José María Arguedas
José María Arguedas was a prominent Peruvian writer and anthropologist, born on January 18, 1911, in Andahuaylas, Peru. Raised in a culturally rich environment, he developed a profound appreciation for the indigenous peoples of Peru and their Quechua language after his mother’s early death and subsequent upbringing by native servants. This background greatly influenced his literary works, which often explore the duality between indigenous and Hispanic cultures in Peru. He initially pursued a degree in literature while working as a postal employee, eventually graduating in 1937. Arguedas gained recognition with his first book, "Agua," published in 1935, and his subsequent novels, including "Los ríos profundos," which further solidified his literary reputation. His work was characterized by a unique blend of Spanish and Quechua, reflecting the complexities of Peruvian identity. Despite his success, Arguedas faced personal struggles, culminating in his tragic suicide in 1969. His legacy includes significant contributions to Peruvian literature and continued discussions on cultural identity and social reform.
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Subject Terms
José María Arguedas
Author
- Born: January 18, 1911
- Birthplace: Andahuaylas, Peru
- Died: November 28, 1969
- Place of death: Lima, Peru
Biography
José María Arguedas, the youngest of two sons, was born January 18, 1911, in Andahuaylas, Peru. His father, Victor Manuel Arguedas Arellano, was a judge; his mother, Victoria Altamirano Navarro, died when he was three years old. His stepmother entrusted his rearing to the family’s native servants and thus began Arguedas’s love of Peruvian indigenous people, their culture, and their language, Quecha. In 1919 his father lost his judgeship and became an itinerant lawyer; Arguedas traveled with him to remote villages. His father died in 1932, shortly after Arguedas entered the University of San Marcos.
Arguedas financed his university education with a seven-year stint as a postal employee in Lima, Peru, eventually earning a degree in literature in 1937. The same year he was arrested for participating in a student demonstration against a Mussolini appointee at the university. During the 1930’s he published the first of several short stories as well as his first book, Agua (1935), which won second prize in an international contest sponsored by the Revista Americana in Buenos Aires. The book, a collection of three semiautobiographical stories, introduced the theme that would dominate Arguedas’s life and work: the complex duality of Peruvian life between the indigenous and Hispanic cultures, evident even in Arguedas’s use of language, a mixture of Spanish and Quecha perfected in his mature works.
In 1939 he began teaching at the National University in Sicuani, Peru, and remained there for three years before entering the Ministry of Public Education to work on secondary education reform. In 1941 he published Yarwar fiesta, a novel in which a bullfight reveals the differences between indigenous and Hispanic culture, considered one of his major works. He received his degree in anthropology from the University of San Marcos in 1950, and the following year he accepted the first of several museum positions as director of the Institute of Ethnological Studies at the Peruvian Museum of Culture. He simultaneously produced scholarly and literary works, many of which won national and international awards. He twice won the Ricardo Palma prize for his novels Los ríos profundos (1958; Deep Rivers, 1978), his best-known novel and one of the few translated into English, and El sexto (1961). In addition to essays on Peruvian folklore and translations from Quecha, in 1950 and 1951 he championed social reforms in a series of controversial lectures entitled “The Problems of Peruvian Culture.”
In 1964 he published Todas las sangres, a major work that used sibling rivalry to portray social unrest rooted in the cultures that made up Peruvian society. He was awarded the 1968 Inca Garcilasco Prize. During this time he was a professor of Quecha at the Universidad Nacional Agraria, working there from 1963 to 1969. Arguedas committed suicide in 1969. His final novel, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (1971; The Fox from up Above and the Fox from down Below, 2000) appeared posthumously, and in 1983 his second wife helped edit a five-volume set of his collected works..