José María Arguedas

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The Indigenista Fiction of José Maria Arguedas

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The principal feature of Arguedas' writing which distinguishes it most clearly from that of other indigenistas is the way in which he succeeded in penetrating the Indian mentality and capturing the essence of the Indian world-picture…. [The] indigenista novels of Arguedas are not works of denunciation, protest or propaganda; rather are they attempts to explore the cultural and social conflicts in Peru, and to reveal the significance of Indian values within Peruvian culture and society. (pp. 56-7)

[The] events of the narratives [in his first book Agua] are unimportant; they are almost incidental to Arguedas' main aims in writing these cuentos. One of those aims is to show the germination within the writer, as a child, of hatred…. (p. 57)

In addition to the bitterness of the collection, however, Agua reveals Arguedas' love of the Indians and the Sierra. (p. 58)

Another of Arguedas' aims in writing Agua was to attempt to achieve an adequate means of expression for works of fiction in which the Indian is a principal character. Both before and after Arguedas, the principal factor which has alienated the indigenista writers from their subject has been that of language: many indigenistas neither speak nor write in the language of their subjects, whether it be Aymara or Quechua. Even those who are in a position to write in the Indian tongue are discouraged from doing so by commercial and practical considerations, since both their readership and their status as writers would be restricted. By the very fact of their being indigenista, and not indígena writers, they are outsiders. Arguedas was in a position to choose between Quechua and Spanish, but if his aim was to correct the image of the Indian in the eyes of the non-Indian, he was obliged to write in the non-Indian's tongue. To compensate for this, and at the same time to reflect linguistically the internal view of the Indian's world, he sought [according to Mario Vargas Llosa] to 'encontrar en español un estilo que diera por su sintaxis, su ritmo y aun su vocabulario, el equivalente del idioma del indio' ['find in Spanish a style that would give through its syntax, its rhythm and even its vocabulary, the equivalent of the idiom of the Indian']…. (p. 59)

Despite the creation by Arguedas of a special Spanish for the Indians, however, the fact remains, as Arguedas was aware, that the Indians do not speak Spanish amongst themselves, and often not even with Spanish-speaking people…. When Arguedas opted for Spanish, he was inevitably making a compromise; the result is an artificial, literary language, even if different from the one from which he was trying to escape…. [It] is impossible, without a knowledge of Quechua, to say how far Arguedas has succeeded in capturing the peculiarities of that language; the writer himself admitted that on this score his word must be accepted….

[The stories in Agua contain an] underlying denunciation of feudalism, without dependence upon either rhetoric or ideology. Indigenismo for Arguedas does not mean militancy, but compassion. (p. 60)

[Los ríos profundos demonstrates] the confrontation that exists in Peru of two races and two cultures and the chasm that lies between them. This confrontation is demonstrated in the novel on an outward level—the hacendero of Patibamba and the colonos, the soldiers and the Indians who frequent the chicherías—but also on a deeper, more spiritual plane (and it is from this that the novel derives its strength) within one individual. Ernesto, the fourteen-year old mestizo narrator, is forced to live as a boarder at a school in Abancay. But everything that he encounters in reality seems alien to him, both at the school and in the town. Having been brought up in the company of Indians (like the author himself), he finds that the only consolation in his loneliness is to turn to those aspects of life—the songs and dances in the chicherías, the constancy of nature—which remind him of his past amongst the Indians, whose pantheistic relationship with the natural world he shares. (pp. 63-4)

The whole tragedy of the Indians, the compartmentalization of social elements, the isolation of those who try to live according to the two cultures, is … embodied in the novel in the tormented life of … the boy Ernesto. The enclosed society of the school, its corruption and hypocrisy, reflects that of the town Abancay outside, and neither offers him any security or fixed set of values…. Nothing is certain for Ernesto, nothing is safe, at least where his fellow beings are concerned. It is fitting, therefore, that after the flight and the procession of Indians facing death by fever, the novel should end with Ernesto's faith in constant and all-powerful Nature…. There is no explicit plea on behalf of the Indians in this novel, no social protest or demand for justice and recognition. Ernesto is a child; he can pose all the questions but knows none of the answers. In a sense, Arguedas hides behind the inexperience of his protagonist, for the author can thereby avoid having to provide the answers. For like Ernesto, the writer could only see the dilemma, not the solution. (pp. 64-5)

It is perhaps true that Arguedas did not explicitly express an affiliation or a faith in his works, except possibly in Indian values; rather did his inspiration stem from a spiritual search, depicted through social or cultural conflicts, for the essence of Peru. This is nowhere more apparent than in his last novel, Todas las sangres…. The novel does not present a very flattering picture of Peru, and yet in Todas las sangres there lies, beneath the surface picture of rivalry, destruction and greed, the author's deep concern and love for his country, in particular for that part of Peru which the Indian element represents.

There is a conflict in this novel between the Indian and the blanco—as there is in almost all of Arguedas' work, for it is from such a conflict that he extracts the drama of his fiction, and embarks on his spiritual search. But in Todas las sangres it is not the most important conflict, for it is overshadowed by that of the two brothers, Fermín and Bruno Aragón de Peralta, and the two faces of Peru that they represent. (pp. 65-6)

Whilst this fraternal conflict is fascinating on a personal level, and constitutes the nucleus of the novel, the brothers also play a more symbolic role. For they represent two faces of Peru's changing character: Bruno, who comes to defend the Indians, belongs to the old, Catholic, feudal order; Fermín is the exploiter who becomes a progressive, patriotic, capitalist modernizer. (p. 67)

In Todas las sangres there is a multitude of characters worthy of detailed study, who add further dimensions to the social and cultural conflicts upon which the novel is based: the vecinos of San Pedro, the engineers at the mine, the other landowners, the figures of provincial authority. Arguedas also shows how the Indians begin to appear as a new and powerful element in the changing social picture and in the drama that is to come. (p. 68)

[The Indians are] characterized by a simplicity, a dignity and a serenity which their social superiors notably lack. They are oppressed, they are pawns in Peru's social and economic games, but they are indestructible…. [Their values and their strength] are most clearly demonstrated in the Quechua songs which Arguedas includes in the novel. They serve as a further contrast between the poetic, spiritual qualities of the Indians' culture and those of the prosaic, materialistic white culture brought by the Spaniards. This poetic quality is captured by Arguedas more directly in the novel, not only through the 'Quechuization' of the syntax, but also through a Quechua concept of imagery. (pp. 68-9)

In Todas las sangres, Arguedas expanded his horizons so that all the various levels of conflict could be encompassed in the narrative. This wider vision may be due in large part to the fact that the novel is not written in the first person and is not a thinly veiled autobiographical story. It is a novel based on conflicts between the characters, all of which lead back to the fraternal conflict between Fermín and Bruno, and ultimately to the cultural conflict which lies at the heart of Peruvian reality. Todas las sangres is not an indigenista novel in strict terms; it is a Peruvian novel (hence the significance of the title [which translates as All Bloods]) in which the author clearly demonstrates that the problem of the Indian and his place in the national life can no longer be dissociated from the full social, economic and cultural context of which he is but a part.

Arguedas' own novelistic development to a certain degree characterizes the development of the indigenista novel in the Andean countries. Inspired initially by a desire to correct a distorted picture of the Indian in fiction, and at the same time anxious to find an adequate means of expression, Arguedas wrote at first with the same kind of stifled anger as Icaza in Huasipungo, but gradually moved towards an attempt to examine the Indian culture from within, both collectively, as in Yawar fiesta, and through an individual, in Los ríos profundos, whilst in Todas las sangres he places the whole cultural problem on a national level. In general terms, his work is an examination of several facets of the Peruvian cultural dilemma, which he saw both as a problem to be solved and a drama to be exploited in fiction. (pp. 69-70)

Peter Gold, "The Indigenista Fiction of José Maria Arguedas," in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (© copyright 1973 Liverpool University Press), Vol. L, No. 1, 1973, pp. 56-70.

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