EGREM/Casa de las Américas (cover designer: unknown), "Palabra de esta América No. 27: Fernando Ortiz, José Luciano Franco entrevista ensayo," 1979. Vinyl record.

Palabra de esta América was an important spoken word recording series produced by Casa de las Américas through their Centro de Investigaciones Literarias and Centro de Estudios del Caribe, with recordings produced by EGREM (Empresa de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales). The series documented Latin American writers and intellectuals, preserving the authentic voices of the continent's most significant figures.

This 1979 release, number 27 in the series, features two towering figures in Cuban scholarship who fundamentally shaped understanding of Afro-Cuban history and culture. Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969), born in Havana, was Cuba's most important ethnographer and cultural historian. Beginning with criminology, his studies progressively deepened into the universe of Afrocuban cultures, making him the principal authority on the subject in Cuba. He investigated folklore, ethnology, archaeology, and linguistics across diverse fields including economics, history, and politics. This disc contains fragments from an interview conducted by ICAIC in 1964, just five years before his death. His major works included Hampa Afro-Cubana, Los negros brujos (1906), Entre Cubanos (1913), Los negros esclavos (1916), Contrapunteo Cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940), Las culturas indias de Cuba (1943), El engaño de las razas (1945), La africanía de la música folklórica de Cuba (1950), and Los instrumentos en la música afrocubana (1952-55).

José Luciano Franco (1891-1989) was a self-taught Cuban historian and essayist who dedicated himself to studying the history of Cuba and the Americas, particularly examining the effects of African slavery in Cuba and the Caribbean. His major works included Coloniales (1933), Antonio Maceo: Apuntes para una historia de su vida (1951-57), Antonio Maceo en Honduras (1956), Afroamérica (1961), Historia de la revolución de Haití (1966), La presencia negra en el nuevo mundo (1968), Esclavitud, comercio y tráfico negrero (1972), and Las conspiraciones de 1810 y 1812 (1977).

The album cover features stylized portrait illustrations of both scholars in yellow and orange tones against the series' signature concentric square design, here rendered in green and orange. This recording was made "in situ" (on location), preserving these scholars' voices discussing fundamental topics: Ortiz on sugar in Cuba and Franco on North American imperialist expansion policy in the Caribbean—subjects central to understanding Cuban and Caribbean history.