Monday, 11 July 2011 17:18
Don Fernando Ortiz Fernández, the great Cuban polygraph.
Havanians are not accustomed to using subheadings with names, as they still do in Spain; we use "don" (sir) and "doña" (lady), nothing more.
However, due to his extraordinary greatness, there is one Havanian that we all refer to as Don Fernando Ortiz Fernández, the great Cuban polygraph.
He really deserves the name. This great man, born on 16 July, was immensely intellectually and scientifically active, which is difficult to describe; his diligent work researching the Afro-Cuban culture´s historical roots the most significant. He was a true master of our folklore. Due to his permanent thirst for knowledge, this lawyer, journalist, professor and diplomat was also a sociologist, criminologist, linguist, musicologist, economist, historian and geographer, to name a few of the fields he dominated.
Consistente with his ideas, he published more than 100 valuable works, among which are: Los negros brujos (Black Sorcerers- notes on the study of criminal anthropology), Los cabildos afrocubanos (The Afrocuban Town Council) Las relaciones económicas entre Cuba y los Estados Unidos (Economic Relations between Cuba and the United States), among many more. But he would have been fine just with his Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Cuban Counterpoint of Tobacco and Sugar) —referred to as one of his greatest contributions to cultural anthropology— achieving immortality by introducing the concept of cultural replacement, still valid today. According to Fernández, "it is a cardinal and basic necessity to understand Cuba´s history and, for similar reasons, all of America in general."
Following this line of thought, Fernández concluded that "Cuba is a melting pot, above all, an open mix. That is Cuba, the island, the pot positioned at the tropic´s fire…the earth´s unique mix, made of mud, which has been very open…" This rose our nation, weaving and merging Spanish, Indian and Black culture.
I think that the forceful and broad Ortiz thought spectrum makes him more than worthy of the title attributed by many: "The third discoverer of Cuba," right after the great Admiral Christopher Columbus and German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
Without a doubt, Don Fernando Ortiz Fernández is deservedly one of Latin America´s scientific icons, and one of the country´s most monumental ethnologist and anthropologists, one whom we will celebrate his 130th anniversary on 16 July.
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