History Africa and the diaspora in Cuba

When the atlantic slave trade began in the early 1500's Cuba was a rare destination. It wasn't until the early 1700's that Cuba became a main destination and large numbers of Africans were brought to Cuba. When Cuba began competing as a major sugar producing colony under the control of Spain in the 1740's, the need for manual labor increased further increasing the number of people brought to Cuba. In the early 1760's Havana was taken over by England and the sugar production was under British control. At that time Britain had a well established slave trade and while Britain was in control of Havana they brought over 5000 Africans to the island. As sugar production increased so did the number of slaves taken from Africa and brought to the island. In 1818 Spain opened cuban exports to the rest of the world and subsequently the number of slaves brought to the island skyrocketed. From 1835-1840 over 165,000 slaves were brought to Cuba.
The majority of the slaves brought to the island were of West African descent and were Yoruba speaking people. The culture of the Yoruba people still survives in Cuba today and the religion merged with Catholicism to form the religion Santeria. Cuban dances resemble the original Yoruban dances slightly modified.  The slave trade that began in the early 1500's and ended in Cuba in 1866 brought a wide variety of people of different origins, mainly the Yoruba speaking people from West Africa, and resulted in a blended culture that survives in Cuba today. Cuba's wide variety of cultural background should prove to be an extremely interesting research topic and I look forward to learning about the effect the African diaspora has had on Cuban culture.

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Sources- 

1) Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society http://www.melfisher.org/exhibitions/lastslaveships/cuba.htm

2)The African Diaspora http://www.duke.edu/~lrw/diaspora.html