Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality

257 Pages·1974·3.09 MB·English

by  Jose Carlos, (Translated by Marjory Urquidi, Introduction by Jorge B Mariategui

THE TEXAS PAN AMERICAN SERIES
1
seven interpretive essays on
PERUVIAN REALITY
BY JOSÉ CARLOS MARIÁTEGUI
TRANSLATED BY MARJORY URQUIDI
INTRODUCTION BY JORGE BASADRE
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS
AUSTIN
2
e Texas Pan American Series is published with the assistance of a revolving
publication fund established by the Pan American Sulphur Company and other friends of
Latin America in Texas. Publication of this book was also assisted by a grant from the
Rockefeller Foundation through the Latin American translation program of the Association
of American University Presses.
International Standard Book Number 0-292-70115-2
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 73-156346
Copyright © 1971 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-292-76265-7 (library e-book)
ISBN 978-0-292-76266-4 (individual e-book)
doi: 10.7560/701151
3
CONTENTS
Introduction by Jorge Basadre
Author’s Note
1. Outline of the Economic Evolution
2. e Problem of the Indian
3. e Problem of Land
4. Public Education
5. e Religious Factor
6. Regionalism and Centralism
7. Literature on Trial
Glossary
Index
4
INTRODUCTION
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.
ere, 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.
5
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 eater 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.
“e 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. is 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. e
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
6
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.” e 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
7
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. e 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. e 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.”
e first number of Nuestra Epoca included an article signed by
Mariátegui attacking the social composition and the character of the
Peruvian army. is 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. e
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. ey published a letter announcing the
formation of a new newspaper that “truly represents the ideals, trends, and
orientation that inspire our work.” is 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
8
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. “ere
exist, however, signs of evolution. e Russian genius has created the
9