Forging People: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in Hispanic American and Latino/a Thought

10. The Amauta’s Ambivalence: Mariátegui on Race

228 [ 1 0 ] the amauta’s ambivalence Mariátegui on Race renZo llorente the “problem of the indian” is not, for Mariátegui, merely one social problem among many others afflicting Peru. to the contrary , he regards it as, in his words, “the fundamental problem,” or “the primary problem,” or “a paramount issue.”1 in short, the problem of the indian was, in Mariátegui’s view, the single most important sociopolitical problem confronting the Peruvians of his day. Whether or not Mariátegui was right to attach such importance to this question—and i should make it clear that i, for one, think that he was—one result of his commitment to this view is that race is a pervasive theme in his sociopolitical writings. Yet it is also a theme that Mariátegui treats with great ambivalence. as i argue below, the reason for this ambivalence, which seems to have gone largely unnoticed in the literature on Mariátegui,2 stems from the apparent inadequacy of Mariátegui’s general framework for analyzing the problem of the indian. this framework tends to render the ethnic or racial aspect of the question epiphenomenal, effectively reducing it to something of a different nature and thereby denying it real autonomy. at the same time, the many occasional observations The Amauta’s Ambivalence 229 concerning race and Peru’s indigenous peoples scattered throughout Mariátegui’s works tend to suggest that the problem of the indian defies the analytical constraints of this very framework. this is, at any rate, what i argue in this chapter. the structure of the present chapter is as follows. in the first section, i discuss Mariátegui’s basic theoretical approach to the problem of the indian—or, as he sometimes calls it, “the indigenous problem”—as developed in the Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality and in other important texts. the central feature of this approach consists in the attempt, from a more or less conventionally Marxist perspective, to reduce the problem of the indian to a more fundamental injustice rooted in existing property relations. in the second section, i discuss Mariátegui’s conception and use of the term race, as well as his various, more or less occasional comments on the nature of Peru’s various racial and ethnic groups, mestizaje, and the identity of latin americans generally. i then argue, in the following section, that many of Mariátegui’s incidental comments on Peru’s indians, along with his other remarks on race, mestizaje, nationality, and the like, are at variance with the premises underlying what i have called his basic theoretical approach, at least insofar as this approach claims that the problem of the indian is reducible to a more basic injustice. in other words, i argue that these comments and remarks tend to undermine Mariátegui’s central thesis, since they imply, if anything, that his basic approach is inadequate to the scope and complexity of the problem of the indian. in the fourth section, i show that Mariátegui’s rather contradictory justifications for Peruvian nationalism merely serve to make this tension or inconsistency in his work appear more acute. My conclusion, accordingly, is that the amauta—a word that means “sage” or “teacher” in Quechua and is often used to refer to Mariátegui, who founded a journal with this name—fails to resolve the discrepancy that i identify and that the overall impression left by his treatment of “the indian question” is one of profound ambivalence. the chapter ends with a brief discussion of some interpretive approaches that might enable us to make sense of, and reconcile, the divergent perspectives on the problem of the indian found in Mariátegui’s writings. 230 Renzo Llorente tHe ProBleM oF tHe inDian as noted above, Mariátegui considers the problem of the indian— which he defines as “the moral and material misery of the indian” (Seven Essays 30 n. 1)—the single most important social problem confronting Peruvians. i have already cited some of Mariátegui’s explicit statements to this effect, and the sincerity of these declarations would seem to be borne out by the sheer number of references to this problem, and related issues, over the course of his works. the problem of the indian is, of course, the theme of one of the Seven Essays, but it is also addressed in the book’s other...