Bad Black Men and Comical Chinese:
 Racial Stereotyping in
 Early Cuban Detective Fiction

 Stephen Wilkinson
 University College London

This essay is an examination of the Cuban detective genre in Cuba prior

 to the revolution, a period which has been neglected by academics
 both inside and outside the island. Contrary to the established view,
there was a relatively highly developed cultivation of the detective narrative
in Cuba before revolution of 1959, and it is possible to argue that the post-
revolutionary boom in the genre was an extension of a tradition stretching
back to the early part of the twentieth century. So it is curious to ask why
academics have overlooked this period.
 In her overview of pre-revolutionary Cuban detective writing Amelia S.
Simpson states that until 1971 'there was virtually no cultivation of detective
fiction in Cuba:'

 Although translations of works from Europe and the United States had been
 popular since at least the 1920s, the genre remained essentially an imported
 model, a narrative form that was widely consumed yet scarcely practised
 nationally. (1990:97)

 In reaching such a conclusion, Simpson was perhaps influenced by post-
revolutionary Cuban critics who play down the pre-revolutionary significance
of the genre. She refers to Luis Rogelio Nogueras who, in a 1978 article, states
that detective literature 'como muchos otros hechos de nuestra cultural' is a
product of the revolution:

 No es un secret para nadie que hasta 1959, en Cuba s6lo unos pocos autores
 se ocuparon esporAdicamente del genero. En su inmensa mayoria, se trataba
 de relatos mAs o menos cortados seg(in el patr6n de la llamada "novela
 dura" norteamericana, y que aparecieron (firmados con seud6nimos como
 John D. Thomas, por ejemplo) en alguna que otra tirada masiva. (1982: 41)