Based on biographical data and intellectual production of José María Arguedas, who lived and studied the myths of indigenous Andean culture related to the cycle of life and death, we will explore this issue here in some of his ethnographic writings and novels like Los ríos profundos (1958) and El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (1971), linking it to the literary project of the Peruvian author the critical approach by Ángel Rama in Transculturación en América Latina (1982).