Not One Palo but Several, Each with Its Own Line of Tata Nganga

Palo is not a single uniform tradition but a family of related branches that developed distinct ritual styles in Cuba, most prominently Palo Mayombe, Palo Briyumba and the Kimbisa rule founded by Andres Facundo Cristo de los Dolores Petit in the nineteenth century, which deliberately combined Kongo-derived practice with elements of Catholicism and, by some accounts, Freemasonry and Santeria, producing a syncretism its founder intended rather than one that developed by accident. A Tata Nganga initiated within one of these branches works according to that branch's specific rules for consecrating and maintaining the nganga, and the branches differ enough in practice that a priest trained in one is not automatically qualified to lead ceremonies in another.

Cuba's post-1959 government promoted state atheism for several decades, and Afro-Cuban religions including Palo were practised more cautiously and less openly during that period than before or after it, a pressure eased considerably by the constitutional reforms of the early 1990s that restored greater religious freedom; Palo, like Santeria, has since become more visible both within Cuba and among the Cuban diaspora in the United States, where Tata Nganga and Yaya priests now serve immigrant communities far from the religion's Caribbean and Central African origins.