José María Arguedas, author of Yawar Fiesta, was brought up a mestizo fluent in Quechua due to his living with Indigenous families while growing up. It is then not a surprise that he went on to use his place as an artist with Quechua perspective to write about Indigenous Andean culture. In Yawar Fiesta, this is exactly what he does, writing about the bullfight (turupukllay) that is a traditional custom of the Indigenous community in Peru. The novel is a reflection of the conflict between Indigenous peoples and the government of Peru, delving into the specificity of a subprefect who relays the information that the bullfight is no longer allowed by the ministry. Arguedas portrays the endless honor and power that the Indigenous peoples had in fighting for their tradition to be upheld.

Along with the story of a conflict, it is an observation of Peruvian Andean society, and he begins the novel by defining the five main characters of these big towns. One of these characters is that of the town mestizo. He describes this mestizo as a man who “does not know where he is going” (pp. xiii-xiv) and one that often follows in the government and lawmaker’s poor treatment of Indigenous people and attempts to simply blend into the crowd. This portrays mestizos of the time as people clinging to their colonial sides, moving into areas in the way that the colonial Spaniards were, as opposed to embracing their Indigenous heritage and living in traditional ways. This is an interesting choice as he himself is a mestizo. He goes on to describe in the first chapter how Puquio was itself an “Indian village” before the entrance of Spaniards and, later, mestizos. This implies in itself that he believes that the mestizos do not belong as Indigenous do. Does he consider himself different because of how he was embraced by Indigenous people for his childhood and upbringing?

In underlining how the Indigenous peoples preserved their cultural tradition and identity, it feels like he’s saying too, that it was a fight between Indigenous peoples and everyone else, i.e., the mistis and mestizos. I wonder how he personally differentiates himself, and if that is what caused the form in which he wrote the book, in Spanish with Quechua words, phrases, and inflections throughout. He does not see mestizos as one with the mistis, as they are differentiated in his cast of characters, but it is clear that they lean closer to the upper class of Puquio than it does the Indigenous people. What I’m asking, then, is where does José María Arguedas find himself in writing about the encroachment of mestizo people in Puquio?