Avatares de la conceptualización de la cultura negra en la obra de Fernando Ortiz, 1900-1940

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the transformations suffered by the ideology of mestizaje in the diverse periods of the essay production of Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, before the publication of his classic Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar in 1940. In order to do that, we will analyze certain fundamental instances in his work, looking especially at some of the numerous essays published between 1900 and the late 1930s and focusing on the articulation, in his beginnings, of the tension between the ethnocentric condemnation of alterity and the valuation of the Afro component as a key basis for the constitution of national identity