Born in Havana on July 16, 1881, the immense human being who was Don Fernando Ortiz died in the same city on April 10, 1969, with the endorsement of a prestigious scientific and cultural work that has always been advanced, sharp, incisive and revolutionary, at the forefront of intellectual thought in the largest of the Antilles and even in the world.
His erudition earned him considerable admiration from his compatriots, as he was comparable to that of the legendary men of the Renaissance, and his prolific work covered fields such as jurisprudence, archaeology, ethnology, journalism, criminology, linguistics, musicology, folklore, economics, history and geography.
A polygraph of universal size, he founded and periodically published in numerous magazines, collaborated with institutions and received recognition from academies, in Cuba and in Europe and the Americas, including the title of Doctor Honoris Causa.
He not only transcended and became famous for his contributions of a high scientific and intellectual level in general. In a certain way, his work went beyond the summits where he managed to settle and became popular and well-known, so much so that he began to be frequently quoted by ordinary Cubans, proud to be his compatriot.
Such is the case of the famous definition, due to the simile used to explain the essence of Cuban culture, comparing it with a great ajiaco -national nutritional soup- due to the diversity of components and the deep and rooted warp of its fabric.
The efforts and results of his studies of the Afro-Cuban historical-cultural roots also earned him veneration in the country, since he demonstrated early before the scientific investigation of DNA, how coarse and false were in the theories of racial discrimination, endorsed even by some scientists.
Great forever and with a permanent presence in the forefront of Cuban social sciences, today the Fernando Ortiz Foundation has contributed for many years to the promotion of his work, more illuminating than ever, because times are still dark.
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