Tatabisaco
A story from Afro-Cuban folklore.
Lydia Cabrera (1899–1991) was a Cuban writer, ethnographer, and folklorist known for her work documenting Afro-Cuban culture, religion, and oral traditions. Born in Havana, she studied art and literature in Paris. Her Cuentos Negros de Cuba, first published in 1940, preserves an oral tradition that might have been lost. Cabrera transcribed these folktales from the voices of Havana’s storytellers, capturing their humor, wisdom, and connection to the past. These stories are woven with African influence, particularly Yoruba and Bantu beliefs, adapted to the realities of life in Cuba. Below, I’m sharing my English translation of "Tatabisaco," one story from this collection.
In the village the women rose early to work the fields (growing rice, yams, yucca, okra, peanuts, and sesame) while the men hunted in the jungle. The field of one woman bordered a lagoon. She had one child, a few months old, who she carried on her back like a bundle of hay. At reaching the field she set him down in the shade of a bush and worked it with a hoe. The shade waned; the sun fell in bursts upon the face of the child, burning and overwhelming him. Mosquitoes and ants bit him. Flies fell into his mouth. The rising wind filled his eyes with dust and sand. Although he cried, his mother couldn’t hear him and never ceased her labor. The lord of the lagoon pitied the child.
One morning, the spirit called to the child from the shore of the lagoon, appearing as an old man, with his swampy chest caked in sable-green muck and a beard that covered the expanse of water.
“Woman,” he said, “give me your son. I am Tatabisaco, father of the lagoon. While you work, I’ll care for him. When you’re finished, call me and I will return him.”
“Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco, take the child.” The woman gave Tatabisaco the child, unsure of what to say and offering no words of gratitude.
Thenceforth, when the woman reached her field at dawn, she approached the shore of the lagoon and called Tatabisaco.
Tatabisaco from the bottom of the lagoon responded:
“Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco…. Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco…. Tuá díla Moana a mé. Cuenda y bricuendé1. Tatabisaco!”
Invisible to the woman, Tatabisaco grasped the arms of the child. The water turned clear, with small fish threading its surface imperceptibly.
The woman turned to her labor, working without rest until sunset. At sunset she called to Tatabisaco, who returned the child. She tied the child to her back and then returned to her hut, passing others returning from their fields. She prepared dinner. Her husband returned from the hunt. They ate and, exhausted, lay down on their cots and fell into a heavy sleep. In her dreams, the woman labored afield. The spirit of her husband returned to the jungle.... He appeared as a phantom on the hunting trails, carrying a magical bow and knife, and all night pursued the elongated phantoms of animals in flight—a dizzying hunt, reaching heaven’s expanse.2
Another day, having cast seeds into the furrows of her field, she offered a goat to Tatabisaco, saying:
“Eat goat with its kid and all.” She didn’t know the proper invocation. And Tatabisaco retired, offended in his heart.
That afternoon, at the lagoon, she called:
“Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco...” She called his name over and over, but the spirit didn’t appear.
Pure blue colored the sky, reflected in the lagoon. Then the water turned the color of a brewing storm, and the woman, far from comprehending its anger, kept shouting with impatience:
“Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco...”
Reeds lining the shore twisted strangely and whistled, stretching and undulating into black venomous snakes. The stones and pebbles rolled on their own and turned into enormous crocodiles with jaws agape. The gray and weeping Güijes3 (children of the inconsolable rains, of ancient sorrow), half made with feathers, half made from the wisps of feverish water, hurled their sharpened pebbles. The lagoon boiled, black and red with blood. The voice of Tatabisaco resounded like thunder:
“Ungué, wó! Ungué, wó!”
And the night, grim, malevolent, rose from the lagoon—a night of mud and blood.
The woman fled and encountered others on the road retiring from their labor. She overheard one say:
“...the husband of the Moon’s younger sister killed her son and made her eat him.”
As soon as she reached her hut, she cut off the head of a ram, put it in a pot, and set it over the fire. Shortly after, her husband appeared, having already returned from the jungle, asking for food. When she opened the pot, she screamed hysterically and rolled on the ground.
The man thought his wife suffered from colic or that a rabid dog had bitten her stomach. To calm her, he fetched water from the well. Meanwhile, the woman ran outside, wailing, and called the neighbors. When the neighbors questioned the woman, her sobbing intensified, and nobody could understand her distress.
At last, it became clear to the multitude what had transpired: the husband, she accused, had put their child in a pot and set it on the fire. When the husband had covered the pot, the child said:
“Ungué, wó! Ungué, wó!” a voice resounding like thunder—and the man was about to eat the head of a ram, thinking it the head of his son.
Hearing this, the man screamed and rolled on the ground, like one bewitched. The women of the village joined the mother in tearing their hair, striking their own faces and breasts; young and old alike lamented in chorus and watered the earth with tears. The children clung to their mothers in fright and wailed. The women, moaning, begged for justice against the murderer of his own flesh and blood. The men, the elders, found this to be fair.
But the chief held the accused in high esteem. No one returned from the jungle with as many beasts as the accused. He knew how to attract animals and understood their language. He knew their origins, their tricks...and the song that tamed them while pierced by the arrow, taught to him by Moñi4, the Demon Bird of the Jungle. Before dipping his knife into the accused, the chief determined to consult Baba, the diviner, who lived alone and more than a league away.
Baba had sent a prenda5 to the Great Air and a deer horn to the Little Air. The Great Air would transmit every word spoken on earth, while the Little Air would recount everything it had seen. So, even before a messenger reached him, Baba knew everything.
“That man is innocent,” the Diviner said.
Nothing would quiet the woman, who had covered herself in ashes and, sitting in a circle, lifted her hands to her head, swaying her body to the rhythm of her weeping.
Baba ordered silence, and in the gloom of the swamp, there resounded a distant roar.
The Little Air came and told Baba that Tatabisaco was swelling and preparing to flood the land, destroy the crops, and, in his anger, would not forgive a single man. Everyone would drown, and the waters would rise to the tops of the tallest trees. Baba sent the Great Air to contain the waters and calm Tatabisaco’s fury. He selected twelve buck goats and twelve does and, followed by the multitude, led them to the lagoon. There, at midnight, he performed an ebbó.
Naked, Baba rubbed a white dove over his body, purifying himself.... Then he called three times:
"Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco…. Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco, Tatabisaco. Tuá díla Moana a mé…. Tatabisaco, Moana y tuá díla mé…. Tatabisaco, cuenda y bricuendé…. Tatabisaco!"
He threw a gourd into the water, which floated and drifted to the center of the lagoon, where it halted.
“Ungué, wó!” Tatabisaco responded.
Baba placed the twelve does into the water, which swam to the center of the lagoon and then drowned.
"Ungué, wó!" Tatabisaco repeated.
Then Baba sent the twelve bucks after the does. These drowned similarly.
From the depths of the lagoon Tatabisaco spoke:
"Tatabisaco, tuá díla Moana mé, Tatabisaco, cuenda y bricuendé…. Tatabisaco, cuenda y bricuendé…. Cuma imbimbo yo, wó!"
Amidst the speechless, awe-struck tribe, Tatabisaco appeared as an old man. His beard shimmered with the silver light of wriggling fish, illuminated by a bright moon. The child slept on his shoulder. The night turned serene.
Tatabisaco, appeased, expressed to the tribe that he wouldn’t harm them. He extended the child to the woman, but she didn’t dare to take him, nor did she lift her head from the ground.... Instead, the hunter took his son, who remained asleep. And the woman, retreating to the shadows, like a creature about to die, disappeared, never to be seen again.
Translated by Pedro José from Cuentos Negros de Cuba by Lydia Cabrera (1940). Courtesy of the Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida
This incantation appears to be an example of ritual language influenced by various African-derived traditions in Cuba, possibly mixing elements from Yoruba, Congo (Palo), or other West/Central African spiritual lexicons. Cabrera often preserved these phrases phonetically, as their precise etymologies can be layered and syncretic. The exact meaning of this and other incantations may be lost or composite.
The idea of a person’s spirit leaving the body during sleep to wander or hunt is common in many African, indigenous, and Afro-diasporic mythologies.
The güije are figures in Cuban folklore that represent water-dwelling goblins or sprites, often portrayed as mischievous or malevolent.
Akin to the ajé (witch-birds) in some Yoruba traditions.
The term prenda is typically associated with Palo Monte (Congo-derived traditions in Cuba). A prenda or nganga can be a consecrated vessel used for divination and spirit work.