The article analyses the way in which in José María Samper’s Florencio Conde. In Scenes from Colombian life (1875) an image of the freed slave in the post-independence period of New Granada is rehearsed; first as an economic subject, who exercises his individuality and citizenship under the influence of a republican organisation, where free trade is pondered, and then as a «racialised lover», from whom freedom is taken away again and on whose body the slave regime is restored, as well as the master’s desire is reconstructed. The aesthetic attempt to build a character of rationalist citizen in Segundo Conde, although of a docile and discreet nature, is analysed, which serves as a lucky example of miscegenation, within the framework of the foundation of the nation and of a new structure of relations of production, metamorphosed by the individualistic logic of profit and capital accumulation. There is an emphasis on the composition of frames, delicately drawn, scrupulously erotic, in which the meeting of the black man and the white woman is verified, assuming this to be a variable, if not transgressive for the time, at least unusual. Hence, in the novel the image of an affective subject, capable of loving despite being black, is also nimbly molded, in a context in which the idea of racial and moral inferiority could be conjured only through future whitening, or the generous promise that comes implicit behind the social approval of the unequal romance. As a whole, the analysis confirms the thesis that Florencio Conde. Scenes from Colombian life corresponds to that type of artifact novel through which, based on an evolutionary ideological pattern, but with remnants of the past, the 19th century Hispano-American literate elites took the first steps towards a national literary tradition, which refract the fortunate convergence of races, cultures and social classes. © 2023 Juan Carlos Herrera Ruiz.