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The indigenous community as “living organism”: José Carlos Mariátegui, Romantic Marxism, and extractive capitalism in the Andes

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Abstract

This article explores the complex relationship between Marxism and Romanticism in the work of early-twentieth century Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui. Following Michael Löwy, it argues that there is a utopian-revolutionary dialectic of the pre-capitalist past and socialist future running through Mariátegui’s core works. The romantic thread of Mariátegui’s thought was in many ways a response to the prevalent evolutionist and economistic Marxist orthodoxies of his time. An argument is made that the fruitful heresy embedded in the Mariáteguist framework might suggest the outlines for a theoretical research agenda to counter a novel orthodoxy emerging out of the state ideologies of the Andean New Left in an era of intensifying extractive capitalism. Deploying a certain Marxist idiom, figures such as Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera defend as progressive the extension of large-scale mining, natural gas and oil extraction, and agro-industrial mono-cropping in alliance with multinational capital. Left and indigenous critics of this latest iteration of extractive capitalism in Latin America are condemned in this worldview as naive romantics, or worse, the useful idiots of imperialism. A creative return to Mariátegui allows us to read the opposition of Left and indigenous critique and activism in a different light. What is more, we can see in the biographies of activists such as Felipe Quispe in Bolivia a concrete realization of the Romantic Marxist critique of evolutionism and economism being discussed theoretically in our exploration of Mariátegui.

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Notes

  1. A new season in the study of Mariátegui has begun in Latin America in recent years, particularly exploring the possibilities opened up by his approach for the theoretical and practical advance of ecological socialism, liberation theology, indigenous liberation, and subaltern struggle, among other themes. See, for example, Sobrevilla (2012); see also the essays in a recent special issue of the Argentine Marxist journal Herramienta: debate y crítica marxista: Löwy (2012); Alfaro Rubbo (2012); Mazzeo (2012); Figueroa (2012); Salinas (2012); Mascaro Querido (2012). For classical discussion, see Aricó (1978).

  2. For a vociferous defence of García Linera’s position on extractivism, see also the influential latest book of Argentinian Marxist, Atilio Borón (2012).

  3. See Webber (2011, 2014) for a background of the political economy of the Morales administrations from 2006 to 2014.

  4. The argument here, it should be obvious, is not meant to suggest any equivalence between the selective violence carried out by compensatory states and the much larger-scale violence of militarized and para-militarized states elsewhere in the region, such as in Mexico, Honduras, and Colombia.

  5. For discussion of the TIPNIS, see Webber (2015b), Laing (2012), Bautista et al. (2012), McNeish (2013).

  6. For general discussion of the conflict-ridden political economy of extraction in Latin America generally, see Bebbington and Bury (2013), and on Bolivia specifically, see Fabricant and Gustafson (2011).

  7. It is important to emphasize that García Linera wrote a series of highly sophisticated texts prior to his vice presidency, and that the critique offered here is strictly focused on his writings since 2006. For often insightful, sympathetic treatments of his earlier work, see Bosteels (2011, 2012).

  8. García Linera was born in Cochabamba in 1962, and trained as a mathematician while in university in Mexico. Upon returning to Bolivia he participated in the short-lived Ejército Guerrillero Túpaj Katari (Túpaj Katari Guerrilla Army, EGTK), as a consequence of which he spent 5 years in jail, between 1992 and 1997. He was never charged and was tortured while imprisoned. Upon his release he became a sociology professor at the main public university in La Paz, a prolific writer on political affairs and social movements, and one of the most important TV personalities of the 2000s, perpetually making the rounds of the evening news programs and talk shows.

  9. Álvaro García Linera, “El capitalismo andino-amazónico,” Le Monde Diplomatique, Bolivian edition (January) 2006.

  10. Álvaro García Linera, “El Evismo: Lo nacional-popular en acción,” El Juguete Rabioso, April 2, 2006.

  11. Por la recuperación del proceso de cambio para el pueblo y con el pueblo: Manifiesto de la coordinadora plurinacional de la reconducción, Cochabamba and La Paz, 2011.

  12. Several of the left oppositionists then responded with a second pamphlet, La MAScarada del poder, Cochabamba and La Paz, 2011.

  13. Relatedly, in a provocative recent cartography of Latin American Marxist theory, Omar Acha and Débora D’Antonio (2010: 225) call for renewed sensitivity to the dialectical relation between national experiences and Latin American tendencies more generally.

  14. The similarities here with Marx’s late engagement with Russian populism are interesting to note, but a proper discussion of them is beyond the scope of this inquiry. See, among others, Anderson (2010).

  15. If one were registering any doubt that Mariátegui’s view is overly one-sided in its backward-looking character, this error of interpretation ought to be disabused with a close reading of the following passage: “These people are surprised that the most advanced ideas in Europe make their way to Peru; but they are not surprised, on the other hand, at the airplane, the transatlantic ocean liner, the wireless telegraph, the radio—in sum, all the most advanced expressions of material progress in Europe. The same kind of thinking that would ignore the socialist movement would have to ignore Einstein’s theory of relativity. And I am sure that it does not occur to the most reactionary of our intellectuals—almost all of them are galvanized reactionaries—that there should be a ban on studying and popularizing the new physics of which Einstein is the greatest and most eminent representative” (Mariátegui 2011e, p. 297).

  16. See also, Mariátegui (2011h, p. 93) where he notes: “Modern communism is different from Inca communism. This is the first thing that a scholarly man who explores Tawantinsuyu needs to learn and understand. The two kinds of communism are products of different human experiences. They belong to different historical eras.”

  17. On a national scale, only Evo Morales has enjoyed a parallel status to Quispe in contemporary indigenous politics, as measured by the intensity of sentiments coming from various sectors of the population. Quispe was perhaps the figure most reviled and feared by the Bolivian ruling class in the early 2000s. By contrast, in the Aymara indigenous countryside of La Paz and Oruro, he received enthusiastic respect from the peasantry for his militant defense of indigenous self–determination and dignity in the face of racism and neoliberal capitalism.

  18. For my account of the left-indigenous insurrectionary cycle between 2000 and 2005, as well as its long historical backdrop, see Webber (2012). For a brilliant history of the same period, written in a distinctly Thompsonian register, see Hylton and Thomson (2007).

  19. For the argument that the left-indigenous cycle of revolt constituted a combined liberation struggle, see Webber (2012). The struggle for “combined liberation” refers to the integral unity of the simultaneous opposition to racial oppression and class exploitation in the Bolivian context between 2000 and 2005. Emancipation in one domain was seen by many activists to require emancipation in both. Because of the specific racialized form that capitalism assumed in Bolivia, combined liberation for the indigenous majority meant a united emancipation from class and ethnic domination.

  20. Many of the basic biographical details of Quispe’s life narrated here are drawn from Albó (2002).

  21. Personal Interview, Felipe Quispe, La Paz, Bolivia, May 12, 2005.

  22. Quispe once remarked: “When we speak about the indigenous, Aymara or Quechua, revindicating our ancestral culture, at the same time we are automatically embracing our brothers who work in the cities as workers or proletarians” (Quispe 2001, p. 189).

  23. At the same time, Quispe is not prone to romanticizing the historical impact of the EGTK: “… in the 1990s we had a revolutionary organization called Tupaj Katari Guerrilla Army (EGTK). It was a political–military organization that we thought would arrive in power through armed struggle and by being the vanguard of the people. It turns out that, with time, we saw that there wasn’t support from the population. So, we ended up in jail for five years. I was captured on August 19, 1992 and remained in jail until 1997. When I left I returned to my community, like any other comunario, like any other peasant. From there the people chose me and told me that I had to be leader of the CSUTCB.” Personal Interview, Felipe Quispe, La Paz, Bolivia, May 12, 2005.

  24. While incarcerated, Quispe read and studied, completing his high school diploma. He was granted provisional freedom to attend classes in History at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres (UMSA) in La Paz, eventually completing his bachelor’s degree.

  25. The name refers to a principal title of authority in traditional Aymara organizational structures (Albó 2002, p. 81).

  26. At the same time, it ought to be noted that the wiphala is a paradigmatic case of invented tradition (see Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). The flag was not used by indigenous radicals in 1899, 1927, or 1946–1947, for example. Thanks to Forrest Hylton for drawing my attention to this point.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Rob Knox, Forrest Hylton, Madeleine Davis, and Lucas Martín Poy Piñeiro for comments on an early draft of this article.

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    Jeffery R. Webber

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Webber, J.R. The indigenous community as “living organism”: José Carlos Mariátegui, Romantic Marxism, and extractive capitalism in the Andes. Theor Soc 44, 575–598 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-015-9259-2

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