Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Grassroots Africans: Havana's “Lagosians”
- 2 Returning to Lagos: Making the Oja Home
- 3 “Second Diasporas”: Reception in the Bight of Benin
- 4 Situating Lagosian, Caribbean, and Latin American Diasporas
- 5 Creating Afrocubanos: Public Cultures in a Circum-Atlantic Perspective
- Conclusion: Flow, Community, and Diaspora
- Appendix Case Studies of Returnees to Lagos from Havana, Cuba
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
4 - Situating Lagosian, Caribbean, and Latin American Diasporas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Grassroots Africans: Havana's “Lagosians”
- 2 Returning to Lagos: Making the Oja Home
- 3 “Second Diasporas”: Reception in the Bight of Benin
- 4 Situating Lagosian, Caribbean, and Latin American Diasporas
- 5 Creating Afrocubanos: Public Cultures in a Circum-Atlantic Perspective
- Conclusion: Flow, Community, and Diaspora
- Appendix Case Studies of Returnees to Lagos from Havana, Cuba
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
Summary
The Brazilians began to arrive in Lagos and in Ouidah at the end of the eighteenth century. … They maintained, on the Guinea Coast, Brazilian traditions: patriarchal organization of the family, architecture of homes, devotion to the cult of Senhor do Bonfin, celebrations, dances, and until recently, the Portuguese language. Were the Cubans able to make their mark with the Brazilians?
—Pérez de la Riva, Documentos para la historia de las gentes sin historia, 30But they [did] come when my mother [was] alive. They [did] come from [the Cuban] embassy. And, when they walked into here—they were here, in the compound … at the lodge, that time my mother [was] alive. That summer they were here, she had seen them—and my mother [was] so happy. So happy that she, she wept! I remember. Ah-ha … that's life.
—Mrs. Aderemi Gooding-King, granddaughter of Aguda Hilario CamposPérez de la Riva answers his own question about the Cuban presence in Lagos, Nigeria, in the negative, citing a lack of “evidence of Cuban culture” in Lagos. However, as seen in the work of Cuban historian Rodolfo Sarracino and from my own interviews with Aguda of Cuban heritage there is evidence of Cuban contributions to the culture of the Aguda in Lagos. Indeed, the very name of Campos Square, where the Cuban Lodge is located, shows that an entire area in Lagos is named after a Cuban repatriate.
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- Information
- Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World , pp. 88 - 110Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010