Natalia Bolivar was raised as a Catholic in an aristocratic family but fought in the underground against the Batista dictatorship and went on to study African religions. Her love for African culture began when she was a child raised by a nanny from the Congo. She remembers the stories she told her and her teachings that the earth, the stones and everything around her was sacred and that she must live well with her surroundings. When Natalia took up the fight against Batista, she put her experience with weapons to work and was involved in a plot to kill the dictator. She was captured and tortured by attempted drowning and beatings that left her with broken ribs and mangled ears. In the course of the Cuban Revolution she has been able to pursue her ethnological studies, writings and paintings, through which she defends the African culture that is part of the Cuban identity.