This African chant mourns the loss of Olaudah Equiano, an eleven-year-old boy who, in 1755, was kidnapped from his home in what is now Nigeria. He was purchased by a captain in the British Royal Navy, was later sold to a Quaker merchant in the Caribbean, and in 1766 bought his freedom. He wrote his autobiography in 1789, giving readers a rare glimpse of how it felt to be kidnapped from home in Africa and to survive onboard a slave trader's ship. In his autobiography, Equiano wrote, "There are few events in my life that have not happened to many." By this, he referred to the kidnapping of millions of free West Africans by slave traders, who then sold them to wealthy merchants and plantation owners.
There were three main causes for the Cuban independence movement and they were
1) discontent with the Spanish rule (Cuba and Puerto Rico were the only colonies still under the Spanish rule and Cubans did not want to deal with the taxes and despotism of the colonial rule)
2) The US ship Maine went to Havana, however, the ship was sunk due to an unexplained explosion. The Spanish were blamed for this incident. The colonial rule tried to appease the US government, however, it was to no avail.
3) The third cause for the revolution was the poverty of the Cuban people which was just exacerbated by the taxes imposed by the Spanish
