Walking Cuba: El Camino del Cimarron

Palmira-The Cabildos

The square of Palmira is a spacious, gleaming public space. It has few trees so it is not a place to go for shade but its soft pastel color in the bright blue day make you believe that the heat bearable.

We skirted the plaza heading past the bici taxis and the cafes and bars and restaurants and kiosks and line of consumers waiting their turn, down to the first Cabildo, la Sociedad de Cristo Babalu Aye/San Lazaro, a long, freshly painted pink stucco building at the end of the street with red and white wooden posts supporting the equally long front porch.

The director knocks on the white door. I stand a few feet back. Felipe Capote Sevilla, the president of the sociedad answer. The museum director warned me that he was not the most sociable of men, taciturn and serious looking but not to let that bother me.

“He’s that way with everybody,” she said.

But when he greets us and the director tells him who I am, and that I’d like to pay my respects, he opens his grin and the door wide.