These experiences, along with a visit to refugee camps on the Guatemala-Mexico border in 1982, sparked his dedication to peoples and Indigenous rights and inspired his scholarly research.
(1978)[2] Arias has held several prestigious fellowships—the Guggenheim (John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation),[3] the Hood (University of Auckland) and the Martha Sutton Weeks (Stanford Humanities Center)--as well as distinguished visiting posts at Princeton,[4] Tulane, and the University of Oregon.
He received the Casa de las Américas Prize for his novel Itzam Na (1981), the Anna Seghers award for his novel Jaguar en llamas (1990), and the Casa de las Américas prize in essay for his book Ideología, Literatura y Sociedad durante la Revolución Guatemalteca, 1944-1954 (1979).
In 2008, he was honored with the Miguel Angel Asturias National Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature in his native Guatemala.
Volumes 1 and 2, The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, Taking their Word: Literature and the Signs of Central America, After the Bombs, and Rattlesnake.