The anthropology of J. M. Arguedas: a history of continuities and ruptures

Abstract

This article analyzes the different stages in Arguedas’ outlook on Andean culture and survival. First, he valued the Andean identitarian energy during his first 15 years of research, and he accepted the Andean developmentalist dynamic within the evolution of a pluralist and heterogeneous society. Though Arguedas didn’t embrace utopian returns to the past, he supported Andean and mestizo hegemony in the beginning of the 1960s. Finally, he progressed to an open anti-imperialist sentiment in the last years of his life.