Although the majority of Raimundo Cabrera’s literary and testimonial output corresponds to the period of the independence struggle, after the establishment of the Republic he conceived a series of novels that have as their antecedent “Episodios de la Guerra. Mi vida en la manigua (Relato del coronel Ricardo Buenamar)”, published in its entirety in 1898, in which real and fictional events and characters are interwoven, with a certain romantic tone.

During the first decade of the Republic, the author began to envision a creative project that would reflect the tormented events of the island and its people from the revolutionary outbreak of 1868 to the early years when the frustration of the republican ideal took shape. These pieces are titled: “Passing Shadows,” 1916; “Ideals,” 1918; and “Eternal Shadows,” 1919.

“Passing Shadows” captures memorable events from the Ten Years’ War and is valued for its vindication of Cuban heroism; however, the characters lack psychological substance, and the narrative itself is couched in a tone close to a serial novel, at a time when superior narrative works were already taking shape.

“Ideales” reflects the gestation of the 1895 War and part of its evolution, but narrated from the social mood of the writing moment, since it fails to establish the necessary empathy and capture the collective enthusiasm that undoubtedly permeated these years of definitive forging of the nation.

“Eternal Shadows” is the epitome of republican frustration, a song of defeat that reflects the sentiment of its time, but lacking narrative power, embedded in the fin-de-siècle aesthetic canons of revived Romanticism.

In short, Raimundo Cabrera’s work is interesting as a testament to its time, to the passage from the late colonial period to the rise of the republic; aesthetically and conceptually, however, it is anchored in molds that prevent it from appreciating the very flow of life and the transformative human capacity associated with the hidden roots of Cuban identity.