Carlota Lucumi is known as one of the leaders of the slave rebellion at the Triunvirato plantation in Mantanzas, Cuba. Carlota was an Afrikan-born free woman from the Kingdom of Benin, West Africa. Her last name, Lucumi, comes from her ethnic group, the Lucumi people, Afro-Brazilians, who are descended from the Yoruba of present- day Nigeria and the Benin Republic.
In 1843 Lucumi and another enslaved woman named Firmina began to plot a rebellion among the slaves. Their plan called for a simultaneous uprising on Triumvirato and surrounding plantations. A plantation owner found Fermina as she was distributing this information to other plantations and had her severely beaten and then imprisoned.
Despite this setback, Lucumi continued to organize the uprising. Using music as a form of communication, she sent coded messages by drum to nearby slaves, coordinating the rebellion.
On November 3, 1843, Lucumi along with other tribal leaders Filip, Narcisco, Manuel Ganga, and Eduardo, led a raid that initiated what would be known as the Triumvirato Rebellion. Wielding a machete, she first freed Firmina and a dozen other slaves being held in captivity in a house on the property. She then burned the house that had been used to torture slaves, killed the overseer’s daughter, Maria de Regla, and then forced Julian Luis Alfonso, the owner of the Triumvirato plantation, to flee. In their brief two-day rebellion, they destroyed five sugar plantations, as well as a number of coffee and cattle estates. The day the last plantation was destroyed, Lucumi and Firmina were both captured and executed.
