Until a short time ago, it was believed that José Carlos Mariátegui was born on June 14, 1895, in Lima. Recently, Guillermo Rouillón uncovered the fact that he was actually born in Moquegua in 1894.1 His family belonged to the lower middle class. His father, Francisco Javier Mariátegui, was a minor employee of the General Court of Accounts; his mother, María Amalia Lachira, was a mestiza from the countryside near Huacho. Of their four children, one girl, Amanda, died in infancy, so that José Carlos was left with a sister, Guillermina, and a brother, Julio César, who later became a bookseller and publisher. His boyhood was spent in poverty. Perhaps for this reason (his father disappeared and his mother worked as a seamstress), or because of his health (always a sickly child, in 1902 he became hopelessly crippled in one leg), the Mariátegui family moved to the village of Huacho. There, José Carlos entered a small school, but he never managed to go beyond a primary education. In 1909, at the age of fourteen, he began to work as a humble linotypist’s assistant and proofreader for the Lima newspaper La Prensa.2
Mariátegui at first went unnoticed in the printing room of the newspaper. He often had to go to the editors’ homes to pick up their manuscripts. During this period he walked a great deal around the city, in spite of his lame leg. Sometimes he went by streetcar and was able to use those trips to read. He also wrote, having begun with the patriotic and religious poetry he composed at school. Little by little he rose in La Prensa. For a while he was assigned to classifying telegrams from the provinces, writing police and fire reports, and other secondary jobs. In 1914 the new journalist became known. He popularized his pen name, “Juan Croniqueur,” by writing verses, theater, art, and book reviews, stories, local news items, and occasional commentaries on national and international events. He also contributed in 1914 to the journal Mundo Limeño, which was intended for an aristocratic public. He soon made many friends among his colleagues, of whom the best known at that time was Abraham Valdelomar. Also in this group was César Falcón, who was long to accompany Mariátegui in his life and ideas. All these writers and others of his contemporaries approached journalism from an aesthetic point of view.
In 1915 Mariátegui became co-director of the journal El Turf. Here he tried to create a new type of “literature,” not only by means of light and ironic reports and social news, but also through poems and stories about horses. He stayed with El Turf until 1917. In 1915 and 1916 he also contributed to the journal Lulu, which was aimed mainly at a public of society girls and young intellectuals. In 1915 he was one of the initiators and founders of the Circle of Journalists, the first attempt made in Lima to gather together the men of his profession as a group.
Mariátegui’s literary personality also found expression in the theater. January 12, 1916, marked the opening in Lima’s Colón Theater of the scenic poem Las Tapadas, which he wrote in collaboration with Julio Baudouin (Julio de la Paz), with music by La Rosa. “Its theme is derived from the classic Spanish theater, its music is mediocre, it has no value as theater, its scenery is taken from a puppet show; but it has unquestionable literary merit,” wrote an independent critic, Alfredo González Prada, in Colónida. “The polished, elegant, flowing, graceful verse of Juan Croniqueur,” he added, “is delicately modern in style within a classic ‘savoir-faire.’” Actually, the author was not trying to revive a classic style, but to imitate the poetic theater in verse cultivated in Spain in the first two decades of the twentieth century by Eduardo Marquina and Francisco Villaespesa, which was characterized by sonorous poetry, high-flown sentiments, and a pseudohistoric setting.
Las Tapadas (parodied as Las Patadas by Florentino Alcorta in his newspaper, El Mosquito) was not Mariátegui’s only theatrical venture. Toward the end of 1916, in collaboration with Abraham Valdelomar, he finished writing the scenic poem La Mariscala. This work was never produced and only fragments of it, which appeared in El Tiempo, are known. Also in 1916, Mariátegui announced his completion of a book of poetry, Tristeza, which was never published. His sonnets “Los salmos del dolor,” printed in the literary journal Colónida, were taken from that collection. The three sonnets were “Plegaria del cansancio,” “Coloquio sentimental,” and “Insomnio.” In one of them he describes himself as “a child both somewhat mystic and somewhat sensual.” In another, in reference to an unhappy love affair, he speaks of “another shadow of sorrow in my life.”3 At that time an Ecuadorian writing on new Peruvian literature said that Mariátegui was “pagan and mystic,” more poet than “goldsmith,” more “ideologist” than “stylist.”4
A new daily newspaper, El Tiempo, published its first numbers in Lima on July 17, 1916, and it was dedicated to firmly opposing the conservative government of José Pardo. Some of its writers, among them Mariátegui, had voluntarily left La Prensa, a newspaper supporting the Pardo regime.5 He was extremely active on El Tiempo between 1916 and 1919. He wrote a daily section of humorous political comments entitled “Voces,” in which he went over the events of each day, parliamentary affairs, and current gossip and rumors, real or imagined. It is very possible that his experience as author of “Voces” contributed to his skeptical attitude toward Peru’s political life. His pseudonyms also appeared on other pages of El Tiempo under such sections as “Lunes Literarios,” where he printed some of his stories about horses. In “Ecos Sociales,” “Juan Croniqueur” occasionally signed a gallant tale or commentary alluding to ladies of the aristocracy. Any incident, however painful or deplorable, could suggest a story to him, as with his “Teoría del incendio.” In one of his “Cartas a X” he praised Manuel Ugarte for his anti-imperialism, adding that our race is not one of apostles, that we are too apathetic, and that although contemporary champions of the Indians are not drawn and quartered like Tupac Amaru, they are ignored. And when in February, 1916, a jealous rival shot to death the poet Leonidas Yerovi, Mariátegui published in El Tiempo his “Oración al espíritu inmortal de Leonidas Yerovi,” which began with these words: “I, who am your brother in pain and laughter, in faith and disbelief, in toil and reverie, in apathy and violence, in love and egotism, in sentiment and intellect, in the human and the divine, I invoke you, Yerovi, in this hour of anguish.”
When the Pardo Government founded the newspaper El Día in 1917, Mariátegui tried to create a humorous counterpoint, La Noche, but it lasted only a short time.
Also in 1917 he received the “Municipalidad de Lima” prize from the Circle of Journalists for his article “La procesión tradicional,” which appeared in El Tiempo on April 12 and described Lima’s popular religious procession in honor of Our Lord of Miracles. Always respectful of religion, he was inspired by a brief retreat in the monastery of the discalced friars to compose the sonnet “Elogio de la celda ascética.”
Nevertheless, Mariátegui and other writer friends provoked an uproar when they went to the cemetery on the night of November 4 to watch Norka Rouskaya, an Argentine dancer, perform to the strains of Chopin’s “Funeral March.” The principals of this incident were jailed for a short period. Mariátegui and his friends, in various Lima newspapers and before congress, vehemently claimed that they had not meant any irreverence by their action, that the cemetery had been used for much more reprehensible purposes, that they were being attacked through ignorance, superstition, or narrowmindedness by critics who were themselves no models of moral rectitude, and that it had been simply an artistic performance.
But Mariátegui was gradually changing in spirit. On June 22, 1918, under the influence of Luis Araquistain’s militant journal España, he joined César Falcón and Felix del Valle to publish in Lima a newspaper devoted to social criticism, Nuestra Epoca. The serious objectives of Nuestra Epoca made it very different from La Noche, just as its intention to be more than a literary journal set it apart from Colónida. The following text appeared in Nuestra Epoca: “Our colleague José Carlos Mariátegui has completely renounced the pseudonym Juan Croniqueur by which he is known, and he has decided to ask forgiveness from God and the Public for the many sins he has committed while writing under that pen name.”
The first number of Nuestra Epoca included an article signed by Mariátegui attacking the social composition and the character of the Peruvian army. This brought down on his head the wrath of a group of officers, and Nuestra Epoca expired after only two issues.6
A short time later, Mariátegui and Falcón formed part of a group that tried to organize a committee of socialist propaganda; but they withdrew from this movement when, under the influence of Luis Ulloa and Carlos del Barzo, it was agreed to immediately establish a party with this name. The dissidents believed that this decision was premature and subsequent events seemed to bear them out, for the party did not last very long.
In January, 1919, the two journalists and another colleague abruptly left El Tiempo. Apparently they were not in agreement with the newspaper’s policy in the election of that year. They published a letter announcing the formation of a new newspaper that “truly represents the ideals, trends, and orientation that inspire our work.” This promise was fulfilled on May 14, 1919, with La Razón, a small newspaper of four pages. In the presidential campaign, La Razón showed its independence and its extreme hostility to the candidacy of Augusto B. Leguía. It became well known as a spokesman for students, laborers, and the common people. La Razón supported the demands of business employees and workers when they struck in May of 1919 to protest high food prices. After the leaders of their strike were freed, the workers held a mass demonstration in honor of Mariátegui on July 8, 1919. He advised them to join together in a stable organization, and that very night they established the Peruvian Regional Labor Federation. In addition, a group of students used La Razón to initiate their campaign for university reforms, which led to a strike that same year at the University of San Marcos.
On July 4, 1919, Augusto B. Leguía became president through a revolution, and La Razón began to oppose him vigorously. On August 8, 1919, Mariátegui and Falcón announced that their newspaper would no longer appear. Because of a very strong editorial, the printing house refused to continue publishing it.7 A little later, so it was said, a high government official who was a friend of the two journalists presented them with the choice of going to jail or traveling to Europe at government expense. Mariátegui and Falcón chose the second alternative and quietly departed on October 8, 1919, with modest official allowances. Although their trip was severely criticized, they never eulogized or supported the government. No traces of them remained in Lima; but between 1920 and 1923, El Tiempo, then a government newspaper, published “Cartas de Italia” and “Aspectos de Europa,” signed with the old pseudonyms that Mariátegui himself had repudiated earlier. Falcón began to appear as a contributor to the Madrid newspaper El Sol with his famous letters from London. Mariátegui did not write for any European publications. He was in France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, and also briefly in Austria and Czechoslovakia. He learned to read and speak fluently Italian and French and to understand German; he clearly defined his beliefs and loyalties; and in Italy he married Ana Chiappe, who was an exemplary wife, attending him faithfully through the illness that ended in his death. “Tolerant of her ideas,” he had their son, Sandro, who was born in Rome, baptized a Catholic; and on March 23, 1923, he returned to Lima.
On March 31, Variedades, a Lima journal, interviewed Mariátegui for a series it was publishing. Mariátegui refused to define art or his concept of life “because metaphysics is not in style and the world is more interested in the physicist Einstein than in the metaphysicist Bergson”; and he stated that his ideal in life “is always to have a high ideal.” In his opinion, journalism, the daily episodic history of mankind, had been created by the capitalist civilization as a great material, but not moral, instrument. He confessed that six or seven years earlier his preferred poets had been Rubén Darío, later Mallarmé and Apollinaire, then Pascoli, Heine, and Aleksandr Blok, and that at the moment he preferred Walt Whitman. His favorite prose writers were Andreyev and Gorki. He considered the theater still too realist and analytic and hoped it would become impressionist and synthetic. “There exist, however, signs of evolution. The Russian genius has created the ‘grotesque’ and the musical setting. In Berlin, in ‘Der Blaue Vogel,’ I saw ten-minute musical scenes that had more substance and emotion than many dramas of three hours.” Eleanora Duse, by then tired and fading, was the actress who had most impressed him. Among composers he preferred Beethoven, and his favorite painters were Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Piero della Francesca, together with Degas, Cezanne, and Matisse and the German expressionist Franz Marc. He judged the contemporary epoch to be revolutionary, but more destructive than creative. As the men most representative of the times, he chose Lenin, Einstein, and Hugo Stinnes, in that order. From the past he admired Christopher Columbus and from the present “the anonymous hero of factory, mine, and fields, the unknown soldier of the social revolution.” He enjoyed travel because he thought of himself as essentially a wanderer, inquisitive and restless. When asked which of his writings he liked best and was most satisfied with, he replied that they were still to be written. Regarding the so-called decadence of the Old World, he said: “Europe’s decadence is this civilization’s decadence. The future of New York and Buenos Aires is tied up with the future of London, Berlin, and Paris. The new civilization is being forged in Europe. America has a secondary role in this stage of human history.”8
When he stated in the interview that he still had not written his best work, he only expressed once again his constant wish to repudiate his “literary adolescence” nourished (as he wrote in his article on Alcides Spelucín) in a “decadent, modernist, aesthetic, individualist, and skeptical attitude.” At that time, he referred disparagingly to his “stone age” of journalism from 1909 to 1919. Actually, that period had two stages: one purely literary from 1914 to 1917, when he wrote under the pen name “Juan Croniqueur,” and a second from 1918 to 1919, when he began to be concerned with social problems.9
In July, 1923, he gave a series of lectures to a working-class public at the González Prada Popular University on the history of the world crisis.10 In September of the same year he began to publish stories in Variedades under the title “Figuras y aspectos de la escena mundial.” The lectures are a better expression of his social and political philosophy than the stories.
When Haya de la Torre was exiled in 1924, Mariátegui succeeded him as director of the Popular University and of the journal Claridad, which he guided through two or three issues.
In the same year, Mariátegui’s life was threatened by a serious illness. A malignant tumor in his left thigh suppurated and had to be drained; as the disease continued its course, he appeared to be near death. An operation, with little likelihood of success, was the only alternative. In their biographies of Mariátegui, both María Wiesse and Armando Bazán relate that his mother opposed the operation but that his wife dramatically insisted on its being performed. Mariátegui survived the operation and for several days thought that his amputated leg, which was the one he had used for walking, was asleep. He was, therefore, condemned to live immobilized or carried by others.
After a rapid recovery, he returned to his intellectual activities with renewed energy. His contributions to Mundial and Variedades later formed part of his book Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality. Despite his limited means, he was always careful to obtain, especially from France and Italy, the latest publications, which sometimes could not be found in the bookstores and libraries of Lima. His home contained not only Marxist bibliographical information but also the works of independent progressive authors like Romain Rolland and even of authors like Raymond Radiguet, of purely literary prestige. He had broken publicly with his aesthetic past; nonetheless, he appeared to return occasionally to his former predilections. For example, he revered and found inspiration in the Italian critic Piero Gobetti, who was not a Marxist and who died prematurely, assassinated by the Fascists. These paradoxes, unacceptable to the rigid Stalinist doctrine, abounded in Mariátegui’s reading and literary and artistic criticisms. They also led him to admire the Peruvian poet of symbolism, José María Eguren, to esteem writers like Waldo Frank, and to preface his essays on Peruvian reality with an epigraph in German taken from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Der Wanderer und sein Schatten.
In September, 1926, he founded the journal Amauta, which he directed until just before his death in 1930. A typical issue of this journal offered interesting characteristics. On the one hand there was its indigenous orientation, beginning with its name and its title page, a prehispanic design in two colors by José Sabogal. This also accounted for its articles by anti-Spanish authors like Luis E. Valcárcel, some of its poems, its enthusiasm for the literary or artistic expressions of American Indians, and its revival of contemporary popular art, encouraged by Sabogal. On the other hand, it was easy to see the doctrinaire line, not only in articles by Marx, Lenin, or Lunacharsky, but also in some by Mariátegui himself (for example, his “Defensa del marxismo”). A similar line was followed by the Peruvian Marxist writer Ricardo Martínez de la Torre in his interpretations of social reality, and by César Antonio Ugarte and Abelardo Solís, among others with different ideas. But this doctrinaire trend was expressed in various ways and included articles on university reform and progress in education. In addition, Amauta always or almost always published in its final section the critical notes by María Wiesse on records and other musical events; and it took particular interest in modern European and American art, with a few pages of reproductions of paintings or sculptures. From a literary standpoint, its young contributors became well-known writers, dealing with a great variety of subjects. Amauta discovered new values, some as far removed from this journal’s “affiliation and faith” as Martín Adán and José Diez Canseco. Later on, it published an increasing number of articles by American and European figures like Waldo Frank. Of the generation of Peruvian writers then considered outstanding, only José María Eguren and Enrique López Albujar were accepted into the pages of Amauta. Number 21 of February–March, 1929, was an homage to the poet of Simbólicas; but in that same issue appeared articles by Eudocio Ravines on the instruments of finance capital, César Antonio Ugarte on the Socialist regime of Russia, and Ricardo Martínez de la Torre on aspects of capitalist stabilization.11
At first, intellectual groups and the general public took little notice of Mariátegui’s ideology. He had always been considered a journalist and professional writer. It seemed quite logical that on his return from Europe he should write for the journals of Lima. Variedades gave wide circulation to his comments on world politics. At that time, the only other political commentaries were those of Luis Varela y Orbegoso (“Clovis”) in the afternoon edition of the newspaper El Comercio; they were pleasant and clearly written, although bland and superficial, with no attempt at interpretation and orientation. Mariátegui’s quick mind and his precision and skill gave his articles an intrinsic value quite apart from their ultimate purpose, which sometimes was not immediately discernible. Furthermore, by not intervening in matters that directly affected Leguía’s policies, he avoided difficulties, at least for a while.
If Mariátegui had defended liberal democracy or the citizen against the state, he would have annoyed the Leguía government and placed it in a difficult position; supporters of the dictatorship believed that to fight those ideas or mention them with scorn or sarcasm was indirectly to help the regime. Since Maríategui’s Marxist theories—he called them “Socialist”—were not expressed in pedantic doctrinaire terms, but emerged as the tacit consequence of his analysis of concrete situations, cases, or persons, they caused no alarm (except later, when the spreading influence of his newpaper Labor led to his arrest in 1927 and a raid on his house in 1929, without, however, interfering with his continued publication of Amauta). The Leguía era was, paradoxically, more favorable to Mariátegui than a truly doctrinaire regime would have been, because it had no appeal for young intellectuals. With his book on Peruvian reality, in which he criticized the educational ideas of Manuel Vicente Villarán, the literary history of José de la Riva-Agüero, and the value of writers like Felipe Pardo y Aliaga; with his controversy with Víctor Andrés Belaúnde, living in exile in the United States; and with his opposition to the election of José Matías Manzanilla as rector of the university, Mariátegui helped to undermine the prestige of the intellectual leaders of the civilismo opposition, who had been exiled, silenced, and humiliated by Leguía. On the other hand, his attitude of political independence was exemplary, for he never sought to profit from the regime’s long years of prosperity. Nevertheless, he maintained friendly relations with some political figures, who were not, in any event, very highly placed in the Leguía government.
In June, 1927, there seemed to be a change in the course of events. The government announced its discovery of a “Communist” conspiracy. This scandal probably grew out of a number of circumstances: a determination to block the labor union movement of the Workers Congress currently in session; opposition to the development of a working-class publishing house sponsored by Mariátegui; and the reaction (presumably spurred by the United States Embassy) to a strongly anti-imperialist issue of Amauta (this was at the time of the fighting in Nicaragua). It has also been said that the decisive factor was the handing over of a letter sent from Haya de la Torre to Mariátegui concerning the organization of the APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana) either to the Minister of State or to President Leguia. Mariátegui was arrested and put into a military hospital, where he spent six days. Many students and workers were also imprisoned. Amauta was temporarily shut down, but reopened six months later.
From the military hospital, Mariátegui sent a letter to the Lima newspapers, which they published.12 He accepted all responsibility for the ideas he had expressed in various newspaper articles, but rejected accusations that he was involved in a subversive plot or intrigue. He declared himself to be a convinced and avowed Marxist and, by that token, far from utopianism, in theory or practice, or absurd conspiracies. “I categorically deny,” he added, “my presumed connection with the Communist party in Russia or with any other in Europe or America, and I assert that there is no authentic document that proves such a connection. In this respect, I would like to remind you that when the Russian office in London was searched, it was announced that nothing relative to Peru was found among the addresses of and information about correspondents in America.” He mentioned the names of great intellectual figures who, without being Communist, had applauded the work of Amauta. He acknowledged his opinions, but added that “under the law, they are not subject to the control, much less the penalties, of the police and the courts.” “The word ‘revolution,’” he continued, “has acquired a new meaning that is very different from its traditional association with conspiracies.”
By the end of 1927, the question being discussed among exile student groups in various cities in America and Europe and among certain circles in Lima was: “Is the APRA an alliance or a party?” With the appearance of the Nationalist Liberation Party, founded in Mexico and directed by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, this question seemed to be answered. On April 16, 1928, Mariátegui wrote a letter to the Mexican group in which he expressed his disagreement with Haya de la Torre. He criticized the transformation of the APRA from an “alliance” into a “party”; the organization of the nationalist liberation movement without consulting “the members of the vanguard who work in Lima and the provinces”; the party’s political literature, reminiscent of “the old regime”; its recourse to “bluff” and lies; its failure to use the word “socialism”; its similarity to Italian fascism. “An ideological movement which, because of its historical justification, the intelligence and abnegation of its partisans, and the lofty purpose and nobility of its doctrine, will gain the support of the better part of the country unless we ourselves ruin it, must not be permitted to degenerate into a vulgar electoral struggle.”13
Haya de la Torre replied from Mexico on May 20, 1928. He accused Mariátegui of having fallen into “tropical illusions and absurd sentimentalism,” of an excess of Europeanism, and of personal hostility revealing a hidden obsession. “You will see that the APRA is a party, an alliance, and a movement. What does not exist in Europe can exist in America. There were no skyscrapers and there are no cannibals in Europe.” He charged his opponent with being unreasonable and with having let himself be influenced by the reactionary mentality and pseudo-revolutionary demagogues of the hysterical continent. He denied that he was an offshoot of Mussolini. He condemned Mariátegui for not having proclaimed the anti-imperialist revolution, “the only possible and immediate revolution of this era,” when he addressed the workers of Vitarte. He added, “Be realistic and try to take your discipline not from revolutionary Europe but from revolutionary America. You are doing a great deal of damage because of your lack of calm and your eagerness always to appear European within the terminology of Europe. In that way, you rupture the APRA. I know that you are against us, and I am not surprised. Nevertheless, we shall accomplish the revolution without mentioning socialism, and by distributing land and fighting imperialism.”14
After receiving this message, Mariátegui broke off his correspondence with Haya de la Torre. He and his group drafted and sent to all groups residing abroad a “collective letter” with the following conclusions: 1) The APRA should be officially and categorically defined as an alliance or common front and not as a party; 2) We who represent the elements of the Left in Peru now establish in fact and shall organize formally a Socialist group or party with a precise affiliation and orientation. Within the movement, we shall collaborate with the liberal and revolutionary elements of the middle class that accept our point of view, and we shall work to direct the masses toward Socialist ideas.15 To commemorate the second anniversary of Amauta (Number 17 of September) Mariátegui wrote an editorial entitled “Aniversario y balance,” in which he developed these same ideas on a high level and without personal allusions.
Bitter quarrels arose in Lima and among the exiles. In the APRA cell in Paris, a group including Eudocio Ravines, César Vallejo, and Armando Bazán advocated, in a document dated December 29, 1928, the formation of a proletarian party as a worker-peasant bloc. This was a much more radical position than Mariátegui’s. A column called “Curso nuevo del APRA” appeared in Number 25 of Amauta (July–August, 1929) with a letter dated May 1, 1929, from Armando Bazán, secretary of the propaganda committee of this organization’s cell in Paris. This document announced that the members of the APRA cell and the Center of Anti-Imperialist Studies of Paris had decided to dissolve those bodies because “there exists a profound disagreement among their members concerning the orientation and conduct of the movement.” At the same time, it invited the comrades to join anti-imperialist leagues or proletarian revolutionary parties. This attitude coincided with the strictly class rules established by the Second World Congress of the Anti-Imperialist League held in Frankfort, which Amauta published in its Number 27 (November–December, 1929).
Luis E. Heysen, the new secretary of the APRA’s Paris section, protested the Amauta news item in a letter published in the Lima journal La Sierra. Amauta commented on this letter in its Number 28 (January, 1930): “The only too notorious truth is that the APRA never was more than a plan, a project, an idea for an ‘alliance’ or a ‘common front’ which a few groups of Peruvian students tried unsuccessfully to organize. . . . Any attempt, therefore, to take advantage of Latin American credulity with somewhat pompous letterheads is inopportune.” The text of Heysen’s communication, for which there was not enough space in that issue, appeared in the following issue (Number 29, February–March). It was accompanied by a new note insisting on the need for the proletariat to have an independent program and action and denying the objective existence of the APRA. “It does exist as a trend toward confusion and demagoguery, which must be confronted by a clearly defined proletarian position.” It concluded with: “Amauta is not a publicity agent for any pretentious performer.” This was the last issue directed by Mariátegui; two more were then published under the direction of Ricardo Martínez de la Torre.
Mariátegui, apart from his intellectual work and his political interests, was directly connected with the Peruvian trade union movement. After the general strike of May, 1919, the Regional Federation of Peruvian Workers was established in Lima, as previously mentioned. In April, 1921, the First Local Congress of Workers met in Lima. It dealt with broad problems such as the organization and orientation of the proletariat, fighting tactics, the eight-hour working day, opposition to compulsory arbitration, the right to strike, solidarity of the organized trade unions, the association of miners, the Indian, popular culture, and affiliation with international organizations. It also discussed the following question: “Should organized labor take political action or not?” After a lively debate, it was agreed to postpone the vote until the next congress “because the proletariat would be better organized and oriented, more experienced, and with a greater grasp of the ideologies of workers everywhere; therefore, fully aware and profoundly convinced of the cause, it would vote for anarchist communism.” Supporters of anarchist syndicalism dominated the congress, but they were not sufficiently strong to carry the confused masses.
The Popular University, founded in 1921, did not try to give doctrinaire guidance. According to a widely circulated statement, its only dogma was social justice. But Mariátegui, in his lectures on the world crisis, defended the Russian Revolution and interpreted current events in a way that was favorable to that revolution.
The First Workers Congress led to the creation of the Local Federation of Workers in Lima and Callao. During that period, Mariátegui advocated a syndicalist common front. In 1927, the Federation called a meeting of the Second Workers Congress. After long and heated discussions, the only important conclusion reached was that the sole purpose of syndicalism was the proletarian labor union. Political repression abruptly ended the meetings. With its leaders imprisoned and the Local Federation of Workers dissolved, the labor movement entered a serious crisis.
Parallel to the formation of the Socialist party, mentioned further on, Julio Portocarrero, Avelino Navarro, and others, under the direction of Mariátegui, worked hard from the end of 1928 to reorganize syndicalism. In early 1929, a Committee for the General Confederation of Workers of Peru was set up. On May 17, 1929, a provisional committee began work and was warmly welcomed by Mariátegui in the June issue of Amauta. The Peruvian labor movement moved politically from anarchist syndicalism to communism. A delegation led by Julio Portocarrero participated in the Communist-oriented Latin American Syndicalist Congress, which took place in Montevideo in May, 1929.
On the occasion of the Fifth Congress of the Red Syndicalist International held in Moscow in 1927, Julio Portocarrero journeyed secretly to that city as a delegate of Peruvian labor unions. On his return, he brought a message from the Third International urging Peru’s association with that movement and blaming Haya de la Torre and his adherents for the delay in the formation of a Communist party in Peru; it offered severe criticism and called for action.
Persuaded by this message and by his own convictions, and in the light of his experience with the APRA, Mariátegui and a very select group of friends decided on September 16, 1928, to set up the first cell of a broadly based party to be called the Socialist party of Peru and to be directed by declared Marxists. “The secret cell of seven” was comprised of Mariátegui, Ricardo Martínez de la Torre, who was an insurance company employee, the workers Julio Portocarrero, Avelino Navarro, Hinojosa, and Borja, and the street peddler Bernardo Regman. Later meetings included Luciano Castillo, Fernando Chávez León, Hugo Pesce, and others. Mariátegui wrote the program of the new party. The committee received invitations to attend the Congress of the Latin American Syndicalist Central held in Montevideo in May, 1929, and the first Latin American Communist Conference, which met in Buenos Aires in June of the same year. It sent five delegates under Julio Portocarrero to the first meeting and it was represented by Hugo Pesce and Julio Portocarrero in the second. Mariátegui drafted documents on “The Problem of Races in Latin America,” “Background and Development of the Class Struggle,” and “The Imperialist Point of View.” Martínez de la Torre prepared “A Report on Peru” in collaboration with Julio Portocarrero.16
There is a record of the debates that took place in the Communist conference in Buenos Aires.17 Here the Peruvian workers were officially censured for their passive acceptance of the 1929 settlement on Tacna and Arica. They were told to take action against Leguía and Yankee imperialism and to militate for the self-determination of those populations, that is, for a plebiscite under worker and peasant supervision. Mariátegui and his friends were sharply attacked for their decision to create in Peru a Socialist party with a reform program which, although directed by a secret group reserved for initiates, was open to the middle class and the masses. It was argued that a monolithic Communist party had to be formed immediately. Opinions were also divided about the problem of races, and the prevailing thesis was that present boundaries should no longer be considered sacred and that the Indians should be given the right to self-determination, with the possibility of establishing Quechua and Aymara republics.
The discussions in Buenos Aires, which influenced the rules adopted by the organizing committee of the Socialist party, together with personal frictions (Eudocio Ravines arrived secretly in February, 1930, with specific instructions), led to the resignation of some of the leaders (March 16, 1930). After his newspaper, Labor, was closed down in September, 1929, and his home raided by the police, Mariátegui planned a trip to Buenos Aires, where he hoped to publish Amauta and several books,18 and to Santiago. This trip, which was arranged by Samuel Glusberg (who was not a Communist) in Buenos Aires and by Luis Alberto Sánchez (who was also not a Communist) in Santiago, indicated a personal attitude independent of any party directive. Mariátegui never took this trip. He died on April 16, at the age of thirty-five. He left ready for publication the works Defensa del marxismo19 and El alma matinal,20 and he had sent to Spain the original manuscript of a book on the political and ideological evolution of Peru, which was lost.
A few days after Mariátegui’s funeral, a long communication reached Lima from the Third International, which referred to the debate begun in Buenos Aires on the necessity of founding a Communist instead of a Socialist party. The latter, during the illness of Mariátegui, already had discussed affiliation with the Communist party. On May 20, 1930, the Peruvian Communist party was born. The only negative vote was cast by Martínez de la Torre, who defended the beliefs of his friend and teacher.21 The Communist party, therefore, appeared later in Peru than in other countries: Uruguay (1920), Argentina (1921), Mexico and Chile (1922), Ecuador and Cuba (1925). Nevertheless, there were already Moscow-trained national leaders like Eudocio Ravines and a few students, as well as workers, who traveled secretly. It is interesting to note that, although Mariátegui died soon after his political line had been sternly criticized, Ravines, Portocarrero, Armando Bazán, and other convinced and declared Communists of that time later left the party.
Whether or not Mariátegui was the founder of the Communist party is a question that is and will continue to be widely debated in Peru. Actually, it is a pointless controversy. Mariátegui was not basically in disagreement with the leaders of the Communist International; the nature of his objections was tactical, immediate, and incidental. Among his last writings, published shortly before his death, were his reply to a questionnaire about contemporary problems and his comments on Panait Istrati’s book on the Soviet Union.22 In the first article, Mariátegui examined once more “the death of the principles and dogmas that made up the bourgeois Absolute” and “the loss of bourgeois morale”; in the second, he made clear his sympathies by trying to disparage Istrati’s censure of Soviet society. Mariátegui, then, did not change shortly before his death.
It is not certain whether Mariátegui intended to use his trip to Buenos Aires to intensify his activities as a writer over his activities as a political and social organizer. The latter had brought him into painful conflict with the Communist party line of that time and with the interests, plans, and undertakings of other, more powerful, men.
Mariátegui may be studied on different levels: the human and biographical, the literary, the ideological, the political, and the social. Often his interpreters and critics do not cover all these aspects. It is not unusual for some of his disciples, as well as diverse elements of both the extreme Right and the extreme Left, to emphasize only one dimension of this man, who did not hide his affiliation and faith—the social agitator, the organizer, the anti-intellectual Mariátegui who continues and will continue to be involved in elections, labor unions, and political tracts and controversies. On the other hand, there is the historical image of another Mariátegui seen from a perspective that embraces his whole life and not just a part of it, that seeks to reach the man himself and not merely the ideas or things he loyally supported, and, finally, that shows him as the promoter of a great cultural and social renaissance and as a hero in a cripple’s chair. This image appeals to persons of different positions—liberal, moderate, Socialist—provided they have a progressive spirit. In the same way, González Prada is not simply one more author in the anarchist pages of his time, but above all a great literary figure, a great thinker, and, in spite of all his imprecations against Peru, a great Peruvian.
There should be a place in these pages for Mariátegui as he appeared in his house on Washington Street. He received his friends at the end of the afternoon, for he jealously guarded for his own work or special interviews the hours other people spent in offices. His visitors found him seated on a sofa with a blanket covering the lower part of his body. He received them quietly, with a smile on his delicate lips that was neither conventional nor affected. His black eyes, gleaming in his wasted, pale brown face, commanded attention. His features were sharp and his thick, black hair was always carefully groomed, but with a bohemian lock sometimes falling onto his forehead. He dressed in a plain, spotlessly clean suit and he invariably wore a black bow tie. His conversation was free of vanity and expansive autobiography, rhetoric, and vague banalities. On the contrary, he was objective in his judgment and always ready to listen and ask questions, reluctant to discuss himself, and immune to commonplaces. His past experience as the humorous columnist of “Voces” in El Tiempo and as a veteran of criollo life behind the scenes was expressed in witty, nimble remarks on men and events. His room was without decoration except for books set at random on modest shelves along the walls. His visitors arrived informally until there would be a group of fifteen or twenty persons. Apart from many other writers and artists, he saw an increasing number of students and workers and, in his last years, visitors from abroad. Mariátegui’s wife occasionally appeared on her return from shopping or the post office. His children were not exhibited with the relentless complacency typical of so many homes that want to show off their private life. Following the foundation of the publishing house and journal Amauta, Julio César Mariátegui joined the group. There was nothing about these gatherings that was deliberate or compulsory or that would imply a commitment. People were free to go every day or just once and never return, or to disappear for a while and then reappear. No attempt was made to proselytize. Current events were commented on, especially those relating to books, paintings, or music. There was no sign of the heavy atmosphere, charged with gossip and backbiting, of political cliques.
The year 1923–1924 marked the beginning of Mariátegui’s intellectual activities. In spite of his uncertain health, he managed to overcome initial doubts, distrusts, and hostilities in order to make his ideas known. From 1925 to 1927, his position became more secure as people became more accustomed to it. In 1925, he published his book La escena contemporánea, made up of many of his articles for Variedades on the contemporary world. Toward 1927, he entered his period of political action: he organized and guided labor unions; he joined the APRA movement and then left it; he founded the newspaper Labor (1928) in order to be in closer contact with the workers; and, finally, he tried to form the Socialist party of Peru. In 1928, he published the book Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, in which he collected articles he had written since 1925 for the journal Mundial under the heading “Peruanicemos el Perú,” together with other articles from Amauta.
Mariátegui’s spiritual homeland was not the university but journalism. If the latter miraculously produced the distinguished author of aesthetic essays, Valdelomar, it also produced the great social essayist of Peru, who was almost his contemporary. He himself said: “I have raised myself from journalism to doctrine.” It is amazing that a man who barely finished primary school and who began as a linotypist’s assistant, messenger, and proofreader should later be able to expound “the contemporary scene”; “figures and aspects of world life”; Marxism; art; Italian, French, Spanish and other literature of our time; and seven of Peru’s most vital problems.
The official Marxist position on Mariátegui appears to have varied. At one time he was considered a “populist” and was so qualified somewhat contemptuously by V. Miroshevsky in an article called “Mariátegui’s Role in the History of Latin American Social Thought,” published in 1942 (May–June issue) in the Havana journal Dialéctica. But, in more recent years, an apparently irresistible movement has arisen to make the author of Seven Essays the father of Peruvian and even South American communism. A Soviet edition of that book came out in 1963; and in 1957 S. Semionov and A. Shalgovski extolled “the role of Mariátegui in the formation of the Communist party in Peru” in the Moscow journal Modern and Contemporary History.23 It would seem that we are witnessing the birth of a myth, strengthened by the memory of the premature death, the heroically endured illness, the stubborn loyalty to ideas, and the brilliant talent that sometimes approached genius.
The independent critic must here fulfill his mission of serenity, precision, and high purpose. With his Seven Essays, Mariátegui introduced to Peru a serious and methodical approach to national affairs that disdained pedantry, excessive details, and rhetoric. He linked history to the drama of the present and the imponderables of the future. He pointed out problems that, unsolved in the past, still weigh on present generations, along with other problems that have appeared in the latter’s time. He drew attention to lacerating and pathetic realities that many did not or would not see. He was exempt from the dislike or contempt of study that fills the soul of every demagogue, whether of the Right or Left. On attempting a diagnosis of his own country, which has so much in common with other countries of Andean America, Mariátegui replaced in those years others who could have done similar work from the standpoint of different ideologies, but who did not because they were traveling abroad or because they had dispersed their energies or dedicated themselves to erudition, light literature, or the many activities of a political, bureaucratic, or social life.
His observations were often astute and provocative, although at times one-sided and sketchy. They also suffered from his personal prejudices (especially evident in the essay on literature), the tendentious nature of his political sympathies, or simply insufficient information.
He himself stated in his preface: “I am not an impartial, objective critic. My judgments are nourished by my ideals, my sentiments, my passions. I have an avowed and resolute ambition: to assist in the creation of Peruvian socialism. I am far removed from the academic techniques of the university.” The reader should never forget these frank words.
On the other hand, it requires a great deal of basic preparation to study, present, and resolve from an invalid’s chair, over a few years, the problem of the Indian, the problem of land, the problem of public education, the religious factor, regionalism and centralism, and the process of literature. This actually was a much more difficult undertaking than to comment on contemporary European politics or on the literary and other artistic products of the time, because of the lack or scarcity of specialized studies and, in many cases, because of the need for background materials consisting of monographs, statistics, surveys, and the like.
But the example and significance of Mariátegui’s work will always remain, in spite of all the amendments that may be made to it and even assuming that it becomes outdated in some respects. This work will never deserve “the silence reserved for superficial, malicious hacks, or the bold flattery thrust on incompetents in high positions, or the empty words of praise accorded to second-rate but agreeable writers.” Instead, it will be worthy of “the keen, harsh analysis” given to work that lives and vibrates in spite of the passage of time (Seven Essays was written more than forty years ago), that examines subjects of permanent interest, and that aims at the public good. No one can deny that Mariátegui initiated social studies in Peru. No one can help but admire his devotion to culture and social justice in a hostile and poisoned atmosphere. And if at the beginning he led a bohemian and even dissolute life, his later discipline—only intensified by his physical suffering—demonstrates that grandeur derives from the free selection of a chastened soul and not from the facile exercise of an innate gift.
Mariátegui’s great value lies, not in his prescriptions and formulas, but in his whole personality, which must be interpreted without making use of the clichés and conventional adjectives that he disliked so intensely. It should not be forgotten, moreover, that he died at the age of thirty-five.
Jorge Basadre
Notes
1 Guillermo Rouillón, Bio-bibliografìa de José Carlos Maríategui (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1963), p. 9.
2 See Alberto Ulloa Sotomayor, “José Carlos Mariátegui,” Nueva Revista Peruana, 1 June 1930.
3 “Los salmos del dolor,” Colónida, 1, no. 3 (March 1916). Reprinted in Edmundo Cornejo Ubillús, Páginas literarias (Lima: Talleres Cumbre, 1955), pp. 69–71.
4 Medardo Ángel Silva, “Un juicio sobre la actual generatión literaria del Perú,” El Tiempo (Lima), 27 March 1917.
5 Jorge Basadre, Historia de la República del Perú, VIII, 3812–3813, 3934–3935.
6 Ibid., VIII, 3829–3830, and IX, 4198.
7 On La Razón and its campaigns, see the articles by Humberto del Águila, under the pseudonym “Rinconete,” in La Prensa (Lima), 25 and 30 August 1949, 1 and 16 October 1949.
8 Variedades, 23 March 1923.
9 The best study thus far of Mariátegui’s “stone age” is Genaro Carnero Checa, La acción escrita. José Carlos Mariátegui, periodista (Lima: Torres Aguirre, 1964), pp. 51–113.
10 Published as vol. 8 in José Carlos Mariátegui, Obras completas (Lima: Biblioteca Amauta, 1959).
11 Carnero Checa, La acción escrita, p. 183.
12 El Comercio and La Prensa (Lima), 11 June 1927; reprinted in Carnero Checa, La acción escrita, pp. 198–199.
13 Published in Ricardo Martínez de la Torre, Apuntes de una interpretation marxista de historia social del Perú (Lima: Empresa Editora Peruana, 1948), II, 296–298.
14 Ibid., pp. 298–299.
15 Ibid., pp. 299–302.
16 Isibid., pp. 392–519.
17 El movimiento revolucionario latinoamericano. Versiones de la Primer a Conferencia Comunista Sud Americana (Buenos Aires: La Correspondent Sud Americana, 1929).
18 Samuel Glusberg [“Enrique Espinoza”], Trinchera (Buenos Aires: Babel, 1931), pp. 40–69.
19 Published with Polémica revolucionaria as vol. 5 of Obras completas.
20 Published as vol. 3 of Obras completas.
21 Martínez de la Torre, Apuntes de una interpretation marxista, II, 497–510.
22 Mundial (Lima), 20 March 1930, and Variedades (Lima), 12 March 1930; both are included in Obras completas, VI, 29–31, 150–153.
23 Published in translation in Problemas peruanas, no. 1, 1960.