This article takes as its starting point the debate that arose in Costa Rica in the 1980s and 1990s regarding the work of Guatemalan writer, M‡ximo Soto Hall: El problema. This text was considered by literary critics to be the first anti-imperialist novel in Latin America. This conclusion is questioned in the present article, on the basis of a detailed analysis of the family and political antecedents of Soto Hall, his intellectual trajectory during the first half of the XX century and his links with the authoritarian governments of Rafael Iglesias in Costa Rica and Manuel Estrada Cabrera in Guatemala.