Palo Mayombe

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,(n1) refer to their homeland as Ngola (Ngola a Kiluanje, "the land between the lower Kwanza and the Dande"), from which derives the Europeanized "Angola."(n2) 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.(n3) 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.(n4)


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 Baluandd.(n5) 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.(n6)


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.


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.)(n7)--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.


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.(n8) Many practitioners of La Regla de Ocha were first initiated into Palo Monte, as was Julian de las Nieves Cagnet, of Santiago de Cuba.(n9) 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.(n10) I was with Pa Lorenzo, who was called Pa Guede in Santo;(n11) with his wife, the deceased Manga; with my grandfather, who was carabali;(n12) 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(n13)]. 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).(n14) Bedia, after his own initiation, assisted Alberto Goicochea, his tata (the title given to one who has attained the highest level of initiation),(n15) 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),(n16) 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.(n17)


In Bedia's experience, two members of the house are each given two small masango. They exit the house and run at breakneck speed, in opposite directions, around the block. Each of the four masango are dropped at the comers, 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.(n18) 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.(n19)


Another activity preceding the actual initiation is the initiate's bath or cleansing, the limpieza (Sp.) or omiero,(n20) for which various herbs are tom 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.(n21)


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.(n22) 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 tara, the highest level. Bedia has achieved the rank of rata.


The name of the candidate's guiding spirit is also revealed, as is the list of ingredients that are required by the tara 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.(n23)


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 tara 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.


Other practitioners have told me that "Jewish ngangas" are used when harm is intended.(n31) 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"(n32) religions of Cuba, particularly Palo Monte, Santeria, and Espiritismo. Their expression of this interest ranged from library research to discussions to visits to casa-temptos 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).

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 Ki-Kongo 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(n33) affixed to the painting and labeled "Casa para Dos" (House for Two).

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.(n34) 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.

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 Ochu, 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.

A configuration reminiscent of the "four moments of the sun," a cosmo-gram 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 & Comet 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.

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.

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.

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.