"I believe we, reportage photographers of the human condition, have a moral duty to get as close as we can to the people we photograph and to draw attention to all the dignity in the world, as Nubar Alexanian has managed to do so well in this book. It gave me immense pleasure to see my Latin-American people portrayed with so much tenderness."

"...an authentic expression of our geography and our people making at the same time a personal statement which is artistically original and morally compelling."

"Anyone thinking of going to Peru or, for that matter any Andean Republic, on a photographic assignment should study this author and photographer's work with great care. He demonstrates great empathy with the people he photographs--his main subject-matter. The photographer should be heartily congratulated for his exceptional ability to study and understand his subject-matter, achieve spontaneity and yet at the same time maintain high standards of composition and outstanding technical quality."

This is a gem of a book. While there are many things to like about it, I am most enamoured of the richness of detail in its naturalistic description. Arguedas, with his Indian upbringing, has a perceptiveness toward nature not often found in modern, Western society. The translation conveys this beautifully, though I've heard that the original Spanish is even more vivid in its descriptions. The characterization is multi-layered: there's even someone highly reminiscent of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov"...

Non-western thoughts, beliefs and fears still permeate 20th.century Peru, a cultural heritage of the Inca empire. Arguedas, although white, learned Quechua as an infant, forced by circumstances to spend long periods with Peruvians of indian extraction, an experience which he would forever remember with deep tenderness and affection, and which would transmit surviving elements of Inca thought as well. The problem Arguedas faced as a writer was how to express a non-western state of mind in Spanish, a western language. In "Deep Rivers", he sometimes shifts the structures of sentences, or uses diminutives, to mimic Quechua. Stones can talk, and rivers sing. Big black flies are attracted to persons who are about to die. For Inca thought, the reflections from a pool of blood relate to the reflections from rapids in a stormy river. In "Deep Rivers" Arguedas shares with us the deep undercurrents and contradictions which flow beneath the surface of modern-day Peru. Conflicting cultures related through cruelty and despotism. Deep rivers flow in every culture. Not the superficial, visible elements of a culture, but those intimate fears, obsessions, and dreams which lie at the core of its members.

JOse Maria Arguedas depicts two different worlds That can't bridge the difference that exists between them. He describes the conqueror's descendents who feel and think as their ancestors who believe that native Peruvians (Quechuas) are animals, who do not know any better, and therefore should be used and treated as animals i.e. kill and use Quechuas whenever they think is appropriate. The novel is a description of the mentality of the conqueror's descendants and their brutality towards the Peruvian natives (Quechuas),which is exploitation, Killing, no sense of value or least of all respect towards the Peruvian natives.

En la novela Los Ríos Profundos, un niño que ha vivido su infancia en un ayllu (comunidad indígena), emprende un viaje con su padre, quien más tarde lo deja -en busca de un mejor trabajo- en una escuela religiosa. El niño protagonista, Ernesto, nos entrega su visión del nuevo mundo que se le presenta. Así, en su particular percepción del entorno, el lector va decubriendo un entramado de matices de desencuentro, de sometimiento, de represión, de confluencia, de presencia: matices que posibilitan una mirada sobre los mismos elementos constituyentes de la realidad latinoamericana que se tematizan en esta novela.

As part of my studies in the University of PR, I had the extraordinary experience of reading "the soul" of Jose Maria Arguedas. He trully wrote from his heart about his lack of belonging of either culture he was exposed or came from. As a Hispanic dealing with Hispanics in the States, I strongly recomend this book as an eye opening to the struggles that other people have faced in their life.

José María Arguedas escribe desde lo profundo de su corazón, sobre su incapacidad para encontar pertinencia en una u otra cultura de las que fue parte. Es un profundo buscar de las raíces de un ser humano. Toda mi vida ha sido impactada por este trabajo y en este momento en el que trabajo con Hispanos en EU, recomiendo absolutamente el mismo para dar una perspectiva impactante sobre el problema que muchas personas han confrontado a través de los tiempos.

This novel has no main characters, but somehow it works. With his extraordinary ability to see across class and ethnic lines, Arguedas construct a whole community as the hero of the story.

Another translated novel by Arguedas, Deep Rivers, comes out so emotionally, it seems innocent of conscious craft and form. In Yawar Fiesta, however, Arguedas displays a more obvious mastery of the novel, pushing the genre and language into beautiful spaces of song and history. Arguedas's childlike way of observing, these incredible lyric passages that amp up the energy, enable worlds of injustice, resistance, joy, creativity, dialogue... I admire Frances Barraclough, the translator, for creating new hybrid spaces out of the wonderful mess Arguedas made of Spanish and Quechua.

For anyone with an interest in the Andean highlands, Arguedas is really a must read. If you're a trekker on the Inca Trail, take this book along with you. It will make a pilgramage of your tourism.