Dolores Real

It was June 7, 1854, and Dolores Real was forty years old. She had lived for thirty years, most of her life, in the city of Havana, Cuba. She was now heading back to her city of birth in Africa: Lagos, Nigeria. When she was just a small girl, Spanish slavers took her to Cuba aboard what she remembered as a large vessel. She and the others were dropped off at the town of Cardenas. From there, they were taken to the slave barracks in the island's capital, Havana, where she stayed for one month, awaiting her fate.

Dolores was then sold to a free Yoruba woman and a fellow Lagosian, Carmen Real. Carmen named her Dolores (her original Yoruba name is unknown) and took her in as a laborer. Carmen, a laundress, employed Dolores in the trade and taught her the necessary skills. Carmen also had eight or nine other female slaves working for her at the time. Six years later, Dolores was sold to Father Leon, for whom she worked as a domestic. It took seven years for her to save up the 450 pesos she needed to buy her freedom from the clergyman. On her own, Dolores returned to the trade she had learned from Carmen, and worked as a laundress, earning about fifteen pesos a month. She worked her way home, literally, saving what she could from these modest earnings until she was able to pay the 140 pesos it cost her for passage back to Lagos.