Resumen de African diaspora and the circulation of language: Cuban and Afro-Cuban loanwords in Equatorial Guinea
When 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. Los confinados a Fernando Po e impresiones de un viage a Guinea. New York: Imprenta de la revolución; Bravo Sentíes, Miguel. 1869. Revolución cubana. Deportación a Fernando Po. Relación que hace uno de los deportados. New York: Halle y Breen. Collection Development Department, Widener Library, HCL. Harvard University (accessed on 18 March 2012).; Saluvet, Juan B. 1892. Los deportados a Fernando Póo en 1869: memoria escrita por Juan B. Saluvet. Matanzas: Imprenta Aurora del Yumuri.; Sifredo y Llopiz, Hipólito. 1893. Los mártires cubanos en 1869. La más exacta narración de las penalidades y los martirios de los 250 deportados políticos a Fernando Po. Primeras víctimas propiciatorias de la insurrección de Cuba en la Habana. Habana: imprenta La Prensa de Ricardo M. Dávila.; Valdés Ynfante, Emilio. 1898. Cubanos en Fernando Pó. Habana: Imprenta “El Fígaro”, 1898. Collection Development Department, Widener Library, HCL. Harvard University. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:641407 (accessed 11 July 2012).; Miranda, Manuel M. 1903. Memorias de un deportado. Habana: Imprenta la luz.), I reconstruct the historical context of that language contact and discuss the type of intercolonial borrowings that circulated on both sides of the Atlantic during the nineteenth century – a “linguistic boomerang” in Maniacky, Jacky. 2013. Africanisms in American English: Critical Notes on Sources and Methodology’. In: Robin Poynor Susan Cooksey & Hein Vanhee (eds.), Kongo across the Waters. Florida: University Press of Florida. words.
