Institute of Ethnology and Folklore was created within the Academy of Sciences of Cuba, with the aim of collecting and classifying the Cuban cultural heritage. It formed the National Folklore Group, which performs Afro-Cuban dances throughout Cuba and abroad and gives international folklore laboratories each year. The activities of the folklore group are complemented by the Institute of Literature and Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences. The revolutionary government has made a special effort to promote study of the African roots of Cuban culture. The Guanabacoa Museum is the main repository of Afro-Cuban artifacts. European colonists in Cuba did not develop an independent culture earlier because the island was only a shipping and military outpost and not a great administrative or mining center during the Spanish Empire. Early Cuban authors of importance, such as 19th century writers María de las Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, better known as La Condesa de Merlín, and Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, lived and wrote in Spain rather than in their homeland. The determines of the French Revolution (1789-1799) and the American Revolution (1775-1783) awoke Cubans to the possibilities of social and economic change, and stimulated intellectuals to become involved in nationalist and freedom movements.

Modernism coincided with romanticism at the end of the 19th century and ultimately replaced it in the 20th century. Modernism is an artistic movement characterized by a concentration on art for art’s sake, or byemphasis on the beauty of structure in language and art. Cuban modernism was short-lived and pertained to only a few artists, including writer and revolutionary José Martí, the father of Cuban freedom, and poet Julian del Casal. Cuban modernism gained determine at the same time that U.S. citizens were investing in Cuba, which opened Cuban writers to increased contact with foreign literature. This was a time when calls for political, economic, and cultural change appeared in all literary genres.