The anguish of the mestizo between Quechua and Spanish*

Abstract

José María Arguedas (1911–1969) was a Peruvian novelist, anthropologist, and translator whose work bridges Indigenous and Western epistemologies. Written in 1939, “Entre el kechwa y el castellano, la angustia del mestizo” is an essential essay in Latin American thought on language, identity, and cultural hybridity. In it, Arguedas articulates the psychic and linguistic conflict of the mestizo — those positioned between Quechua and Spanish, between Indigenous and colonial worlds. The essay reflects Arguedas’s lifelong project to translate not just between languages but between ontologies. He argues that Quechua expresses the animate world of a people and a land infused with affect and communal belonging, whereas Spanish embodies a rationalist worldview detached from land and spirit. Writing from within this tension, Arguedas envisions a future in which the mestizo transforms Spanish through the “genius” of Quechua, producing new expressive and cultural forms. Published decades before the emergence of decolonial and postcolonial theory, this text anticipates central concerns of translation studies today: translation as transculturation, as epistemic negotiation, and as ecological and affective relation. It also resonates with Indigenous resurgence and multilingual realities across the Americas. This English translation seeks to make accessible one of Arguedas’s most incisive meditations on translation, language, and identity. It brings renewed attention to a thinker whose bilingual imagination remains vital for understanding the intertwined futures of language, land, and cultural survival.