Viejo Gringo Reports #5: Peruvian Creativity

 Jose Carlos Mariategui Casa & Museo - Lima Peru

This was the final home of Mariategui, one of the most creative Marxists in Latin America.  It was preserved and then turned into an official museum by the City of Lima in 1994.  Mariategui is one of the first modern Marxists to consciously incorporate indigenous people into the revolutionary movement.  He influenced the origins of Liberation Theology by realizing the role of ‘myth’ and belief within the socialist movement, as socialism can also be messianic.  He analyzed the role of colonialism and imperialism in economic and political detail in Peru, and by extension, all of Latin America.  He was also fluent in cultural matters.

On organizational issues, Mariategui opposed the left-nationalism of APRA, which was based on the ‘anti-imperialist’ wing of the Peruvian capitalist class and later won elections as a bourgeois-nationalist formation.  APRA’s founder, Haya de la Torre, was influenced by the Mexican Revolution, not the Soviet one.  Not surprisingly APRA, like the bloody Kuomintang, was inducted into the Comintern by Stalin. Instead Mariategui rejected instantly forming a Communist Party without roots in the proletariat, campesinos and peasants.

A Peruvian Socialist Party was finally formed in 1928, but without mentioning ‘democratic-centralism’ – a concept which was being transformed into bureaucratic centralism by the Comintern.  Mariategui preferred a class-based ‘front’ that would challenge capital across the board, and hoped the PSP would help form that front. All these approaches set Mariategui apart from the slavish CPers who aped everything from Moscow.  He was denounced by their mouthpieces for various deviations in a Latin American conference

Amauta and his various interests.

My Spanish is rudimentary, so I could not work with the guide in this free, gratis, museum, though I was able to read some of the texts.  They would not even take a donation – very socialist.  Mariategui visited Europe once in 1919 with comrades, meeting Togliatti, Barbusse and Zinoviev, and embraced Marxism during that trip. This was in the period of the Spartacist uprising in Germany, the Italian factory occupations and the formation of the Italian CP – tumultuous times. 

Mariategui had 4 children and was crippled by a joint injury in his left leg as a child, which later led to amputation and a wheelchair.  He founded the journal Amauta (Quechua for ‘wise’ or ‘teacher’) in 1926, was imprisoned in 1927 and in 1928 broke with APRA.  He was one of the founders of both the PSP in 1928 and in 1929, the General Confederation of Workers of Peru.  He died in 1930, buried after a massive funeral procession.  He lived a short but productive life.

A communist breaks with bourgeois nationalism.

Today a statue of him is in a city plaza not far from the museum.  Here are some more pictures from the museum: 

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Peru,” Mariategui.”

The Cultural Marxist / May 26, 2025    

Like the colonialists, we must carry death.

Funeral at top.