Arguedas's "black butterfly": Afro-Peruvian figures in The Fox Above and the Fox Below

Abstract

This article examines the representation of Afro-Peruvian figures in Arguedas’ posthumous novel, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo. The novel contains several characters of African descent, such as Dr. Gastiaburú, the zambo Moncada, and a couple of anonymous women. The article proposes that Arguedas constructs a coherent symbolic universe around these figures based on their physical vitality, thus counterposing the Afro-Peruvian characters to the indigenous and mestizo characters, who are associated with sickness and death. Although images of the physical vitality of blacks have a colonialist origin, Arguedas in this novel uses such images for his own purposes in his representation of his personal struggle against death and the struggle of Chimbote’s Andean migrants to create their world.