The 20th century opened with an independent republic mediated by U.S. occupation that, with the repeal of the Platt Amendment in 1933, began to create its own institutions. Cuba had finished a bloody war of independence from Spain with the help of the United States, by which Cuban literature in the first half of the century continued to be marked, not only with the influx of great writers such as Julián del Casal and José Martí, the first Cuban modernists, but also with a contradictory consolidation of Spanish culture with national identity. The American government had a positive in influence in Cuba as it helped the Cubans with the task of building a new nation.