First published in Cuba in 1954 and appearing here in English for the first time, Lydia Cabrera’s El Monte is a foundational and iconic study of Afro-Cuban religious and cultural traditions. Drawing on conversations with elderly Afro-Cuban priests who were one or two generations away from the transatlantic slave trade, Cabrera combines ethnography, history, folklore, literature, and botany to provide a panoramic account of the multifaceted influence of Afro-Atlantic cultures in Cuba. Cabrera details the natural and spiritual landscape of the Cuban monte (forest, wilderness) and discusses hundreds of herbs and the constellations of deities, sacred rites, and knowledge that envelop them. The result is a complex spiritual and medicinal architecture of Afro-Cuban cultures. This new edition of what is often referred to as “the Santería bible” includes a new foreword, introduction, and translator notes. As a seminal work in the study of the African diaspora that has profoundly impacted numerous fields, Cabrera’s magnum opus is essential for scholars, activists, and religious devotees of Afro-Cuban traditions alike.

In 1988, Lydia Cabrera (1899-1991) published La lengua sagrada de los Nanigos, an Abakua phrasebook that is to this day the largest work available on any African diaspora community in the Americas. In the early 1800s in Cuba, enslaved Africans from the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon created Abakua societies for protection and mutual aid. Abakua rites reenact mythic legends of the institution's history in Africa, using dance, chants, drumming, symbolic writing, herbs, domestic animals, and masked performers to represent African ancestors. Criminalized and scorned in the colonial era, Abakua members were at the same time contributing to the creation of a unique Cuban culture, including rumba music, now considered a national treasure. Translated for the first time into English, Cabrera's lexicon documents phrases vital to the creation of a specific African-derived identity in Cuba and presents the first "insider's" view of this African heritage. This text presents thoroughly researched commentaries that link hundreds of entries to the context of mythic rites, skilled ritual performance, and the influence of Abakua in Cuban society and popular music. Generously illustrated with photographs and drawings, the volume includes a new introduction to Cabrera's writing as well as appendices that situate this important work in Cuba's history. With the help of living Abakua specialists in Cuba and the US, Ivor L. Miller and P. Gonzalez Gomes-Casseres have translated Cabrera's Spanish into English for the first time while keeping her meanings and cultivated style intact, opening this seminal work to new audiences and propelling its legacy in African diaspora studies.

First published in Cuba in 1954 and appearing here in English for the first time, Lydia Cabrera's El Monte is a foundational and iconic study of Afro-Cuban religious and cultural traditions. Drawing on conversations with elderly Afro-Cuban priests who were one or two generations away from the transatlantic slave trade, Cabrera combines ethnography, history, folklore, literature, and botany to provide a panoramic account of the multifaceted influence of Afro-Atlantic cultures in Cuba. Cabrera details the natural and spiritual landscape of the Cuban monte (forest, wilderness) and discusses hundreds of herbs and the constellations of deities, sacred rights, and knowledge that envelop them. The result is a complex spiritual and medicinal architecture of Afro-Cuban cultures. This new edition of what is often referred to as "the Santeria bible" includes a new foreword, introduction, and translator notes. As a seminal work in the study of the African diaspora that has profoundly impacted numerous fields, Cabrera's magnum opus is essential for scholars, activists, and religious devotees of Afro-Cuban traditions alike.

As much a storyteller as an ethnographer, Lydia Cabrera was captivated by a strange and magical new world revealed to her by her Afro-Cuban friends in early twentieth-century Havana. In Afro-Cuban Tales this world comes to teeming life, introducing English-speaking readers to a realm of tenuous boundaries between the natural and the supernatural, deities and mortals, the spiritual and the seemingly inanimate. Here readers will find a vibrant, imaginative record of African culture transplanted to Cuba and transformed over time, a passionate and subversive alternative to the dominant Western culture of the Americas. In this charmed realm of myth and legend, imaginative flights, and hard realities, Cabrera shows us a world turned upside down. In this domain guinea hens can make dour Asturians and the king of Spain dance; little fat cooking pots might prepare their own meals; the pope can send encyclicals about pumpkins; and officials can be defeated by the shrewdness of turtles. The first English translation of one of the most important writers on African culture in the Americas, the collection provides a fascinating view of how African traditions, myths, stories, and religions traveled to the New World-of how, in their tales, Africans in the Americas created a New World all their own. Lydia Cabrera (1899-1991) was a legendary Cuban ethnographer of Afro-Cuban culture and the author of many books, including El Monte and Vocabulario Congo. Alberto Hernandez-Chiroldes is a professor and chair of the Spanish department at Davidson College. Lauren Yoder is James Sprunt Professor of French at Davidson College. Isabel Castellanos is one of the foremost scholars on Afro-Cuban culture.

YEMAYA Y OCHUN (Kariocha, Iyalorichas y Olorichas) Lydia Cabrera

ANAG, VOCABULARIO LUCUM (El Yoruba que se habla en Cuba.) Lydia Cabrera

Los origenes de los Palos Mayombe y Kimbiza se encuentran en algunos paises africanos tales como el Zaire, Angola, Congo, Sambia, Namibia y en todos los paises donde se hallan las tribus Bantu. La religion de Palo se desarrollo en Cuba, Haiti y otras partes del Caribe. A mediados de 1841, el primer grupo de personas procedentes de diferentes zonas de Nigeria y de las tribus Bantu, el pueblo de Calabar fundo una sociedad. Esta sociedad se llama la sociedad Abakua. La sociedad Abakua da origen a los linajes de Palo Mayombe y de Palo Kimbiza. Mientras que el Palo Mayombe fue muy fuerte en Cuba, al mismo tiempo el vudu Mayombe y Kimbiza se estaban desarrollando y creciendo en Haiti. La tradicion Kimbiza fue traida a Cuba por Andres Petit Alto sacerdote y fundador que ostentaba el titulo de Tata Nganga Nkisi Malongo. Es una figura muy controvertida porque no solo saco adelante la primera casa Kimbiza sino que, tambien, fundo la primera sociedad de blancos en el linaje Abakua. Fundo estas sociedades en 1863 en la ciudad de Guanabacoa, Cuba. A Andres Petit se le llamo el Cristo de los Dolores Mayombara Kimbiza Nuncatesia. Lo cual significa que actuo en contra de los mayores de mayombe al iniciar a los blancos en las tradiciones Abakua y Kimbiza. Por ello, fue condenado y marginado, pero su legado dejo un millar de templos Kimbiza en la Cuba de aquel tiempo. Kimbiza quiere decir superar. Kimbiza quiere decir que si tenemos fe en Dios y utilizamos todo lo que procede de la tradicion y de la palabra de Dios y de las antiguas ensenanzas de los pueblos Congo y Bantu, que aprendieron a respetar a la Madre Naturaleza y a todos sus atributos, todas estas ensenanzas juntas forman un gran cumulo de conocimientos. Kimbiza toma todo esto de las diferentes religiones espirituales que provienen de Dios para superar al mal en la vida. Al tener fe en el Todopoderoso y al creer en ti mismo, respetando las ensenanzas de tus antepasados y aplicando todas esas ensenanzas a tu vida diaria, te salvas a ti mismo, alcanzas la iluminacion y ademas, salvas a los demas y los ayudas a encontrarse a si mismos en esta jungla de asfalto a la que llamamos el nuevo mundo. En Africa, esta tradicion no se conoce como Palo. Esta tradicion se conoce como Yimbola. Es la practica de los chamanes africanos solo porque en muchos de esos paises, la clase dirigente es musulmana. Es por esto que los rangos en esas tradiciones, asi como los saludos tales como: Sala Maleco, Maleco Sala pertenecen a las costumbres musulmanas. Este es un saludo utilizado por los paleros de las tradiciones Kimbiza y Mayombe. La diferencia entre Mayombe y Kimbiza es que Mayombe es estrictamente congo y no esta mezclado con creencias esotericas ni espiritualismo ni catolicismo ni Ocha. Es una religion congolesa pura que venera a los antepasados mediante el caldero. Kimbiza, por otra parte, tiene mucho de mayombe, vudu, espiritualismo, esoterismo, chamanismo, catolicismo y Ocha. Aunque Kimbiza esta mucho mas cerca de Ocha que de Mayombe.

KOEKO IYAWO: APRENDE NOVICIA (Pequeno tratado de Regla Lucumi)

In 1988, Lydia Cabrera (1899-1991) published La lengua sagrada de los Nanigos, an Abakua phrasebook that is to this day the largest work available on any African diaspora community in the Americas. In the early 1800s in Cuba, enslaved Africans from the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon created Abakua societies for protection and mutual aid. Abakua rites reenact mythic legends of the institution's history in Africa, using dance, chants, drumming, symbolic writing, herbs, domestic animals, and masked performers to represent African ancestors. Criminalized and scorned in the colonial era, Abakua members were at the same time contributing to the creation of a unique Cuban culture, including rumba music, now considered a national treasure. Translated for the first time into English, Cabrera's lexicon documents phrases vital to the creation of a specific African-derived identity in Cuba and presents the first "insider's" view of this African heritage. This text presents thoroughly researched commentaries that link hundreds of entries to the context of mythic rites, skilled ritual performance, and the influence of Abakua in Cuban society and popular music. Generously illustrated with photographs and drawings, the volume includes a new introduction to Cabrera's writing as well as appendices that situate this important work in Cuba's history. With the help of living Abakua specialists in Cuba and the US, Ivor L. Miller and P. Gonzalez Gomes-Casseres have translated Cabrera's Spanish into English for the first time while keeping her meanings and cultivated style intact, opening this seminal work to new audiences and propelling its legacy in African diaspora studies.

En esta obra Lydia Cabrera, transcribe y colecciona por puro deleite el conjunto de leyendas negras de La Habana. Se trata de Cuentos afrocubanos, que aunque estan cundidos'de fantasia y ofrecen entre sus protagonistas algunos personajes del panteon yoruba, como Obaogo, Oshun, Ochosi, etc., no son unicamente religiosos. La mayoria entran en la categoria de fabulas de animales. Otros son de personajes humanos en los cuales la mitologia entra secundariamente. En varios de ellos se descubren supervivencias totemicas, como cuando se cita el Hombre-tigre, el Hombre-Toro. Papa-Jicotea, etc. Otro nos ofrece unas fabulas muy curiosas, de como se originaron el primer hombre, el primer negro y el primer blanco, muestra de como abundan en el folklore negro los mitos de la etnogenia. Si bien la mayor parte de los cuentos negros coleccionados por Lydia Cabrera son de origen yoruba, en varios aparece evidente la huella de la civilizacion de los blancos.