Background
Alcides Arguedas was born in La Paz, Bolivia, July 15, 1879. He was the son of Fructuoso Arguedas and Sabina Diaz.
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historian novelist sociologist statesman
Alcides Arguedas was born in La Paz, Bolivia, July 15, 1879. He was the son of Fructuoso Arguedas and Sabina Diaz.
Arguedas was educated at the Colegio Nacional, the University of La Paz, and the Collège Libre des Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Alcides pursued an active career in government. He represented Bolivia in London, Paris, Colombia, and Venezuela and became minister of agriculture in 1940. Throughout his public career he explored in his own works the plight of the Indians, sympathetically portraying their manners and customs and documenting the social and economic forces that had brought about their exploitation and decline.
Though noted for such sociological studies as Pueblo enfermo (1909; “Ailing Town”) and for his Historia general de Bolivia (1922; “General History of Bolivia”), Arguedas is best remembered for his novels about the Indians, especially Raza de bronce (1919; “Race of Bronze”), an epic portrayal of the travels of a group of Bolivian Indians, ending with their extermination by Europeans. His exploration of the Indian problem foreshadowed the Indianista novel of the 1930s and ’40s in Latin America.
He died in Chulumani, a district of La Paz.
The most significant work of Alcides, Bronze Race (1919), is considered one of the most influential Bolivian literary works and a precursor of the indigenism ideology.
His literary work, which had a profound influence on the Bolivian social thought in the first half of the twentieth century, addressed issues related to national identity, miscegenation, and indigenous affairs.
Arguedas received the Rome Prize in France for his autobiographical book La danza de las sombras in 1935.
Arguedas was a leader of Bolivia’s Liberal Party, serving as a national deputy and a senator.
Arguedas was a member of the Bolivian Academy of Letters.
