The short story had not been one of the most successful genres during the colonial era and was still undefined between the novel and the essay, with a romantic flavor and some minor nationalist discoveries. This legacy began to change during these first decades, with the emergence of new figures who would cultivate this literary trend with greater or lesser success—almost always the latter.

This period was marked by a quantitative surge in the number of those who ventured into the genre. Although there were no truly notable narratives from a quality perspective, there was a sustained attempt to create a unique framework that would address the literary and even political concerns of the different generations.

Among the voices that truly resonated within the broader quorum are, according to what is reflected in “History of Cuban Literature,” those of Esteban Borrero Echevarría, Jesús Castellanos, Alfonso Hernández Catá, Miguel de Carrión, Carlos Loveira, Miguel Ángel de la Torre, and Luis Rodríguez Embil, not all members of the same generation but the best within the avalanche of short stories from that period.

Esteban Borrero, Jesús Castellanos, and Alfonso Hernández Catá found some progression in their works. It should be noted that Borrero’s starting point was a formal and thematic attachment to the fin-de-siècle setting and its roots in warlike romanticism. Castellanos, for his part, continued the criollismo in “De tierra adentro” but moved toward more urban themes. In the case of Hernández Catá, despite residing in Spain, he left behind an authentic and still undervalued body of work that interweaves national themes, universal human themes, and a more thorough understanding of the springs of the genre.

In general, political issues had little place in the narrative sphere, and the authors preferred to express themes of sentimental truculence and a certain extreme tragedy in some cases, with a language that had little ancestry from our regions and their ways of speaking—with the exception of Loveira—and a still-nascent dramatic concept, factors that condemned most of the authors to the oblivion of posterity.

However, it is necessary to take into account that the storytellers of this period were fortunate enough to experience one of the most difficult times for the nation and the evolution of the collective consciousness, marked by a hot iron not only by the oft-repeated frustration of the ideal of emancipation, but also by excessive commercialism, given an equally complex economic climate. However, their persistence in cultivating the genre became a fertile ground that would allow for better results in later stages.