Stories by José María Arguedas

In these Stories of José María Arguedas the problematic that would end up presiding over all his writing is noticed:

• life,
• The Hazards
• and the sufferings of the Indians in the haciendas and villages of the highlands of Peru.

The theme par excellence of Arguedas’ work is the confrontation between two cultures: the Andean of Quechua origin and the urban of European roots.
Arguedas (1911-1969) born in Andahuaylas, in the heart of the poorest and most forgotten Andean area of the country, was in contact from childhood with the environments and characters that he would incorporate into his work. For this reason his work reveals the writer’s deep love for the culture of the Peruvian Andes. He owed his earliest training to her, and represents, without a doubt, the summit of Peruvian indigenism.
Scholars of Arguedas’ work (1911-1969) have highlighted his originality as a narrator. They also agree that it is born, in part, from the way in which the Peruvian writer analyzed the Andean world from within. But his work means something more, it is also the reflection of his life and his passions, from his first stories of

• Water (1935),
• through the novel Yawar Fiesta (1941),
• until the famous Los ríos profundos (1958), without detracting in tone, theme and ambition the subsequent ones:
• The Sixth (1961)
• Dracena (2016),
• All the Bloods (1964),
• Love World (1967)
• and El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (published posthumously, in 1971).

These great stories of José María Arguedas, with the rest of his short story work, anthropological writings and poems, will give body and depth to one of the most formidable writers of the Spanish language.