Prieto: Yoruba Kinship in Colonial Cuba during the Age of Revolutions by Henry B. Lovejoy (review)

This original and fascinating book connects Africa and Latin America in a world created by the violence of the transatlantic slave trade. The Oyo Empire, an expansive and notable empire that wielded power among the Yoruba and their neighbors, created a Pan-Yorubana, whose consequences in religion and world-view migrated to Cuba, where several of Oyo's cultural and religious practices and values were produced. The storyline is woven around a powerful central figure, a Yoruba with the new name of Juan Nepomuceno Prieto, whose life was dated from ca. 1773 to ca. 1835. The sources to sustain the work include slave trade narratives, registers of traffic in slaves, and trial records. The book contributes to the multiple fields of African diaspora studies, Latin American history, the Yoruba in the Atlantic world, and slavery and resistance.

The funneling to the Americas of enslaved Yoruba people during the Atlantic slave trade provides the context for the overarching narrative. Cuba was a destination point. Prieto, like thousands of other Yoruba slaves, known as Lucumi, lived an excruciatingly difficult life in Havana. It was here that Prieto emerged, accidentally of course, into some kind of prominence. He was drafted as a slave to become a soldier for Spain, a military service that granted him the opportunity to work for self-manumission. Thereafter, he became a community and religious leader, leading the most recognized cabildo (socio-religious brotherhood) and becoming a preeminent figure in the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. As he drew more people unto himself, Cuban officials suspected that he was planning a slave rebellion, and he was arrested and tried in 1835. His end was unclear, as he fell ill during the process, and he disappeared from historical records. The book is nuanced in capturing all the contradictions, as well as the missing records that created a narrative without closure.

The tragic ending began on July 12, 1835, as a small calamity that escalated into a tragedy. A small disturbance by a group of about thirty recently liberated slaves in Havana was forcefully put down by the military police and some citizens. What followed was revenge in which those involved with the disturbance were arrested and tried, and four were publicly executed. Rumors filled the air that Lucumi slaves were planning a mass rebellion to end slavery and declare the independence of Cuba. Prieto was identified as the leader, principal instigator, and planner.

This book lends itself to multiple readings. First, it is a comprehensive biography of Prieto, portraying the life of a creolized African. This adds to the short list of slave biographies dating back to the studies on Olaudah Equiano, and it connects powerfully to Jane Landers's Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolution.¹ Lovejoy's portrayal of Prieto is rich, with evidence to support certain aspects of his life and career.

A second reading is on the slave rebellion. The fall of Prieto was tied to the fear in the early nineteenth century of an imminent slave rebellion. Prieto was caught in a web of conspiracies at a restless moment, which explains why Lovejoy connects the narrative to the "Age of Revolutions," as well as to the fear of uprisings—real and imagined. This can be read along with works on the Cuban insurgency led by Aponte,² as well as the American, French, and Haitian revolutions.

The third reading is more closely connected to the objectives of this journal—the centrality of Afro-Atlantic religion in the biography and broader canvas of Cuban history. Religious worldviews triggered associational life and communal duties, generating an ethos of rebellion and strategies of resistance. For two decades, Prieto led the Mutual Aid Society of the Lucumi Nation of Santa Barbara, a religious-cum-social organization that engaged in Yoruba religion and assisted one another. As seen in the case of Aponte and of Islam in Bahia, authorities...