INFOGRAPHICS OF JOSÉ MARÍA

ARGUEDAS ALTAMIRANO
BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD:
✔
José María Arguedas Altamirano was born on January 18, 1911 in the city of Andahuaylas, in the southern
highlands of Peru. He was the son of Víctor Manuel Arguedas Arellano, a Cuzqueño lawyer who served as judge
in several towns, and Victoria Altamirano Navarro, belonging to a wealthy landowner of Andahuaylas. When his
mother died, he moved to live at the home of his paternal grandmother, Teresa Arellano, in the city of
Andahuaylas. In 1915, when he was appointed judge of first instance in the province of Lucanas department of
Ayacucho, his father moved to that headquarters, where shortly after he married a rich landowner of the district
of San Juan. Little José María then traveled to Lucanas, to join his stepmother, the trip was an event for him, as
he would always remember. The family settled in Puquio, capital of the Lucanas province of the department of
Ayacucho.
✔ José María and his brother Aristides, two years older than him, were enrolled in a private school in 1919,
Aristides was sent to study in Lima and José María continued to live with the stepmother. This stage in the life of
the child José María was marked by the difficult relationship he had with his stepmother and with his
stepbrother Pablo Pacheco. That felt for his stepson a clear contempt, and constantly sent him to live whit the
indigenous servant of the hacienda, which only picked him up at the arrival of his father, as Arguedas has
reported in the first meeting of storytellers in Arequipa in 1965.
COLLEGE LIFE:
•
In 1931, already 20 years old, he settled permanently in Lima and entered the Faculty of Letters of the National
University of San Marcos. There, against what he expected, he was received with cordiality and respect by his
classmates, among whom were the future philosophers Luis Felipe Alarco and Carlos Cueto Fernandini, and the
poets Emilio Adolfo Westphalen and Luis Fabio Xammar. Following the death of his father, which occurred the
following year, he was forced to earn a living by going to work as an assistant in the Post Office Administration. It
was just a stall post, but the 180 soles per month of salary eased their economic needs over five years.
• In March of 1947 he was appointed General Conservator of Folklore of the Ministry of Education, to later be
promoted to Chief of the Folklore, Fine Arts and Dispatch section of the same Ministry (1950-1952). He carried
out important initiatives aimed at studying popular culture throughout the country. Due to his direct
management, Jacinto Palacios Zaragoza, the great ancashino troubadour, creator of the Andean guitar of 2
manceras, recorded the first Andean music album in 1948. The Municipal and Segura theaters opened their
doors to Andean art.
DEPRECIATION AND SUICIDE:

•
The depression of Arguedas made crisis in 1966, taking it to a first attempt of suicide by overdose of barbiturates
the 11 of April of that year. From some years ago, the writer had been receiving multiple psychiatric treatments,
describing his sufferings in his writings:
•
I am extremely worried about my poor health. (...) I have become fatigued, unable to sleep and anguished.
•
After the suicide attempt, her life was never the same again. He isolated himself from his friends and resigned all
public positions he held in the Ministry of Education, with the purpose of dedicating himself only to his chairs at
the Agrarian University and the San Marcos University. To treat his illness, he contacted the Chilean psychiatrist
Lola Hoffman, who recommended him, as a treatment, to continue writing. In this way he published another
book of stories: Amor mundo (in simultaneous editions in Montevideo and Lima, in 1967), and worked on what
would be his posthumous work: El zorro de arriba and el zorro de abajo.
•
Finally he resigned his position at the Agrarian University. On November 28, 1969, he wrote to his wife Sibyla.
That same day (November 28, 1969) he locked himself in one of the bathrooms at the university and shot
himself in the head. He spent five days of agony and died on December 2, 1969 and on the day of his funeral
they did it as the writer requested in his letter.
 THANK YOU!
MEMBERS:
BENITES CCASA, TAMARA
PURIZACA ROMERO, MARICIELO
RAMÍREZ REYES, XIMENA
GARCÍA YOVERA, YASMELIN
PANTOJA MATÍAS, MELANI