100 STEPHEN WILKuNSON

formulated the theory that criminals were a distinct anthropological type
who could be identified scientifically by careful measurements of the shape
of their skulls. The young Ortiz clearly agrees with his Italian mentor:

 El brujo afro-cubano, desde el punta de vista criminol6gico, es lo que
 Lombroso llamaria un delinquent nato, y este carActer de congenito puede
 aplicarse a todos sus atrasos morales. (1917: 367)

 Ortiz later radically modified his views to argue that criminality stemmed
from a cultural rather than racial origins but at the time when both Fantoches
and La hija del policia were produced, he was contributing to a belief in the
inherent criminality of blacks.
 What is particularly interesting is how far these theories, and the wider
public attitude towards blacks is represented in the novel Fantoches 1926.
Los negros brujos is not primarily concerned with the Mfiigos but it is a wide
ranging study that reports on the rituals, vocabulary and the kind of spells
that blacks of various different cults allegedly performed and which, Ortiz
concluded, lead them into crime by exacerbating conflicts between them, by
accidents such as poisonings, or by stealing from graves to obtain ingredients
for spells such as human bones and body parts. By placing curses on one
another, Ortiz argues, blacks often kill to get curses lifted just as the attempted
murder in Fantoches is perceived by the Judge to be the consequence of a
witch's curse (Ortiz 1906: 357). The book also contains a series of reports
culled from newspapers; there is no mention of the Zoila case but there are
numerous references to similar occurrences, one of which, from the Santiago
de Cuba newspaper, Cubano Libre (March 1905), provides a real-life basis for
the plot of La hija del policia:

 Va tomando cada dia caracteres mas alarmantes el rumor que circula en
 esta ciudad sobre la aparici6n de various fiAfiigos en el seno de la poblaci6n.
 Seg6n tenemos entendido, en la noche del martes o mi6rcoles de esta
 semana (20 marzo 1905), y favorecido por la obscuridad, intent uno de
 esos filAigos secuestrar a una nifia, hija de un conocido sefior, y hasta se
 asegura, sin que de ello (tengamos) [sic] hayamos adquirido, como intent
 referido, la noticia cierta, que por la calle de San Antonio ha desaparecido
 un nifio. (1906: 339-340)

 It is evident that by the latter part of the first quarter of this century, the
issue of race was a significant topic of public concern in Cuba. It was brought
to the fore by events such as the Black uprising of 1912 which was itself a
symptom of an increasing discrimination against blacks, and by the publishing
of work on black customs, beliefs and criminality by Fernando Ortiz. It is
unsurprising that this controversy should find its way into popular culture
and in a way which counterpoised the supposedly 'savage' nature of the African
culture with the 'civilising' influence of white European society. Detective fiction