Dr. María Dolores Ortiz Passes Away, Emblematic Cuban Intellectual

October 27, 2023

Dr. María Dolores Ortiz leaves an indelible mark on Cuban Higher Education and our people, recalled in a statement by the University of La Habana, where she achieved the merits of Dr.C. in Philology and Full Professor

Dr. María Dolores Ortiz leaves an indelible mark on Cuban Higher Education and our people, recalled in a statement by the University of La Habana, where she achieved the merits of Dr.C. in Philology and Full Professor.

She was also Professor Emeritus of the Enrique José Varona Higher Pedagogical Institute and National Heroine of Labor of the Republic of Cuba.

In an interview published in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde it is noted that she spent 12 uninterrupted years at the current Enrique José Varona Higher Pedagogical Institute and, as an advisor to the Minister of Higher Education, she returned to teach Grammar and Composition at the University. Already retired, she continued as an advisor, thesis mentor and gave lectures in Cuba and abroad.

She told the journalist that teaching had been her entire life and a fitting extension of that profession was the program Escriba y Lea, where she worked for around 40 years.

About that time on TV she said: "The fact that a program like this, without resources, without nice set design, has remained on television against all odds —you put it just like that—, is the best demonstration that our people like, respect and need culture. And we have tried through the years to convey that cultural message, accessible to everyone."

She also commented on her paradigmatic pen: "Once a colleague from Camagüey came so that I would donate my pen to her, the famous one with the little chain. She had a collection of them, belonging to writers, well-known people; I think she later displayed it in a museum in that city in the province. I told her that as long as I lived, as long as Escriba y Lea was on the air, I couldn't give it away because it was part of me, part of my image on the program. Just imagine, even the cartoonists draw me with it."