• Submitted by: admin
• Arts and Culture
• Caribbean
• culture an traditions
• Education
• history
• Literature
• national
• personalities
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• 07 / 22 / 2008

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From its creation over ten years ago, the Foundation Fernando Ortiz, chaired over by the National Literature Award winner and president of the Association of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC), Miguel Barnet, has not only explored the wide register of the Cuban cultural identity and the plural expressions of the collective imagination, but also it has deepen in the mixture of our Cuban condition, studying and stimulating the research of our diverse ethnical, racial, cultural and religious sources that form this transcultural process.

The Catauro Award is a life testimony of that work and this time, when delivering the award to the titles published in 2007, it is worth mentioning two different texts, but both equal valuable and interesting: Los árabes en Cuba (The Arabs in Cuba), by Rigoberto Menéndez Paredes and La vestimenta ritual tradicional de la santería cubana (The traditional ritual dress of the Cuban santeria), by María Elena Molinet. Molinet is National Theatre Award winner and Design winner.
Some months ago Cubasi, published a review of a Maria Elena book, an indisputable reference of the most authorized personality in our country about the dressing world, has her work backs her and her links with the stage and cinematographic arts.

Rigoberto Menéndez PhD, on the other hand, author of Los árabes en Cuba, is the director since 1989 of the House of Arabs. The book is the result of several years of research, with which he won the PhD in Historic Sciences of Havana University last year.

This file has been qualified by Reinaldo Sánchez Porro, the Cuban specialist in Middle East topics as “a specific encyclopaedic dictionary”.

Those of us who know the quality of the teacher Maria Elena Molinet and of Rigoberto Menendez, also know the scientific and intellectual rigo of their work, the high level of exigency in the work with the primary and secondary information sources, as well as the intelligent communication speech of both books, directed to an open public interested in these topics.

(Cubarte)