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By Marc Becker
June 23, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from TeleSUR English — In 1930, Waldo Frank
wrote in the leftist U.S. weekly the Nation that the April 16 death of
Jose Carlos Mariategui had plunged “the intelligentsia of all of
Hispano-America into sorrow; and nothing could be more eloquent of the
cultural separation between the two halves of the new world than the
fact that to most of us these words convey no meaning.” His funeral turned into one of the largest processions of workers
ever seen in the streets of Lima, Peru, but in the United States his
death was hardly noticed. Unfortunately, 87 years later Mariategui is
still largely unknown in the English-speaking world, even as his status
as the founder of Latin American Marxism remains as relevant as ever for
understanding political changes sweeping across the region.Mariategui was born
in the small southern Peruvian town of Moquegua on June 14, 1894, the
sixth child of a poor mestiza woman, Maria Amalia LaChira. Mariategui
was a weak and sickly child. From an early age he had developed a
tubercular condition, and when he was eight years old he hurt his left
leg, which crippled him for life. Because of a lack of financial
resources and the need to support his family, he acquired only an
eighth-grade education. At the age of 15, Mariategui began work at the
Peruvian newspaper La Prensa. Throughout his life, Mariategui
used his journalism skills as both a financial livelihood as well as a
vehicle for expressing his political views.Mariategui’s vocal
support for the revolutionary demands of workers and students ran him
afoul of the Peruvian dictator Augusto B. Leguia, who in October 1919,
exiled him to Europe. From 1919 to 1923, Mariategui studied in France
and Italy where he interacted with many European socialists. The time in
Europe strongly influenced the development and maturation of his
thought, and solidified his socialist tendencies. Upon returning to Peru
in 1923, Mariategui declared that he was “a convinced and declared
Marxist.” Mariategui later looked back on his early life as a journalist
as his “stone age” in contrast to his later writings when he had
matured as a Marxist thinker.Mariategui interacted dynamically with European thought in order to
develop new methods to analyze Latin American problems. He implemented a
new theoretical framework that broke from a rigid, orthodox
interpretation of Marxism in order to develop a creative Marxist
analysis that was oriented toward Peru’s specific historical reality. He
favored a non-sectarian “open” Marxism and believed that Marxist
thought should be revisable, undogmatic, and adaptable to new
situations. Rather than a rigid reliance on objective economic factors
to foment a revolutionary situation, Mariategui also examined subjective
elements such as the need for the political education and organization
of the working-class proletariat, a strategy that he believed could move
a society to revolutionary action.Mariategui was an
intellectual at odds with the academic world. Although he lacked a
formal education, he had a creative and brilliant mind. In 1926, he
founded Amauta, a journal that he intended to be a vanguard voice for an
intellectual and spiritual movement to create a new Peru. Amauta
reached a wide audience not only in Peru but throughout Latin America.
In 1928, Mariategui launched a biweekly periodical called Labor to
inform, educate, and politicize the working class. He also published two
books, "La escena contemporanea" (“The Comtemporary Scene”) in 1925 and
"7 ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana" (“Seven
Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality”) in 1928, in addition to many
articles in various Peruvian periodicals.Mariategui is best known for his second book, which contains seven
essays on the topics of economic development, Indigenous peoples, land
distribution, the education system, religion, and literature. It was
critically acclaimed for its original and creative insights into Latin
American reality. Mariategui presents a brilliant analysis of Peruvian,
and by extension Latin American, problems from a Marxist point of view.
It is a foundational work on Latin American Marxism and commonly cited
as the one book everyone should read to understand Latin American
realities.Unlike orthodox
Marxists who believed that peasants formed a reactionary class,
Mariategui looked to the rural Indigenous masses in addition to an
industrialized urban working class to lead a social revolution that he
believed would sweep across Latin America. Mariategui argued that once
Indigenous peoples had seized onto socialism, they would cling to it
fervently, since it coincided with traditionally based communal
feelings. To be successful, modern socialism would fuse the legacy of
“Inka communism” with modern western technology.Mariategui’s revolutionary activities did not remain only on a
theoretical level. He organized communist cells all over Peru and served
as the first secretary general of the Peruvian Socialist Party that he
founded in 1928. In 1929, the PSP launched the General Confederation of
Peruvian Workers, a Marxist-oriented trade union federation. Both the
CGTP and the PSP were involved in an active internationalism, including
participating in Communist International-sponsored meetings. Twice the
Augusto B. Leguia dictatorship arrested and imprisoned Mariategui for
his political activities, although he was never convicted of any crime.Although the
political party and labor confederation that Mariategui had helped
launch flourished, his health floundered. In 1924 he had lost his right
leg and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In spite
of his failing health, Mariategui increased the intensity of his efforts
to organize a social revolution in Peru. He was at the height of his
intellectual and political contributions when he died on April 16, 1930,
two months short of his 36th birthday. Unfortunately, after his death,
the movement that Mariategui had founded lost its vitality and its
revolutionary potential. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in
1959, a new generation of activists rediscovered Mariategui’s thought.
More than 50 years later, the founder of Latin American Marxism
continues to inspire revolutionaries to rethink and reimagine new ways
of confronting problems of political and economic exclusion and social
injustice.Marc Becker is the author of "Mariategui and Latin American
Marxist Theory" and an editor and translator (with Harry Vanden) of
"Jose Carlos Mariategui: An Anthology."
