ON TWO ITALIAN PUBLICATIONS BY THE CUBAN ANTHROPOLOGIST FERNANDO ORTIZ (1881- 1969)

MASSIMO ALIVERTI¹, ILARIA GORINI², MELANIA BORGO², MARTA LICATA², MARIANO MARTINI⁵, IGNAZIO VECCHIO³, CRISTINA TORNALI⁴

¹University of Insubria (Varese) Italy, ²Department of Biotechnology and Life Sciences, University of Insubria (Varese) Italy - ³Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Catania, Italy - ⁴Department of Biomedical and Biotechnological Sciences, University of Catania, Italy - ⁵Department of Health Sciences (DISSAL), Section of History of Medicine and Ethics, University of Genoa, Italy

Fernando Ortiz was a Cuban anthropologist as well as one of the most prominent figures in 20th-century Latin-American cultu- re. His interests spanned from law to criminology, from anthropology to sociology, from psychology to ethnomedicine, and from folk- lore to musicology. In this paper, we will focus on two essays that he wrote in Italian, “Criminality of the Black in Cuba” and “Criminal superstitions in Cuba”. Noteworthy is the relationship between Ortiz and the Italian school of criminology. He spent seve- ral years in Genoa where he met Cesare Lombroso, one of the leading figures of the “positive school”. Ortiz drew inspiration from Cesare Lombroso and contextualised these ideas in Cuban society.