SOURCE: Archibald, Priscilla. “Gender and Mestizaje in the Andes.” In Mixing Race, Mixing Culture: Inter-American Literary Dialogues, edited by Monika Kemp and Debra J. Rosenthal, pp. 103-21. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.

In the following excerpt, Archibald explores Arguedas's tendency to use mestizo characters as symbols of merging influences, and sexual lust and impropriety as symbolic of the Andean migration to the coast with a “redemptive anarchy” that was transforming Peru.

José María Arguedas: Mestizaje and Sexuality

Increasingly, scholars look toward novelist and anthropologist José María Arguedas for help in addressing the new dimensions of Andean society. The most prominent Andean actor in Arguedas' anthropological work is the mestizo. After attending “El primer congreso internacional de peruanistas” [“The First International Congress of Peruvianists”] in 1952, Arguedas expressed disappointment with its limited focus on lo indigenista and lo hispanista. Once again the mestizo was left to the margins...