In 1790, a period of literary institutionalization began, marked by, among other factors, the emergence of the Havana newspaper. Although not the first on the island, it capitalized on the political and literary debates of the time, which gained visibility through its pages. Literary professions began to enjoy the social recognition they had lacked in the preceding era.

The awakening of national consciousness was essentially framed in this period, subsequently manifesting itself in literature, within a social and economic context of the rise of the sugar bourgeoisie and the beginning of political reformism related to these interests, represented by thinkers such as Francisco de Arango y Parreño and José Antonio Saco, already in the prelude to the independence movement advocated by Félix Varela and which would take root in the collective consciousness until leading to the beginning of the national liberation struggle.

Under the aegis of Don Luis de las Casas, Captain General from 1790 to 1796, the principles of enlightened despotism sponsored by Charles III, who had already died in 1790, continued to be applied. In 1793, the Patriotic Society of Havana was founded, which would become the Economic Society of Friends of the Country. In addition to fostering economic development, it contributed to somewhat improving the state of education and culture within the narrow colonial framework. A certain cultural boom, which did not extend to the humblest strata of the population, was also manifested in the cultivation of letters, although with a considerable delay, since literature stagnated in neoclassical molds when this movement was already dying in Spain.

This period represents the transition from the awakening of national consciousness to its most radical and definitive manifestation in the independence movement. This was marked in literature by the break with neoclassicism and the beginning of the Romantic movement, which for a long time permeated the literary sphere with the desire for independence. Politically, the independence movement was still struggling with vestiges of reformism and certain annexationist impulses, which would find expression in literature.

The literature produced during this period, rather than reflecting the formation of national consciousness, acted as a catalyst for this process. Spanish influence was not accepted as such but rather adapted to Creole elements, where the popular lay. French Romanticism also exerted a notable influence on Cuban literature, but through a Creole filter, which would give the island’s Romantic movement a distinctive character, in tune with the increasingly strong aspirations for independence, which, it can be said, in addition to being fully justified as an ideology on the intellectual level, had its sentimental foundation in the Romantic movement.