This paper analyzes the public life of Ildefonso Riera Aguinagalde (1834-1882) as a writer and politician who participated in the vagaries of the construction of the national state in the Venezuela’s nineteenth century. Based on a systematic historiographical review and consultation of primary sources, the Riera Aguinagalde political action was reconstructed amid the challenges of his time: the Federal War (1859-1863) and discussions of ideas between liberalism-federalism and conservatism-centralism. In sum, the work of Riera Aguinagalde represented the concerns of part of the society of his time, to build a civil and political order amid the turbulence of military caudillos and violent struggles that undermined Venezuela in the second half of the nineteenth century.