This article analyzes Tatiana Álamos’s illustrations for Leyendas chilenas (1973), the only volume in Quimantú’s Nosotros los chilenos collection that dispenses with photography in favor of illustration exclusively. Drawing on Deborah Poole’s visual economy, Santos Zunzunegui’s theoretical assumptions, and Marie Louise Pratt’s concept of the contact zone, the article examines how the illustrations transformed popular expressions -initially positioned as forms of otherness in relation to literate culture- into components of a collective national identity. The analysis of the illustrations shows that this incorporation operated through visual decisions that varied according to each legend, mediated by the codes of an academically trained artist, within the framework of the Unidad Popular’s cultural project (1970-1973).