The Search for Indigenous Identity in Peru

The search for a Peruvian identity is the common thread running through this work. In the light of the numerous identity claims in the face of globalisation, the author considers that the search for the self, as well as the attempt to assume a culture strong enough to allow integration into modern life, is a key theme for the study of what is happening today in countries such as Peru. The author also attempts to situate the work of Peruvian writers José María Arguedas and Mario Vargas Llosa within the search for an identity in Peru. The idea for the book came from reading an essay that the latter wrote about the former, entitled La utopía arcaica: José María Arguedas o las ficciones del indigenismo, in which Vargas Llosa tries to show that Arguedas' work is an attempt to rescue a vision of Andean culture that only existed in his memory.