Jos Mara Arguedas

(Summary) Jose Maria Arguedas was born on January 18, 1911 in Andahuaylas a province in the southern Peruvian Andes. He was born into a well-off mestizo family, but his mother died when he was two years old. Because of the absence of his father, a lawyer who travelled frequently, and his bad relationship with his step-mother and step-brother, he comforted himself in the care of the family's indigenous servants, allowing him to immerse himself in the language and customs of the Andes, which came to form an important part of his personality. He went to primary school in San Juan de Lucana, Puquio, and Abancay, and completed his secondary studies in Ica, Huancayo, and Lima. He began studying at The University of San Marcos (Lima) in 1931; there he graduated with a degree in Literature. He later took up studies in Ethnology, receiving his degree in 1957 and his doctorate in 1963. Between 1937 and 1938 he was sent to prison for his protesting for an envoy sent to Peru by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Arguedas also worked for the Ministry of Education, where he interested in preserving and promoting Peruvian culture, in particular traditional Andean music and dance. He was the director of the Casa de la Cultura (1963) and Director of the National Museum of History (19641966). Arguedas shot himself in the head on November 28, 1969 in his office at the Agrarian University in La Molina, leaving behind very specific instructions for his funeral, a diary depicting his depression, and a final unfinished manuscript, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below). Finally he died five days later (December 2, 1969). Last year commemorated Jose Maria Arguedass Birth Centenary in our country and it performed several activities in honor to indigenist novelist. The life and works of Jos Mara Arguedas reflect in a seminal way the drama of acculturation and transculturation suffered not only by what we think of as the indigenous and mestizo cultures of Peru, but by other Latin American societies as well. Intricately reflecting his pluricultural and bilingual life experience, Arguedass illuminating poetic visions of Andean culture cross multidisciplinary borders to transfigure pedagogical and social practices.