Arguedas, Alcides

Arguedas, Alcides (älsē`thās ärgā`thäs), 1879–1946, Bolivian writer and diplomat. His essays and novels, which have social and moralizing tendencies, are a reaction against the romantic idealization of the Native American. His best-known works are Pueblo enfermo [a sick people] (1909) and Raza de bronce [a race of bronze] (1919), a novel exposing the exploitation of Native Americans by the landowners. Some of the Native American folktales he collected are included in the volume Singing Mountaineers: Songs and Tales of the Quecha People (tr. and ed. by Ruth Stephen, 1957, repr. 1971).