Palo Mayombe is the best known of the branches, or ramas, of Palo Monte, the Kongo-derived religion that took shape among enslaved Central Africans in Cuba. Within the family of Palo traditions, which also includes Briyumba and Kimbisa, Mayombe is generally regarded as the most conservative and African-oriented, keeping closest to the BaKongo religious inheritance and admitting comparatively little of the Catholic and Spiritist material that other branches absorb. Its name recalls the Mayombe forest region of the Congo, and the emphasis of the branch falls on the powers of the wild, the earth and the dead.
Like all of Palo, Mayombe centres on the consecrated vessel called the nganga or prenda, a cauldron housing a pact with the spirit of a specific dead person (nfumbi) together with sticks, earth and other charged materials, through which the initiated palero works for healing, protection, divination and the resolution of human affairs. Reflecting its reputation for potency and its roots in a religion long practised under concealment, Mayombe is transmitted in secrecy through initiation into ritual houses rather than through any text.