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The present paper studies the work and figure of Uruguayan writer Juana de Ibarbourou (1892-1979) during the 1920's decade in which the poet published her first trilogy, which included Las lenguas del diamante (1919), El cántaro fresco (1920) and Raíz salvaje (1922). The interpretation hypothesis proposes that the success among critics which in 1929 consecrated the poet as 'Juana of America' has more to do with the historic context in which the work was read than with the work's intrinsic characteristics. In this sense, the key element was rather the timeliness of her aestheticideological proposal (the simplicity of her language; her anti-intellectualism; the vitality and conservative values regarding her take on gender and her position towards modernisation, represented in the exaltation of nature and the rejection of 'civilised life') within the nationalistic tendencies in vogue at the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]