African diaspora and the circulation of language: Cuban and Afro-Cuban loanwords in Equatorial Guinea

Abstract

AbstractWhen in 1861 nearly 200 emancipated black Cubans settled in the “Barrio Congo” of Fernando Po to work in public construction, a process of language contact initiated. Four years later, a few hundred political activists were deported from Cuba to Fernando Po because of their potential influence in the Cuban revolution. This historical episode might have triggered Cubans’ and Afro-Cubans’ lexical transfers to the Spanish spoken in Fernando Po as a result of the two-way connection of the transatlantic slave trade. Based on royal decrees, archival material and the memoirs of Cuban exiles (Balmaseda, Francisco Javier. [1869] 1874.