José Antonio Portuondo Valdor

He completed primary and secondary education up to the high school degree in Santiago de Cuba. He studied at the Universidad de La Habana, first in the Faculty of Law, from which he transferred to Philosophy and Letters, where he graduated in 1941. During those years he was co-editor of the magazine Mediodía and directed the weekly Baraguá.

From 1941 to 1944 he taught at various private schools in the city of La Habana. He was one of the editors of the Gaceta del Caribe.

Between 1944 and 1946 he resided in Ciudad México by virtue of a scholarship he received. In 1945, he publishes his book Concepto de la Poesía. Subsequently he goes to the U.S. where he teaches at the universities of New Mexico, Wisconsin, Columbia and Pennsylvania.

Between 1949 and 1950 he was a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation to conduct studies on Hispanic American literary criticism. Upon his return to his homeland he works as a professor at the Universidad de Oriente, in Santiago de Cuba between 1953 and 1958.

In 1958 he travels to Venezuela where he serves as a professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Venezuela. He returned to Cuba in 1959.

Between 1960 and 1962 he was Cuban ambassador to Mexico and was part of Cuban delegations to the VI and VII Consultation Meetings of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of American States (San José, Costa Rica, 1961) and to the Conference of Non-Aligned Countries (Belgrade, 1961). He was appointed vice president of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, of which he was a founder and Emeritus Member.

He served as Rector of the Universidad de Oriente in the years 1962-1965. He founded the Instituto de Literatura y Lingüística, attached to the Academia de Ciencias de Cuba, and was appointed professor of Aesthetics at the Universidad de La Habana, positions he held until his death.

In 1976 he was appointed Cuban ambassador to the Holy See, a position he held until 1982. National Prize for Literature, 1986.

He is perhaps one of those figures in Cuban literature who will not be forgotten even when the inexorable passage of time indicates bowing toward new and refreshing ways of making literature and philosophy.

The intention to approach the vast body of work of this man of letters is, in my view, a tribute to the friend, to the human being of virtues and defects, to the lucid and complacent intellectual with his fellow men, but also severe with the pen in the tense and evocative moment of literary criticism, that which allowed him to take the pulse of and enhance the different moments of the process of formation of our national identity, especially from the difficult years that followed the decade of the twenties until his physical disappearance in a date as recent as March 1996.

Organic intellectual, who managed through his literary critiques and his essayistic work to contribute an inexhaustible spring of theoretical production, which places him within those men who, in an ascending manner, formed a committed thought not only with the need to transform the historical stage in which he lived, but everything he did was accompanied by an eminently Marxist, class-based and principled theoretical base.

He drinks from the primordial sources of a process that has its genesis in the most advanced thought of the late nineteenth century, which already reveals the formation of an independent, liberating and emancipatory consciousness by essence, that although it was mediated by decades of neocolonialism, equally served to found and refound a new will of Cubans that favored resuming in the 1920s the best of the thought of this historic stage of the nation, with figures of great philosophical ascendancy such as José Martí, Enrique José Varona, José de Luz y Caballero and other philosophers, mixing it with the best of the intellectual production of the first half of the twentieth century.

Every nation in formation objectively requires, beyond the will of the human and material elements that compose it, an influence from the surrounding world, from the good and bad that reaches it from other places and exerts undoubtedly a regulating influence on national thought that ends up favoring, fostering and developing identity as a kind of synthesis of the customs, memory and traditions of peoples.

Taking into account these hard realities of a complex socio-political context; it allows José Antonio Portuondo to settle his work in an overflowing humanism that comes to his formation, polishes it, strengthens it spiritually and provides him the necessary instruments to structure a committed work, of high philosophical scope, from an anthropological base that has transcended time and is part of the best traditions of an emancipatory national thought that has been woven and complemented with other intellectuals such as: Juan Marinello, Nicolás Guillén, Navarro Luna, Jorge González Allué, Ángel I. Augier, Raúl Roa, Alejo Carpentier, among other outstanding figures of Cuban letters and culture in general.

In his capacity as literary critic, he felt the need to delve not only into the masterworks of universal literature, but also those with proven aesthetic deficiencies, which allowed him to create the foundations of a system of theoretical analysis as a critic, recognized at the national and international level.

In his work "Bosquejo Histórico de las Letras Cubanas, (La Habana 1960)", he demonstrates a profound knowledge of national and universal literary production, of history and philosophy, for which he employs his best instrument: creative and generous criticism, directed at an exhaustive hermeneutics of the best of human thought.

It is valuable, the journey he makes through philosophical and literary thought, with an exquisite bath of good history, that leaves a pleasant taste that compels the reader to seek new and varied sources of information. This original rhythm of making his literary critiques is a constant in all his written materials, hence, his readings are very enjoyable, even those of recherché oratory, resulting from his work as a researcher and voracious reader.

Portuondo was a distinguished critic and essayist, but at the same time had sufficient time to venture into the most diverse topics of general culture, made several analyses on the work of Martí, studied the influence of other cultures on the Cuban one, ventured into the problems of the press and workers' organization in Cuba, fashion, painting, Marxist aesthetics, education, literary theory from a Marxist approach, literary criticism, in short, had the capacity to interpret through a cosmic worldview ascension the best of human production in the historical context in which he lived.

In 1959 the triumphant Revolution crushes with that overwhelming force of its people, more than fifty years of sellout and corrupt governments, of fraudulent politicians, of misery and contempt for the human being, but as all social work that arises, it always exhibits imperfections that Portuondo knew how to see with great clarity and in some of his literary pieces explains with special conviction. In such a way, that we will always find him giving lessons of ethics and dedication to the revolution as a process of change, generator of new and transcendental solutions, but equally of complex contradictions, an unmistakable sign of development and vital force.

Precisely at this point, we find vigorous critiques of areas of Cuban culture, as was the case with the plastic and applied arts, which suffered from dogmas and serious aesthetic limitations within the framework of the revolutionary process, and such is the case of the well-known "Salón de Mayo" in the ardorous years of the sixties, where the presence of works of questionable quality were exhibited only because they came from abroad, exaltation of a kind of naivety and snobbism that gained certain space, which fortunately was better combated as the revolution favored the elevation of appreciation and creation of the arts among the people and especially in its institutional cadres.

In such a way, that a more current analysis of this phenomenon would lead us to reason under the same ethical and aesthetic principles of Portuondo in the decade of the 1960s; insofar as still, the ballast of an uncommitted, empty aesthetics is dragged along, bearing banal and alienating content, which fortunately does not constitute a regularity, but exists and in many cases shows a demobilizing discourse from an ideological point of view. This is a topic addressed in all its breadth and with a dose of permanent relevance by comrade Abel Prieto Jiménez, Minister of Culture, in different national and international forums.

Culture as human production entails a responsibility of the subject with its environment, with its surroundings, with nature itself, which allows it to interact actively and harmoniously at the same time; under a holistic vision of the object of study in question.

All of the above must be in correspondence with the way of thinking and acting of the human being. An a priori assessment of the surrounding political reality can lead the subject to fundamental epistemological errors, hence, the critiques that Portuondo makes on the topics of appreciation of the arts and culture in general, carry that mark of making us see the need for a complex thought, capable of seeing the totality of the object, through its parts and vice versa.

Broadening the view, elevating to supposedly more updated and universal conceptual planes, which have their genesis in a globalized world, is not sufficient cause to disregard from the fields assigned to the arts and culture in general, the noblest interests of an emancipatory process, bearer of imperfections, but generator of its own contradictions, ready for healthy and proper debate that help its development and better purposes, within the framework of the purposes aspired to by the majority of the people.

The above presupposes rejecting dogmas, superficialities, schemes and narrowness of thought that help little, within the framework of an era of civilizational refounding in culture as in all its mediations. Portuondo knew how to alert them in his moments and throughout his work it is present without ambiguities.

In that fruitful practice of criticizing, of seeking imperfections only because in them can gather reminiscences and deficiencies proper of ill-intentioned arguments or naïve assertions, unfortunately coincided events that in some way generated conflicting and even negative opinions among some intellectuals about this exceptional revolutionary; in it there could have been unfounded arguments, but equally possible mistakes proper of human beings, which are neither sufficient nor glorious to bring them forth, before the grandeur of a useful thought from its origin to its demise.

From the thirties onward, that is, the foundational stage of his thought, one observes in Portuondo, how the intellectual grows, always ready from his work, to deliberate commitment with the political and social reality of the moment.

His critical opinions were always well received by the intellectual milieu, even when they did not achieve all the force and requirement demanded by the craft. In 1938, he publishes "Proceso de la cultura cubana. Esquema para un ensayo de interpretación"[3]. Valuable contribution to the study of Cuban literature and culture, under a Marxist approach.

In his book "El Heroísmo Intelectual", La Habana 1938, in ten of his articles, he explores with great acuteness the role of the writer and his commitment to his time and to his homeland, this theme is reinforced with great vigor in "Bosquejo Histórico de la Letras Cubanas", where he insists that "literature always denounces a political and social reality".

According to Roberto Fernández Retamar, he is already a solid Marxist militant in 1936, that is, at only 25 years old. Six years later he is earning his doctorate in Philosophy and Letters at the Universidad de la Habana, with a thesis titled "Concepto de la Poesía"[4], considered by many scholars as a great contribution to Literary Theory, not only in the country but internationally. His Marxist approach in literary analyses is so refined, that this work converted a few years later into a book, surpasses one of similar make written by a contemporary of his, the English George Thomson called "Marxismo y Poesía".

His extensive body of work and his tireless labor as a revolutionary and as an organic intellectual place him in a position of privilege before the challenges imposed by the emergence of an emancipatory and liberating social system par excellence in Cuba of 1959, to which he gave himself without prudishness and with total selflessness.

To place then in the current debate the work of Portuondo is undoubtedly a beautiful task, insofar as his thought was always ready to assume dialectically all that was necessary to alleviate the destinies of the Homeland and our emancipatory process.

In that sense, the debate on so-called socialism in the twenty-first century must be assumed with the urgency demanded by the current circumstances of an absolutely globalized and globalizing capitalist world, immersed in the worst economic crisis ever known in the history of humanity, which announces a real exhaustion of this system and at the same time has not structured a theoretical thought that ensures the survival of the human species itself and its environment. Hence, the necessity of the socialist alternative, for being the most human, emancipatory and equitable of all possible and known alternatives.

Portuondo was an intellectual whose exquisite eloquence is the maternal cloister of a profound and referential thought; hence in this work we attempt to make a modest but conscious approach to his work, to the thousands of men and women who in Cuba and in the world, are eager for an intellectual foothold highly committed to a social project and by essence, emancipatory, that instills commitments and new vigor to access the peaks of the noblest human aspirations.

The analytical reading of his work is a well-deserved pretext for the necessary raising of consciousness about the reality that prevails in today's world. Only by signifying the greatness of a man like Portuondo and others of similar literary and revolutionary richness, will it be possible to contribute from a socio-political perspective to the improvement of class consciousness, to defend, develop and place in its deserved dimension our socialist social project.