Since Carlos Loveira's last novel was published in 1927, the whole way of life which it described—and described with what bitter disillusion!—has disappeared. The Cuba Loveira knew, and the Cuba he hoped would evolve, are both lost—perhaps irretrievably— but the novel itself, seen through the perspective of four decades and a social upheaval, now seems to have even greater values, both as a work of art and as a social document, than its first readers saw in it.
In 1922, a friend of Loveira, reviewing Los ciegos (his third novel), placed him in the first rank of Cuban novelists:
Entre los novelistas cubanos, ha logrado Loveira colocar su nombre en prominente lugar, y, sin hipérbole, a tanta altura, como el que más haya alcanzado.
And he added that Los ciegos seemed to predict an obra maestra from the author's pen. Juan Criollo is that masterpiece.