ABSTRACT
A brief exploration of selected texts reveals how El Nanigo figured within Ortiz's ethnology and Cabrera's folklore writing during the 1950s. Their efforts, particularly those of Ortiz, because he remained in Cuba after the "triumph of the revolution," as Cubans say, laid the foundations for "folklore" theory and practice from the 1960s forward. Fernando Ortiz's works are heavily analytical ethnologies. They subordinate particular archival and informant sources to social scientific and taxonomic classification. Cabrera's ethnographic-style works rightly fall under anthropology's folklore subfield, inasmuch as they concentrate primarily on experience-near representation of expressive culture and oral history through indigenous "voices." Cabrera accomplished this by eliminating heavy redaction of her field notes and emphasizing direct discourse on the published page. Equally important to the open-textured effect of Cabrera's earlier works are her innovative narrative strategies, particularly the ingenious modulations and positional shifts in the narrator's voice, comparable to those encountered in Zora Neale Hurston's folklore studies.
