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Fernando Ortiz:Transculturation and Nationalism

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Essays in Cuban Intellectual History

Part of the book series: New Concepts in Latino American Cultures ((NDLAC))

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Abstract

In the early twentieth century, news spread in the academic circles of Cuban social sciences that the fossil of a monkey, together with a mysterious jawbone, had been found in a cave in Sancti Spíritus, at the island’s center. The discovery aroused a degree of archaeological speculation that dated the first signs of human life on the island to the early Quaternary, when Cuba was still connected to the Florida Peninsula. This expedition to the Sierra de Banao, where in the Boca del Plurial cave researchers found the remains of what was to be named “homo cubensis,” “montaneia anthropomorfa,” “Sancti Spiritus man,” or simply “Cuban fossil man,” was led by Cuban paleontologist Luis Montané.1 The discovery also led to a kind of genealogical euphoria, in which the discourse of social sciences, anxious to affirm the identity of Cuban culture, made its first nationalist statements.

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Notes

  1. Emeterio S. Santovenia, Historia de Cuba (La Habana: Editorial Trópico, 1939), 3 vols. vol. 1, pp. 52–55.

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  5. Ibid., p. 27.

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  28. After Bloom, it could be said that that long shadow of texts makes Ortiz a canonical author: Harold Bloom, El canon occidental. La escuela y los libros de todas las épocas (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1995), pp. 11–22. See also Jacques Derrida, La diseminación (Madrid: Editorial Fundamentos, 1975), p. 41, and Giuglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, Historia de la lectura en el mundo occidental (Madrid: Taurus, 1998), pp. 534–549.

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  29. Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (La Habana: Jesus Montero Editor, 1940), pp. IX–XXIII.

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  30. Ibid., p. X.

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  31. Ibid., p. XI.

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  32. Ibid., p. X.

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  33. Ibid., p. XV.

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  34. Ibid., p. 142.

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  35. Ibid., p. XXI.

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  36. Ibid., pp. X–XI.

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  37. Ibid., p. XXII.

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  38. Ibid., p. XXII.

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  39. On the editions of the Counterpoint, see the “Prologue” by María Fernanda Ortiz Herrera, the author’s daughter, in a beautiful reprint that she supervised herself: Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Madrid: Música Mundana Maqueda, 1999), pp. I–IX. See also Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Universidad Central de las Villas, Cuba, Dirección de Publiciones, 1963), p. IX. The most recent critical edition of the Counterpoint was supervised by Enrico Mario Santí: Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Madrid: Cátedra/Música Mundana Maqueda, 2002). 40. Órbita de Fernando Ortiz (La Habana: UNEAC, 1973), p. 39.

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  42. Ibid., pp. 31, 80, 81.

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  43. Ibid., p. 71; Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El Ingenio. Complejo económico social cubano del azúcar (Barcelona: Crítica, 2001), pp. 87–115.

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  44. Ibid., p. 131.

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  45. Ibid., p. 137.

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  46. Ibid., pp. 137–142.

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  49. Before Benítez Rojo, Moreno Fraginals, from the viewpoint of a distrusting historian, referred to the weight of fiction in the Counterpoint, a book “written with all the grace and genius of maestro Fernando Ortiz, describing the contrasts between sugar and tobacco just as the Archpriest of Hita did in the fight between Don Carnal and Doña Cuaresma. Many of his statements are wonderfully brilliant and suggestive: many others do not stand up to the slightest Celtic analysis.” Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El Ingenio. Complejo económico social cubano del azúcar, pp. 728–729, Antonio Benítez Rojo, La isla que se repite (Barcelona: Editorial Casiopea, 1998), pp. 183–190; Román de la Campa, Latin Americanism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 64–96; Fernando Coronil, “Introduction” to Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint. Tobacco and Sugar (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. IX-LVI; Peter Burke, Formas de historia cultural (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2000), pp. 202–203; Enrico Mario Santí, Fernando Ortiz: contrapunteo y transculturación (Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2002), pp. 65–89.

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  51. David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America (Pantheon Books: New York, 1995); Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

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  53. Fernando Ortiz, La reconquista de America. Reflexiones sobre el panhispanismo (Paris: Librairie Paul Ollendorf, 1913), p. 19

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  54. Ibid., p. 27.

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  56. Ibid., pp. 73–80.

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  57. Ibid., p. 80.

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  58. Ibid., p. 73.

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  64. Enrico Mario Santí has described the complex genesis of this text in his critical edition of the Counterpoint. Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Madrid: Cátedra/ Música Mundana Maqueda, 2002), pp. 47–61.

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© 2008 Rafael Rojas

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Rojas, R. (2008). Fernando Ortiz:Transculturation and Nationalism. In: Essays in Cuban Intellectual History. New Concepts in Latino American Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230611078_4

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