Sources

Macaulay, Zachary, ed. The Anti-Slavery Reporter. Under the Sanction of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Vol 2, 3rd ser. London: Peter Jones Bolton, 1854, 234–39.

Pérez de la Riva, Juan. Documentos para la historia de las gentes sin historia. 1960. Reprint, Havana: Biblioteca Nacional de José Martí, 1969.

Joaquín Pérez

A native of Lagos, Joaquín Pérez was between fifty and sixty years old at the time of his journey back to the city of his birth. He had lived in Havana for about thirty years. Joaquín first arrived in Cuba with three hundred other enslaved Africans on a Spanish ship, on which there was an outbreak of smallpox. However, only four people were lost to the disease at sea. Upon reaching Cuba, Joaquín was taken to the Castillo Principe slave barracks, where he waited for three days before being sold to a businessman named Don Pérez. He worked as a dockworker with other slaves until he was sold to Joaquín Lupicio, under whom he worked for fifteen years before saving up enough money to buy his freedom for 550 pesos. His wife, Martina Seguí, and his eighteen-year-old son, Crescencio Seguí, accompanied him back to Africa. Joaquín paid a total of 300 pesos for their journey.

Martina Seguí

Martina Seguí was a child when she arrived in Havana, about thirty years before joining her husband, Joaquín Pérez, on their journey. She was between forty and forty-five years old when she made her declaration to ship officials upon boarding the repatriation vessel. Martina had been taken from Lagos to Havana with five hundred other captives.