By comparing the shakespearean play and a well-known essay by the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó called Ariel published in 1900, both from the historical as well as the literary perspectives, we have sought to single out intertextual relations with a view to identify perceptions that were later to enter the colective imaginary of our societies.

In this paper we will dwell on the reception of the play by an intellectual who is promoting  the emergence of an elite who should ideally resemble the European leadership. The option for Caliban that has become widespread in the last third of the XX century especially in the Americas under the spell of the Cuban Fernandez-Retamar shows that the definitions of identity have been re-ideologized in reaction to a perceived or supposed cultural domination and makes us wonder whether the time isn't ripe to reconsider what Ariel meant and could still mean in our territories.