and they have no idea why they were. But what we learned is that they were becoming sick and this led to them dying. They mistreated a lot of the natives and I saw it first hand when they brought me to the new world, when I was on the ship. They would beat a lot of people on the ship, we rarely got fed and then they started to throw a lot of people over board for no reason. I witnessed first-hand that people were being attacked by sharks when they were being thrown overboard and then they were being thrown into these rooms if they were not feeling well. They ended up getting more sick and dying in a few days. My friend was fine on the boat and then a few days later he eventually started to grow sores on his body and they snatched him away from us and threw into one of these rooms.

The year is 1863 and me and my family have been captured and taken from our village in the Whydah. We are very terrified and do not know what is going on or why we have been captured. All we know is that they are taking us on this huge ship along with the majority of our village and they are throwing us on this huge ship. They say we are being brought to a place to start a new life and to help and make money. What we did not know was that we were making money for the men that have taken us and selling us. They told us that the boat is named the Cicerón and that it is owned by Julián Zulueta and José Carreras. The voyage to the port that we are going to was very nerve-racking. For the months we were sailing, things happened that I had never seen. We come from a small village and I had never seen so many people in one place, especially in such a small space. There are more then 960 people on this ship, many of them coming from all over Africa to be sent to what we found out is the country of Cuba. The trip over was nothing that I had ever seen. My family and I were scared to death due to the fact that we did not know what was going to happen to us once we got off the ship and because we did not know what was going to happen to us while on the boat. While on the boat we became friends with some of the other passengers. But it was very difficult because one day our friends would be there and the next they would be gone. We have no idea where they went or why they were taken away. Some of the passengers were taken away because they started to develop these sores on their body and began to look sick. We had no idea what to do for them and one day they were taken away to another room. We saw them take some of our friends and tell them that they were going over board, or that they were going to be food for the sharks. We had no idea what they were talking about, but this frightened us to death not knowing what sharks were. Eventually, we got close to where we were landing and they were saying this will be our home for the rest of our lives.

“EXPLORE THE DISPERSAL OF ENSLAVED AFRICANS ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

WORLD.” Slave Voyages, www.slavevoyages.org/.

The day is Sunday February 23^rd in the country of Cuba. There are so many changes that are happening the this great country, meaning that there are so many strange men that are coming into my country. My fellow Cubans and I are very afraid of these men due to the fact that they bring new technology and people that do not look like us. They are forcing us into working and many of my friends and family have been dying off ever since they have arrived. These men call themselves Spaniards and tell us that they are here for a new opportunity. As time has gone on, more and more ships keep arriving and our population keeps growing and growing. These men that arrive with the Spaniards do not look anything like my fellow Cubans and the Spaniards. The Spaniards also treat them worse than the way they treat us. Ever since they have shown up the population has grown to 700 slaves (Hunt). They have them doing all different types of things such as the agriculture and domestic work (Hunt). Ever since the Spaniards, they have also taken my family and friends and they are putting us to work in terrible conditions and the days are long. Since the Spaniards have been bringing over slaves from Africa, the population of our country has grown immensely. With Spaniards coming into our country many big cities and major port cities. This led to many people moving in to the country, and with more Spaniards coming in, this led to more slaves being imported into our country and causing our country population to increase exponentially. They have started making a new time of product in our country called tobacco and sugar cane. With this new crop many new people have been fleeing to our country and wanting to live here. I have been experiencing new things over the time since the Spaniards have arrived. Many new people have been showing up and this has led to my city and the cities around the country of Cuba to grow at a very fast rate. But this has led to a lot of up rises and led to many revolts that lead to a lot of death and caused many of my friends to die. We see what the Spaniards are doing to us and the other people that they have brought in and we do not like what is going on. This has been causing a lot of problems and leads to major revolts and caused a lot of death. We do not like these Spaniards because of what they are doing to us and we want this to end.

Hunt, Nigel. “Cuba History .Org - Settlement.” Cuba History .Org - History of Cuban Nation,

www.cubahistory.org/en/spanish-settlement/settlement.html.

I know when people think of Cuba many people think of cigars, Fidel Castro, trade agreements, and how the cars look like they are from the 50s. You also think about Cuba as a not well-developed country and oppressed by their government and by the way they isolated themselves from other countries. Before all of these things, Cuba was a major part of the slave trade and the trade of local goods. Cuba relied primarily on the production of sugar cane (Trollope). Because it was a major import, slaves were brought over to help produce and harvest these goods. For about 350 years, the Atlantic slave trade provided the Spanish colony of Cuba with a continuing supply of young African American men (Love). But the British also profited from the trades and goods that Cuba had produced. Britain used Cuba for its supply of sugar cane and with these trades helped out Britain’s economy grow. But after the years of the Napoleonic War, British attitudes stiffened into opposition to the human traffic to Cuba and elsewhere in the New World (Love). Many other nations began to follow in the footsteps of Great Britain and try to stop the import of slaves into other countries. Eight years after the Constitutional Convention, the negotiations at Ghent American delegates agreed to join forces with Great Britain “to use their best endeavors” to achieve “the entire abolition of the slave trade” (Love). This all happened before the Civil War in the United States and its pretty impressive to see that other countries were not in favor of the slave trade that was going on in Cuba was against what people believed back before it was a big deal. Cuba began to suffer when countries were trying to get rid of slavery in Cuba, and stopping it from spreading to the new world. 

LOVE, ROBERT WM. “THE END OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE TO CUBA.” Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 2/3, 1976, pp. 51–58. JSTOR

Trollope, Anthony. “Cuba.” New England Review (1990-), vol. 31, no. 3, 2010, pp. 178–190. JSTOR