The main objective of this work is to study, through a cultural analysis, political thought and literary criticism of José Victorino Lastarria. To sustain this study we start from the theoretical consideration of literary criticism as a cultural text where emerging political and social struggles. To this extent, in the political context of the nascent Republic of Chile stands a struggle for separate waters with the ancien régime Spanish. Therefore the illustration serves as an anchor on which thinking literature and culture as a space of social autonomy.