Hortensia Pichardo Viñals

Cuban historian and pedagogue. She distinguished herself through her work researching archives, by means of which she made known significant documents for the history of Cuba.

Hortensia Pichardo Viñals was born in La Habana. She was the granddaughter of Esteban Pichardo Tapia, author of relevant works in various areas of knowledge, among which stand out the first text of geography and the first map of Cuba of profound accuracy, as well as the first dictionary of Cuban words. In a family environment characterized by a love of culture, the childhood of the one who would become a renowned researcher of her country's history took place.

She entered the Escuela Normal de Maestros de La Habana in 1917. After completing general education, she enrolled in the Pedagogy degree at the Universidad de La Habana, opting for the free education modality. Her thesis work, which she defended in 1924, was titled "El Colegio de San Cristóbal de La Habana".

In the course of her pedagogy studies she met Fernando Portuondo, who would also become a distinguished historian, author of works that enriched Cuban historiography. They married on October 5, 1927.

Subsequently, Hortensia Pichardo studied Philosophy and Letters, and her doctoral thesis, "Mercedes Matamoros, su Vida y su Obra", had to remain pending until 1934, as a result of the closure of the University decreed by dictator Gerardo Machado.

During the course of that political crisis, in the 1930s, the family moved their residence to the city of Santiago de Cuba, where Fernando Portuondo worked as a school inspector, while Hortensia Pichardo worked as a teacher in a public school. From then on, she began to put into practice the pedagogical criteria that would characterize her subsequent teaching activity.

Later she was a rural teacher at the site of Los Cocos, in the municipality of Sagua de Tánamo, where she taught children to sing the National Anthem, which they had never heard before. In 1937 the family returned to La Habana, and Portuondo began writing his Historia de Cuba, which would constitute a classic work of national historiography.

In 1944, Hortensia Pichardo was appointed professor at the Instituto de la Víbora, in La Habana, where she taught different disciplines, such as History of Cuba and Ancient, Medieval, Modern, Contemporary and American History.

During that stage of her professional life she continued broadening her pedagogical criteria, based on the use of audiovisual media, rigorous search of original documentary sources, and the promotion of active student participation. With this mode of proceeding she achieved very positive results, since her students became accustomed to prioritizing the study of primary sources. This would be the basis upon which Hortensia Pichardo advanced in what would be her most relevant contribution to Cuban historiography: her collection of Documentos para la Historia de Cuba.

In the early 1960s, she joined the faculty of the newly created Escuela de Historia of the Facultad de Humanidades at the Universidad de La Habana, where she held the chair of Técnica de la Investigación Histórica. She rigorously conveyed to her students the inescapable principle that research must be, more than reading, a complex process of searching for, organizing, and processing original information, in order to undertake a scientific analysis of historical processes.

In that sense, for those who had the privilege of being her students—some of them prestigious Cuban historians today—the working sessions with Dr. Pichardo in the Sala Colección Cubana of the Biblioteca Nacional "José Martí" and in the Archivo Nacional de Cuba were memorable, aimed at training them practically in the proper use of documents, and introducing them to the complex process of historical research.

Thus, she showed her students how one should approach the document, literally, just as it appeared in the source, respecting its spelling and wording, as well as the style of its author—informative of its historical moment—so that they would be educated in the criterion of the complexity of that work, for she considered that the professor should dedicate himself to research to offer his students the best of himself, with a view to achieving the highest results.

Simultaneously with Técnica de la Investigación Histórica, she also worked at the aforementioned university school, as professor of the subjects of General Historiography—with a program that covered from the Bible to contemporary works—and Cuban Historiography, always recommending reading as an essential premise of the work, and particularly for future historians.

She never accepted inaccuracies, and her effort was always aimed at placing historical facts in their proper place. An example of this was her struggle so that the event that occurred on October 10, 1868, which began the Guerra de los Diez Años, would not be called "Grito de Yara", but rather "Alzamiento de La Demajagua"; nor "Grito de Baire", but rather "Alzamiento de Oriente", to the events of February 24, 1895, which restarted the struggles for the emancipation of the Island with the Guerra de Independencia of the Cubans against Spanish colonial domination.

As evidence of the value that Dr. Pichardo placed on historical knowledge in the formation of patriotic values, her article "Los niños de la calle" is exemplary, where she argued the need to offer sessions in schools and children's homes where the causes that gave rise to the Cuban Revolution that triumphed in 1959 would be explained.

Of particular significance is her extensive historiographical work, embodied in numerous books and articles related to the history of Cuba, which saw the light in various publishing houses and in periodicals such as the Anuario de Estudios Martianos, the Revista Bimestre Cubana, the magazine Bohemia, the Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional "José Martí", the Revista de la Universidad de La Habana, the magazine Islas, and the magazine Santiago.

Likewise, Hortensia Pichardo distinguished herself through her extensive participation in national and international scientific meetings.

She was a member of the Tribunal Nacional de Categorías Científicas and the Tribunal Nacional de Grados Científicos en Ciencias Históricas. She also was part of the Sociedad de Estudios Históricos e Internacionales—one of the corporations that most contributed to the development of Cuban culture—and served as a member of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC) and the Asociación de Historiadores Latinoamericanos y del Caribe (ADHILAC).

She held the degree of Doctor in Historical Sciences and the condition of Profesora de Mérito of the Universidad de La Habana, and she was conferred the Orden "Carlos J. Finlay", the Orden "Ana Betancourt", and the Distinción "Por la Cultura Nacional". Other important recognitions and decorations she received were the Medalla "150 Aniversario del natalicio del general Máximo Gómez"; the Medalla "150 Aniversario del natalicio de Calixto García"; the Medalla "250 Aniversario de la Universidad de La Habana"; the Orden "Carlos Manuel de Céspedes", and the Premio Nacional de Ciencias Sociales (1995). Hortensia Pichardo Viñals passed away in the city of La Habana on June 21, 2001.