"The Dead and the Living in a Cuban-Kongo Sacred Society" by Todd Ramon Ochoa

Todd Ramon Ochoa

Deposited 2005

Abstract
This dissertation is about a Kongo-inspired sacred society in the town of Guanabacoa, on Havana's eastern outskirts. The Nkita Mana Nkita house, as it is called, is one instance of the unique gathering of the Kongo dead that occurs in Cuba under the name of Palo. My study is an attempt to render ethnographically meaningful the praise of the dead engaged in Palo houses, so as to communicate the singularity of Cuban-Kongo social forms. I am herein concerned with Cuban-Kongo practices concerning the dead, matter and fate, and how these energize the fringes of social matrices wherein power is produced, concentrated, and transformed. Through detailed treatments of the materiality of Palo ritual, my thesis argues for an interpretation of the dead that posits the immanence of visceral experience as the privileged zone from which healing and harming are conjured. The Cuban-Kongo dead, as this concept is here elaborated, is understood as a realm of experience prior to signification, giving rise to subjects and objects, and necessitating their dissolution. Explicit is the proposal of a philosophy of serial affirmation as an analytic strategy to best communicate Palo thinking and action. Affirmation is likewise pursued as a strategy to position Palo within the Cuban religious milieu, which is here figured as a history of competing Kongo, West African, and Spanish Catholic inspirations. Publicly derided, and secretly respected, as powerful sorcery, Palo embraces this characterization through an affirmation of the 19th century Catholic figures of the Devil, the witch, and the Jew, which it turns into the discursive basis of its cosmological sovereignty. This sovereignty holds struggle dear as a form of praise for the dead, embraces suffering alongside joy, and places healing and harming beyond West African and European moral registers through a practice of transformation that guarantees “Kongo Rule” in Cuba today.