Fernando Ortiz y Fernández (1881-1969)

Lawyer, anthropologist, historian, sociologist, outstanding ethnographer, author, publisher, and intellectual. Born in Havana of a Spanish father and Cuban mother, Ortiz grew up on Minorca, Spain, returning to Cuba in 1894.  He studied at the University of Havana and at the Universidad Central of Madrid, where he received his doctorate of civil law in 1901, becoming a pioneer scholar of Spanish folklore.  From 1902 he was Cuban consul in Spain and Italy and, in 1906-08, public prosecutor in Havana.  He then served as professor of public law at the University of Havana, 1908-16.  At this time, he published Hampa afrocubana: los negros brujos (1960) and Los Negros esclavos (1916), the two best-known studies of the history and culture of Blacks in Cuba.  From 1910 he edited the Revista bimestre cubana.  He entered the Cuban house of representatives as a liberal in 1917 and was reelected in 1919. He founded the Sociedad del Folklore Cubano in 1923 and the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos in 1926.  Exiled in Washington, 1931-3, on his return he founded the journal Ultra.  Columbia University made him a doctor honoris causa in 1945.  He is best known outside Cuba for his study Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar.