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 Book |
| Title: | Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba |
| Author: | Miller, Ivor L. |
| Year: | 2009 |
| Pages: | 432 |
| Language: | English |
| City of publisher: | Jackson, MS |
| Publisher: | University Press of Mississippi |
| ISBN: | 9781617033193; 9781934110836 |
| Geographic terms: | Nigeria Cameroon Cuba |
| Subjects: | slave trade slavery migration history |
| Abstract: | In this book, Miller shows how African migrants and their political fraternities played a formative role in the history of Cuba. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no large kingdoms controlled Nigeria and Cameroon's multilingual Cross River basin. Instead, each settlement had its own lodge of the initiation society called Ékpè, or 'leopard,' which was the highest indigenous authority. Ékpè lodges ruled local communities while also managing regional and long-distance trade. Cross River Africans, enslaved and forcibly brought to colonial Cuba, reorganized their Ékpè clubs covertly in Havana and Matanzas into a mutual-aid society called Abakuá, which became foundational to Cuba's urban life and music. |
