in a nutshell, is the argument sustained in the book to which he owes his reputation, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1926).
Departing from an analysis of landed property, Mariátegui explains how Peru, despite having achieved political sovereignty during the third decade of the nineteenth century, had failed to rid itself of the economic and social structures implemented during the colonial period. The Peruvian economy, unlike the most advanced European ones, had a “semifeudal” character in which the wealth of the elites was sustained by their ownership of vast tracts of land (the latifundio system) rather than by large industry. But this semifeudal quality manifested itself in the sphere of social relations as well, with life in the countryside still ruled by the serfdom system that the Spanish invaders had imposed via the encomienda regime. Although not legally enslaved, the peasants depended on a “lord” to whom they ceded a portion of their labor and income in exchange for the right to farm his land.
Admittedly, this system had not been designed for exploiting indigenous labor in the colonies (manorialism and latifundia had organized the life of European societies for centuries); yet in Peru, it acquired a distinct racial and cultural bias, for the divide between lords and serfs was nearly identical to that between whites and Indians – the children of the victors and the children of the vanquished. If the indigenous peoples were ever to overcome their state of destitution, Mariátegui concludes, the feudal structures that supported the entire edifice of social relations in Peru had to be abolished. Any form of indigenism that merely denounced abuses or proposed protective measures without attacking the foundations of the Peruvian economic system was doomed to failure. “The chance that Indians will raise themselves materially and intellectually depends on changes in social and economic conditions. They are not determined by race, but by economics and politics” (1969, p. 31; 1994, Vol. I, p. 171; 2011, p. 313). For all their good intentions, the reformist and liberal‐democratic currents of indigenism appeared to be fatally indebted to the old colonial mentality; in proposing that educational reforms would improve the living standards of the Indian, they implicitly assumed that she was responsible for her own poverty.4
For Mariátegui, the only valid route to vindicate the Indians was by recognizing them as the true protagonists of Peruvian history. Peru was not like Argentina or the United States, where the indigenous populations, pursued and decimated, had been buried firmly in the nation's past. They were a living force. And they could be said to have built one of the most complex civilizations of the Americas – a great culture shattered by the Spaniards, who reduced the Indian masses to the status of serfs. It was then a cruel irony that the local elites, from the late nineteenth century on, had fixed their gaze on the glorious Inca past while neglecting the present‐day Indians, seen as little more than remainders left behind by the conquest. For the Peruvian elites, the Inca civilization served as a symbol of national pride, while the Indian of flesh and blood was an object of derision. Both the “neo‐Inca” style that adorned the façades of modern limeño constructions and the colorful stories set during the Inca Empire filling the shelves of bookstores attested to this split in the attitudes of Peruvians; they celebrated a pre‐Hispanic past in which, paradoxically, the Indians (qua impoverished peasants) were missing.
In this context, indigenist art could and should be more than just a diversion for Creole elites: “The Indian is prominent in Peruvian literature and art, not because he is an interesting subject for a novel or a painting, but because the new forces and vital impulses of the nation are directed toward redeeming him” (1959a, p. 290; 1971, p. 272; 1994, Vol. I, p. 149). For Mariátegui, then, indigenist art had a mission: to build a bridge connecting past and present that might rekindle for the indigenous population a sense of their own history. The past should be turned into a legacy. Two key Latin American artists – Diego Rivera and José Sabogal – offered vivid examples of how to pursue that goal.5
What Mariátegui praises in Rivera is his capacity to built great revolutionary myths:
In Mexican literature, nobody has done anything yet as big as what Rivera has done in painting: granting the Revolution a grandiose visual representation of its myths. A realistic vision of the common man and woman, of peasant and soldier, is supplemented by an almost metaphysical, and wholly religious, conception of the symbols that contain and condense the meaning of the Revolution.
(1959c, p. 97; 1994, Vol. I, p. 586)
Seemingly unimpressed by the adulation of the machine that runs through much of Rivera's work, Mariátegui applauds the visionary who, by building “superhuman figures like the prophets and sibyls of Michelangelo” (1959c, p. 97; 1994, Vol. I, p. 586), places the indigenous population of Mexico at the very center of the country's history.
But judged against these criteria, his enthusiasm for Sabogal is less readily comprehensible. Unlike Rivera's murals, the vast majority of Sabogal's paintings lack any narrative content, thus they can hardly be said to connect the Indians with their past or transform them into a historical force. Although both artists grant indigenous figures a monumental and hieratic air, the protagonist of Rivera's muralism – the collective – is absent in Sabogal. In his paintings, the figure of the Indian typically appears alone: he is not integrated into any mass movement, nor does he participate in any activity. A distant, ageless presence, the Indian that Sabogal portrays can certainly be viewed as a cosmic force that, in its singularity, is meant to endure. That said, he also resembles a specimen exposed for inspection, an impression aggravated by the fact that he is rarely depicted so as to meet the viewer's gaze.
It is noteworthy, then, that it is Sabogal's woodcuts (not his paintings) that captures Mariátegui's attention: solid, stylized figures – like his Chimu‐inspired fishermen (Figures 3.1 and 3.2) – that reimagine and modernize the iconography of the ancient inhabitants of Peru. These works, writes Mariátegui, “reveal how an art this ancient can still yield modern realizations” (1959c, p. 93; 1994, Vol. I, p. 584). With them, Sabogal “revives elements of Inca art, so deeply connected is he to his native themes” (1959c, p. 93; 1994, Vol. I, p. 584).
This kind of commitment, in fact, is all that one could reasonably expect from indigenist art. As Mariátegui saw it, indigenism, because of its origin, was an art of transition, meant to give way to a properly indigenous art in the future. Following this rationale, he found it mistaken to accuse the indigenist writers of having wrongfully usurped the representation of the Indians. In a telling passage from the last of the 7 Essays – the one devoted to literature and occupying almost a third of the book's pages – he argues that “… a critic could commit no greater injustice than to condemn indigenist literature for its lack of autochthonous integrity or its use of artificial elements in interpretation and expression” (1959a, pp. 291–292; 1971, p. 274; 1994, Vol. I, p. 150). Indigenist literature was bound to idealize and stylize the Indian because it was still a literature made by mestizos: “If an indigenous literature finally appears, it will be when the Indians themselves are able to produce it” (1959a, p. 292; 1971, p. 274; 1994, Vol. I, p. 150).
Figure 3.1 José Sabogal, Chimu Fishermen, 1929. Woodblock print, 23 × 24 cm. Colección Isabel María Sabogal Dunin Borkowski.
Figure 3.2 José Sabogal, Caballito, Huanchaco, 1929. Woodblock print, 24.5 × 25.5 cm. Colección Ana Sabogal Dunin Borkowski.
Without going into further details, Mariátegui