During the Cuban Independence War or Spanish-American War, the white skinned Spanish forces referred to the darker skinned revolutionary forces, many of the soldiers dark-skinned Afro-Cubans and mixed people, as Mambises. “Mambi means the child of a Monkey and a buzzard,” says Esteban Montejo a former slave who fought in the revolution with thousands of other former enslaved Cubans.
Many people believe that the religion of Palo Mayombe is one of a solitary practice they are sadly mistaken because before the cofrades(cabildo structure) within the many ethnic Bantu groups and native alliances within Cuba created a structure that was unprecedented in the island. Five hundred years of Bantu occupation created a formula of practice and a means to have a set value within its make up and structure that was similarly based on a unilateral understanding of rank and even hierarchy. Yes rank we are not a military group but all are official ranks are based on ceremony that works conclusively through a spiritual and ritual order. What makes this so important in the official structure of who and what we are is the basis of Firmas or as many people may see as Sigils of power and ritual importance. Every ranking in the order within a Muna nso is based on your official rank within your own line. Most of the mambi warriors were intricately involved in some way with the practice of Palo Mayombe as more than 80 percent of the population whether Afro-Cuban or of mixed or white descent were initiated officers in the Cuban Independence against the Spaniards. For a time before the subsequent intervention of American forces there was worries of racism and bigotry. Ricardo Batrell Oviedo a Cuban freedom fighter account recalls how an editor recounts his story(borrowed from shades of history by F.S.J. Ledgister all rights reserved.
(As editor and translator Mark A. Sanders tells us, Batrell was a remarkable figure, who not only rose to the rank of junior officer in the rebel army in the western province of Matanzas while still in his teens, but after the war, while not yet twenty, taught himself to read and write. The text we have is a deliberately crafted work, Para la historia (“For History”), published by Batrell in 1912, in the wake of an abortive revolt by black Cubans who had been denied full political rights in what was supposed to be a democracy, but which — since it was in reality a puppet regime of the white supremacist United States — was increasingly racially unequal. This was a period, after all, when the United States supported the suppression of one of the two black-ruled states in the Americas, the Miskito Kingdom in Central America, and turned the other, the Republic of Haiti, into a protectorate.
Batrell’s purpose in writing his account was to emphasise the role played by black Cubans in the War of Independence, and how shabbily and undemocratically they were treated subsequently. What he gives us is a dramatic story of men, almost all of them black, mostly young — he became a mambí at fifteen — armed with Remington and Mauser rifles and with machetes (the last most likely to put fear into their Spanish enemies), who showed uncommon courage during the three years of the War of Independence.
Batrell’s narrative of the war in Matanzas shows that black men fought harder for Cuban freedom than whites, and then were shoved aside in the aftermath and relegated to inferior status. That was a condition he regarded as unjust. On the other hand, for a brief moment true racial democracy appeared to have been achieved when the Spanish withdrew from Cuba: “It was in those days that there was truly a Cuban community. There were no worries or any races. Everyone was joyful and full of brotherly love.” (There is not much brotherly love for the Spaniards, the “sons of Pelayo” as Batrell calls them, with his autodidact’s love for stock epithets; or for the Cuban guerrillas who fought on their side. Nor is there much love for the majás, the Cubans, mostly white, who supported independence but did most of their fighting after the American intervention in 1898 had guaranteed Spain’s defeat.)
It is very much Batrell’s story, the account of a young man who rode into action eager to free his country and, in the process, change his own status. The ingratitude of white Cubans for the courage of black Cubans is a crucial theme. After one victory, ammunition seized from the Spaniards is taken from the black regiment in which Batrell served by the white general Avelino Rosa, commanding the Cuban forces in Matanzas, precisely because they were black, and given to a regiment commanded by a white officer. “Indeed,” writes Batrell, “there was no other reason that could explain why he unjustly took the munitions from us, except his racial prejudice.”)
To believe in faith sometimes we must understand the struggle that incurs in one’s life to really appreciate what we have even if we did not go through the same struggle within our faith. Understanding the basis of war tends to show why people may feel that to defend a ritual rite we have to constantly on guard with our ideals and our way of thinking and even portray this idea of gangsterism. Well it never existed in Palo Mayombe and we as Paleros need to stop thinking that one person can run around as many call themselves Buey Suelto’s (bull on the loose which in terminology means ox on the loose) Since an Ox has no testicles what can it really produce accept work and if it has no one guiding it than it will surely produce nothing. We are to be led by our elders and in doing so we follow a rank and an order, Monotheistic and Animistic in belief and origin but we are guided by those before us. Our ranks are based on who we are and what is represented as such in the religion. If you have no backing of elders, No Position or place in this religion, No Pati-mpemba to prove your worth and validity than who are you really?
Every rank is a ritual and every ritual is a blood pact into a family sometimes these ties are a lot stronger the family ties and bridge the understanding of who we are supposed to be. Loyalty, Faith, Honor for one to promote it you must first live it. So when I hear people saying they only got cut once then they are only a small rank in a every big nucleus that is palo mayombe. Now one thing is receiving the same rank over and over but another is receiving promotional markings as many people do in this religion from Engueyo, to fula ngando(or in some houses bakonfula) Manzanero, Lindero de prenda, Talanquero, Tata nkisi, Tatandi endibilongo and all those are rankings. Official ranks through initiation process and not through self naming you can not make it up it has to be given to you. Let’s start understanding ritual and not entertain fallacy for the sake of creating persona. This is not a Grammy award this is a privilege so if you earned it then be about it. If you have not then unfortunately for those out there who look for guidance will be led into darkness and the only person to blame is the persona and not the priest or priestess who is working for the betterment of the community at large. Tata Musitu.