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The category of "insufficiency" is widely used in criticism that addresses César Vallejo's poetry; however, frameworks that deploy this category tend to omit that poetry's ethical dimensions. The genealogical method of this paper denaturalizes the concept of insufficiency to show a previously unacknowledged ethical critique of sacrificial history, which emerges through a negative order of perception. Drawing on Maria Zambrano's sociopolitical thought to describe active modes of insufficiency, I argue that the ethos of Vallejo's poetry sought to rehumanize political life by elevating the subject's indivisible constitution as protagonist and author of history, while proposing a responsible anagnorisis in response to the nightmare of tragedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]