Bronze breed

With Raza de bronce (1919), Alcides Arguedas initiated the “neoindigenista” literary current, which portrays the social, political, economic and cultural reality of the original peoples of Latin America. The author’s intention is to capture the dilemma and confrontation of identities and societies characterized by cultural heterogeneity.
With a background of social denunciation is one of the first Latin American novels that narrates the life of the indigenous people of the highlands of Bolivia.
The prominent Hispanist Ernest Martinenche, professor at the Sorbonne, tells us about Bronze Race:

“The types who live or vegetate on this land, already fecund, already ungrateful, seem painted with no less fairness: little by little we enter into their miserable dwellings, into their superstitions. The facts alone speak in their impassive language, more infuriating than the most violent protests.”

The story, narrated following the modernist line, heir to French symbolism and realism. It is articulated around the resistance, usually underhanded, finally violent, of an Aymara community on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The trips and daily obligations to which the Indians are subjected by the Creole landowners;

• communal rites and festivals,
• A love story
• and some representative characters,

They constitute diverse scenarios.
This novel achieves that “objective knowledge” (of the environment, of history, of the “psychology of race”) explicitly formulated by Arguedas from a positivist perspective.
Carlos Castañón Barrientos wrote about the literary meaning of this novel:

“With Raza de Bronce the American indigenist literary current begins, of defense of the exploited Indian, by cruel white bosses, owners of the land, and their mestizo employees.”