Jose maria arguedas

Arguedas began by writing short stories about the indigenous environment in which he was brought up, in a Spanish highly influenced by Quechua syntax andvocabulary. By the time of his first novel, Yawar Fiesta (1941; the name means "Blood Festival"), he had begun to explore the theme that would obsess him for the rest of hiscareer: the clash between white "civilization" and the indigenous, "traditional" way of life. In this he was part of the Indigenista movement in South Americanliterature. He continued to explore this theme in his next two books Los Ríos Profundos ("Deep Rivers") (1958) and Todas las Sangres (1964). His work showed theviolence and exploitation of race relations in Peru's small rural towns and haciendas, while portraying Indian characters as gentle and childlike.[2]

Arguedas wasmoderately optimistic about the possibility of a rapprochement between the forces of "tradition" and the forces of "modernity" until the 1960s, when he became morepessimistic. In his last (unfinished) work, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo ("The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below") (1969), he abandoned therealism of his earlier works for a more postmodern approach. This novel expressed his despair, caused by his fear that the 'primitive' ways of the Indians could notsurvive the onslaught of modern technology and capitalism. At the same time that Arguedas was becoming more pessimistic about race relations in his country, youngerindigenist intellectuals became increasingly militant, often criticizing his work in harsh terms for his poetic, romanticized treatment of indigenous and rural life.[3