The fox from above and the fox from below by José María Arguedas; the death speech

Abstract

This study proposes a critical reading of a borderline piece of work in American literature: “El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo” by José María Arguedas. This was the author’s last novel, published in 1971 after his death where a man talks about hisagony preceding his suicide. With this cursed text Arguedas takes part in a tradition of breaking the rules of the canonical proIndian movement and undermines the linguistics moulds enhanced by the ”criollo” culture, taking as a starting point codes and materials from the
”quechua” and “andino” cultures and also from the new excluded urban cultures. He shows the downfall of a man and of a whole group of people that as from a destructive personal and social process go back to a state of disintegration.