This paper presents a family of finite elements for the nonlinear static and dynamic analysis of cables based on a mixed variational formulation in curvilinear coordinates and finite deformations. This formulation identifies stress measures, in the form of axial forces, and conjugate deformation measures for the nonlinear catenary problem. The continuity requirements lead to two distinct implementations: one with a continuous axial force distribution and one with a discontinuous. Two examples from the literature on nonlinear cable analysis are used to validate the proposed formulation for St VenantKirchhoff elastic materials. These studies show that displacements and axial forces are captured with high accuracy for both the static and the dynamic case.