Brazil, Cuba and Colombia - countries with a significant proportion of people of African descent, where the abolition of slavery resulted from a process in which the slave trade had already lost power and economic dynamism before it actually ended - also share linguistic situations prototypical of the effects of contact with African languages in Latin America. These include the permanence of a lexicon of African origin and the formation of Creole languages, or restructured varieties of European languages.  
The individuals who were deported to America came from sub-Saharan Africa, a vast area stretching from Upper Guinea, on the west coast, to the south-central region. An indication of the origin of these transplanted people appeared in documents through the designation of their ports of embarkation, as well as generic names or, more rarely, their actual ethnic groups. Information relating to their origins was not always properly declared or recognized by those who made the records. This explains why there are question marks over what certain names, such as 'Mina', 'Angola', 'Congo' or even 'Negro da Costa' (negro of the coast), actually mean. As pointed out by scholars, the latter could be a 'Benguela', resident or born in the south of Angola, Benguela, or from the Gold Coast region in the Gulf of Guinea (Brügger and Oliveira, 2009; ÁlvarezLópez, 2015).  
In Cuba, according to Bernal (2008, pp. 58-59), African slaves were classified by their metaethnonyms: Gangá (Bulom, Kono, Egrie, Gbandi, Gola, Kissi, Cross, Loma, Mani and Vaï), Mandinga (Bagá, Bambará, Dyola, Fulbé, Malinké, Serer, Sosso, Yolofe, Bram and others), Mina (Ashanti, Manti, Gwa, Mina, Bonna and Gan), Arará (Fongbe, Ewe and Mahi), Carabalí (Baribá, Binni, Bolo, Chamba, Gbari, Hausa, Mosi, Nupe and Yoruba), Lucumí (Ekoi, Ibibio, Ijaw and Ibo), Congo (Gbanda, Boma, Bubi, Kamba, Kongo, Kuba, Marawi, Mbala, Mbamba, Mbundu, Ndamba, Ngangela, Nhanka-Humbi, Ovimbund, Rundi, Songe, Sundi, Teke and Yaka) and Macua (Macua and Malagasi).