Fantoches 1926: A Collective Crime Mystery

Abstract

Social, founded in 1916 by Conrado Massaguer, whose drawings illustrated the first and last chapters of the novel, had harbored contradictory aims from the start. On one hand, it catered to the desire for prominence ofthe new Cuban bourgeoisie that had become enriched as a result of rising sugar prices after World War I. On the other, following the urgings of Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, director of the literary section of the magazine until its demise in 1938, it advanced criteria and ideologies that undermined the hegemony of that very class. Social was a unique blend of bourgeois banality and artistic vanguard that encompassed social chronicle, fashion, film reviews, various kinds of advertisements, and some of the best poems and stories of its generation, as well as critical essays on art, music, and architecture.3 Social followed a long tradition of Cuban literary magazines that included El Figaro (1885-1933; 1943-?), Bohemia (1910-present), Revista Bimestre Cubana (1910-1959), Orto (1912-1957), Cuba Contemporanea (1913-1927), Grafico (1913-1918), and Chic (1917-1959) (Romero, “Social,” see “En el contexto socio-historico y cultural de su surgimiento”). Social had no peers in its role as the voice of the rising literary vanguard:Con el transcurrir de los anos, sin perder sus caracteristicas de revista de sociedad, fue portavoz de los escritores jovenes que salieron a la vida nacional con nuevas actitudes politicas y culturales y que dieron lugar a actos tan importantes como la Protesta de los Trece y mas tarde la formacion del Grupo Minorista . . . fue Social la unica revista de estos anos que tuvo el privilegio de iniciar un tipo de publicacion distinta, novedosa, surgida al calor de determinadas condiciones y alentada por individuos cultos y sensibles al arte y a la literatura. Ello hizo posible que se le considere hoy a la vanguardia de todas, para de esta forma trascender hasta nuestros dias. De ella expresaba Juan Marinello en 1925: es “la revista de mas alta significacion literaria y artistica que jamas haya tenido nuestro pais.”4,5 (ibid.)Roig de Leuchsenring, the author of chapter 11 of Fantoches 1926, was an active member of the Grupo Minorista, and his intention, though secret at first, to turn the magazine into its mouthpiece is evident in the second period of the magazine, which encompasses the years from 1923 to 1928 (ibid.). Fantoches 1926 was written during the period when the Grupo Minorista began its rapid politicization with the “Protest of the Thirteen” and undertook a contextualization of art within a social framework. Thus, the literary games in Fantoches 1926 are not as banal as would be expected from the apparently frivolous character of the magazine in its first period (1916-1923) and the equally playful atmosphere of the first five chapters, written by Loveira, Martinez Marquez, Alberto Lamar Schweyer, Manach, and Federico de Ibarzabal.