As Altamirano contends in "The foundation of the literature Argentina", the debate is installed on the Centenary of the value of Hernandez's Martin Fierro says one intellectual problems beyond the scope of letters and ends to build a national identity whose legitimacy was in the past but projected its meaning on the present and even into the future. Identity made the figure of the gaucho as a social-outcast until his disappearance, which becomes the paradigm of national opposition to immigrants

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... perceived by the elites of that time as an anarchic factor and a threat to social harmony. Thus, it is proposed to develop in this essay relates not so much with the new feature provided with the gaucho culture during the Centennial but with aspects for understanding the effectiveness of a typical institutional representation naturalizes itself as opposed to the alien that is projected into our present, to the point of making the text of Hernandez in the most important work of literature in Argentina and, therefore, a required reading in our culture. This fact is connected with another problem that we will also consider: the tensions involved in the processes of production, reception and legitimation in the literature, mainly in those authors in where there is a relationship of alienation with respect to our language mother.