2023-07-15 20:59:52
One hundred and forty-two years ago, on July 16, 1881, the prominent anthropologist, jurist, archaeologist and journalist Fernando Ortiz Fernández, known as the third discoverer of Cuba, was born in Havana.
The scholar earned this epithet for the contribution of his studies on numerous stages of the island’s society. Faced with the multiplicity of his scientific interests, he became a criminologist, ethnologist, linguist, musicologist, folklorist, economist, historian, and geologist. Relevant were his works linked to Afro-Cuban historical-cultural roots.
with his work slave blacks (1916), made valuable contributions to the study of slavery in Cuba and laid the foundations for what would become ethnographic research in the country. (YO)
Among his works, there are works that address the roots of the Cuban way of being. and in his book Cuban decadence (1924), defends culture as a way to preserve freedom. With the publication of Cuban counterpoint of tobacco and sugar (1940), “introduces his concept of transculturation, to explain the rich process by which the fusion of cultures is produced, giving rise to the extraordinary amalgam that represents the Cuban”. (II)
The deceit of the raceswritten in 1945 as part of the campaign against German National Socialism, evidences the scientific unsustainability of discrimination based on skin color, and the need to spread that truth.
Showing how sorcery was an integral part of the European culture that arrived in Cuba with the colonizers, was his purpose with Story of a Cuban fight against demons (1959).
As the most important of his works worldwide, it is considered The instruments of Afro-Cuban music (1952-1955), published in five volumes.
Research authored by the distinguished scientist related to the aboriginal cultures of Cuba are History of Indo-Cuban archeology (1923) y The new orientations of Cuban prehistory (1925).
Fernando Ortiz, whose life spanned almost nine decades, created and edited numerous magazines and collaborated with various national and foreign media.
“His position in defense of the cause of blacks, as well as his vindication of the indigenist heritage, position Ortiz as a determined representative of anti-racism in Cuba.” (III)
(Taken from Cuba in short).
Grades
I. History of science and technology in Cuba, Pruna Goodgall, Pedro M., Editorial Científico-Técnica. Havana, p. 178.
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III. One hundred figures of science in Cuba. García Blanco, Rolando, 2002, Editorial Científico-Técnica. Havana, p. 300.
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