In response to the crisis suffered by literary criticism in the nineteen seventies and that has extended with even greater force today, it seems useful to return to the approach Borges developed in a paper that was first published in 1953 with the title "El escritor argentino y la tradición" which was later included in the reedition of Discusión in 1957. Here the author analyzes a recurring theme in Hispanoamerican literary studies, the tradition of "South American" belle-lettres, especially Argentinean: "I think our tradition is that of all Western culture and I also think we have a right to this tradition which is greater than that of inhabitants of any other Western nation". The replies were not long in coming. I dare suggest they were a glimpse of the perplexity of today's reader, who is familiar with other answers, in particular, those of sociology or related fields, such as cultural anthropology, that have proposed that the way to reach the originality and autonomy of Hispanoacamerican literature resides in highlighting the differences that separate us from the Western Cannon. To examine and argue in favor of Borges' thesis in the framework of the current situation of literary criticism, slowly but seemingly inexorably displaced by cultural studies, especially in university literature departments, is the pretensión of this work, which I hope is free of prejudice although I recognize that they never cease to be present in an undertaking of this type.