Jose Maria Arguedas was born on January 18th, 1911. Jose was born in the province of Andahuaylas in the southern Peruvian Andes. Arguedas was the son of Victor Manuel Arguedas Arellano and Victoria Altamirano Navarro. Despite his father being a lawyer and his mother coming from a prominent family in San Pedro, the Arguedas family lived in poverty. Jose and his older brother were sent to the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Eventually both older and younger brothers were living on the streets until a friend of Jose's father gave him his first job at the Lima Post Office. It wouldn't be until 1963 that Jose Maria would obtain his first job in anthropologyl. The set back in his education was due in large part to his financial situation as well as his time spent in jail in 1937 for political-theft dispute, during the reign of General Oscar Ramundo Benavides.
Along with becoming a Linguistic Anthropologist, Jose Maria managed to write several novels and become a field researcher. Arguedas graduated and soon headed the Instituto de Estudios Ethnologicos of the Museo Nacional de Cultura with a Bachelors Degree in 1957. Jose Maria then received the Javier Prado Prize from his graduating thesis “La evolucion de las comunidades indigenas.” Although Jose was a Lingustic and Social Anthropologist he expressed the need for the Indian culture to be depicted realistically in his fictional novels.
Agruedas's first book was Agua.Los Escoleros. Warma Kuka (Water. The Students. Puppy Love) published in 1935. His first novel was in 1944 Yawar Fiesta (Blood Fiesta). In 1954 he published a novel based on Arguedas's first book, Daimentes y Pedernales. Agua (Diamonds and Flintstone. Water). In 1961 he published two books Los Rios Profundos and El Sexto (The Sixth), bringing to light one of the most notorious Peruvian prisons. Arguedas published La Agonia de “Rasu Niti” and a hymn to Our Lord the Father/Creator Tupuc Amur. Two years passed and in 1964 Jose published Todos los Sangres (All Bloods). In terms of his Linguistic Anthropology, Jose published a bilingual novel El Suenodel Pongo (The Pongo's Dream) in 1965. Amor Mundou Otros Relatos (Love World and Other Stories) was published in 1967 along with Amor Mundo y Todos los Cuentus (Love World and All Short Stories). In many of Jose Maria's novels, he writes of love and sex the contradiction of the “desired yet sinful act.”
Also on an Anthropological note, Arguedas's works depicted the Indian World “exactly as it is” but with hardship of a fictional yet readable text.
Along with his many novels, his research also gained international attention. In 1956 his renowned writing Puatio: Una Cultura en Proceso de Cambio and his praise for the comparisons of Leon and Peru in 1963. From Jose Maria's fieldwork he collected many aged writings of the Andean literary. Arguedas was also the Director of Museo Nacional de Historia from1964 to 1969 enabling his efficiency for translations and field research. Jose Maria translated the myths of Huarochiri from Quechua into Spanish; this led into his completed novel entitled Dioses y Hombres de Huarochiri (Gods and Men of Huarochiri) in 1966. El Zorro becomes Arguedas's last novel. He managed to avoid the fallacies surrounding the Indian culture.
In his field research and his own life experiences of the Andean world and rural Indian community, Arguedas developed a “crippling depression.” He was divorced from his first wife, Cecilia Bustamante Vernal, in 1966 and remarried the following year to Sybila Arredondo which was recorded as his “greatest happiness.” Through his inner turmoil spurred the creative engine toward his fictional novels. In 1969, in a bathroom, Jose Maria Arguedas took his own life. Arguedas thrived on the happiness of his Indian childhood and forever led the Spanish and Indian world as a realistic and “speaking” culture.
Notes for a History of Peruvian Social Anthropology, http://links.jstor.org/, (2003)
William, Luis, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale Research Inc. 1st Series, 1992
Written By: Jennifer Zahn, 2003