The artists José Parlá and Claudia Hilda, his wife, live in a former fire station in Fort Greene surrounded by memories of Cuba, which Parlá's family fled in 1970 and where Hilda lived until recently. "There's a lot of magical realism here, a big mix of Cuban traditions and religion," says Parlá, pointing to an icon of la Caridad del Cobre, the island's patron saint, in the kitchen. "We cannot move her!"
they won't sit with novices or enthusiastic tourists visiting Calle Ocho, the heart of the disapora in Miami, to admire the nostalgic murals of Cuban exile, but rather be able to play one-on-one with their own kind, those who know Little Havana, people who left Cuba and helped build a city on the swamp that was Miami, who spend long hours thinking about what a return would be like and who never stop talking about politics.
In 1954, the Cuban ethnographer Lydia Cabrera published " El Monte," a book that committed to paper the hitherto oral history of major Afro-Cuban religious traditions. Its title, which translates roughly to "The Wilderness," refers not only to nature but to the separate, sacred space where, for those who practice Palo Monte and Lucumí-better known as Santería-spirits and deities reside. For decades, the book has informed the art of Cuban nationals and the Cuban diaspora.