View source for Alcides Arguedas

{{short description|Bolivian writer and historian}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2021}}
{{family name hatnote|Arguedas|Díaz|lang=Spanish}}
{{Expand Spanish|topic=bio|date=November 2013}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| name              = Alcides Arguedas
| image             = Arguedas, Alcides 02.jpg
<!-- Political Offices -->
| office            = [[Chamber of Senators (Bolivia)|Senator]] for [[La Paz Department (Bolivia)|La Paz]]
| term_start        = 1940
| term_end          = 1942
| successor         = 
| office1           = [[Ministry of Rural Development and Lands|Minister of Agriculture, Immigration,<br>and Colonization]]
| president1        = [[Enrique Peñaranda]]
| term_start1       = 15 April 1940
| term_end1         = 11 November 1940
| predecessor1      = Carlos Salinas Aramayo
| successor1        = Edmundo Vásquez<br>{{small|as Minister of Agriculture}}<br>Demetrio Ramos<br>{{Small|as Minister of Immigration}}<br>[[Carlos Blanco Galindo]]<br>{{Small|as Minister of Colonization}}
| office2           = Member of the [[Chamber of Deputies (Bolivia)|Chamber of Deputies]]<br>for [[La Paz Department (Bolivia)|La Paz]]
| term_start2       = 1916
| term_end2         = 1918
<!-- Personal Details -->
| birth_name        = Alcides Arguedas Díaz
| birth_date        = 15 July 1879
| birth_place       = [[La Paz]], [[Bolivia]]
| death_date        = {{death date and age|df=yes|1946|5|6|1879|7|15}}
| death_place       = [[Chulumani]], [[Bolivia]]
| parents           = Fructuoso Arguedas<br>Sabina Díaz
| spouse            = Laura Tapia Carro
| children          = 3
| education         = [[Higher University of San Andrés]]
| party             = [[Liberal Party (Bolivia)|Liberal]]
| awards            =
| signature         =
|}}

'''Alcides Arguedas Díaz''' (July 15, 1879 in [[La Paz]] – May 6, 1946 in [[Chulumani]]) was a [[Bolivia]]n writer and historian.   His literary work, which had a profound influence on the Bolivian social thought in the first half of the twentieth century, addresses issues related to [[national identity]], [[miscegenation]], and [[Indigenous peoples in Bolivia|indigenous affairs]].   His most significant work, ''[[Raza de bronce]]'' ("Bronze Race") (1919), is considered one of the most influential Bolivian literary works and a precursor of [[indigenism]].

==Background and political and diplomatic roles==
Son of Fructuoso Arguedas and Sabina Diaz, Arguedas studied in the Ayacucho school and then Law and Political Science (1904) at the [[Universidad Mayor de San Andrés]] and sociology in [[La Paz]].

He began working in various forms of media as a student, beginning with the Peruvian newspaper [[El Comercio (Peru)|''El Comercio'']], moving on to columns for [[El Diario (La Paz)|''El Diario'']], the short-lived  ''[[Revista de América]]'' and ''[[El Mundial]]'', and eventually becoming deputy editor of ''[[El Debate (Spain)|El Debate]]'' in 1915.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Paz Soldan|first1=Edmundo|title=Cronología de Arguedas en la edición de la Biblioteca Ayacucho de Raza de bronce|date=2006|location=Caracas}}</ref>

As a diplomat, he was second secretary of the Legation of Bolivia in Paris (1910), where he would meet [[Rubén Darío]] and [[Francisco Garcia Calderon]] and would have as boss the ex-president [[Ismael Montes]].   Subsequently, he was sent to [[London]].

After returning to Bolivia, he was elected deputy of the [[Liberal Party (Bolivia)|Bolivia's Liberal Party]] in 1916,  and served as Bolivian representative to the creation of the [[League of Nations]] (1918). He also was consul general in Paris (1922) and minister plenipotentiary in Colombia (1929), where he was dismissed for criticizing the President [[Hernando Siles Reyes|Hernando Siles]] (1930).

He maintained a critical stance toward certain political administrations, for which he was removed from office, exiled, and even slapped by then-President [[Germán Busch]]. He became senator for the department of [[La Paz]] and eventually led the Liberal Party.

Under the administration of President [[Enrique Peñaranda]], he served as Minister of Agriculture, Colonization, and Immigration (1940), and then left for Venezuela as minister plenipotentiary (1941).

==Writer==
Arguedas is one of Bolivia's best-known writers. His work describes the relationship between Bolivian society and its indigenous peoples, often cynically. Through his books, full of social analysis, he sought a solution for his country's permanent state of conflict. Some of the issues for which he contributed a significant amount of thought—conflicts between cultures, the complexities of [[mestizaje]], and the sometimes violent relationship between the indigenous and creole/mestizo worlds—were later taken up by other currents of thought, including [[indigenismo]], albeit from a different perspective.

His first literary works date from his student days, and the first book he published was ''Pisagua'', a novel which appeared in 1903. In the subsequent year, he wrote ''Wata-Wara''. His novelistic production would continue with ''Vida criolla'' (1912) and culminate with ''Raza de bronce''.

His essay ''Pueblo enfermo'' ("sick people" or "sick town"), published in [[Barcelona]] in 1909, solidified his importance in Latin American letters, earning praise from major writers such as [[Miguel de Unamuno]] and [[Amado Nervo]]. However, it created controversy in Bolivia, and [[Franz Tamayo]] responded critically to his ideas in a series of editorials that would later be compiled as his book ''Pedagogía de la educación nacional''.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Rodriguez|first1=Huñascar|title=Huñascar Rodríguez en el encuentro Somos Sur|url=http://www.somossur.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=456:debate-sobre-el-bicentenario-en-encuentro-somos-sur&catid=92:repensar-el-bicentenario|website=Cochabamba}}</ref> Arguedas coined the term "radical pessimism" for his stance on indigenous issues, explaining that it came from "a mixture of fatal biological laws, historical reasons and environmental circumstances [that] have made the indigenous an atrophied or infirm race".<ref>José Miguel Oviedo. ''Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana. 3. Postmodernismo, Vanguardia, Regionalismo'', Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 2001, p.115</ref> Unsurprisingly, some critics identify Arguedas with some of the more distasteful aspects of the Bolivia of his time and reject his relationship with ''indigenismo'' <ref>{{Citation
 |last1=Osorio |first1=Óscar |title=Alcides Arguedas: El dolor de ser boliviano |url=http://poligramas.univalle.edu.co/eldolordeserboliviano.htm |year=2005 |url-status=dead 
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101017140248/http://poligramas.univalle.edu.co/eldolordeserboliviano.htm |archive-date=2010-10-17 }}</ref>

However, in his most important novel, ''Raza de bronce'' ("Bronze Race"), Arguedas lays out several themes that would later be instrumental in the development of Bolivian literature: the creole-mestizo oppression against indigenous peoples, their capacity to rise in the face of these abuses, the social placement of the "cholo-mestizo" (a term, now more commonly a slur, for those mestizos whose indigenous parentage exceeds their European), and the rift between creole and indigenous societies in Bolivia.

Arguedas worked on this novel almost until his death. Although he published his first edition in 1919, he continued correcting and re-editing it until he released the definitive edition in 1945. The plot of ''Raza de bronce'' is an evolution of his second novel, ''Wata-Wara'', which went relatively unnoticed at the time of publication. In retrospect, despite widespread criticism, it was listed by experts as one of the essential works of Bolivian literature.

Over the years, Arguedas found history to be a more direct medium for reflecting upon and interpreting Bolivian social reality. His first historical book, ''La fundación de la República'', was published in 1920. This marked a turning point in Arguedas's life: from here, history and politics came to the fore and his work in literature became secondary.

The first volume of his ''Historia general de Bolivia'' was published two years later under the auspices of industrialist and millionaire [[Simon I. Patino]]. He completed only five of the eight projected volumes of that collection, ranging from the colonial period to its violent 19th-century era of [[caudillismo]].

Arguedas received the [[Rome Prize]] in France for his autobiographical book ''La danza de las sombras'' in 1935.

==Personal life==
Arguedas was married to Laura Tapia Carro from 1910 until her death in 1935. The couple had three daughters.

In 1945, after spending a period of time in [[Buenos Aires]], he returned to Bolivia and died of [[leukemia]] in [[Chulumani]], a district of [[La Paz]], on May 6, 1946, at the age of 66.<ref>{{Cite web|last=TABOADA TERAN|first=Nestor|date=2013-06-28|title=INCOTENIBLE BUSQUEDA DE AFECTO|url=http://www.palabrasmas.org/desplegar_texto2.php?id_articulo=249|url-status=live|access-date=2021-02-27|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130628215634/http://www.palabrasmas.org/desplegar_texto2.php?id_articulo=249|archive-date=28 June 2013}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Arguedas|first=Alcides|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fw91kqETl4EC|title=Raza de bronce|date=2006|publisher=Fundacion Biblioteca Ayacuch|isbn=978-980-276-428-0|language=es}}</ref>

==Important works==
* ''Pueblo enfermo'' 1909 (social commentary)
* ''[[Raza de bronce]]'' (1919) (novel)
* ''La fundación de la República'' (1920) (history)
* ''Historia general de Bolivia'' (1922) (history)
* ''Política y la Guerra del Chaco'' (1926) (history)
* ''La dictadura y la anarquía'' (1926) (history)
* ''Los caudillos bárbaros'' (1929) (history)
* ''La danza de las sombras'' (1934) (memoirs)

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.scielo.org.bo/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2077-33232007000200003 Diary of Arguedas  (Diario de Alcides Arguedas)] (Spanish)

{{Peñaranda cabinet}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arguedas}}
[[Category:1879 births]]
[[Category:1946 deaths]] 
[[Category:Bolivian male writers]]
[[Category:Writers from La Paz]]
[[Category:Bolivian senators from La Paz]]
[[Category:Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Bolivia)]]
[[Category:Agriculture ministers of Bolivia]]
[[Category:Colonization ministers of Bolivia]]
[[Category:Immigration ministers of Bolivia]]