Mariátegui, Critical Thinking, and Andean Futures

• Author: Ronaldo Munck,Pascual García-Macías,Karina Ponce
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221091189
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Introduction

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221091189

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 245, Vol. 49 No. 4, July 2022, 3–12

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221091189

© 2022 Latin American Perspectives

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Introduction

Mariátegui, Critical Thinking, and Andean Futures

by

Ronaldo Munck, Pascual García-Macías, and Karina Ponce

As we move well beyond the optimism of the left turn in Latin America that

began in 2000 and ended (at least temporarily) around 2015 (with the end of the

commodities price boom and the defeat of progressive Peronism in Argentina),

we have to find ways to reconnect critical thinking with the need to reconstruct

hegemony across the broad masses to create a better future. We base this enter-

prise in the Andean region, where two countries (Bolivia and Ecuador) have

had an intense experience with leftist regimes/movements and in two others

(Peru and Colombia) the left has recently come to power (Peru) or has mounted

a serious challenge to the existing order (Colombia).

Our analysis starts with a recovery and renewal of the thinking and practice

of the Peruvian/Nuestra América figure of José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930)

a socialist and labor organizer who set out to “Latin-Americanize” Marx and

make him fit for purpose in a continent that he misunderstood so badly. As

Fernanda Beigel (2019: 11) has argued recently, Mariátegui “should be consid-

ered the founding father of Latin American Studies” for his pioneering role in

the analysis of the structural heterogeneity of the Latin American social forma-

tion and in particular his contribution to the study of “race.” His work was at

the intersection of scientific research and political practice. His Marxism was

never just “applied” but translated into a methodology that was appropriate to

the recalcitrant reality of Latin America and geared always to the achievement

of what he called “practical socialism.”

Mariátegui’s classic Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana

(Mariátegui, 1997 [1928]) represents an original engagement with Peruvian

social, economic, political, and cultural reality in the period leading up to the

crisis and transition of 1930. The 1920s saw a series of upheavals amongst the

indigenous peoples of Peru that shaped or rather reshaped Mariátegui’s polit-

ical vision for change. This was also, of course, the period when the great

Mexican Revolution was coming to the close of its most active phase. Far away,

in Russia, the October Revolution of 1917 brought onto the world scene a new

world-historical subject, the proletariat, and a bold ideology for social transfor-

mation, Leninism.

Ronaldo Munck, a participating editor of Latin American Perspectives, is a professor of sociology at

Dublin City University. His most recent book is Social Movements in Latin America: Mapping the

Mosaic (2020). Pascual García-Macías is a lecturer in economics at the Universidad Técnica

Particular de Loja (Ecuador) who researches on migration issues. Karina Ponce is an economics

graduate of UTPL currently doing a Master’s at the Facultad Latinoamericano de Ciencias

Sociales, Quito. The collective thanks them for organizing this issue.

1091189LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X221091189Latin American PerspectivesMunck, García-Macías, and Ponce/INTRODUCTION

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