Palo Monte Mayombe and its influence on Cuban contemporary art.

The "rayados," those sworn into the Congo Reglas, as are the Lucumi [Yoruba] descendants and initiates in the cult of the Orishas, consider themselves united by a sacred bond of mystical kinship and, like them, speak and pray in their language.... A Mayombero friend of mine, his eyes filling with tears as he remembered the Congo mothers he had known in his childhood from the mill where he was born, sang for me the crib song that they were in the habit of singing to put their children to sleep:

   Tata solele lembaka solembaka
   Lune nene suati kuame
   Munu sunga Nsambi lune lune.

   Sleep, my little baby, so you can go to
   heaven and give god -- Nsambi -- a cigar.

(Cabrera 1986b:121-22; my translation)

Kongo culture still resonates throughout the Caribbean. Many Cuban practitioners of the religion known as Palo Monte Mayombe (colloquially) Palo Monte or Palo) or Congo Reglas, among other names, (1) refer to their homeland as Ngola (Ngola a Kiluanje, "the land between the lower Kwanza and the Dande"), from which derives the Europeanized "Angola." (2) Through a detailed discussion of Palo Monte initiation, I will discuss the significance of some of the religion's Kongo-derived iconography and show how it finds expression in the work of three Cuban contemporary artists, particularly Jose Bedia, an initiated practitioner.

Nganga and Mpungus

Palo Monte is related to religious practices from the historical kingdom of Kongo in central Africa, and the language used by Cuban practitioners is heavily indebted to Ki-Kongo. (3) It is intriguing to speculate on the origins of its Spanish name, for within the religion palo monte refers to "spirits embodied in the sticks in the forest." A palo is a segment of wood; monte is the forest or a rural area, where local rule is dominant. Palo also describes the sections of wood that form a palisade around a military outpost or rural stronghold. As such, the name of the religion reflects the reputation of people of Kongo descent in Cuba; they are rural, strong, and strong willed. (4)

In Cuba, Kongo ancestor spirits are considered fierce, rebellious, and independent. The greatest power in the Palo Monte faith is Nsambi (Nzambi), and below him practitioners venerate mpungus, spirits of the ancestors and spirits of natural forces. In some cases an mpungu has a proper name, such as Nsasi or Sarabanda or Baluande. (5) This pantheon can be even more refined, for a named mpungu may have multiple aspects which also have proper names. For example, there are many different Sarabandas, each having a distinguishing modifier, such as the Sarabanda Tongalena. (6)

Each mpungu can be known by four names: a name in the Palo Monte religion, a creole or Congo-Cuban name, a name in the Yoruba-based religion La Regla de Ocha (also known as Santeria and Lucumi), and a name in Cuban-Spanish (see Fig. 2). These are often used interchangeably, yet diacritically, in my own field experience, practitioners frequently used a Santeria name, because most visitors interested in Cuban religions are more familiar with Santeria terminology than any other. The orichas of Santeria have been part of the official national cultural agenda since the Triumph of the Revolution. J. Lorand Matory writes (1994:226):

   Despite the numerical prominence of central African captives during the
   slave trade and the strength of their cultural influence throughout the
   diaspora, Oyo-Yoruba gods are the core of a "metalanguage", or lingua
   franca, according to which even religious groups consciously opposed to the
   Yoruba--such as Bahian Candomble Angola, Umbanda in Rio de Janeiro and Sao
   Paulo, and Cuban Palo Mayombe--feel obliged to identify the beings they
   worship.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

The essence of Palo Monte, however, can be condensed in the concept of nganga, the religion's central icon. In central Africa the nganga is a wise and powerful man who conducts religious rituals. In Cuba it is a receptacle, also called a prenda or cazuela (Sp.) (7)--usually a clay container, a gourd, or a tripod iron cauldron, which is kept in the backyard, in a cellar, or in the monte under a tree. The most commonly depicted nganga is the iron pot, often resting on a tripod stand (Fig. 1), for Sarabanda (Fig. 3), the mpungu associated with things made of iron. Other Palo mpungus use distinct types of nganga. For example, Chola Wengue, Baluande, and Nsasi use differently shaped clay pots called tinaja (Sp.) (Fig. 4). Chola Wengue's is painted yellow or orange, Baluande's is blue, and Nsasi's is red. Another mpungu, Centella Ndoki, uses an nganga made from a gourd.

[FIGURES 1 & 3-4 OMITTED]

In service to Palo Monte, the initiate accumulates power through the objects he or she deposits in the nganga. These are many and varied. The eminent Cuban ethnographer Lydia Cabrera comments (1986b:126; my translation):

   [The nganga] is spirit, a supernatural force, but it is also the name for
   the entire receptacle ... and the wrapping, a sack of Russian cloth ... in
   which is deposited a skull and human bones, earth from the cemetery and
   from a grave, sticks, herbs, bowls, bones of birds and animals, and other
   items that make up an Nganga.... Moreover, the Nganga signifies the
   deceased.

The word nganga, then, can refer to the pot itself, the power of the pot, or the owner of the pot. It is a world in miniature, and when one is initiated into the final level in Palo, one receives a personal nganga. Thus, initiation makes nganga--both the priest and the pot.

Palo Monte belief, reflected to a large degree in the nganga's contents, is centered on assistance from ancestors and a relationship with the earth, one's land, one's home. According to Cabrera (1986b:125), "After Nsambi, Regla Conga believers venerate the souls of the ancestors, the dead, and the spirits of nature that live in trees and in rivers, and they [the believers] also make agreements with those spirits who live in the woods and in rivers ..."

Jose Bedia, whose own initiation and art are discussed below, explained Palo this way (in Hanly 1994:52):

   Palo teaches that there are spiritual forces within the natural world. Our
   lives depend on them. The religion offers ways to relate to those forces
   and bring their energy to play more directly in our lives. Prayer in Palo
   can be to go off alone to some natural place and leave a simple offering.
   Prayer can be collecting small bits of nature--particular roots or plants
   or stones or water or animals--and combining them in sacred recipes which
   release certain energy.

Initiation Preliminaries

At the core of Palo Monte iconography lie references to the mpungus and to the initiation process itself. While initiation can be discussed in many ways and to many ends, my purpose here is to demonstrate how it influences a recognizable aesthetic structure and a pictorial iconography. (8) Many practitioners of La Regla de Ocha were first initiated into Palo Monte, as was Julian de las Nieves Cagnet, of Santiago de Cuba. (9) This 104-year-old santero (initiate of Santeria, or La Regla de Ocha) offered this memory of his Palo Monte initiation (Del Caribe 1988:106-7; my translation):

   When I was nine I was rayado, scratched at the four winds, in a cabildo on
   Calle Carniceria. (10) I was with Pa Lorenzo, who was called Pa Guede in
   Santo; (11) with his wife, the deceased Manga; with my grandfather, who was
   carabali; (12) and my father, son of the "nacion." The floors were dirt and
   the rooms were lined so to be dark, because there was a secret that was
   being kept; it wasn't divulged like today.... My grandmother held a
   cauldron on my head and at each of my bare feet; on my legs they put a
   little box covered with a black handkerchief which had an animal which
   dragged itself [i.e., a snake (13)]. They made four scratches on my arm,
   almost on the shoulder: three lengthwise off the little box so that the
   animal which drags itself would go up my body; but I was so terrified when
   I saw the little animal that I ran around yelling all over the cabildo, and
   the animal ended up going up Pa Lorenzo's leg.

My explication of this testimony and expanded discussion of initiation are based on two firsthand experiences of initiation, Jose Bedia's in Havana in 1983 and Gladyse Gonzalez Bueno's in Santiago de Cuba, also in the early 1980s. I have also drawn on Gonzalez Bueno's numerous insights gained from her interviews with Palo practitioners (Gonzalez Bueno 1988). (14) Bedia, after his own initiation, assisted Alberto Goicochea, his tata (the title given to one who has attained the highest level of initiation), (15) during the initiation of other members of his casa-templo (Sp., house-temple).

Bedia's description of the initiation process commenced with this analogy: practitioners are members of the orchestra, each playing his or her part, and the tata is its conductor. Preparation for the initiation includes protecting the area around the casa-templo, in his own case a full square block. Bedia explained how, during a long period in the urban history of Cuba, these religious activities were subject to police harassment. In her interviews with initiates in the 1940s and '50s (1986a:15), Cabrera also indicates that it was important to safeguard the house from the police. During Bedia's youth in Havana (1959-1991), (16) however, the casa-templo was to be protected more from spiritual contamination than political persecution.

Cabrera uses the word makutos (sing. nkuto) to refer to the small packets that are left at each corner of the block, while Bedia describes an nkuto as a small portable nganga (Fig. 5). This is not a contradiction but merely an amplification of the term's meaning. Masango (a type of nkuto), impermanent packets made from corn husks and containing earth from the four directions and from the principal nganga of the house, help protect the area. One initiate explained to Cabrera (1986a:15):

   We take four corn husks and inside of this packet [the masango] we put four
   kernels of corn and a little of the kimbisa [soil from the nganga?]. We tie
   it from the outside to the inside and knot it. We spit three times on top
   of the fundamento (nganga). The masango is passed 7 times over the top of a
   candle and 7 little mounds of fula [gunpowder] are put in front of the
   masango. The gunpowder is ignited. We spit three more times and the masango
   is pointed toward (carried to) the four corners. (17)

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

In Bedia's experience, two members of the house are each given two small masango. They exit the house and run at break-neck speed, in opposite directions, around the block. Each of the four masango are dropped at the corners, and when the assistants meet each other during the run they must not look at one another or acknowledge the other's presence. At the house, their arrival is eagerly anticipated and a song is sung: Llego buen amigo (My good friend has arrived)/Llego buen amigo. They then enter the house and shake hands with everyone as the Palo phrase of greeting is repeated: Salaam malekum, salaam malekum. (18) The special Palo handshake resembles the greeting used by many African Americans in the United States: each initiate's right thumbs are locked together, and as the palms meet both hands are rocked back and forth. (19)

Another activity preceding the actual initiation is the initiate's bath or cleansing, the limpieza (Sp.) or omiero, (20) for which various herbs are torn up and placed in the water. At the same time, assistants create a blessing for the house by drawing a firma (a signature, a composite name, a cosmogram; see examples in Thompson 1993:68-69) on the earth in front of the nganga. The creation of a firma, which resembles the veve of Haitian Vodou in form and function, is an essential, primary act in the ceremony. Without the firma, the mpungus do not have a path into the ceremony, and communication with them will not occur.

In working with his or her nganga the initiate also learns the firmas; it is an act of offering, an aesthetic act (Fig. 6). These signs are made up of caminos (Sp.), or "roads." Thus a particular firma becomes a vehicle for calling on the spirits or for communicating a sacred act. Firmas can also be combined to communicate more complex meanings. Each casa-templo has its own firma, which anyone initiated into that house may use. Each mpungu also has its own, which can be used when that spirit or its nganga is activated. Then there are personal firmas that should not be reproduced. (21)

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

Before initiation or any other ceremony begins, firmas are drawn on the ground around the room. Gunpowder placed at specific locations near the motifs is lit to awaken and activate the mpungus who will assist in the ceremony. Firmas drawn on the initiate's back and chest put the initiate at the center of the life force during the ceremony itself. These firmas often incorporate Kongo-derived references to the circling of the sun around the earth and to the Kalunga line, or the horizon line, the division between heaven and earth. As-Robert Farris Thompson makes quite clear in his groundbreaking analysis of Kongo cosmograms, "[i]n Kongo there is scarcely an initiation or ritual transformation of the person from one level of existence to another that does not take its patterning from the circle of the sun about the earth" (Thompson & Cornet 1981:43).

Bedia first met Tata Alberto in 1976, but he was not initiated until 1983. (22) In the interim he became increasingly interested in the African-based religions of Cuba. One of Bedia's closest friends in art school, Ricardo Rodriguez Brey, came from a family of practitioners, and through him he was introduced to many followers of La Regla de Ocha and Palo Monte. Bedia commented that at this point his relationship with these religions was "como una especie de curiosidad antropologica de mi propio pais" (like a kind of anthropological curiosity about my own country). By 1982 he was ready to learn more, and met with Tata Alberto to discuss his possible initiation.

In the requisite initial meetings the tata performed a consultation involving the tossing of four pieces of coconut shells. There are three main types of divination; the kind that is used is determined by the question being asked. In addition to coconut shells, one can use cowries or other ocean shells, and even gunpowder. This initial divination session determines if one is going to become an ngueyo, the first level of initiated participation in Palo, or a tata, the highest level. Bedia has achieved the rank of tata.

The name of the candidate's guiding spirit is also revealed, as is the list of ingredients that are required by the tata and the mpungu for the nganga. Because these are sometimes difficult to obtain, the next step in the initiation process can be delayed--for six months in Jose Bedia's case. Bedia received Sarabanda, and references to this spirit occur frequently in his installations, as I will discuss later. (23)

As Sarabanda is associated with metals, its nganga might hold such things as a magnet, nails, a knife, pliers, razor blades, a horseshoe, and scissors. Bedia was told that he should try to include a pistol, to be guarded by the tata until all the other ingredients were assembled. Other Sarabanda ingredients are handcuffs (difficult to obtain in Cuba), which signify the potential of being locked up by the police, and a special kind of whistle used by Havana police. These items associated with violence help the initiate control his or her own aggression. Bedia commented that sometimes a lock is also included, a reminder of the oppression of slavery. Another Cuban artist, Ludvik Reginfo Perez, included many of these ingredients in his altar-assemblage in Figure 1.

The Initiation Proper

The actual initiation begins with the herbal bath. The candidate is washed from the neck down and often walks in a circle during this procedure. Multiples of seven are sacred in Palo. Gonzalez Bueno indicates that the bath is prepared with seven, fourteen, or twenty-one leaves from specified plants. Ritual events take place over a seven-day period. There are twenty-one palos placed around the circumference of an nganga. In firmas, twenty-one paths of energy, sometimes drawn as an arrow with twenty-one intersecting marks, are included in the graphic ensemble. A double-snake motif is called twenty-one, and a snake is represented by an S, again crossed with twenty-one marks (Fig. 6).

The clothing donned after the bath marks one as a participant in Palo: old pants rolled up to the knees, a bandana around the head, and a towel over the shoulders (Fig. 7); the torso and feet are bare. This outfit reminds practitioners of the rural roots of Palo and ultimately the field slave.

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

According to Gonzalez Bueno, after the bath the tata tears up the initiate's old clothes, which are then placed on the ground and covered with the same leaves used in the bath water. With his foot the tata then drags the clothes toward the side of the room. They are later taken to a special place, preferably in the countryside. I have been told that often they are buried under a special tree along with the initiate's nganga. The tree most often used for these rituals is the ceiba, known as nkunia nsambi, the branch (nkunia) of god (nsambi). (24)

At this point in the initiation, Bedia's and Gonzalez Bueno's accounts differ slightly. For example, Bedia describes how assistants indicate the four directions on the initiate's body with chalk, mpemba or tiza (Sp.). Above each design they make a mark with an nkunia (stick) and a sweeping motion of a machete. Then the machete is placed lightly on the body and hit with the stick in a rhythmic gesture, thus marking the location of actual cuts the initiate will receive later. While drawing the assistants chant: "Buen mpemba (npembe) dimanga ngombo" (Good chalk makes a mark on [or draws on] a bull or horse) (25); then they sing: "Nkunia mbele nkunia arriba ngombo" (Stick and knife are crossed over the top of a bull or horse).

Afterward, eyes covered with the bandana (Fig. 7), the initiate is led to the munanso, the initiation room itself, for the part of the ceremony that is essential to Palo: rayamiento (Gonzalez Bueno's term) or rayadura (Bedia's), when the motifs that signify initiation are incised into the body. Because of the blindfold, Bedia explained, events are only sensed, felt, or intuited. (26)

During Bedia's initiation, a razor blade was used for the cutting. In the initiation described by Gonzalez Bueno (see trans. in Sarduy & Stubbs 1993:117), the cutting was done with a thorn from the yua or ayua (27) or with the spur from a rooster. She describes vertical incisions, sometimes crossed by a horizontal incision, on both sides of the chest. Bedia distinguishes the cuts made for the first-level initiate, the ngueyo, from those for initiates at other levels. An ngueyo receives a cross pattern on the back of the head, while the future tata receives the cross pattern and a bar on each side. Both Bedia and Gonzalez Bueno describe how the cuts were rubbed with special mixtures, sometimes earth mixed with gunpowder, sometimes sawdust from special woods or pemba, or even dust from ancestral bones, the nfumbe. Candle wax is also dripped on the cuts and over various parts of the body. Bedia implied, with a smile, that this was one of the "little tests" that showed whether one was strong enough to go through with the entire ritual. The tongue (ntonda) is also cut, after which the initiate drinks a special mixture, el agua gongoro (Sp.), (28) from a gourd as the assistants sing:

   Agua gongoro buena pa remedio Agua gongoro buena pa remedio (Gongoro water
   is good for curing)

As Bedia explained, each house has its own style of cutting, so the graphic results are varied. Each house may also determine its own sequence of initiation events. For example, the following has taken place before the cutting in Santiago de Cuba, and after it at Tata Alberto's Havana house: strands of the initiate's hair are cut and either placed directly on the tata's central nganga or wrapped in special leaves. Sometimes the initiate's own name is written on a piece of paper that is also wrapped in the leaves, and the packet is then offered to the central nganga. The tata's nganga is now in charge. During this part of the ceremony the initiate shouts out his name and the name of his mpungu, and then the assistants call out this name. It is during this call and response that one is "born again." (29)

At the conclusion of the rayadura, the blindfold is removed. Again, there are differences in each description. Bedia related the following narrative to me:

   As the blindfold is taken off you are instructed to keep your eyes closed.
   Then as you open your eyes, the first thing you see is a reflection of
   yourself in a mirror that is held up in front of you. I think that in
   former times, or maybe in some houses even today, this is the mpaka, the
   reflective surface at the end of the sacred horn [like a cow's horn] that
   is filled with medicine. The metaphor here is that your self-image is
   contained inside the sacred mpaka; it absorbs you and you are born again.
   The tata then has your name, your hair, and your first vision, your first
   appearance in the reflective surface.

According to Gonzaez Bueno, however, at this point it is not a mirror but rather a candle (see Fig. 7) and then a crucifix that is held in front of the initiate's eyes. The crucifix warrants some additional discussion. Its association with Afro-Cuban or Afro-Caribbean religions is fairly common. I have seen quite a few ngangas in Santiago and in Havana which include a crucifix, and was told that the image indicated that the nganga was "blessed or baptized." Without either a crucifix or simple cross, it was often called a "Jewish nganga." (30) (Similarly in La Regla de Ocha, certain "unbaptized" ritual objects are called judeo, or Jewish.) Bedia claims that since the Jews were some of the "first people" and have always been considered religious and intelligent, this term demonstrates Palo followers' respect for Jewish people; "Jewish" refers to a time before Christianity--a purer, "antique" time. Bedia's explanation, however, may simply reflect his personal thoughts.

Other practitioners have told me that "Jewish ngangas" are used when harm is intended. (31) Robert Farris Thompson (1993:66-67) seems to confirm this when he comments that a crucifix in an nganga may refer to Nsambi ("Great Almighty God"); he also calls this assemblage "Nzambi Mpungu," a title indicating that good work is to be done. A leader of La Regla Kimbisa explained to Cabrera (1986a:5): "We are called `Nkisi al Santo Cristo.' This crucifix that you can see and that inside has its own kind of power (su brujeria) accompanies us all the time.... Andres Petit was mayombero, but our mayombe is Christian, is good, is of god. Because of this we only do good deeds" (see this page, "La Regla Kimbisa").

When I discussed this statement with Jose Bedia, he commented that many Palo people say that the crucifix Andres Petit used had a carved-out section, into which was placed special medicines. Bedia compared it to the carved-out stomach of a Kongo nkisi n'kondi figure in which special medicines are stored. According to his understanding, the crucifix had become an nkisi.

As one can see, the connotations of the cross in Palo are multiple and cannot be resolved at this writing. Perhaps it is wise to accept the explanation offered by Karen McCarthy Brown: that which is not baptized, that which is non-Christian, is "Jewish" (personal communication, March 1999). "Jewish" is a generic trope for anything non-Christian.

To return to the description of initiation, after the blindfold is removed and the initiate is faced with the mirror or the candle and crucifix, the ceremony is over. The initiate rises from a kneeling position and is greeted by the tata and his assistants, who welcome their new brother or sister with the special Palo handshake, saying: "Salaam malekum, malekum salaam."

Other important activities that are done communally ensure that the initiation is complete. These include sacrifices, cleansings through the use of animals, and the feeding of the nganga. When the nganga of the casa-templo is fed, so is the initiate's new nganga. After a few days the initiate takes it home, prepared to practice the religion at any place or time. Palo Monte is personal and portable.

Palo Monte and Contemporary Art

Palo Monte provides the basis and inspiration for artistic production in many ways. The following discussion focuses on the work of two artists who are are initiated practitioners and one who is not. In each case the art is distinct conceptually and stylistically.

Ludvik Reginfo Perez is a Palo Monte practitioner with no studio training in art. His altar-assemblages are primarily intended for private ritual and ceremony, although he also creates some paintings on cloth for sale. The altar-assemblage that I photographed in June 1988 (Fig. 1) is constructed according to the rules of his Palo lineage; at the same time it is a personal statement, the result of aesthetic inspiration activated by Palo belief.

This construction has several easily recognizable components. Reginfo Perez refers to it as "Nganga of Sarabanda with a banner for Nsasi." But because the naming of elements within Palo is so flexible, he sometimes calls it a banner for Siete Rayos (Seven Lightning Flashes). He understands that Siete Rayos (and Nsasi) are names that have a Regla de Ocha equivalent in Chango, who is associated with thunder and lightning, and calls the red banner behind the nganga "Nsasi/Siete Rayos" because the zigzag line refers to bolts of lightning. Palo altars are linked with the earth, as Palo is directly associated with the graveyard and the ancestors. The nganga, the altar's central focus, contains a human skull, a crucifix (discussed above), a cup, a glass, shells, stones, a candle, a knife blade, a sewn packet (the nkuto mentioned earlier), bones, and cut wooden sticks, the palos which embody the forest. Embedded in the earth between some of the palos are iron spikes, or railroad spikes, for Sarabanda. A red ribbon and an iron chain (also a reference to Sarabanda) encircle these elements and bind them together. The color red is often associated with Palo Monte in general. On the extreme right is a tall lungoa, a hooked stick, that helps pull the mpungus into a sacred space or into an nganga. Directly beneath the nganga is a construction resembling a snake ("the animal that dragged itself" in the initiation account by Julian de las Nieves Cagnet), and in front of it are seven shells, called chamalogos by Reginfo Perez, used in divination. A ceramic head to the right represents Nkuyu Nfinda, also known as Lucero Mundo, the guardian. On either side of the nganga are cane staffs, cana brava (Sp.), usually filled with herbal ingredients. Most of the objects in this altar-assemblage are charged; that is, they act as caminos to connect to the world of the ancestors.

Jose Bedia's artistic production is very different from Reginfo Perez's. Bedia is studio trained, holding the Cuban equivalent of an M.F.A. His work is intended to be exhibited internationally, and he participates in a transcultural dialogue with contemporary artists and their publics who wish to introduce religious-based art into the discussion of late-twentieth-century cultural hybridity. Bedia sees his work as having the potential to cut through national, class, and religious boundaries. He credits his coming to maturity in Cuba in the 1970s and '80s with underscoring the importance of these views.

Jose Bedia and his peers in Havana have become known as the Generation of the '80s; during that decade they graduated from art school and established an international reputation. To understand their work one must understand how their relationship to Cuban culture, both "high" and "popular," differed from that of the artists before them. As Bedia has pointed out, not only did many of his art-school friends come from the working class, but his closest friends all took an interest in the various "noninstitutionalized" (32) religions of Cuba, particularly Palo Monte, Santeria, and Espiritismo. Their expression of this interest ranged from library research to discussions to visits to casa-templos to actual initiation. As a tata, Bedia has reached the top level of Palo, while some of his colleagues have only gone as far as ngueyo, the first level, when one receives the cuts and an initiation necklace or bracelet but not an nganga (Fig. 8).

[FIGURE 8 OMITTED]

The title of Bedia's painting Nso Ndoki (Fig. 9) incorporates words which function in the hybrid language of Palo Monte. Nso is Congo-Cuban for nzo, which is KiKongo for the Spanish casa (house). The Ki-Kongo word ndoki means "spirits of the dead"--ghosts. Nso Ndoki pays tribute to the casa-templo where Bedia was initiated, represented by the small model house with the red flag (33) affixed to the painting and labeled "Casa para Dos" (House for Two).

[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]

The painting honors two mpungus associated with Bedia's personal practice of Palo Monte. Each mpungu in Palo Monte is associated with a tree or bush. On the left is a spiny Marabu bush, linked to Sarabanda, and in the left doorway is the tripod iron nganga for that mpungu. A chain is draped around the rim, and inside the container is a skull, a knife, railway spikes, and a lungoa. Similarly, a palm tree, the Palma Real, stands on the other side, where a doorway frames a clay nganga containing a seashell and two lungoa. The shell and the shape of the nganga indicate that it is dedicated to Baluande, also known as Madre de Agua (Mother of the Water).

Palo firmas are frequently incorporated into installations, sculptures, and paintings. They can communicate on two levels: as aesthetic drawings and as coded indicators of a special power or identity. As the former the firmas need not be sacred in and of themselves. Bedia claims that often those he uses in gallery installations are only "a little bit" sacred. Calling them "firmas caprichos," whimsical firmas, he emphasizes their aesthetic dimension rather than their religious connotations (interview, May 3, 1999).

Because firmas are reproduced in numerous publications, they have become available to many artists and graphic designers who are not initiated into Palo Monte. For example, a 1992 publication by Jorge and Isabel Castellanos replicates fifty-two firmas drawn under the supervision of informants by Lydia Cabrera in the 1950s. (34) Comparison with other published firmas reveals that there may be variations in elements within each composite firma, but in general the entire image is recognizable.

The Cuban critic and curator Gerardo Mosquera (1992) wrote an article concerning the "African element" in the work of Cuba's best-known twentieth-century artist, Wifredo Lam (1902-82), after his return to the island in 1942. Mosquera underscores the difference between appropriating from a religion and using elements from one's own religious experience. He notes that while Lam's work represents a "pioneering primitivism," some artists of the Generation of the '80s have gone beyond this to create work with religious and African elements that come from the "interior of experience" and thus cannot be categorized as primitivist. Mosquera dedicated his article to Jose Bedia, one of the most important of the artists to gain international recognition during the 1980s.

There are various ways to train initiates to render firmas. Many tatas teach from a ledger-type notebook filled with hand-drawn images. When I interviewed Ludvik Reginfo Perez about his panos (drawings on cloth) that consist entirely of firmas, he indicated that he had learned them by studying such a notebook (Santiago de Cuba, Mar. 29, 1988). Bedia, on the other hand, recounted how he arrived one day at the casa-templo when Tata Alberto was constructing a complicated firma. Bedia sat in a corner quietly watching, until finally Tata turned around and simply said, "Help me." Bedia did so for the next hour. This lesson was part of his apprenticeship.

Often there is a fine line between the sacred and the secular. As Reginfo Perez deconstructed his compositions for me, he made it clear that sometimes the firmas he uses in his panos that are made for sale (e.g., Fig. 6) are not to be "translated." Even within an ostensibly sacred composition, interpretations may vary. Reginfo Perez gave the name adornos, or decorations, to his nonsacred firmas. In the composition in Figure 10, none of the firmas contain references to either mpungus or acts within Palo. In other panos, some firmas can be understood as referents while others cannot. The sun, moon, and clouds above the center of the composition in Figure 11 are drawn depictions, not firmas per se. Below them Reginfo Perez has combined other such illustrations with firmas. The white arrow-like rays refer to Nsasi, who is sometimes referred to as lightning. He identifies the adjacent large circle intersected by various arrow-like lines as part of a "firma de trabajo"--a firma that describes a special work to be done in the forest. To the right are drawings of an nganga placed on a small fire, a carabela (a skull, representing dead "brothers") on a taburete (stool) and some ceibas, the trees that figure in initiation rituals. The skull rests on a small chair or stool for spirits to sit on that is placed in a sacred environment. A Palo spirit manifests itself through whatever is on the chair. Then, at the lowest register, are five firma-like adornos, placed there to anchor the composition.

[FIGURES 10-11 OMITTED]

Many noninitiated members of the Generation of the '80s reference Afro-Cuban religions in their work, though in variable forms. For example, Marta Maria Perez Bravo is not initiated but nonetheless uses firmas in her constructed photographs to reference and deconstruct the power of religion in a person's (particularly a woman's) life. In No One Unites Us (Fig. 12) she has created a three-dimensional firma, placing it over her head rather than on her body or on the floor or wall of a sacred space. The firma references Mama Chola, who is particularly important in La Regla Kimbisa. Mama Chola is cross-referenced with the oricha Ochun, a beautiful woman who is associated with sweet water, honey, and love. Combining the firma's referent with the title of this piece enables the viewer to participate in Perez Bravo's deconstructivist strategies.

[FIGURE 12 OMITTED]

A configuration reminiscent of the "four moments of the sun," a cosmogram central to Kongo and Kongo-based philosophy, appears in another piece by Perez Bravo, Macuto (Fig. 13). Here it locates the source of power on her body, with the firma placed on her chest, as it would be in initiation. Robert Farris Thompson reminds us: "[T]he sign of the four moments of the sun is the Kongo emblem of spiritual continuity and renaissance par excellence" (Thompson & Cornet 1981:28). Perez Bravo's feminist construction accumulates additional power with the sacred bundle she holds in her hands. This bundle, the macuto (nkuto), is a small portable nganga comprising twin dolls, reminding the viewer of woman's maternal power. As in many of her other pieces, these dolls also recall the artist's own twin daughters.

[FIGURE 13 OMITTED]

Jose Bedia uses the practice and iconography of Palo Monte to construct a semantic constant in his work. Most of his pieces include the nganga in addition to other elements. The 1984 drawing Sarabanda (Fig. 8), for instance, is autobiographical, for it references some of the attributes of Sarabanda that the artist received at his initiation, like the chain strung with miniature iron implements. The figure holds knives and a hammer, while at his feet rest an anvil and a Sarabanda nganga.

Bedia's installation Kakuisa el Songe (Fig. 3) contains both a public and a private altar. The private one (at left) is covered with a black cloth, but it is attached to its public counterpart with a chain. Ideally an nganga is placed in a sacred place outside, on the earth, but in more urban areas it is often housed in a special room with a dirt floor. This altar-nganga is embedded in earth that Bedia moved into the gallery.

Kakuisa is Congo-Cuban for flight or the ability to fly; el Songe is Congo-Cuban for el hierro (Sp.), which means iron. Bedia's work is made from a six-cylinder car engine, an allusion to power and energy. In the holes for the pistons the artist placed his palos, which in this piece take the form of the hooked lungoa. The altar is dedicated to Sarabanda, who presides over all things metal and most means of transportation. Continuing this theme, Bedia drew a large figure on the wall. It is the spirit of Sarabanda emerging from his nganga. Bedia put propellers at the crooks of the figure's arms, which he sees as highways. Attached to each arm is a small truck. Bedia is calling attention to the presence of spirits in the industrialized world. They exist side by side. "I am interested in connotations here. Like a toy plane being confused with wings or with birds. And religion ... like in religion something else is in control." Here Bedia conflates at least two types of power, the industrial and the spiritual.

A discussion of Bedia's participation in the exhibition "Magiciens de la terre" (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1989) underscores the innumerable ways in which the artist incorporates his religious belief into his art, at the same time challenging the museum world and the art public to come to terms with cultural hybridity and spiritual inspiration. For him, art is a form of diplomatic activity that unites diverse peoples. Bedia and members of the participating international group of religious artists wanted to consecrate their installations before the exhibition opened to the public. The curators were horrified when they put in requests for chickens to be sacrificed, or explained that they were going to use chicken blood to activate certain parts of the installations. According to Bedia, many of the artists assisted each other in these special ceremonies, especially when they realized how similar they were. Even some of the museum guards and janitorial staff (all immigrants from Third World countries) joined in.

In the official video made during the installation of the show, the curators were sure to include Cyprien Tokoudagba, from Benin, singing praise songs and sacrificing a chicken. I cannot help but wonder at their motivation. The religious artists were exoticized and therefore marginalized, directly contradicting the stated curatorial goals. No European or Euro-American artist is included in the video except for Richard Long, who is not interviewed. Yet a Euro-Cuban artist, Jose Bedia, is, because he is also an artist who works from a religious base.

For his "Magiciens" installation, Vive en la linea (He Lives on the Railroad Tracks) (Fig. 14a, b), Bedia drew on the wall a male figure lying on tracks supported by four constructed red-brick walls reminiscent of those that may demarcate sacred spaces within a casa-templo. This figure is both a self-portrait and a reference to Sarabanda, who incorporates the spirit of the Afro-Cubans who constructed Cuba's rail system. Remember that Bedia received Sarabanda at his initiation. Each of the three sections demarcated by the walls contains a reference to an mpungu drawn on the back wall: a male profile for Sarabanda, an emblem of the crossroads for Lucero Mundo, and a deer for Nkuyo Watariamba. And each section, like a miniature sacred space, contains an altar with an nganga, earth on the floor, and a bench with a firma drawn on top. (The bench here is like Reginfo Perez's painted taburete; it provides a resting place for mpungus.) Each nganga contains offerings and the remains of the sacrificial chickens.

[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]

Vive en la linea reflects the many ways Palo Monte belief can be incorporated into art. It also summarizes Bedia's particular aesthetic, a product of his Cuban religious training and his participation in the international art world. In this installation the artist challenged the latter to accept both his religiously inspired art and the requirements that it imposes on host institutions and the public. The coexistence of these two factors continues to make his work relevant and exciting. Bedia has demonstrated that his faith, Palo Monte, is simultaneously personal, public, and portable.

Each of these Cuban artists has been inspired by Palo Monte. The differences in their art suggest the range and depth of religious belief and of the reactions to it. At stake in this complex environment of artistic production is an issue that may rest outside the art or the religion itself, yet is inextricably tied to it. It is the insistence by most scholars and the global curatorial market in maintaining the boundaries between the "trained" and the "untrained" artist, between studio art and religious art. But Cuban society and religion are composed of complex, inseparable identities. In their own individual ways, all these artists reflect--and reflect upon--this cultural hybridity. Like the religion itself, the art intermingles the African and the European or Euro-American to produce a Cuban reality or, better yet, multiple Cuban realities. Together, Reginfo Perez, Bedia, and Perez Bravo are constructing a fluid communitas of nation, where religious signs create shifting signifiers, each understood differently, yet forming a shared foundation for aesthetic energy.

Today, students and scholars are finding postcolonial theory an enticing (re)solution to the dilemmas inherent in Caribbean cultural production. It is a given that Caribbean society and art are hybrid and syncretic, but this given arises from a complex play between discordant social and religious factors. While demonstrating a healthy respect for Palo Monte, the Cuban religious and studio artists discussed in this essay engage in sociocultural commentary that probes this tension as it is expressed in the practice of the religion, and it is this same tension that makes their work so powerful.

Nombres congo-espanoles         Equivalente    Equivalente Catolico
                                Lucumi

Nsasi, Siete Rayos              Chango         Santa Barbara

Tata Kanene, Pungun Futila,     Babalu Aye     San Lazaro
Tata Fumbe, Para Llaga

Kariempembe, Mariwanga,         Oya            La Virgen de la
Centella                                       Candelaria

Mama Kengue, Tiembla-Tierra     Obatala        La Virgen de las
                                               Mercedes

Baluande, Ma Kalunga,           Yemaya         Virgen de Regla
Madre de Agua

Chola Wengue, Chola Nwengue,    Ochun          La Virgen del Cobre
Mama Chola, Siete Rios

Sarabanda                       Ogun           San Pedro

Nkuyo Watariamba                Ochosi         San Norberto

Nsambia Munalembe,              Ifa, Orula     San Francisco de Asis
Tonde, Cuatro Vientos

Nkuyu Nfinda, Lucero Mundo      Elegua         Nino Jesus de Atocha y
                                               de Praga, San Antonio
                                               de Padua

[This article was accepted for publication in December 1999.]

The bulk of this essay was written in the summer of 1998, when I received a stipend from the National Endowment of the Humanities and did research in Miami and Cuba. I am very grateful to the Endowment for consistently supporting my work.

During that summer I was able to visit and photograph in two casa-templos (house-temples) of the Briyumba (Brillumba) branch of Palo. One was Cotalima, the house of Tats Alberto Goicochea, and the other was Munanso Tutuka Nsasi hasta que Ntulla Enfurri, the house of Tata Francisco Casteneda (see photos in Bolivar Arestegui & Diaz de Villegas 1998).

(1.) It is best to be flexible when referring to Cuban religious traditions, for practitioners may even call their religion by different names within the same discussion. Jorge and Isabel Castellanos (1992:130) explain: "La Religion Conga is sometimes called Palo Monte Mayombe and it has many branches: la Regla de Palo Monte; la Regla Kimbisa; la Biyumba; la Musunde; and la Brillumba" (my translation). Congo Reglas, the term used by the eminent Cuban scholar Lydia Cabrera in the opening quotation, is synonymous with La Religion Conga--that is, those religious doctrines said to derive from Kongo culture. During her research in Santiago de Cuba, Gladyse Gonzalez Bueno discovered that most practitioners belonged to what she calls the Mayombe branch, although the term is most often used in Cuba as a synonym for Palo Monte. As Robert Farris Thompson reminds us (1993:60), Mayombe is most certainly derived from Yombe, the name of an ethnic group from the northern Kongo area. In Face of the Gods (1993) he refers to the religion as Regla de Mayombe. Officially the name is Palo Monte Mayombe.

La Regla de Ocha refers to religious practices arising from those of Lucumi (the Yoruba of Nigeria). In the broadest terms, one could then compare Ocha practices with Palo or Congo practices.

(2.) I thank Al Roberts, now at UCLA, and his student at the University of Iowa, Maria Beatrice Rodriguez-Feo, for this reference from Miller 1988:33. By the way, if you have ever wondered why the prison in Louisiana is called Angola, it was built on the site of a plantation, and it still carries the name of the homeland of the original slaves who worked it. In 1994 Jose Bedia completed an installation titled Ngola-La Habana. Via photographs it traces his religious life in Havana to its source in Ngola.

(3.) The groundbreaking work by Lydia Cabrera (1986a-c), Robert Farris Thompson (1983, 1993, Thompson & Comet 1981), and Wyatt MacGaffey (1986, 1993) in establishing the extent and importance of Kongo heritage in the Americas is well known and need not be summarized here. I accept their extensive evidence that Kongo religious practices and language permeate most aspects of Palo Monte and that the vocabulary of the religion is Kongo-based.

(4.) See Miguel Barnet 1994 for an important account on Congo-Cubans. It includes commentary on religious practices and plantation life, the Congo-Cubans' role in the fight for Independence, and life in Cuba under various governments before the Revolution. Esteban Montejo was 103 in 1963 when he was first interviewed by Barnet, and he died in 1973. I strongly recommend the 1994 translation, which attempts to reconcile the voice of the "informant" with the voice of the "interviewer."

(5.) Although many researchers refer to the named spirits within Palo Monte as "gods," Jose Bedia, who is collaborating with me on a project involving Palo Monte and its influence on his art, insists that they are spirits. He uses the word mpungu rather than dios (Sp. for God), or sometimes nfumbi, "spirits of the dead." Unless otherwise noted, all information concerning Jose Bedia and his thoughts on Palo Monte derives from interviews conducted during June 1996 in Miami, Florida, and transcribed and annotated in February 1997 and July 1998.

(6.) See note 23 for a discussion of how mpungu names are further refined.

(7.) In this article I use "(Sp.)" to denote important Palo words in Spanish (Cuban), rather than in Ki-Kongo or a KiKongo--derived Creole Cuban. See pp. 119 and 125 of the Montejo story (Barnet 1994) for an account of the making of a prenda (nganga) and the importance of wrapped packets which serve as amulets of power. In Haitian Vodou they are called pakets Kongo, underscoring the Kongo heritage that Vodou shares with Palo Monte.

(8.) See Mason 1997:23--39 for an excellent article about initiation whose viewpoint and goals are very different from my own.

(9.) If one is initiated into La Regla de Ocha, one cannot subsequently be initiated into Palo Monte. This fact does underscore the hegemonic status of La Regla de Ocha in Cuba. It is not regarded as a contradiction to be initiated into more than one religion.

(10.) Cabildo refers to a religious/mutual aid society and/or its meetingplace. The cabildo on Calle Carniceria still exists, and I attended a Palo Monte ceremony there in 1991.

(11.) This is obviously a reference to Gede of the Vodou religion in Haiti. That a Vodou-derived name is used in Santiago de Cuba is not surprising, considering the importance of Haitian-derived culture in Oriente province. See Bettelheim 1993:171-82 for a detailed explanation. Santo here refers to La Regla de Ocha.

(12.) In Cuba carabali refers to the descendants of the slaves who left Africa from different points in the Niger Delta, such as Bonny and the port of Old Calabar at the mouth of the Cross River. The actual geographic area where the Africans lived extended both west and east of the river and some distance inland. I have written about the cabildos Carabali Olugo and Caraball Isuama in most of my articles on Carnaval in Santiago de Cuba. (e.g., see Bettelheim 1991, 1998).

(13.) The word "snake" cannot be spoken; some practitioners instead say "21," a sacred number in Palo. The number also stands for snake in the Chinese lottery played in Cuba.

(14.) Each time I visited Santiago, I worked with Gonzalez Bueno, who, for her job with the Municipal Department of Culture, conducted interviews for a project on Palo Monte. Some of this information, then, was discussed during our many sessions together.

(15.) As with the naming of the religious practice itself, the titles used to designate individual status within a given Palo house are flexible. The highest level of initiation may be designated as tata, padre nganga, or mayombero. I have noticed that the title palero is also often used to designate either the first or second level of initiation. And strictly speaking ngueyo refers to the first level of initiation only. A tata can appoint people within the house to different positions, like bakofula, the one in charge of thefula (gunpowder).

(16.) In 1991 at the age of 32, Bedia and his family left Havana for Mexico City, and in late 1993 they settled in Miami. See 1997:85-93 for a more complete discussion of his move and its influence on his production.

(17.) As mentioned elsewhere in this article, other numbers and numerical combinations are sacred in Palo. Whenever I inquired as to why these numbers were important, the response was quite emphatic: "They are." This is one of the many times when I decided that my own "need to know" was not critical and that not having an "answer" would not have a negative effect on my research.

(18.) I have not yet been able to determine why the standard Palo greeting is in Arabic. It takes many variations. Gonzalez Bueno writes "sala maleco" and "malecom sala," while Lydia Cabrera's transcription is a bit more creative: "sala maleko maleko nsala." Bedia commented, "She is trying to Kongo-ize it."

(19.) This handshake is Masonic in origin. Masonic influence in the Caribbean is an area of enormous importance, but because research has been focused on African-derived elements, it has been only slightly investigated (as in Cosentino 1995).

(20.) Omiero is the word for a cleansing in Santeria, but Bedia is not aware of a parallel term used in Palo rituals. This underscores the point about the power of Oyo-Yoruba influence in Cuba and other places in the Americas. See Matory 1994:226, quoted earlier in this article.

(21.) Bedia explained that if for some reason one wanted to do so, one should always leave out a section, in order to protect it. He reminded me that other cultural traditions also allow leeway in aesthetic acts with similar prohibitions. Joe Ben, the Navajo artist who participated with Bedia in the exhibition "Magiciens de la terre" in Paris in 1989, created some dry ground drawings for the exhibition, but omitted certain parts so as not to replicate exactly sacred elements.

(22.) The mid-seventies was a difficult period in the young man's life, a period of self-reflection and decisions. During their first meeting Tata Alberto advised Bedia to calm down and take control of his life, or risk becoming ill. Bedia indeed did become quite ill, and he admits that the wisdom of Tara Alberto's advice was one of many factors that influenced his return to the tata's casa-templo in 1982.

(23.) Bedia explained to me that each initiate receives a personal name which is structured to indicate, first, one's line of descent within a particular Palo branch, then one's house, then oneself. For example, one could have the name "Cotalima Sarabanda-Tongalena," which indicates both a line of descent and a particular initiation spirit guide within Palo. Another way to understand this is that each name derives from three distinct entities: the house name, the name of the tata's nganga, and one's personal name. Bedia indicated that he thinks it is not wise to reveal one's personal name outside of the context of one's house.

(24.) Cabrera (1986a:70) recounts a similar series of initiation rituals. First the initiates' clothes are buried in the cemetery for seven days. During this period they must undergo three separate baths. After each they drink some of the specially prepared liquid, some of which will be poured on the roots of special trees, such as the ceiba. (This practice does not happen in Havana, where open space is limited. Bedia indicates that that is why earth from the monte is brought to the tata's house to be placed in the nganga.) Sometimes an initiate will sleep under a ceiba before his initiation. An nganga who is buried there can accumulate additional power. Practitioners in Santiago de Cuba and Havana have told me that burying one's old clothes and the nganga in a cemetery for a specified period of time, often seven days, would put them in direct contact with the ancestors. See MacGaffey 1986:154 for references to ritual practices in Kongo that parallel Palo initiation rituals in Cuba.

(25.) According to Bedia, the word ngombo refers to any hooved animal, like a horse or a bull.

(26.) Bedia expressed some hesitation in publishing his experiences during the rayadura, but I have read at least three other accounts, so the following is a mixture of all the descriptions, and I have conferred with Bedia to make sure no private information is discussed.

(27.) Cabrera (1986c:562) identifies this type of wood or tree as "Lunga-kuma", and states that to use it one must be very brave (strong).

(28.) Gongoro is a thick, bad-tasting, black-colored drink. The word itself refers to a black insect with many feet, like a millipede.

(29.) Bedia wants to emphasize that this phrase has absolutely nothing to with fundamentalist religions.

(30.) The inclusion of the crucifix is controversial. Within Congo-Cuban culture the combined reference to Jews and the crucifix may steer one toward an early African source for these practices and prejudices. "[T]he most successful of the missions in Africa, the mission to Kongo, were Portuguese, who after 1492 surely followed the teachings of the Inquisition, and thus promote negative information about Jewish people" (Thornton 1992:257).

Other sources are possible as well. Gonzalez Bueno states that the crucifix was introduced into Palo in Santiago after the rebellion of the Independientes de Color in 1912. She offers no evidence to support this claim, but her explanation probably has historical significance. If Afro-Cubans incorporated a crucifix into their worship, they might have been less likely to be a target of persecution by the authorities. The 1912 rebellion is considered by many to be the country's bloodiest racist massacre. Thousands of Afro-Cubans were killed, the majority in Oriente Province. Acclaimed Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando recently released Raices de mi corazon (Roots of My Heart), about this tragic event.

I am working on a book on Palo Monte, which will include a chapter on the importance of Cuban-Haitian culture in Oriente Province and the practice there of what I provisionally call "Palo-Vodou," a term signifying the shared Kongo heritage of Palo and Vodou, as well as the influences from Haiti.

(31.) Natalia Bolivar Ar6stegui's recent publication on Palo Monte (1998:61) includes a section entitled "Nganga Cristiana? Nganga Judla?" She acknowledges that most Cubans equate this duality with good and evil but explains that the reality is much more complicated when it comes to the practice of the religion itself. Perhaps a comparable example from Haiti will illustrate this conundrum. Portrayals of "the Jew" in Haitian Rara festivals, suggest a more complicated historical explanation. According to Elizabeth McAlister (2000: 204-5):

   In the course of Easter week, Jews are demonized and burned in effigy by
   some--but they are also honored and claimed by others as forefathers and
   founders of the Rara bands. Various Rara leaders embrace the identity of
   "the Jew" and claim a sort of mystical Jewish ancestry. In accepting the
   label of "Jew," these Rara leaders might be understood as taking on a
   mantle of denigration as a kind of psychic resistance. In carving out a
   symbolic territory as "Jews," they symbolically oppose the powers that
   historically have seeked to exploit them--the Haitian Catholic elite.

Bedia told me about a parallel situation he witnessed when visiting Native communities in New Mexico during Semana Santa (Easter week). All the young men there wanted to play the Jews in the masquerade accompanying the rituals. Because the Jews in this case were warriors who fought the Spanish, they may be seen to represent those who, as McAlister indicates for Rara, oppose the power that exploits them.

Unfortunately the simplistic good/evil duality has reached deep into popular culture in the United States, as reflected in an episode of the television series NYPD Blue. The plot of that episode circulated around the murder of a santero, and included shots of his altar and his sacrifices. There was a lengthy explanation about his "good work," emphasizing that he was a man of God and did "white magic." There was also an explanation that "bad works" were related to Palo Mayombe.

(32.) I use the word "noninstitutionalized" according to the practice of some Cuban writers, although some religions, such as Santeria, are in fact quite institutionalized. The adjective does seem preferable to another phrase often used in Cuba: "los sistemas magico-religiosos."

(33.) Red flags, red scarves, and red bandanas are associated with Palo Monte. The mambi, the Afro-Cuban freedom fighters during the War of Independence, fought under red flags and are said to have been members of various Palo Monte branches. The Afro-Cuban general Quintin Banderas is believed to have been a palero, and he had intimate connections with the cabildo and carnaval group Brujos del Limon, in Santiago de Cuba. Fernando Ortiz (1985]:337) indicates that the most likely source for mambi is Congo, where the term refers to a dangerous man, a perfect designation for a member of the Liberation Army.

(34.) Most publications about Palo Monte include reproductions of some of the most commonly known firmas, many from the research of Lydia Cabrera and others from original fieldwork. It is instructive to compare the firmas recorded by Cabrera (reproduced in Castellanos & Castellanos 1992) with the ones in Rafael L. Lopez Valdes (1985). The Lopez Valdes text was written without cross-checking other ethnographic information, and in my opinion is marred by shallow interpretations. There are also some obvious "mistakes."

References cited

Barnet, Miguel. 1994 [1968]. Biography of a Runaway Slave. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press.

Bettelheim, Judith. 1991. "Negotiations of Power in Carnaval Culture: Santiago de Cuba," African Arts 24, 2:66-75.

Bettelheim, Judith. 1993. "The Tumba Francesa and Tajona of Santiago de Cuba," in Cuban Festivals: An Illustrated Anthology, ed. Judith Bettelheim. New York: Garland Publishing. Rev. ed. 2001: Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers.

Bettelheim, Judith. 1997. "Jose Bedia Reflects on the Song of the Immigrant," in Cronicas americanas: Obras de Jose Bedia, texts by Judith Bettelheim, Orlando Hernandez, Charles Merewether. Monterrey, Mexico: Museo de Arte Contemporaneo.

Bettelheim, Judith. 1998. "Women in Masquerade and Performance," African Arts 31, 2:68-70.

Bolivar Arostegui, Natalia and Carmen Gonzalez Diaz de Villegas. 1998. Ta Makuende Yaya y las reglas de Palo Monte: Mayombe, Brillumba, Kimbisa, Shamalongo. Havana: Ediciones Union.

Cabrera, Lydia. 1986a [1977]. La Regla Kimbisa del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje. Miami: Ediciones Universal.

Cabrera, Lydia. 1986b [1979]. Reglas de Congo: Mayombe Palo Monte. Miami: Ediciones Universal.

Cabrera, Lydia. 1986c [1954]. El monte. Miami: Coleccion del Chichereku.

Castellanos, Jorge and Isabel Castellanos. 1992. Cultura afrocubano 3: Las religiones y las lenguas. Miami: Ediciones Universal.

Cosentino, Donald J. (ed.). 1995. Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

Del Caribe 5 (Dec.). 1988. Testimony.

Gonzalez Bueno, Gladyse. 1988. "Una ceremonia de iniciacion en Regla de Palo," Del Caribe 5 (Dec.).

Hanly, Elizabeth. 1994. "Symbol Truths," South Florida, April.

Lopez-Valdes, Raphael. 1985. Componentes africanos en el etnos cubano. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1986. Religion and Society in Central Africa: The Bakongo of Lower Zaire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1993. Astonishment and Power: The Eyes of Understanding: Kongo Minkisi. Washington, DC: The Smithsonian Institution Press.

Mason, Michael Atwood. 1997. "I Bow My Head to the Ground," Journal of American Folklore 107:423.

Matory, J. Lorand. 1994. Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Ogo Yoruba Religion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

McAlister, Elizabeth. 2000. "The Jew in the Haitian Imagination," in Black Zion: African American Religious Interpretations of Judaism, eds. Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutch. New York: Oxford University Press.

Miller, Joseph C. 1988. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade 1730-1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Mosquera, Gerardo. 1992. "Modernidad y Africania: Wifredo Lam in His Island," Third Text 20 (Autumn).

Ortiz, Fernando. 1985 [1923]. Nuevo catauro de cubanismos. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Sarduy, Pedro Perez and Jean Stubbs (eds.). 1993. Afrocuba: An Anthology of Cuban Writing on Race, Politics, and Culture. Melbourne: Ocean Press.

Thompson, Robert Farris. 1983. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Random House.

Thompson, Robert Farris. 1993. Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas. New York: The Museum for African Art.

Thompson, Robert Farris and Joseph Cornet. 1981. The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.

Thornton, John. 1992. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

La Regla Kimbisa

The Kimbisa branch of Palo Monte (La Regla Kimbisa del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje) is noteworthy for its influence on contemporary Cuban scholarship and artistic practice. It was founded by Andres Facundo de los Dolores Petit, who, according to Jose Bedia, was one of the most important figures in Cuban cultural history. Petit was "everything ... he was congo, lucumi, espiritist, and Catholic" (Cabrera 1986a:3; my translation); in other words, he was a follower of Palo Monte, Santeria, and Espiritismo, the religion introduced by Allan Kardec (a.k.a. Hyppolyte Leon Denizard Rivail), who published his influential Le livre des esprits (El libro de los espiritus) in 1857. Petit's example proved enormously important to Bedia and his artist associates in the 1970s and 1980s as they strove to integrate their lives with the culture of their own country.

In 1863 Petit, a mulatto, founded an Abakua potencia (lodge) especially for whites and mulattos. (Abakua is a brotherhood with roots in the Cross River area of Nigeria-Cameroon.) The freedom of certain hermanos esclavos (brothers who are slaves) was purchased through his efforts and those of members of his potencia. Petit believed that these activities could help end the prejudice against the Abakua and, because the potencias would be racially integrated, perhaps end religious persecution of Afro-Cubans.

According to Bedia, the Kimbisa branch is especially influenced by Catholicism, but nevertheless he thinks its importance in the twentieth-century development of Palo Monte itself is critical, especially as concerns official attitudes toward Palo. For Bedia, Petit set the standard for a socially and racially integrated practice of Afro-Cuban religions.

JUDITH BETTELHEIM, Professor of Art History at San Francisco State University, has conducted fifteen research trips to Cuba since 1985. She is the editor of the forth-coming Cuban Festivals: A Century of Afro-Cuban Culture (Ian Randle Publishers, fall 2001) and is the curator of "Jose Bedia: Of the Spirit: Afro-Cuba Meets Native America," a major exhibition opening in fall 2002.