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~ "1 Am Not an Acculturated Man ...

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The Fox from Up Above and the Fox from Down Below

"I

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Jose M. Arguedas's words upon accepting

the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega Prize1
(Lima, October 1968)
I am delighted to accept the Inca Garcibso de b Vega Prize, be
cause I teel it represents the recognition ofa body of work in which
I sought to disseminate <lnd intCctiously transmit to the readers' spirit
the art of a modern Quechu<l individual who, thanks to his aware
ness of the value of his culture, was able to broaden and enrich it
with what he had learned and assimilated of art created by other
peoples who had much greater means of selfexpression at their dis
posal.
The dream of the author's youth seems to hJve been realized. His
sole ambition was to pour out into the current of wisdom and art of
the Peruvian criol!o that other stream of art and wisdom of a people
who were considered to be degenerate and debilitated, or "strange"
and "impenetrable," but instead were really doing nothing less than
becoming a great people, oppressed by being scorned socially, domi
nated politicJlly, and exploited economically on their own soil, where
they accomplished great teats t()r which history considered them a
great people: they had been transformed into a corralled nation (iso
lated in order to be better and more easily managed) about which
only those who had walled it in spoke, while viewing it from a dis
tance with repugnance or curiosity. But oppressively isolating waIls
do not extinguish the light of human reason, especially after that
L Included as a prologuc in the 1983 Editorial Horizonre edjtion of Obms comp/etas
dt' Jose M. ArlJlJt'das, in Volume 5, Lima, Pcru.-T1u~s.
2. Explanatory note placed at cnd of J983 editiol1.--TlUl\'s.

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light has had centuries of use, nor do they dam up the springs of
love trom which art flows. Inside the oppressive isolating wall, the
Quechua people, rather archaized and getting along by dissembling,
went on conceiving ideas, creating songs and myths. And we know
very well that the walls isolating nations are never completely isolat
ing. As tor me-they tossed me over that wall tor a time when I was
a child; I was CJst into that dwelling place where kindness is more
intense than hatred and where, t()r that very reason, hatred is the fire
that impels people onward rather than perturbing them.
IntCcted t()rever by the songs and myths, by good t()rtune taken
to the University of San MJrcos, a Quechua speaker all my lite, a
joyful visitor of great t(xeign cities, I attempted to transt()fJll into
written language what I was as an individual: a strong living link,
capable of being universalized, between the great, walled-in nation
~ll1d the generous, humane side of the oppressors. The link was able
to uni,'ersalize and extend himselt~ proving to be a real live, func
tioning example. The encircling wall could have and should have
been destroyed; the copious streams [of wisdom JIH.i art] from the
two nations could have and should have been united. And there was
no reason why the route t()lIowed had to be, nor was it possible that
it should solely be, the one imperiously demanded by the plunder
ing conquerors, that is: that the conquered nation should renounce
its soul (C\'Cn if only t()fJllally appearing to do so) and take on the
soul of the conquerors, that is to say, that it should become accul
tur<lted. I am not an acculturated man; I am a Peruvian who, like a
cheerful demon, proudly speaks in Christian and in Indian, in Span
ish and in Quechua. I longed to trJnstC)fJll this reality into artistic
language and-according to a more or less general consensus of
opinion-I appear to have succeeded in doing so. That is why I am
delighted to receive the Inca Garcilaso de ]a Vega Prize.
But this speech would be incomplete without the explanation that
I would never have been able to realize my dream (which I seem to
have succeeded in doing insofar as possible) had it not been tor two
principles that inspired my work trom the beginning. In my early
youth I was full of great rebelliousness and great impatience and I
Was eager to fight, to do something. The two nations trom which I
originated were in conflict; to me the universe seemed like a sea

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J U OS.lS .M A KIA A K G U B D A 8

rough with high-curling waves of confusion, of promises, and of ai,

beauty more demanding than dazzling. It was by reading Mariitegui';.
and later Lenin that I tound a permanent order in things; socialist
theory channeled not only my whole future but also whatever en
ergy there was in me, giving it a direction and making it flow even
stronger by the very fact of channeling it. How far my understand_
ing of socialism went I really do not know. But it did not kill the
magic in me. I never sought to become a politician, nor did I think
I was capable of practicing party discipline; but it was the socialist
ideology and my being close to socialist movements that provided
direction and permanence, a clear destination for the energy I felt
being unleashed during my youth.
The other principle was that I always considered Peru to be an
intlnite source of creativity. To pertcct the means of understanding
this infinite country through t:1l11iliarity with whatever is discovered
in other worlds. No, there is no other country more diverse, nor
with a greater multiplicity of earthly and human resources; it has all
degrees of heat and hue, oflove and hatred, of warps and subtleties,
of symbols both utilized and inspiring. It was not simply tor the hell
of it (as the so-called common people would say) that Pachacamac
and Pachacutec, Huaman Poma, Cieza, and the Inca Garcibso, Tupac
Amanl and Vallejo, Mari~1tegui and Eguren, as well as the Festivals
of Qoyllur R.iti and of El Senor de los Milagros, were developed
here; and also the warm vallevs of the CO~1st and the sierra, agricul
ture at an altitude of more than q,ooo teet, ducks who speak in
highland lakes where all the insects of Europe would be drowned,
and hummingbirds who rise up to the sun to drink in its tire and to
flame over all the flowers of the world. Being here and imitating
others would turn out to be rather shameful. In technology they
will surpass us and dominate us, tor how long we do not know, but
in art we can alreadv" oblige
them to learn from us and we can do it
<
without even budging from right here. I hope there hasn't been
much arrogance in what I have had to say. I thank you and ask you
to please pardon me.

~Glossary

for this English version of EI zorro de arriba.v el zorro de abajo it was not
necessarv to include a translation of the Glossary made tl)r the Spanish
UNESCO edition bv Martin Lienhard, since most of the words he had
explained there had alre~ldv been translated into English in the main text of
the no\el. Hmvever, a tCw of his definitions were included, tiJr the most
part being restricted to the meanings of the words as Jose Maria Arguedas
had used them in EI zOrJ"O . . . The botanical terms were taken trom the
Lienhard Glossarv, citing Vocablllario de los Hombres l'uLqares de la .flora
pcntall a , Lw J. Soukup (Lima: Colegio Salesiano, 1(7 0 ).
The sources cited here are Jose M. Arguedas himself (JMA), as he ex
pLlined words either in EI zorro ... or (if otherwise specified) elsewhere,
and Sybila Arredondo de Arguedas (SA), his widow. The latter's clarifica
tions oflexical ditnculties were originally taken trom Volume 5 of the Obras
complatH de Jose A1aria AI~qltedas (Lima: Horizonte, 1983, "Notas," pp.
20--219).

I 11.l\'e added a tCw meanings trom M~lrtha Hildebrandt's Diccionario dc

1)cntaitiSluos (Lima: Moncloa-Campod('ll1ico Editores Asociados, 1(69),
\\hich prmulmost helpful. Also cited, as fG, is E. foley Gambetto, Uxico
tid 1)c1'11 (Lima, 1983, 198+).
A: Aymara
C: Carib
E: English
Q: Quechua
S: Sp~lnish
\Vhen letters are in combination, they are shared by the languages. The
first letter indicates the language ti'om which the other language(s) bor
rowed the word. Letters joined by + indicate a word that is a combination
of two languages, Quechlla often borrows a word fi'om Spanish and adds
its own endings.

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