This chapter critically documents the literary work of pioneer 19th century Latina feminists whose subversive literary work – with a ferocious feminist and nationalist rhetoric – has been often relegated to the background or simply ignored. The chapter reveals that the writings of these authors – María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Clorinda Matto de Turner, Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, Aurelia Castillo de González, Lola Rodríguez de Tió and Manuela Sáenz – nevertheless reproduced, from an elite Creole class and racial privilege position, the anti-Indian racism or patronising discourses of reform that functioned as counter-insurgent, nation-building prose in the 19th century. Their narratives – relevant for their undeniable socio-historic and artistic value – delve into the theme of gender and racial identity while revealing an entire racist ideology that served to explain as a natural process the segregation, exclusion and discrimination (at every level) of African and Indigenous peoples in the 19th century. This chapter also proposes that Latina feminist recovery scholarship should reflect on the racialised histories of lynching and genocide that their writings ignored.