José Carlos Mariátegui: Encyclopedia II - José Carlos Mariátegui - Life and works

José Carlos Mariátegui - Life and works

Mariátegui was born in Moquegua. His father, Francisco Javier Mariátegui Requejo, was a grandson of Francisco Javier Mariátegui Tellería, one of the original signers of Peru's declaration of independence in 1821. Mariátegui Requejo abandoned his family when José Carlos was young; to support her children, his mother, María Amalia La Chira Ballejos, moved first to Lima, then to Huacho, where she had more relatives that helped her make a living. José Carlos had a brother and a sister: Guillermina and Julio César. In 1902, as a young schoolboy, he badly injured his left leg, and was moved to a hospital in Lima. Despite a four-year-long convalescence, his leg remained fragile and he was unable continue his studies. The injury led to severe health problems later in life.

At age 14, he started working at a newspaper, first as an errand boy, then as a linotypist, then eventually as a writer. He worked in daily journalism for "La Prensa" and also for the magazine "Mundo Limeño". In 1916, he left his first employer to join a new daily, El Tiempo, which had a more leftist orientation. Two years later he launched his own magazine, only to find that the owners of El Tiempo refused to print it. This led him to break with El Tiempo and launch a newspaper called La Razón, which became his first major venture in leftwing journalism. In 1918, "nauseated by Creole politics," he wrote in an autobiographical note, "I turned resolutely toward socialism."

The newspaper led by Mariátegui waged a vigorous defence of the campaign then underway for reform of the universities, and went on to become a tribunal for the defence of the young labour movement. La Razón supported a strike for the eight-hour day held in May 1919, along with lowering the cost of subsistence goods. The paper’s aggressive radicalism brought it into conflict with the Leguía government, and it was rumoured that the ruling circles offered Mariátegui a choice: either go to jail, or travel to Europe with government assistance. In any event, Mariátegui left for Europe in 1920, traveling through France, Germany, Austria and eventually living in Italy for two years, where he married an Italian woman, Ana Chiappe, with whom he had several children. He was in Italy during the Turin factory occupations of 1920, and in January 1921 he was present at the Livorno Congress of the Italian Socialist Party, where the historic split occurred that led to the formation of the Communist Party. By the time he left the country in 1922, Mussolini was already on his way to power.

In his writings from that period, Mariátegui observed that fascism was a response to deep social crisis, that it based itself on the petty bourgeoisie of town and country, and that it relied heavily on a cult of violence. According to him, fascism was the price that a society in crisis paid for the failures of the left.

Upon his return to Peru in 1923, he began giving in lectures to the Student Federation and in the People’s University and writing articles about the European situation. He also began using Marxist methods to study Peru. Mariátegui also came into contact with and allied himself with Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, leader of the populist movement American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). In October 1923, Haya de la Torre was deported by the Leguía government, leaving Mariátegui as the editor of the magazine Claridad. The fifth issue of the publication in March 1924 was dedicated to Lenin.

In 1924, Mariátegui nearly died, and his injured leg had to be amputated. In 1926, he established the journal Amauta to serve as a forum for discussions of socialism, art and culture in Peru and all of Latin America. In 1927, he was arrested and confined to a military hospital, and later subject to house arrest. He briefly considered relocating to Montevideo or Buenos Aires.

In 1928, Mariátegui became alienated from the APRA, and he set about establishing the Socialist Party, which formally constituted in October of that year, with Mariátegui as general secretary (it later became the Communist Party of Peru). That year, he published his best-known work, Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality, in which he examined Peru's social and economic situation from a Marxist perspective. It was considered one of the first materialist analysis's of a Latin American society. Beginning with the country’s economic history, the book proceeds to a discussion of the “Indian problem", which Mariátegui locates firmly within the “land problem”. Other chapters are devoted to public education, religion, regionalism and centralism, and literature.

Also in the same work, Mariátegui blamed the latifundistas, or large land-owners, for the stilted economy of the country and the miserable conditions of the indigenous peoples in the region. He observed that Peru at the time had many characteristics of a feudal society. He argued that a transition to socialism should be based on traditional forms of collectism as practiced by the Indians. In a famous phrase, Mariátegui stated "the communitarianism of the Incas cannot be denied or disparaged for having evolved under an autocratic regime."

In 1929, Mariátegui participated in the establishment of the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), which then sent a delegate to Montevideo for the Constituent Congress of the Latin American Trade Union Conference.

Mariátegui died on April 16, 1930, of complications from his earlier affliction.

His house at Jirón Washington in the center of Lima was later turned into a museum.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Life and works", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki