An attempt to recognize and understand the work of the first Venezuelan anthropologist Miguel Acosta Saignes who studied in Mexico and was then at the Universidad Central in Caracas. The author, as a student, came to know Acosta Saignes in the 1960’s. She comments briefly on some of his work and discusses his basic ideas as contributive to Venezuelan anthropology in spite of their initial rejection by the establishment. “Etnologia Antigua de Venezuela” (1954) and “Estudios en Antropologia, Sociologia, Historia y Folclore” (1980) are illustrative of the “integral anthropology” which he pioneered, and which present two salient aspects of his work: the didactic, and his emphasis on the ethnographic.