This study examines how faithfully second language (L2) Spanish textbooks represent the variability found in natural language use with regard to variable clitic placement (VCP). We offer a corpus study of VCP in the language used throughout nine Spanish L2 textbooks, which constitute all the available textbooks designed to teach Rioplatense Spanish. The results show that VCP in the textbooks is not constrained by animacy or register, and they suggest that the L2 textbooks analyzed do not necessarily portray VCP in monolingual Argentine Spanish. Instead, textbooks portray some important aspects of native-like VCP found across dialects, such as the overall frequencies reported for written Spanish and main effect of lexical verb lexeme.