The following paper aims to show that the reception of Jose Maria Arguedas’most ambitious work, Todas las Sangres [Every Blood], and his suicide were the consequences of a generation that valued authenticity over sincerity. By making acritical analysis of the life and works of Argueda in the light of Lionel Trilling’s conceptsof “sincerity” and “authenticity”, the following paper concludes that Argueda’s natural sincerity might actually have been more complex and productive than the authenticity of his literary and academic peers.