Blacks do not know how to love. Nation, representation and exclusion in "The belonging" by Ricardo Palma

It is widely believed among literary critics that the Peruvian Romanticism was unable to generate a national project. I think this statement is incorrect because this project is not only reflected in some novels of this period (as in the rest of Latin America), but it can also be found in the Peruvian Traditions of Ricardo Palma (Lima, 1833-1919). The following article examines "The belonging" (1874), one of the few traditions whose theme speaks on African descendents. Our goal is to show that, in this text, there is a national project. In this project, Palma develops an opinion on the inclusion / exclusion of African descent matrix as an integral part of the future Peruvian society. In addition, we propose to review the intertextuality that this text establishes with Sab (1841) Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda and Matalache (1928) by Enrique Lopez Albujar.