The transatlantic slave trade was one of the most devastating and inhumane processes in human history. It is the subject of many studies, but the individual life histories of the arrival and survival of enslaved people in foreign lands remain largely untold.
A lawsuit filed against a slaver in 1589 in Antioquia (a province in today’s Colombia) allowed me to trace the paths of 11 enslaved Africans. The slaver needed to prove these Africans entered legally on ships and over land from Africa into the heart of a South American mining operation.
Their lives were extraordinarily challenging. They were captured near the Atlantic coast of Africa, by the rivers of Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone. One of them, Ana, was captured in the kingdom of Ndongo, in Angola, west-central Africa.
