"These notes, arisen from Latin American literary and cultural studies, propose a reflection on the formation of national identities in Argentina and Peru. To this end it was carried out a sociocritical and contrastive reading of two commentaries on the trial for heresy to which Angela Carranza was subjected by the Santo Oficio Court in Lima at the end of the seventeenth century. These commentaries were written by Juan Maria Gutierrez and Ricardo Palma, respectively, almost two centuries later. The methodological perspective chosen permits the apprehension ofthe mechanisms by means of which each society re-elaborates its colonial past and founds a national heritage with distinctive traits. Furthermore, it makes evident that the nation turns to be a geopolitical device built on "lived" regions that exceed it from the temporal point of view and that, beyond the cultural models in vogue, the local memories constitute an identity impossible to elude."