Defending our culture

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Fernando Ortiz
He is born on July 16th, 1881 and dies on April 10th, 1969. In 1883, his mother took him to live to Menorca (Balearic), where he studied the elementary school and graduated of High school in 1895. Student still, published a story in a newspaper of Menorca. In 1895, when beginning the career of Law in the University of Havana, he participated in the foundation of the student publication The Echo of the Class. He continues his studies of Law in Barcelona where he graduated. He graduated of Doctor of law (1901) in the University of Madrid and returned to Havana in 1902. Between 1903 and 1905, he worked in the consular service of the Republic. He studied criminology in Italy and he made acquaintance with Caesar Lombroso and with Enrique Ferri. He collaborated in the magazine of the first one, Archivio di Anthropologia Criminale, Psichiatria e Medicina Legale.

In 1906, he was designated fiscal lawyer of the Audience of Havana. The following year he entered in the Economic Society of Friends of the Country of which ended up being president. Professor for opposition of the Public Law school of the University of Havana. In 1910, he attended as official delegate from Cuba to the First International Congress of Administrative Sciences, taken place in Brussels. That same year he renews the publication of the Revista Bimestre Cubana, organ of the Economic Society. He stays as its director up to 1959. He figured among the initiators of the Popular University in 1914. With José María Chacón y Calvo he founded in 1924 the Society of the Cuban Folklore and that same year founded the magazine Archivos del Folklore Cubano that directed during the five years of its publication. He lived in Washington between 1931 and 1933 and deployed activities against Machado's regime, then prevailing in Cuba.

He founded in 1936 the Spanish American Institution of Culture of which was president until its disappearance, and the Ultra magazine, organ of cultural diffusion. In 1937, he created and was the president of the Society of Afro-Cuban Studies. In 1941, he organized in the Hispanocubana, the Cuban Alliance for a Free World, as a fighting organ against the fascism. In 1942, he gave beginning to a Seminar of Cuban Ethnography in the University of Havana.

He received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Humanities of the University of Columbia, in Ethnography of the University of Cuzco and of Law of the University of Santa Clara. Besides in the magazines founded and directed by him , he collaborated in Cuba America , Cuba Contemporánea, Universidad de La Habana, Revista de Arqueología y Etnología, Azul y Rojo, Revista Científica Internacional, El Mundo Ilustrado, Derecho y Sociología, El Mundo, El Cubano Libre, El Fígaro, Remedios Ilustrado, Diario Español, Ilustración Cubana, El Comercio, Letras, Alma Cubana, La Discusión, Bohemia, El Triunfo, La Razón, Revista de Administración, Gráfico, La Reforma Social, El País, Revista de La Habana, La Revista, Heraldo de Cuba, La Nova Catalunya, Revista de Avance, Social, Polémica, Revista Tabaco, Minerva, Diario de la Marina, Islas, La Gaceta de Cuba, Casa de las Américas; Archivos Venezolanos de Folklore; Traducción (Tampa, Florida); El Diluvio (Barcelona); La Nueva Democracia (New York); The Hispanic American Historical Review (North Carolina, USA). Member, also, of the Academy of the History of Cuba. He stood out as figure of first importance in the investigation of the Afro-Cuban folklore where he left published diverse and important titles. He wrote several books of Laws and his works La filosofía penal de los espiritistas y Contrapunto cubano del tabaco y el azúcar were translated to the Portuguese and English, respectively.

posted by Lilith @ 12:20 PM