SOURCE: Lockert, Lucía. “Peruvian Social Realities in José María Arguedas.” Michigan Academician 19, no. 2 (spring 1987): 243-51.

In the following essay, Lockert presents Arguedas's work as examples of the tensions in his thought between solidarity and individualism and acculturation and assimilation.

The noted twentieth-century Peruvian author, José María Arguedas, once wrote of his homeland:

There isn't a country more diverse, more varied in its terrain and its people; every degree of heat and color, of love and hate, of manipulations and inspiring symbols. Not without reason, as the common people would say, were important people and events made here. People like Pachacamac and Pachacutec, Huaman Poma de Ayala, Cieza and the Inca Garcilaso, Tupac Amaruc and Vallejo, Mariátegui and Eguren. The Coastal Yungas and those of the Sierras. Events such as the celebration of the Coyllur and the Procession of Our Lord of the Miracles.¹

In...