person

José María Arguedas

José María Arguedas Altamirano was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Arguedas was an author of mestizo descent who was fluent in the Quechua language. That fluency was gained by Arguedas's living in two Quechua households from the age of 7 to 11. First, he lived in the Indigenous servant quarters of his stepmother's home, then, escaping her "perverse and cruel" son, with an Indigenous family approved by his father. Arguedas wrote novels, short stories, and poems in both Spanish and Quechua.