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As the newly elected director of the Sociedad Literaria in Santiago, Chile, José Victorino Lastarria outlined the Society’s objectives in a discourse in 1842. He duly described the role of nature as it related to the nation’s past and impending progress that the letrados were to continue to cultivate through original compositions steeped in sociopolitical utility. In preparation for that task, John Godfrey Herder’s historiographical work had been selected to serve as fundamental source material. The following year, Lastarria published what many conceive to be Chile’s first short story, ‘El mendigo’. Reflecting many aspects of the discourse, the short story manipulated facets of Herderian thought to constitute a counter-hegemonic discourse intensified through a concomitant reading of Lastarria’s ‘Investigaciones’ (1844). As this study reveals, analysing the story against its Herderian intertext and alongside other Lastarrian productions affords a deeper understanding of Lastarria’s espoused ‘liberal’ ideology in the post-Portalian era that bridged various contexts for their critique in a bid for future success.
