Sweet thing: a personal look at a photographer’s Cuban slavery heritage – photo essay

From the remnants of my great-grandparents’ Cuban home near the sugar plantation that is part of Unesco’s Slave Route programme – where they were once enslaved - to personal artefacts, each piece reconstructs an uncertain past

Gathering information on our origins that might help with constructing self-identities could be a beautiful endeavour.

Unfortunately, for millions of people worldwide, retracing a past filled with unfinished stories is like trying to nurture a tree whose roots have been severed.

I still remember that narrow ribbon of earth winding down from my grandfather’s house towards the old Triunvirato plantation – the same fields where an enslaved woman called Carlota, who led an uprising in 1843, raised her voice against chains. In the silence of that road, it feels like a place that has been frozen in time