Ontological Migrations in José María Arguedas’s Tupac

Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman : The Triumph of Runa Migrants

Against the Colonial Violence in Lima

Christian Elguera

Diálogo, Volume 23, Number 2, Fall 2020, pp. 119-132 (Article)

Published by University of Texas Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/dlg.2020.0025

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/787807

[ Access provided at 10 May 2021 21:51 GMT from San Diego State University ]
Ontological Migrations in José María Arguedas’s
Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman: The Triumph of
Runa Migrants Against the Colonial Violence in Lima
Christian Elguera
University of Oklahoma

Abstract: In his poem Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman (1962), José María Arguedas depicts runa migrants
as resisting spatial segregation and racial and social injustices in Lima through the practice of ontological migra-
tion. Arguedas shows that, by transferring their ontological beliefs to their new urban geography, runa migrants
confronted the colonial violence of Lima with the support of non-human beings that had inhabited their home-
lands, such as the Amaru or Serpent God. In this way, Arguedas engages Quechua ontologies as a political ges-
ture in his poetry.

Keywords: migration, Indigenous ontologies, Quechua poetry, José María Arguedas

Palabras clave: migración, ontologías indígenas, poesía Quechua, José María Arguedas

O n May 2, 1960, police officers, delegated by

the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, received
the order to eliminate runa or Quechua peasants in the
Huayllacancha community (Cerro de Pasco, Peru).1 The
official, Manuel Carranza, gave the fatal command.2
As a result, three peasants died and almost forty were
wounded by military forces. That act of repression, well
known as the Huayllacancha massacre, was part of a
national campaign to exterminate peasant movements
in the Andes. To be sure, since the late 1950s, peasants
had been trying to recover their lands that had been
usurped by the Peruvian nation-state, ­haciendas, and
extractive industries. However, defeated by the Peru-
vian Armed Forces and removed from their territo-
ries, many peasants were forced to migrate as orphans
or wakchas toward Lima.3 They were also forced to in-
habit racialized spaces, especially in the Peruvian cap-
ital.4 Concerned with these colonial vexations against
Native subjects in the 1960s, Indigenous-­mestizo writer
José María Arguedas wrote the poem Tupac Amaru
Kamaq Taytanchisman (To Tupac Amaru, Our Father
Who Animates, 1962) in Quechua.5
By analyzing Arguedas’s poem, the present ­article
attempts, on the one hand, to sketch a picture of the
governmental hostilities against the runa or Quechua
population in Andean territories.6 On the other hand,
considering the forced displacement of runakuna to-
ward urban geographies that resulted from these
hostilities, this research intends to highlight the In-
digenous migrant repertoire of agency and survival in
Lima.7 My main argument is that runa migrants con-
front colonial violence in their homelands and in new
spaces through what I identify as ontological migra-
tion. Adopting a defiant attitude against the legacies of
colonization in Peru, these migrants produced a range
of strategies to transfer and to protect their ancestral
cultures in the segregated capital city. In Tupac Amaru
Kamaq Taytanchisman, the central migrant character
in the poem works to transfer their mobility from their
original community to cities as a way to “reground”
their Indigenous practices of territoriality as well as to
gain access to political recognition (Ahmed 9; see also
Massey 26).
I chose the term ontological migration to explain
how Indigenous migrants reshape urban geographies
according to their local ways of living, defying the spa-
tial colonization in the city of Lima. For ­Arguedas, mi-
gration was a primary experience that could be used
to problematize the dominant narratives of Lima
through an Indigenous lens. As a result, urban space
is more than modern geography; it is also an exam-
ple of “onto-epistemic spaces of action that can [. . .]
host practices that enact more than one world” (De la
­Cadena, “Earth Beings” 26). In this light, Arguedas

Diálogo © 2020 by the University of Texas Press

Christian Elguera Volume 23  Number 2  Fall 2020
shows us how Indigenous migrants travel carrying dif-
ferent ontologies or “worlds” within them as a way to
preserve their ancestral notion of territoriality and to
resist the praxis of coloniality in Lima.
When Arguedas wrote and published Tupac
Amaru Kamac Taytanchisman in 1962, numerous
runa subjects felt forced to migrate toward Lima. The
poem concentrates on the potential opportunities of
migrating, which, I will demonstrate, is understood
by Arguedas as an essential strategy to reinvigorate
the political agency and identities of Indigenes in the
capital. In the poem, runa migrants do not abandon
their traditions in Lima, but rather persist in dialogu-
ing with the Amaru and other powerful non-human
beings, living in the city according to their ancestral
worldviews. In this way, runa migrants resisted the so-
cial and racial violence imposed by Limeño thinking
and urban policies. For this reason, Arguedas’s poem
should be seen as refusing to engage in the forms of
representation used by Limeño writers, members of
the so-called Generation of 50, who essentially repro-
duced colonial preconceptions about migrant subjects.
To be sure, Arguedas recognized migrants’ empower-
ment due to his participation in Andean meetings in
Lima, such as at coliseums, music festivals, and pro-
vincial clubs (García Liendo 136–38). Also, Arguedas’s
ethnographic works reflect his interest in analyzing
the continuity of traditional knowledge and identities
in Andean cities, which are strongly influenced by dis-
placements and cultural contacts.8
As will be discussed below, Arguedas focuses on
ontological migrations to underline Indigenous soli-
darities and senses of rootedness during the process of
displacement. In Arguedas’s poem, migrants are also
moving their ontological, political, and emotional en-
gagements with their homelands from their local com-
munities to Lima, to protect their culture against the
disdain and hostilities of Limeño elites and the middle
classes. Inserted in a colonial city opposed to Indige-
nous presence, the most critical concern of Quechua
migrants was the preservation of their cultural and
political lifestyles beyond the material and symbolic
violence of racism and acculturation. In this way, on-
tological migration reinforced Quechua practices,
memories, affects, and knowledge within Lima, a city
that has been plagued by racial struggles and social in-
equalities since its foundation.
120  Articles Diálogo
FROM PEASANTS TO MIGRANTS
Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman was the first
text written in Quechua by Arguedas and, thereby, it
manifested a position-taking in favor of the linguistic
and political self-determination of Andean cultures.
Arguedas also published a translation of the poem
from the Indigenous language to Spanish, establishing
a bilingual dialogue with the Peruvian readership. The
poem consists of two sections that articulate runa or
Quechua conceptions of territoriality and migration.
In the first sequence, the text’s lyric voice pronounces
an invocation to the Amaru or serpent God. Arguedas
scholars have interpreted this lyric voice in a number
of ways. Gonzalo Espino identifies the poetic charac-
ter with a runa or Indigenous subject who speaks for
his people, whereas Martin Lienhard explains that this
character is an Andean migrant (see also Noriega 134).
Finally, in his research on A ­ rguedas’s poems, Mauro
Mamani defines the lyric voice as “a paqu, a layqa,
an amauta or an awichu” (76). Considering the spec-
ificity and meaning of each of these Quechua words,
­Mamani’s proposed list of names creates confusion
and dispersion.9
By contrast to the work of these scholars, I prefer
to identify the poem’s narrator as a camasca or Andean
shaman, because this character reveals ways humans
and non-humans can be ontologically and politically
connected.10 Camasca and kamaq (a word that also ap-
pears in the title of the poem) allude to the camac or
energy that a subject receives from a powerful entity,
such as an illa (thunder) or a wamani (mountain). As
we learn from colonial chroniclers Cristobal de M ­ olina
(18) and Polo de Ondegardo (27, 35), the camasca is a
sorceress who establishes interactions with malefic
forces. In this poem, specifically, the camasca is ani-
mated by the Amaru and devotes prayers and other rit-
uals to this sacred being.
Respect, protocols, and reciprocity mark the re-
lation between both the camasca and the Amaru en-
tity. Through allusions to its vigorous and its dexterous
body depicted in fights against “the Spaniard that eats
knives and blood” (10), the camasca expresses his rev-
erence and invokes the Amaru figure with deferential
terms such as: “Our Father,” “my Father,” “My Father
and Brother, my Serpent God” (14).11 Throughout the
poem, the Serpent God is worshiped for its fierce anger
that coexists with radiant grace, as we can read in the
 Ontological Migrations in José María Arguedas’s Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman
following instances: “The rage boiled in your veins,”
“Your face was like the great sky” (11, 14). Additionally,
the Amaru’s beloved authority is evoked through ep-
ithets like “Loved Chief,” “Unforgettable and eternal
Amaru” (16). Lamenting the colonial violence against
Quechua people, the camasca reports to the Amaru
the invasions of Indigenous communities by Lords or
false weraqochakunas.12 Such brutal occupations have
produced a desolate atmosphere, in which “Men are
crying more sadly than the little children” (12). The
camasca also uses the poetic figure of the dove to un-
derline runa lamentations over such brutal seizures:
“Hear, from the Lambras tree, the chant of the aban-
doned dove, who never has been loved” (12).
In the second segment of the poem, the camasca
narrates his migration to Lima. Pressured by land dis-
possession, he and other runakuna migrate to the
capital city, settling in racialized spaces such as the
Comas plateau. Still, within this new urban environ-
ment, the camasca persists in invoking the Amaru’s
power. Indeed, rather than a detrimental experience,
the ­camasca recognizes his condition as runa migrant
as an opportunity to re-territorialize Lima according
to the Amaru’s commands. In this vein, he ponders
how to convert such a hegemonic space into a llaqta
or Quechua territory: “We will convert this city into
a town of Indigenous men, a town that intone hymns
from the four regions of our World” (18). Furthermore,
he emphasizes that runa migrants do not refuse the
­Weraqocha or Castilian culture, but rather learn new
idioms and technologies in order to negotiate their
agency in Lima. He declares to the Serpent God: “I
learn the Castilian language, I learn about the wheel
and the machine, and with us your name arises” (20).
Finally, the camasca invokes the Amaru’s protection to
carry on the runa goal of Indigenizing Lima.
Arguedas’s poetry highlights the possibility of
autonomous Quechua power within the Peruvian
nation-­ state. With this project in mind, Arguedas
demonstrates the potential impact of urban migration
on runakuna or Quechua people. For instance, they
use their Andean traditional organizations and soli-
darity to fight together against colonial hierarchies in
Lima, as well as to reinforce their demands for social
justice and the legal recognition of their new terrains
in the city. Arguedas expresses this agency in a uto-
pian tone:
Diálogo Articles 121
Waranqa waranqa kasiayku, huñusqa, llaq­
tan llaqtan huñusqa. Mat’isiayku kay runa
cheqniq llaqtata, cawallupa akanta hina mil­
lakuwaqninchis llaqtata. ¡Qespichisaqkun!
runa llaqtan kanqa, tawantin suyu hatun ta-
kiq [. . .] mana cheqniq ¡chuya! Apu ritin hina
mana asnaq huchyoq. (18)
We are millions of people here; town by town
we are together, pressuring the head of this
city that hates us, that detests our presence
as the excrement of horses. We will make it
shine! We will convert it into a town of In-
digenous men, one that intones the powerful
chants of the Four Regions [. . .] a town that
has not resentment; it will be splendorous!,
similar to the snow of the Apu without the
pestilence of the sin.
According to José Antonio Mazzotti, these verses
suggest the possibility of a Peruvian unification in
1960s Peru. In Mazzotti’s words, the poem “presenta
por momentos un tono de confianza y optimismo
homogenizadores que permiten identificarlo con el
deseo de una unidad y purificación nacionales” (“ex-
presses at times the tone of a confident and homoge-
nizing optimism which permits us to identify it with
the desire for national unity and purification”) (153).
As Miguel ­Ángel Humán demonstrates in his semi-
nal study of Arguedas’s poetry, Tupac Amaru Kamaq
Taytanchisman suggests a utopic horizon character-
ized by national integration (20). To Mamani, the Que-
chua people represented by the lyric voice “Relatan un
mundo de perfección y equilibrio en el que se vivía an-
tes de la llegada del hombre blanco” (“describe the bal-
anced and perfect world in which they lived before the
arrival of the White man”) (83). However, as I shall ar-
gue below, the act of inhabiting Lima as a llaqta signi-
fies neither a return to the past nor a project of unity,
but the continuation of autonomous runa notions of
territoriality within Limeño space.
In Conquistadores de un nuevo mundo (1986),
Carlos Iván Degregori and others detail how Andean
migrants developed relations of clientelism with nu-
merous political groups. Such clientelism was based
on the voting of migrants for specific candidates dur-
ing electoral campaigns. In this way, migrants hoped
Christian Elguera Volume 23  Number 2  Fall 2020
to resolve their practical necessities as well as to re-
ceive property titles for their neighborhoods. Like-
wise, Peruvian historian Alberto Flores Galindo
suggests in “Los caballos de los conquistadores, otra
vez” (1988) that Andean migrants continued their tra-
ditional practices to confront numerous racial injus-
tices in Lima (179). He mentions the cases of “clubes de
migrantes,” “clubes de madres,” and “comedores popu-
lares” (“migrant clubs,” “mothers’ clubs,” and “popu-
lar dining halls”) that provided support and a sense of
rootedness to thousands of migrants (Flores Galindo,
179–80). Similarly, I argue that actions performed by
Indigenous migrants in the 1960s—such as seizing a
territory, building a house, organizing popular com-
mittees, and networking with electoral candidates and
a variety of social institutions—challenged the social
and racial hierarchies in the capital city. A ­ rguedas
comprehended and represented this historical fight for
citizenship and territories in his poem, defying the he-
gemonic urban narratives in Lima, the “principal town
of the execrable Lords” (18).
­profundos (Deep Rivers, 1958) was inspired by an Indig-
AN ALIEN AND HOSTILE HOUSE
We can see one example of how Tupac Amaru
­Kamaq Taytanchisman depicts the Indigenous com-
munity’s challenge to the hegemonic racial and social
hierarchies of Lima in the way the poem addresses the
impact of land dispossession on peasant movements in
the 1960s. The poem dialogues with historical strug-
gles led by runa peasants in order to recuperate stolen
lands in the Andes. In a letter to American anthro-
pologist John Murra, dated August 15, 1962, Arguedas
indicated:
El poema a “Tupac Amaru”, lo escribí en los
tristes días en que se mataba comuneros. No
estoy aun decidido a difundirlo. Te ruego
que, si te es posible, me pongas unas líneas
dándome tu opinión acerca de si podría ser
interpretado como un llamado a la rebelión.
El Dr. Valcárcel que es tan prudente y lo ha
sido durante toda su vida, cree que no, pero
yo siento algún temor. No deseo ser en mi pa-
tria un “apestado comunista”. Soy un hombre
libre; tengo discrepancias irremediables con
los comunistas. (Cartas 84)
122  Articles Diálogo
I wrote Tupac Amaru in disconsolate days,
when commoners were killed [by Armed
Forces]. I still haven’t decided whether to pub-
lish the poem. I’d ask you, if you find it pos-
sible, to write me a few lines giving me your
opinion as to whether the poem can be in-
terpreted as a call to rebellion. Dr. ­Valcárcel,
who is very prudent and has been his whole
life, does not think so; but I still feel some ap-
prehension. I do not wish to be seen in my
country as a “stinking communist.” I am an
independent man; I have irreconcilable dif-
ferences with the communists.
Arguedas’s fear depends on the insurgency po-
tentially fomented by his poem in a context in which
military censorship reigned. To be sure, his reference
to rebellion is connected with Indigenous resistance
exhibited during invasions of their land and the rev-
olutionary ideologies promulgated by Leftist groups.
In this light, Arguedas recalled how his novel Los ríos
enous uprising with magical resonances (53). Accord-
ing to Arguedas’s testimonies, a plague quickly spread
through the city of Abancay, causing panic and uncer-
tainty amongst the townspeople. Native colonos, facing
the epidemic, requested a priest; they believed that only
a Catholic mass could destroy the “mother” or “energy”
of that disease (Arguedas, Primer encuentro 239). Us-
ing the anthropological terms of his time, Arguedas ar-
gued that these colonos were compelled by “beliefs” and
“magic.” In this sense, he distinguished insurgencies
motivated by “una creencia de tipo mágico” (“belief in
magic”) from rebellions inspired by urgent social prob-
lems (Primer encuentro 239). According to Arguedas,
the peasant movement addressed by the mestizo Hugo
Blanco in La Convención in 1962 (Cusco) belonged to
this second group. For this reason, Arguedas remarked
the connections between La Convencion’s seizures and
the colonos’ sublevation in Los ríos profundos.
Alberto Flores Galindo understands A ­ rguedas’s
works within the context of Indigenous/peasant
movements in the Andes. According to this author,
“­Arguedas tuvo una conexión directa con las rebeli-
ones que estallan en los 60 en la sierra” (“Arguedas had
a direct connection with the uprisings that broke out in
 Ontological Migrations in José María Arguedas’s Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman
the 60s in the sierra”) (Flores Galindo, Ensayos 11). In
a parallel fashion, I want to establish the relationships
among Native uprisings in mid-twentieth-­ century
Peru and Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman. If we
consider that Quechua peasant rebellions were nu-
merous in Cusco, Ayacucho, and Cerro de Pasco be-
tween 1957 and 1961, Arguedas’s poem could be read as
a reaction against governmental repressions of peas-
ant movements.
How does Arguedas express these peasant con-
flicts in Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman? To what
extent does the poem confront the colonization of runa
territories in the Andes? In one verse we read about
the expansion of colonial violence in various Peruvian
geographies: “the bullets are killing .  .  . here and ev-
erywhere: / in the cold spine of Cerro de Pasco moun-
tains/ in the snowed soils and pampas” (14). In this
sense, Peruvian spatial policies are aggressive to runa
peasant bodies. In his book’s dedication, Arguedas
offers important information for us to understand the
state’s aggression against the peasantry. Remembering
Doña Cayetana—a Quechua woman who protected
Arguedas during his childhood—the dedication states:
“To Doña Cayetana, my Indian mother. She protected
me with her tears and tenderness when I was an or-
phan in a hostile and alien house” (5). I propose to read
the expression “a hostile and alien house” as a refer-
ence to the dominion of Peruvian governments over
Indigenous lives. I argue that the Peruvian nation-state
is a colonial space where Indigenous/peasant subjects
are killed and devalued in the name of progress and
national hegemony. As a repressed culture relegated to
an inferior political status, that is, a domestic depen-
dent nation, the Quechua people suffer different kinds
of violence—the most enduring of all calamities being
territorial dispossession.
The poetic voice of the camasca laments this sit-
uation in front of the Amaru. He declares, “Manañan
allpaykuna” (“We do not have lands”), “Amaruy, qan
pacha timpuykipi cumun allpayku karqaraqmi” (“in
your time, my Amaru, we were Indigenous landhold-
ers”).13 The loss of territories implies the production
of brutal punishment directed by colonizers who are
trying to expand their power across Peru. I would like
to highlight the vocabulary of physical aggression in
these verses:
Diálogo Articles 123
Balan sipisian,
Metrallan yawarta toqyachisian
Jierro cuchillun runaq aychanta kukuchkan,
Cawallun, irrajinwan, upa, llasaq chakinwan
umayta, wiksaykuta ñitisian. (14)
The bullets are killing
The machine guns are breaking the veins
The iron knives are mutilating human flesh
The horses, with their savage and heavy
hooves, are crushing my head and
bowels.
This scene evokes the ways in which military forces
subjugated runa peasant movements in the Andes. As
I previously noted, the repression of ­Huayllacancha on
May 2, 1960, represented the epitome of state-sponsored
violence over Peruvian peasant bodies. In this regard,
Arguedas chooses to accentuate the armaments wielded
by soldiers and police officers: bullets, machine-guns,
knives, and cavalry. In addition, the Quechua word upa
(savage) underscores the impact of these onslaughts on
peasant bodies.
ONTOLOGICAL MIGRATION
As I have already discussed, in the first sequence
of the poem, the camasca informs the Amaru of the
tragedies of the governmental usurpation of Quechua
land. As a member of an Andean community injured
by governmental representatives and the armed forces,
the camasca has to migrate toward Lima. National poli-
cymakers and developers planned forced displacement
as a form of cultural genocide. In Lima, thousands of
migrants were obligated to refuse their identities, tra-
ditions, and knowledge. Facing this violent project
of assimilation, Arguedas focused on the migrants’
strategies for survival and self-­empowerment. With
this goal in mind, he depicted the ways in which the
­camasca preserved their world-making practices, epis-
temologies, and histories. Along these lines, I propose
the concept of ontological migration to understand
how the camasca, in his condition as shaman and mi-
grant, conserves Indigenous cosmologies, territoriali-
ties, and political concepts in Lima.
In the first sequence of the poem, the c­ amasca’s
invocation articulates the plethora of entities that
Christian Elguera Volume 23  Number 2  Fall 2020
occupy runa landscapes, as we read in the following
stanza:
Mayun takisian,
Tuyan waqasian,
Wayran muyusian
Ichun, tuta punchay sukasian
Wamanikunaq, apukunaq kirunpi, riti
sutustan,
Llipipisian
Hatun mayunchijmi qaparisian[.] (10)
The river is singing
The calandria is crying
The wing is spinning
The ichu from night to day is vibrating
In the teeth of our Wamanis and mountains
the snow is lacking and shining
Our powerful river is roaring[.]
The camasca configures an ontological net with
diverse levels of intensity. For example, we observe in
the last stanza a transition from the “the river is sing-
ing” to “the river is roaring,” from micro-particles of
snow to the vast and sacred river. He uses his own body
as a receptacle of feelings and energies that emerge
from the territory. In the verse “Uyariykuy sonqoyta,
tanlinyasqanta” (“Listen to the intense resonance of
my heart as a bell”), the camasca says that he can trans-
mit all types of intensities, even at the least perceptible
level (12). In this sense, Arguedas uses the word t­ anlin
to compare the camasca’s body with the vibrations of
a bell. The camasca´s heart concentrates a net of enti-
ties at different ontological levels, such as the crying
children and a dove in a Lambras tree. In this context,
the camasca transmits to his community and the pub-
lic sphere of non-Indigenous readers the many worlds
that make up Indigenous places.14 As we can perceive
in this stanza, he feels and transports multiple beings:
Chiri puñuq qochata, yana qaqata
wañuy qawaq chiririnkata
runa llanpu sonqonta
tukuy teqsi muyuntipi, kausayniyoq mana,
kausayniyoq kaqta,
kay pachapi[.] (20)
124  Articles Diálogo
To the lagoon that sleeps, to the black
precipice,
To the chiririnka that sees the dead
to the tender heart of the men;
to the sphere of the divine creation, of the
living and non-living beings,
that exist in the World[.]
With his body animated by the Amaru, the
c­ amasca transfers these ontological existences from
his community to Lima, disseminating numerous
non-human actors and traditions in diverse Limeño
racialized spaces such as Comas. In this way, he per-
forms an ontological migration that extends Quechua
worldviews and practices within urban cartographies.
Thanks to this ontological migration, the camasca
and his migrant cohorts are able to resist the racial
and social violence perpetrated by national authori-
ties, Limeño elites, and the middle class. In this sense,
­Arguedas’s poem confronts official archives and schol-
arly interpretations of migration.15
To be sure, for Arguedas, a non-human entity
such as the Amaru or Serpent God also moves to Lima
and guides Indigenous mobilization in the city. In this
sense, migration is more than an expansion of tradi-
tions at a multicultural level; it is a political practice
that emerges from the relations of migrants with their
homelands.16 In other words, Quechua Indigenous mi-
grations from the village to the city imply the entan-
gled “movement” of ontologically different worlds.
Arguedas’s poem describes the ways in which Que-
chua migrants conserve their multiple worlds in Lima.
The interactions among diverse planes of existences,
such as runakuna, the Amaru, mountains, and riv-
ers, persist in the new urban environment. In what
follows, I argue how Arguedas’s imagining of runa mi-
gration implies ontological mobility rather than only
a human displacement. Hence, the Amaru and other
powerful non-human beings also populate Lima, pro-
moting runa political negotiations in the Limeño pub-
lic sphere.
ERECTING A HOME IN A RACIALIZED SPACE
In the second section of the poem, runakuna feel
compelled to move to the capital city. The camasca char-
acter as a migrant engages in prayers to the Amaru with
 Ontological Migrations in José María Arguedas’s Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman
the aim of re-defining the physical and cultural geog-
raphies of Lima. How does the camasca extend runa
ontological and political relations within Lima? In the
poem, we see how runa or Quechua migrants reinvent
their spatial practices and maintain their difference in
new geographies without refusing the cultural values of
the capital. In spite of racial injustices and acculturation,
their plan was to convert Lima into an Andean territory.
Arguedas witnessed the massive arrival of migrants to
the capital city in the 1960s. In accordance with his in-
formation, he noted, “Más de 400.000 hombres de habla
quechua habitan en ella [en Lima]” (“more than 400,000
quechua speakers live in Lima”) (“Soledad” 117). Con-
sidering this amount, he identified migrant ties of sol-
idarity, organizations and feasts as forms of protection
of their traditional identities as well as a way of con-
fronting the colonial violence that Lima represents. To
be sure, the Lima depicted in Arguedas’s poem is a co-
lonial city embedded with the hierarchies of viceroys
and dominant dynasties (Salazar Bondy 13).
If runakuna claimed sovereignty for their com-
munities, then they also fought for national recogni-
tion and autonomy in their new terrains in Lima. At
this point, Arguedas’s poem shows how non-human
beings motivated the political struggle of runa mi-
grants to “Indigenize” the capital city, as represented by
their spatial occupation of Comas and other peripheral
zones under the Amaru’s instructions. In this sense,
Arguedas’s conception of non-human collectivities
problematizes what Armando Muyolema has called the
“primitive ethos,” a trope that archaized and roman-
ticized Indigenous landscapes (355). A ­ rguedas’s poem
demonstrates how other-than-human existences, such
as mountains, rivers, or animals, assist the ­runakuna
in their appropriation of Lima’s geographies, as we can
observe in this stanza:
Llaqtay mayu, llaqtay sombra, llaqtay tika
way­tas, llaqtay hatun cruczi, chay wasi ­u kupi
sonqosian; qori qentis llipipisian techo way­
ra­champi, pukllaspa[.] (18)
The river, the shadow, the flowers, the great
cross from my town, are living intensely in
this house, and a hummingbird flapping in
the wind, playing on the ceiling[.]
Diálogo Articles 125
The reiteration of “Llaqtay” (“from my town”) un-
derlines that non-human agents have moved from An-
dean landscapes to Lima. In these verses, Arguedas
highlights the value of territoriality, a sense of belong-
ing, and home for Andean migrants. The city occupied
by Quechua migrants may sometimes resemble De la
Cadena and Blasser’s conception of “many worlds” (4).
To be sure, here we can perceive how the worlds of the
“flowers” or the “hummingbird” also occupy the cap-
ital city.
Arguedas conceived the mobility of ontological
worlds as a fundamental Indigenous strategy to coun-
teract a feeling of inferiority and hopelessness. The
lyric voice refers to the fact that Lima detests runa
migrants. According to Limeño racial ideologies, the
highlanders are the “excrement of horses” (18).17 In
many ways, runa migrants’ spatialities in Lima were
formed according to “cartographic rules,” which orga-
nize social and racial hierarchies “in place” (McKitrick
44). In this sense, the name for Indigenous communi-
ties, “barriadas”—known as “pueblos jóvenes” during
the 1970s—denoted the superiority of Limeño citi-
zens over Indigenes. Arguedas depicted this racialized
space as follows:
Más de cien barrios marginales clandestinos
han construido en Lima los inmigrantes pro-
vincianos. Allí han ido a caer la mayor parte
de los indios lanzados de sus pueblos por la
miseria. Allí comparten la vida con otros “se-
rranos” y con los antiguos negros, mulatos,
y otras familias pobres tradicionalmente li-
meñas, arrojadas también de la ciudad por la
miseria y la apresurada construcción de mo-
dernos edificios. (“Soledad” 119)
Migrants from the countryside have built
more than a hundred shantytowns in Lima.
The majority of Indigenous people removed
from their towns, as a consequence of the
misery, have landed there. They share their
lives with other “highlanders,” Blacks, mu-
lattos, and poor Limeño families, whose re-
moval from the city was due to the poverty
and the accelerated construction of modern
buildings.
Christian Elguera Volume 23  Number 2  Fall 2020
To the Limeño middle classes and elites, “­barriada”
was a pejorative expression that referred to a racialized
space, mainly characterized by informal real estate
markets and lacking primary services, such as water or
electricity. In light of these stereotypical associations, a
barriada is not a neighborhood or a recognizable terri-
tory under urban policies. Geographically, these spaces
constituted the peripheries and signified a menace to the
modern planning of the capital. For this reason, they
were also known as “cinturones de miseria” (“belts of
misery”) because they represented the margins of the
capital city.
From Arguedas’s perspective, displacement has
another meaning. In his childhood, he was a migrant
who suffered violence in criollo societies. On various
occasions, he denounced a schoolteacher in Ica who
had shamelessly claimed that Andean people made
foolish students.18 Probably in response to this sort
of humiliating stereotype, Arguedas studied at the
­Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in an at-
tempt to be included in Lima’s select literary field. As
we know, A ­ rguedas became a writer admired by new
generations of readers, a prolific contributor to impor-
tant journals in Peru and Argentina, as well as direc-
tor of the Instituto Nacional de Cultura and the Museo
Nacional de Historia. As such, Arguedas exemplified
the successful Andean migrant. In his essay “No soy un
aculturado,” he states: “yo soy un peruano que orgullo-
samente, como un demonio feliz, habla en cristiano y
en indio, en español y en quechua” (“I am a Peruvian
who proudly, like a happy demon, speaks Christian
and Indian, in Spanish and Quechua”) (“Aculturado”
297). Considering this optimistic or utopian perspec-
tive, Arguedas conceived Quechua migrants as “de-
monios felices” (joyful demons) who preserved their
traditions in spite of the forced displacement and the
racialized urban policies in Lima. In this regard, he de-
scribed his encounters with Don Luis Gil Pérez (from
Lucanamarca, Ayacucho) and Don Santos C ­ coyoccosi
Huillca (from Humutu, Cusco).19 In addition, he had
strong reasons to believe in the positive results of mi-
gration.20 Besides his prolific literary career, he also
produced significant ethnographic work on Puquio,
Huancayo, and the Mantaro valley. In these cities, In-
digenous migrants configured their modalities of mo-
dernity and agency in contact with Western cultural
codes.21 For example, Arguedas observed that in the
126  Articles Diálogo
Mantaro Valley “las comunidades conservaron un alto
grado de independencia económica en esta zona, in-
dependencia que confirió a los indios un status espe-
cial, no de extrema inferioridad social y aun humana,
como la que padecieron y padecen las comunidades del
sur” (“the communities preserved economic indepen-
dence at a high level. Such autonomy gives the Indig-
enous people of this area a special status. In contrast,
communities in the Southern region are still suffering
an extreme social and humane inferiority.) (“Cambio
de cultura” 29).
Unlike Arguedas’s positive perspective on An-
dean migration, intellectuals associated with the
so-called Generación del 50 in Peru—namely Luis
Felipe Angell, Julio Ramón Ribeyro, and Luis Jaime
­Cisneros—were suspicious of the narrative of the suc-
cessful migrant. Angell’s novel, La tierra prometida
(The Promised Land, 1958), describes with pathetic
realism the myriad of penuries that the protagonist
Manuel Costa suffers in Lima as a migrant from Lam-
bayeque (in Northern Peru). Angell describes Lima as
a hostile environment for the migrant, who cannot
overcome a life of misery and violence. For Arguedas
this novel was “una desfiguración” (“a misrepresen-
tation”) of migrants’ lives, as he asserts in his article
“¿Una novela sobre las barriadas?” (1958). In this text,
Arguedas affirmed that “las barriadas no son obra de
la derrota ni de la delincuencia. Son el fruto de la des-
esperación, de la energía indomable de los desplazados
y de quienes han resuelto labrar por la fuerza y la cons-
tancia una vida mejor” (“Lima’s ghettos don’t spring
from defeat nor delinquency. They are an expression of
hopelessness, of wild energy from displaced subjects,
as well as from whoever decides to forge a better life
with strength and constancy”) (10). According to this
quote from A ­ rguedas, migrants and displaced subjects
confronted the inequalities imposed by Limeño rulers
or the “falsos wiraqochas,” manifesting their wish for a
“better life” in the new spaces. Therefore, in the poem,
the camasca and their comrades understand displace-
ment as a strategy for survival and empowerment.
For the Generación del 50, Angell’s La tierra pro-
metida was a manifestation of individual aesthetic cre-
ativity. That is, the writer was free to represent migrant
lives without any ethical or sociological concern. This
was precisely Cisneros’s position in “Novela de las ba-
rriadas II: en torno a una polémica.” Arguedas reacted
 Ontological Migrations in José María Arguedas’s Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman
to Cisneros by way of underlining the writers’ ethical
responsibility. For him, La tierra prometida essential-
ized migrant subjects as victims of the detrimental con-
sequences of displacement. In this sense, ­Arguedas’s
critique in the second part of “¿Una novela sobre las
barriadas?” relies on the writers’ failure to represent
their migrant characters as human subjects inserted in
oppressed and complex realities. Therefore, Arguedas
emphasized the urgency for intellectuals to link litera-
ture and life. Otherwise, literary pieces would result in
social indifference (16). The initial interchange of ideas
between Arguedas and his peers focused on questions
of literary technique—as Julio Ramón Ribeyro pointed
out in “Crítica literaria y novela.” Gradually, however,
their conversation manifested the racial and social hi-
erarchies that characterized the Limeño literary field
in those years. Cisneros even admitted that his gener-
ation’s writers were “débiles testigos” (“incapacitated
witnesses”) of real-life stories of migrants’ modes of
living (12). For the Generación del 50, migrants func-
tioned as bizarre and exotic materials for their liter-
ary productions. Hence, their literary representations
could be read as instances of colonial violence against
migrant lives. In this sense, I argue that Tupac Amaru
Kamaq Taytanchisman might have been motivated by
this debate. This poem does not only talk about the
survival and resilience of Quechua cultural customs in
migrants’ spaces, but it also calls for resistance and en-
visions the possibility of Quechua power in Lima.
In the second textual sequence of Tupac Amaru
Kamaq taytanchisman, as soon as the camasca settles
in Lima, Arguedas points out the political function of
ontological migration. As a runa migrant, the camasca
in the poem settles in the peripheries of the capital,
more specifically in Comas—a racialized space with-
out public services and separated from the modern
city. In this regard, the date of the poem is important
because Comas is a vast scenario of Indigenous dis-
placements in 1962. During that year, building a house
was crucial for those migrants to secure their perma-
nency. The foundation of homes and neighborhoods
represented a collective triumph within the struc-
tures of spatial segregation in Lima.22 In this sense,
­Arguedas describes how the camasca erects his house
according to traditional Andean rules. As is described
in the poem: “Comas aqo pampani weywan, kallapay­
wan, yawarniywan, takispa, wasicha ruwakusqaypi”
Diálogo Articles 127
(“In the plateau of Comas, I erected a house, singing,
upon the sand, with my tears, with my strength and
my blood”) (18).
I would also like to highlight the act of singing as a
form of migrant agency in this stanza. House building
in Andean societies goes through different ritualized
stages, which are usually accompanied by different
chants. For instance, in Junin, builders sing Pirkansa
over the course of erecting walls. Meanwhile, in Aya-
cucho, people sing Cinta apay when they finalize the
house structure. At this point, I remind the reader that
Arguedas subtitles his poem “Haylli-Taki” (Hymn-
song). Arguedas, who wrote many ethnographic works
about the Andes, must have known that waylli or haylli
is a famous song in Ayacucho. It refers to the physical
transport of mud-brick. Considering this aspect, the
camasca, I observe, seems to sing a haylli in reference
to the earliest phase of house construction. However,
the meaning of haylli goes beyond a mere building
process to also express a voice of victory. According
to Santo Tomas, hayllini—a variation of haylli—means
“capture of the other, of the enemy” (290). Meanwhile,
the anonymous dictionary of 1586 translates this Que-
chua word as “triumphar de los enemigos” and “can-
tar triupho [de triunfo]” (“victory over enemies” and
“song of triumph”). I contend that, from the c­ amasca’s
perspective in Arguedas’s poem, the construction of
a house in spite of racial and social discrimination is
a triumph. Hence, as Antonio Cornejo Polar rightly
notes, the poem “apuesta a favor de un triunfo social y
cultural del pueblo quechua” (“takes a position in favor
of the socio-cultural victory of the Quechua people”)
(“Arguedas” 175). Erecting a house means the preser-
vation of runa worlds inside spaces that refuse or even
hate them. In this light, the poetic scene of building
a house demonstrates one among other ways of the
runakuna’s insertion into Lima’s ontological relations,
epistemic notions, and practices of territoriality; that
is, the runakuna’s ontological migration that defies the
hegemony of the weraqochakuna. Therefore, the poem
itself is a kind of architectural Quechua structure,
home, and place of belonging where runa migrants
welcome visitors.
For Arguedas, migration conceived solely as
progress or acculturation signified a menace to the
continuity of Indigenous practices. He declared:
“para esa empresa no sirven el quechua, ni las formas
Christian Elguera Volume 23  Number 2  Fall 2020
cooperativas tradicionales de trabajo, los bellos trajes,
las fiestas con sus cortes de músicos y bailarinas. . . .
Eso es precisamente lo que se trata de destruir” (“for
this project the Quechua language does not work,
neither do traditional cooperatives practices, beauty
customs or celebrations with blocks of dancers and
musicians. . . . This is precisely what is destroyed [by ac-
culturation]”) (“Soledad” 119). In this light, the scenes
of singing and house building in Tupac Amaru Kamaq
Taytanchisman show us the attempts of Quechua mi-
grants to confront the Limeño project of cultural ex-
termination. According to Javier Ávila, the migration
to Lima implied
un proceso de etnocidio andino, el mismo
que provenía tanto desde el ámbito externo/
foráneo del migrante —las élites patrimo-
niales criollas y sus sistemas educativos, por
ejemplo—, como del interno/subjetivo del
migrante, que había internalizado la subvalo-
ración de muchos elementos de su cultura, lo
cual dio como resultado la desaparición irre-
versible de buena parte de los activos cultura-
les andinos/rurales. (216)
an Andean ethnocide process, which came
from spheres that are external/foreign to the
migrant—the criollo heritage of elites and
their educative system, for instance—and
also from internal/subjective spheres, where
the migrant has internalized the devalua-
tion of many aspects of their culture. Conse-
quently, this process caused the irreversible
elimination of a large percentage of Andean/
rural cultural expressions.
Concerned by this process of cultural ethnocide,
­Arguedas show us another perspective on migration in
his poem. Here the camasca and their comrades con-
ceive their new lives in the city as an opportunity to
resist colonial hierarchies, to create spaces of coexis-
tence, and to build agency. In view of these consider-
ations, the scene of house building in the poem reflects
the runa or Quechua desire to exist, as indicated by the
word “Kausasiniku” (“We are alive”) (12). Additionally,
the triumph of runakuna defy the urban policies of
Lima, affirming that such space is also an Indigenous
128  Articles Diálogo
land. Borrowing a term from Dipesh Chakrabarty, the
camasca’s intent is to provincialize Lima (2000). For
this reason Arguedas asserted that Andean migrants
in Lima “se han convertido en células irradiantes de
la cultura andina” (“had become irradiant cells of An-
dean culture”) (“Complejo cultural” 5).
Runa migrants perceive the city as an urban cen-
ter, but also as something else. Their mobility intro-
duces Indigenous meanings and practice into Lima,
challenging the city’s prevailing spatial policies. Fac-
ing the urban segregation of Lima, the c­amasca in-
forms the Amaru about his people’s communal
engagement in the indigenization of the capital city:
“Waranqa waranqa kasiayku, huñusqa, llaqtan llaqtan
huñusqa” (“We are thousands of people, here, right
now. We are together here, people by people, name by
name we are grouped” (18). In this quote, the Amaru
delegates to runa migrants the mission to decolonize
Lima. ­Arguedas’s poem thus reflects a political act in
connection with Indigenous ontological relational-
ity. The Amaru’s commands impact the runakuna’s
negotiations, dialogues, and resistances in contexts
of colonization; this powerful non-human being an-
imates and designs the fight of his people. In this
sense, the camasca concludes his prayer, requesting
the A ­ maru’s support for his struggle against the vio-
lence of Limeño dominant groups: “Uraykamuy Ama-
ruy [. . .] kallpa­cha­way” (“Please, descend here, Amaru
[. . .], strengthen me”) (22).
CONCLUSIONS
José María Arguedas in Tupac Amaru Kamaq
Taytanchisman describes an ontological migration,
which consists of translating Quechua ancestral prac-
tices and knowledge to Lima, converting this capital
city into an Indigenous territory. Arguedas focuses on
the figure of the camasca to portray the runa migrant
mobility and spatial appropriation. In this sense, on-
tological migration is conceived by Arguedas as a de-
fense against the violence of the state in Indigenous
communities and by Limeño citizens in urban geog-
raphies. Occupying the peripheries of the city, such as
the district of Comas, runa migrants continue their
spatial practices, knowledge, and political organiza-
tions. This Quechua empowerment is motivated by the
Amaru or Serpent God, who commands the decolo-
nization of the capital city. Here, runa migrants try to
 Ontological Migrations in José María Arguedas’s Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman
convert Lima into an Indigenous land. As we see, this
process does not imply an exclusion of Western codes.
Instead, the ontological migration juxtaposes Que-
chua and Western worlds in a relational spatiality.
Arguedas wrote this poem in 1962, during a pe-
riod where the Peruvian nation imposed its sover-
eignty, aggressively, over Quechua lives and lands.
For this reason, he invokes Andean rebellions and
ancestral notions of politics to problematize colonial
domination. Furthermore, Arguedas proposes the
continuation of Quechua non-human politics in the
capital city. In this sense, the Amaru, thanks to his in-
teraction with the camasca, commands the provincial-
ization of Lima, a spatial appropriation that challenges
the social and racial injustice in the so-called “City
of Kings.” Throughout centuries, the k’ita weraqo-
chakuna (“the execrable Lords”) had imposed colonial
hierarchies over runakuna. In this sense, the runa ap-
propriation of Lima, based on the expansion of their
cultural and political traditions, challenges Limeño ur-
ban segregation. Within Lima, the Amaru participates
actively in the building of an Andean house, an event
that symbolizes the political triumph of runa migrants
over colonization policies in Lima.
To Arguedas, migrant movements underscored
the continuity of Indigenous cultural and political
practices in 1960s Peru. In contrast, migration has
produced a negation of Indigenous cultures in recent
decades. Indeed, we can identify a governmental dis-
course of diversity that only recognizes Andean an-
cestral traditions, dances, and even foods. However,
with respect to political power, Indigenous subjects
are minorities and invisible citizens. The most recent
Peruvian census of 2018 is a clear example of this sit-
uation. The limited percentage of Indigenous auto-
identification reflects the triumph of the deracinating
effects of migration and policies of mestizaje. The de-
nial of Indigenous identities in Lima is the result of ra-
cial and social hierarchies that migrants must confront
due to their phenotype, languages, and traditions. In
this venue, at a political level, Lima did not become
the llaqta that Arguedas hoped at one point it would
become.
Christian Elguera is a lecturer in Spanish at the Uni-
versity of Oklahoma. His research is concerned with
the production and circulation of cultural translations
Diálogo Articles 129
by and about Indigenous peoples from the sixteenth
century to the present in the Americas. In addition,
he analyzes the relationships between Peruvian avant-
garde and communist ideologies in the 1930s. His arti-
cles appear in a range of journals and edited volumes,
including Litterata, Amerika, Espéculo, and Iquitos
(2014), among others. In 2020, he published the book
El marxismo gótico de Xavier Abril el proceso disolvente
y germinal en El autómata (Ediciones MYL). He is cur-
rently working on a book manuscript that examines
the political role of non-human beings in José María
Arguedas’s Quechua poetry.
NOTES
This essay is dedicated to Antonio Cornejo Polar.
1 In the dictionaries of Anonimo (1586) and Diego
Gonzalez de Holguin (1608), the word runa signi-
fies a person or human being. It also could be un-
derstood as humanity or people. For instance, the
Indigenous chronicler Guaman Poma de Ayala re-
minds us that four types of humans populated the
Indigenous World prior to the Incas: Vari Vira
­Cocha runa, Wari runa, Purun runa, and Auca runa
(35–56). According to Cerrón Palomino (95), runa
designated the Indigenous Andean group in the
colonial period. In contrast to the Republic of the
Spaniards, runa people inhabited the Republic of
the Indians. In the twentieth century, runa refers to
Indigenous subjects or peasants in opposition, prin-
cipally, to mestizos, mistis, or wiraqochas.
2 According to Lourdes Flores Bordais, Manuel
­Carranza was a legal assistant of the Cerro de Pasco
Corporation. However, the day of the massacre he
led the armed forces as “jefe de la guardia republi-
cana” (Chief of Republican Policy) (Flores Bordais
174).
3 Arguedas explains that wakcha or huak´cho could be
translated as orphan: “Es el término más próximo
porque la orfandad tiene una condición no sola-
mente de pobreza de bienes materiales, sino que
también indica un estado de ánimo, de soledad, de
abandono, de no tener a quien acudir. Un huérfano,
o huak´cho, es aquel que no tiene nada” (“Because
orphanhood refers to a condition beyond economic
poverty, it is the closest term [to wakcha]. Orphan-
hood also involves a state of humor, solitude, aban-
donment, of having nobody for help. An orphan, or
Christian Elguera Volume 23  Number 2  Fall 2020
an huak’cho, is he who has nothing”) (“Testimonio”
50).
4 Due to their Indigeneity—symbol of poverty in Peru-
vian imaginaries—migrants from Indigenous com-
munities were forced to occupy peripheral zones and
invisible spaces, as opposed to the modern hous-
ing and neighborhoods available to the hegemonic
groups of Lima. Therefore, even today racial inequal-
ities configure the spatial rules of Lima, “the city of
the Kings.”
5 From a linguistic perspective, runa in combina-
tion with the word simi becomes runasimi, “human
speech” (Mannheim 85). In the sixteenth century,
Fray Domingo de Santo Tomas replaced the word
runasimi with Quechua (Cerrón Palomino 89).
6 To Itier, “Quechua” referred to the language spoken
by the inhabitants of one specific geographical area,
localized between the Andean valleys and the high-
lands, well known as the region of Quechuas (37–38).
In this essay, I employ runa and Quechua as syn-
onyms; however, I contend that runa is how Indige-
nous persons identify themselves as an autonomous
ethnic group in the Andes.
7 In Quechua, kuna indicates the plural of nouns.
If runa means person, then, runakuna signifies a
group of Indigenous Andean subjects.
8 In this sense, Arguedas writes: “El natural de ­Puquio,
no perturbado aún por los poderosos agentes de
cambio que en la actualidad influyen sobre él, apa-
rece sólidamente respaldado por sus dioses locales”
(“The native of Puquio, who seems unperturbed as
yet by the powerful agents of social change that have
influence over him, is very protected by their local
deities”) (“Puquio” 76).
9 As an Andean religious specialist, a paqu inter-
acts with non-human beings in sacred ceremonies.
Meanwhile, a layqa is a powerful medicine man in
the Southern Andes. In contrast, an Amauta means
“teacher” or “sage.” Finally, awichu is the Quechua
word for “grandfather.” As we can see, every word,
mentioned by Mamani, has a particular meaning in
Andean cultures.
10 Taylor observes that camasca is an entity that re-
ceives camac (vitality or life force) from a power-
ful deity (225). According to Salomon, this character
is a shaman animated by a huaca or a mighty non-­
human being (16). Meanwhile, Brosseder defines
130  Articles Diálogo
camasca as “a religious specialist [. . .] who had the
power to adapt non-human powers” (369).
11 I have translated all excerpts from the poem from
Quechua to English. However, on some occa-
sions, I quote in both languages to highlight Que-
chua concepts. I am grateful to my colleague Ofelia
Vilca Mendoza for clarifying some expressions in
Quechua.
12 At this point, Arguedas traces an intertextual link-
age with colonial Andean chronicles, which reg-
istered the word weraqocha or viracocha. He
emphasizes that Lima is the city of kita weraqochas
(execrable Lords) due to the association of Span-
ish conquerors with the non-human entity called
­Viracocha. According to oral traditions, Viracocha
was the Creator of the world. Members of Inca elites
such Manco Inca, Titu Cusi Yupanqui, and Santa
Cruz Pachacuti believed that the first conquerors
were Viracocha emissaries and represented them as
powerful strangers. However, very soon, Inca soci-
ety recognized that Spaniards were not the sons of
Viracocha but destructive presences.
13 Cumun allpayku refers to the Quechua workers of
fertile soils known as comuneros or “people from
the community.” I prefer to translate this expres-
sion as “Indigenous landholders” in order to under-
line Quechua power against Peruvian and extractive
colonization.
14 See De la Cadena and Blaser (1–6).
15 The Peruvian Census as well as studies in the social
sciences have understood these migrations as hu-
man displacements undertaken for the sake of na-
tional progress and inclusion. In Conquistadores
de un nuevo mundo, Degregori and others observe
that Andean migrants recognized themselves as Pe-
ruvian citizens that address a process of democra-
tization. Meanwhile, in Imágenes de la sociedad
peruana, Franco argues that migrants configured
another modernity, which opened new opportuni-
ties for economic development and the appropria-
tion of Limeño lifestyles.
16 Depending on the host environment, migration
could also mean the suppression of traditions. For
instance, Andean migrants are obliged to speak
only Spanish in Lima. His Indigenous language,
Quechua, is understood by Limeños as a symbol of
inferiority.
 Ontological Migrations in José María Arguedas’s Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman
17 See chapter seven, “The Highlanders,” in Yawar
Fiesta.
18 See Arguedas (Primer encuentro 39; Confesar 48).
19 See Cuentos religioso-mágicos quechuas de Lucana-
marca (87) and their letters with Mejía Baca (38–39).
20 Tupac Amaru Kamaq taytanchisman thematizes
the positive results of migration in 1962. In con-
trast, ­ Arguedas’s posthumous novel, El zorro de
arriba y el zorro de abajo, which was published in
1969, offers us a dramatic perspective on migration
to ­Chimbote. Here, migration becomes a complex
and dramatic reality. From 1962 to 1969, migrant
peoples increased in urban centers drastically and
suffer spatial racialization and other kinds of social
injustices. Poverty, acculturation, and racism con-
front the ideal presented in Arguedas’s poem.
21 In the words of Irina Feldman: “For Arguedas, the
case of Mantaro was a positive model, the manner
of the ayllu to survive and to serve as a social forma-
tion that would improve the lives of the Indians [. . .]
­Arguedas used Mantaro communities as a model for
a strong community able to survive” (51).
22 In following years, the house will change its mean-
ing. The dream of “la casa propia” (“one’s own
house”) becomes an individual effort inserted
into capitalist economies rather than a commu-
nal project embedded in Indigenous relationalities.
Consequently, Quechua practices and knowledge,
which played a capital role in the foundation of
houses and districts, decline in favor of individual
agendas.
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