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Jos Carlos MariteguiJos Carlos Maritegui (14 June 1894 – 16 April 1930) was a Peruvian journalist, political philosopher, and activist. A prolific writer before his early death at age 35, he is considered one of the most influential Latin American socialists of the 20th century. Maritegui's most famous work, Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928), is still widely read in South America. An avowed, self-taught Marxist, he nonetheless insisted that a socialist revolution should evolve organically in Latin America on the basis of local conditions and practices, not the result of mechanically applying a European formula. Life and works Maritegui was born in Moquegua. His father, Francisco Javier Maritegui Requejo, abandoned his family when Jos Carlos was young; to support her children, his mother, Mara Amalia La Chira Ballejos, moved first to Lima, then to Huacho, where she had more relatives. Jos Carlos had a brother and a sister: Guillermina and Julio Csar. 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 Limeo" until age 19. 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 Razn, which became his first major venture in leftwing journalism. In 1918, "naseuated by Creole politics," he wrote in an autobiographical note, "I turned resolutely toward socialism." The newspaper led by Maritegui 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 Razn supported a strike for the eight-hour day held in May 1919, along with lowering the cost of subsistence goods. The papers aggressive radicalism brought it into conflict with the Legua government, and it was rumoured that the ruling circles offered Maritegui a choice: either go to jail, or travel to Europe with government assistance. In any event, Mariategui left for Europe in 1920, travelling 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 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, Maritegui 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 Peoples University and writing articles about the European situation. He also began using Marxist methods to study Peru. Maritegui also came into contact with and allied himself with Vctor Ral Haya de la Torre, leader of the populist movement American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). In October 1923, Haya de la Tore was deported by the Legua government, leaving Mariategui as the editor of the magazine Claridad. The fifth issue of the publication in March 1924 was dedicated to Lenin. In 1924, Maritegui 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, Maritegui became alienated from the APRA, and he set about establising the Socialist Party, which formally consituted in October of that year, with Mariategui 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 an economic situation from a Marxist perspective. It was considered one of the first materialist analysis of a Latin American society. Beginning with the countrys economic history, the book proceeds to a discussion of the Indian problem", which Maritegui locates firmly within the land problem. Other chapters are devoted to public education, religion, regionalism and centralism, and literature. Also in the same work, Maritegui 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, Mariregui stated "the communitarianism of the Incas cannot be denied or disparaged for having evolved under an autocratic regime." In 1929, Maritegui 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. Maritegui died on April 16, 1930, of complications from his earlier affliction. Maritegui's house at Jirn Washington 1938-1946 in the the center of Lima was later turned into a museum. Quotes - Italian fascism represents, clearly, the anti-revolution or, as it is usually called, the counter-revolution. The fascist offensive is explained, and is realised in Italy, as a consequence of a retreat or a defeat of the revolution.
- I am self-taught. I once enrolled in Letters in Lima, but only with interest in taking an erudite Augustines Latin course. And, in Europe I freely attended some courses, but without ever deciding to lose my extra-collegiate, and perhaps anti-collegiate, status. (1927) http://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/works/1927-bio.htm
Maritegui is also responsible for coining the phrase, in reference to Marxism, sendero luminoso al futuro ("the Shining Path to the future"). This later became the eponym of the Shining Path Maoist guerrilla in Peru. External links
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