Mariátegui’s Thought in the Peasant Struggles of Hugo Blanco

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221099924
• Author: Patricia Pensado Leglise,Nayeli Camacho Olvera
• Date: 01 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles: Maríategui

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221099924

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 245, Vol. 49 No. 4, July 2022, 62–77

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221099924

© 2022 Latin American Perspectives

62

Mariátegui’s Thought in the Peasant Struggles of

Hugo Blanco

by

Patricia Pensado Leglise and Nayeli Camacho Olvera

Translated by

Victoria Furio

The peasant uprisings in the valleys of La Convención and Lares in Cuzco, Peru, in the

late 1950s and early 1960s placed the Peruvian indigenous peasantry at the center of the

national scene and led to the 1969 agrarian reform that would transform the property-

labor system in the Peruvian countryside (a system that produced the famous Mariátegui

aphorism “The problem of the Indian is the problem of land”). Hugo Blanco Galdós was

an iconic figure and one of the leaders of this movement. Although Trotskyism was the

most visible directive of his political praxis during his militancy in La Convención, the

influence of José Carlos Mariátegui’s (1894–1930) thought was what marked it. While the

twenty-first-century indigenous peasant struggles have modified their objectives and dis-

course, Mariátegui’s thought remains current in a figure such as Blanco.

Los levantamientos campesinos en los valles de La Convención y Lares en Cuzco, Perú,

a finales de la década de 1950 y principios de la década de 1960 pusieron al campesinado

indígena peruano al centro de la escena nacional y condujeron a la reforma agraria de

1969, la cual transformaría el sistema de propiedad-trabajo en el campo peruano (sistema

que dio lugar al famoso aforismo de José Carlos Mariátegui, “El problema del indio es el

problema de la tierra”). Hugo Blanco Galdós fue una figura icónica y uno de los líderes de

este movimiento. Aunque el trotskismo fue la directriz más visible de su praxis política

durante su militancia en La Convención, la influencia del pensamiento de Mariátegui

(1894–1930) fue lo que la marcó. Si bien las luchas campesinas indígenas del siglo XXI

han modificado sus objetivos y discurso, el pensamiento de Mariátegui sigue vigente en

una figura como Blanco.

Keywords: José Carlos Mariátegui, Hugo Blanco Galdós, Indigenous peasant union,

Peasant strike, Agrarian reform

The peasant movement in the valleys of La Convención and Lares in Cuzco,

Peru, occupied the national media spotlight in the early 1960s. Organized pri-

marily in unions, the region’s peasants considered fighting gamonalismo, the

Patricia Pensado Leglise is a researcher in the Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis

Mora and a professor of Latin American history at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de

México (UNAM). She specializes in the oral history of social movements of the second half of the

twentieth century. Nayeli Camacho Olvera is a mathematician, a B.A. intern in Latin American

studies at the UNAM, and a fellow of the same research institute. Both are members of the

CLACSO working group on lefts, praxis, and transformation. Victoria Furio is a translator and

interpreter located in Yonkers, NY.

1099924LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X221099924Pensado and Camacho/MARIÁTEGUI AND BLANCO’S PEASANT STRUGGLES

research-article2022

Pensado and Camacho/MARIÁTEGUI AND BLANCO’S PEASANT STRUGGLES 63

property-labor system of the Peruvian highlands, one of their principal objec-

tives. The name of an iconic figure of this movement, Hugo Blanco Galdós,

emerged on the international scene when he was imprisoned in 1963. A well-

known Trotskyist activist, Blanco was the leader of the union defense brigades

on the Chaupimayo hacienda, a stronghold of the movement. The vision of one

of the great Marxist thinkers produced by the Latin American region, José

Carlos Mariátegui, echoes through his interpretation of the struggle in which

he participated. Blanco had read Mariátegui, and in this essay we will show the

influence of Mariátegui’s thought on Blanco’s political praxis. During this

political experience Blanco revealed an intellectual and political relation to

Mariátegui’s ideas, not only aware of the latter’s political project but sharing

his interpretation of the role of indigenous peasantry in the struggle for social-

ism.

Mariátegui was an avid reader and scholar of Latin American historical real-

ity—which he called “Indo-American”—with extensive knowledge of Marxism.

However, he dissented from the orthodoxy of the communist parties of the

Third International and became the subcontinent’s first unorthodox leftist.

This, in our opinion, was responsible for his empathy with the new Peruvian

and Latin American left to which Blanco belonged, made up of divisions of the

communist parties and Trotskyist groups, Maoists, and populist and national-

ist movements and influenced by the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnam War, and

the figure of Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Debates within this left followed “basi-

cally three lines: the nature of the Latin American revolution, the pathways of

the revolution, and the subject of the revolution” (Necoechea and Pensado,

2011: 6).

As time went on, Blanco took up Mariátegui’s thought from another, more

essentialist perspective, finding convergence with it in its identifying the poten-

tial of Latin American indigenous people, who had not abandoned their com-

munal relations, collective work, or attachment to the land, as subjects capable

of transforming the social and cultural order.

From mariátegui to Blanco

José Carlos Mariátegui was shaped by the ideals of the Russian Revolution,

but he maintained a distance from ideas that later became Marxist dogmas,

being among the first left intellectuals to express his political differences on

both local and international platforms. He identified the complex social-histor-

ical Latin American reality resulting from the semicolonial status of our nations

due to their political and economic dependence on the central capitalist coun-

tries. He was one of the most important and creative intellectuals on the left in

Latin America. His thesis on the role of indigenous people in the revolutionary

struggle transcended the limits of the various left currents both within and

outside his country. It made him contemplate the political strategy of including

the indigenous peasant from a class perspective as an essential subject in the

struggle for socialism in Latin American countries.

The course of Mariátegui’s intellectual life and his lucidity and sensitivity

soon led him to realize that beyond the exploitation by capital of agricultural