José María Arguedas

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Indian of the Heart

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SOURCE: Muñoz, Braulio. “Indian of the Heart.” Americas 34, no. 3 (May-June 1982): 25-9.

[In the following essay, Muñoz examines Arguedas's struggle to describe a future for the Andean Indians that relies on neither liberalism nor western socialism and retains their sense of the magical.]

But if I die of
life, and not of time, …

—César Vallejo

I first met José María Arguedas when he came to Chimbote, my native port in northern Peru. He came to write a novel about despair and hope—a novel about Peru. He was the first “Indian” I really knew. He was born in the Andean highlands, had learned the Indian worldview through the Inca language, and had grown up in the ayllus (Indian communities that to this day infuse their members with the old ways). But this indio sonqo, this Indian of the heart, did not remain in the highlands for long. His mestizo ancestry proved too strong for the claims the ayllu had on him, and eventually succeeded in drawing him to the coast.

The childhood experiences were not to be erased, however; until his death, J. M. Arguedas remained an Indian of the heart. Through Ernesto, the central character of his best novel, Los Ríos Profundos (1958) (Deep Rivers, 1978), Arguedas evokes memories of his own childhood:

To escape cruel relatives, I had thrown myself on the mercy of the Indian community that grew corn in the smallest, happiest valley I had ever known. The flame-blossomed thorn trees and the songs of the wild doves illuminated the corn fields. The family chiefs and the older women, the mamakunas of the community, protected me and instilled in me the kindness in which I live and which I can never repay.

These memories, repeated throughout his work, are witness to a desire to return. In these memories he sought solace from the onslaught of injustice and inhumanity that makes of Peru a tragic society.

For too brief a period, Arguedas was my teacher. Under his guidance I entered the distorted and fragmented world of the Indian, who barely existed in his shantytowns scattered on the outskirts of the port. It was a world in which Indians, through their rather awkward speech and mannerisms, showed their disdain and even contempt for their native culture. As I followed this indio sonqo among the Indians of the port I began to wonder what he could be searching for, why he became suddenly silent as he heard the sorrowful tune of a blind beggar's harp, why his eyes moistened as he spoke in Quechua to a drunken Indian who would not answer except in a badly learned Spanish.

Only years later, when I reread his work and remembered our experiences, did I begin to understand why he always seemed to be searching for atonement. In rereading his books I grasped the extent of his love and respect for the Indians who had nurtured him. And his love and respect seemed to develop, quite naturally, into a deep desire to liberate the Indian from centuries of oppression. But if the wish to liberate seemed a most human stance, the consequences of such a redemptive posture seemed most unfair. For Arguedas was caught on the horns of a dilemma: the liberation of the Indians whom he loved and respected for being what they were seemed to demand that he ask them to become other. Indeed, as one reads his novels a paradox immediately manifests itself: for the Indians to be saved they had to vanish. This paradox underlay Arguedas' existential predicament and affected him in untold ways.

But great artists are never alone in their predicaments; they are never “ahead of their time.” They articulate that which is felt by the many who are unable or unwilling to articulate their hopes or their dis-ease. Thus, Arguedas was not alone in his anguish; he only gathered and reflected a collective dis-ease through his life and work. He did this better than anyone else because he was an indio sonqo, and felt these fateful, paradoxical demands in his very being.

When I first encountered it, I thought that Arguedas' dilemma was Peruvian property. After all, had not César Vallejo—the Peruvian poet who looked at death all too soon—stated with the full force of his own Indianness: “In sum, I do not have anything with which to express my life except my death” (Poesía Completa, 1978)? But reflecting about it, I realized that the dilemma underlying Arguedas' life and work was neither a uniquely Peruvian dilemma nor, for that matter, a Hispano-American dilemma. It is in fact a dilemma that envelops today's humanist posture and points out the need for its justification. Let us use the Indian case to sharpen our focus on it, given that Arguedas reaches us from that context. To do this, it is necessary to discuss, however briefly, the socioliterary movement of which he formed an essential part, and of which he was the conscience; namely, Indigenismo, the Indianist movement.

The influence of Indianism as a socioliterary movement was felt across Hispanic America and lasted from about 1919 to roughly 1964. In its artistic expression, the Indianist movement aimed at shattering old myths about the Indian in Hispanic America. It pitted itself against two traditional views—the old image of the Indian as a cross between a noble and a savage (an image found in half-forgotten accounts by half-forgotten chroniclers who in their dreams saw the Spanish conquest of America as a destruction of Arcadia), and the romantic view of the nineteenth century, which saw the Indian living exotically in remote corners of Hispanic America. Against the first view Indianism insisted on speaking about the Indians of the present. Against the second it insisted that the Indian did not live a romantic life in exotic places but a sordid one amidst white and mestizo landlords. In short, the Indianist literary movement presented itself as part of a larger social movement to liberate the Indian. That aim expressed itself initially in a liberal and later a socialist literature. The Indianist novel of the Andes is focused on here for two reasons—it is from the Andes that J. M. Arguedas speaks, and the work of the Andean writers is paradigmatic of the movement as a whole.

The liberal writers presented the Indian characters as almost subhuman, and incapable of acting on their own behalf with any hope of success. Yet, in their view, Hispanic America needed to move beyond neocolonialism and its ultimate result, exploitation of the Indian. The redemptive fervor of the liberal writers led to their demand that the Indian be liberated at all costs; that he be incorporated into a liberal society as a citizen—even if that meant dictatorship. Thus, ironically, liberalism was to be born out of despotism. And the irony concealed the paradox that in order for the Indian to be liberated he had to become something other than what he was. For liberalism and Indian culture are incompatible. The paradox remained concealed from the liberals because to them the only life worth living was that of a member of the bourgeoisie. All other conceptions of life were seen as either hopelessly romantic or decidedly backward.

Socialist writers, among whom Arguedas must be included, articulated the paradox more fully. But, except for him, even these writers did not grasp the paradox in its full import. Instead, they viewed the paradox as a fateful and fitting event. In their eyes the Indian came to constitute the messianic subject-object of history. In their very hearts, these writers believed, Indians were socialists; and they pointed to the remnants of communal life in the ayllus as examples of the ancient socialist spirit. All the Indians needed was to be shown their past that they might claim a future. Once having grasped their true desire, the Indians would come down from the mountains to stamp out the evils of bourgeois society that radiated from the capitalist centers of the cities.

The paradox concealed from the liberal writers was thus made explicit and “solved” at the same time. No, the Indians were not asked to vanish; they were being asked to “return” to their “true” being. The Indians would save the Andes from centuries of injustice with a last effort that was at the same time their self-immolation. The Indians were praised for sacrificing their Indianness in pursuit of socialist society where all men would be free. But they would make good their promise only if they acted not as Indians but as free men. And free men do not follow the whims of magic or deceive themselves by believing in drawing strength from mythical inspiration. Free men act rationally; their acts are grounded in a true and scientific understanding of history and the world. In other words, for the socialist writers, too, the Indians had to become other.

Looking back at the Indianist movement one may well ask what reasons could these writers give for demanding the Indians' cultural death? That the Indianist writers' hopes for either a liberal or a socialist society in the Andes did not materialize should not preempt the asking of the question. For, whatever the outcome, it is the ground for the demand itself that stands in need of justification. It is here that we appreciate the seriousness of the humanist dilemma exemplified by Indianism.

The dilemma can be stated as follows: On the one side, to have “left the Indians alone” in the highlands under real and perceived conditions of oppression would have been willfully to ignore the evils feeding on Indian poverty, thus abandoning the humanist stance. On the other, to demand changes in the Indians' culture in view of liberating them from oppression necessarily meant to ask for their cultural death, a demand not altogether consonant with a humanist position respectful of all human efforts toward self-fulfillment.

It is at this juncture that the issues transcend a discussion of Indianism. The questions surrounding the Indianist dilemma are the same as those enveloping the dilemma of humanism in general. For at the bottom of the humanist stance there lurks the question: How does one justify decreeing how others ought to live?

Western humanism has always been dual. While it manifests a contemplative concern with man's understanding of his existence—which ultimately implies an anthropocentric, a panhuman, conception of the world—it also sustains an active intervention in the world to make that world comply with the demands of thought. The interplay between the contemplative and the interventive faces of humanism, however, has not always been auspicious. Often its anthropocentric conception of the world has turned into an ethnocentric conception as soon as Western man has attempted to act. Thus, humanism often changes into its opposite and shows its Janus face. The proverbial contradiction between thought and action has here one of its most telling tales. A tale, one might add, that reaches deep into Western history, and is well exemplified in two concrete instances in Latin American history—the colonial experience and Indianism.

The earliest grounds for humanism were furnished mainly by religion. Socrates affirmed this with his life, and Christ gave it a sublime character. Until recently the idea that all men were created in the image of God and therefore shared in His essence was taken as given. This fundamental postulate of Christian theology furnished the basis for Charity and Love—the cardinal tenets of a religiously based humanism. But this religious grounding also gave humanism a militant edge. Martyrdom—perhaps the purest form of militancy—and proselytizing translated the Christian faith into practice. And in the translation something was certainly lost. Let us recall the soldier-priests who carried out the deeds of conquest in Hispanic America: the Indian soul had to be “saved”; the Indian had to be converted at all costs, even if he had to be eliminated in the process. The Janus face of humanism in this instance was shown to be of a purple color.

This religious ground for humanism began to erode around the fifteenth century. By the end of the eighteenth century the once solid religious base had virtually disappeared. The expansion of the West—so effectively supported by its religious zeal—eventually worked against those values that sustained it. From conquerors, missionaries, converted natives, pirates, and adventurers, the eighteenth century philosophes had gathered evidence to use against their own church and state. By the end of the eighteenth century the Christian Godhead had been largely replaced in the minds of humanists by a new one: Nature. And attached to this God-term there were two minor gods: Human Nature and Reason.

But, as it turned out, the attempts by the philosophes of the Enlightenment were half-hearted. They could claim to have found a Human Nature only because they did not look hard enough. As anthropologists examined the evidence, the concept of Human Nature all but evaporated. Anthropologists became convinced that if there was something constant in all cultures, it was a tendency to be different. To be sure, all men belonged to one family, but now the ground for the obvious unity was no longer obvious. As the social sciences increased their participation in the general discussion, the conception of man and his world on purely religious grounds was left behind. The development of the social sciences was marked by a shift to scientism—a reliance on the scientific method—and a pronounced preoccupation with the classification and analysis of “hard facts.” The old concept of Reason gave way to a conception of reason as instrumental; the traditional concept of Human Nature gave way to one couched in the theories of socialization and propaganda that saw man as manipulable and malleable. As to humanism, having lost faith, it embraced science. It came to rely more and more on the correct reading of “hard facts” ostensibly gathered through work done with full impartiality and objectivity.

The new grounding of humanism when translated into practice brought about another turn of its Janus face. This is clearly exemplified by the case of Indianism, for the humanism of the Indianist writers was certainly grounded in scientism. It was no longer based on religion or notions of Human Nature, as were the romantic Indian novels of the nineteenth century. Indianism was a naturalist-realistic movement. These novels report “hard facts,” and the assessment of these facts undergirds the author's humanist stance. After all, the hard facts were all too eloquent in showing the Indian exploited by a corrupt white minority. Convinced by their readings of the available hard facts, these writers saw no choice but to wrest the Indians from their shackles—and thus reaffirm their own humanism.

The problem was that their stance was too “objective.” These humanists looked at the Indian from the outside and did not attempt to gain an appreciation of two subjective elements involved—their own motives as representatives of a particular culture and class, and the Indian's appreciation of their own culture. From their position as outsiders these humanists increasingly took a paternalistic position vis-à-vis the Indians. The eventual outcome of this position was the silencing of the Indian voice with respect to any discussion about their own future. Since the Indian was seen as caught in a web of social relations that prevented self-reflection, ultimately only writers and other humanists could adjudicate between alternative courses of action for liberation. Given all this, it is no wonder that the Indian was asked to commit cultural suicide, and that all efforts to resist such a demand were seen as the product of “false-consciousness” or sheer ignorance of the telling “hard facts.”

To be sure, this scientistic grounding for humanism has been forcefully questioned in recent years. Social scientists from Hispanic America, for example, are intent upon rooting out some of the basically ethnocentric biases of orthodox Marxism. This effort has come in the aftermath of World War II, encouraged by developments in Western Marxist thought. A renewed Hispano-American Christian theology has also taken a stand against the scientistic developments. But as far as the Indians are concerned, these developments have come too late. The Indians have now moved down from the mountains to the coastal and urban centers. They did not come to destroy bourgeois society, but to lose themselves in it. They now engulf the capitalist centers with their shantytowns. What the course of events would have been had these developments taken place at the peak of Indianism we cannot say. Perhaps the demand for the Indian's cultural death would not have been so powerful as to smother attempts to oppose it.

Arguedas did not enjoy the full benefits of the current challenges to paternalism in and outside of Latin America. This is precisely because he himself must be counted among the first to challenge all forms of scientism and paternalism. Among all Indianist writers he is alone in presenting the paradox noted both clearly and as unsolved—indeed as unsolvable. He firmly believed that neither bourgeois liberalism nor Marxist socialism could accommodate the Indian world within it. Liberalism with its decisive emphasis on individualism could not accommodate the Indian communalistic spirit; socialism with its decisive emphasis on rationalism would never admit the Indian magico-mystical worldview. He knew that calls for a “return” were sirens' calls.

And yet Arguedas, too, called for revolution, perhaps more subtly than others, but certainly as forcefully. He hoped that a society could be fashioned in the Andes which, while destroying age-old injustices, would keep and share in the Indian heritage, wisdom, and values. Only a revolution, he believed, could rid the Andes of centuries-old injustices; but also only the Indian's communalistic, magical spirit could save the Andean peoples from the ills of a rapidly growing materialistic, rationalistic, and individualistic society, be it in its liberal or its socialist form. But deep in his heart he feared his hopes would come to naught. He saw the Indian becoming “other,” and no new society in sight. Perhaps he felt partly responsible for the change—perhaps he just sensed it as a fateful event.

J. M. Arguedas paid the price for setting a course between Scylla and Charybdis. His hopes he presented as hopes, leaving the real paradox in full display. He did not fall into the temptation of closing the circle too soon, of giving false solutions to the contradiction inherent in his work; he did not offer clear-cut solutions to the problems he described. As one reads his work one finds him torn between the Indian's and the white's understanding of the world. And this ambivalence permeates his work and gives it the depth other Indianist literature lacks. At the end of Los Ríos Profundos Ernesto, the young hero who reflects Arguedas' own anguish, disappears from the scene of the massacre of Indians by the forces of “law and order,” but we do not know either his destination or his intent. We are left to ponder his next step as we imagine him growing into a man.

But even if we do not know Ernesto's next step we can be certain of Arguedas' stance. When the ground for humanism seemed to turn against humanism itself, he, through his art, pointed out the danger. He reached into a magico-mystical world for illumination and strength. He wrote truly magico-realist novels because he lived and felt the world in that fashion. This indio sonqo actually believed, as Indians still do, that rivers speak, that old elms guard ancient secrets, that flora and fauna store wisdom and bear counsel to men.

We may describe moments of Arguedas' life as he himself described those of the Indians. We may truthfully say that in his heart “the rolling hills [were] laughing and crying, in his eyes live[d] the sun and sky; in his insides the rolling hills [were] singing with their voices of morning, noon, afternoon and evening.” (Yawar Fiesta, 1940). And despite all polite skepticism as to the grounds for his life and work, Arguedas' magico-realist position was ultimately the most human of stances. In it, humanity reaffirmed itself against a dehumanized humanism.

As he heard the sorrowful tune of the blind beggar's harp, Arguedas felt the withering strength of an exploited humanity reach the depths of his soul. Fortunately for us, he lived long enough to translate, and thus capture, that withering humanity into literature. In doing this he found both a reason for living and a source of agony. He never finished the novel he intended to write when he came to Chimbote. His last novel resembles his life in that, like his life, it is a truncated effort. J. M. Arguedas took his own life in 1969. His battle against death ended when he realized he could no longer continue with his lifelong commitment to writing a nonpaternalistic, nonethnocentric literature.

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