José Carlos Mariátegui on América and International Communism

Mariátegui articulates of his independent yet sympathetic position towards the Comintern.

Antecedents to and the Development of Class Action

Written as the contribution from the Workers’ General Confederation of Peru [Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú (CGTP)] to the Constituent Congress of the Latin American Syndical Confederation, held in Montevideo, Uruguay from May 18-26 of 1929.¹

The first manifestations of revolutionary ideological propaganda in Peru are those aroused, at the beginning of the current century, by the radical thought of [Manuel] González Prada. Shortly after González Prada broke away from politics, the Radical Party failed, and the first libertarian groups appeared. Some workers, who are interested in these ideas, come into contact with González Prada, whose disappointment with political struggle pushes them to an anarchic position. Small libertarian groups are formed that limit themselves to initiating the propaganda of their ideas, without proposing any other action for the moment. González Prada collaborates, with a pseudonym or without a signature, on temporary anarchist papers: "Los Parias,” "El Hambriento.” Some radicals and Freemasons, friends of Gonzáles Prada, sympathize with this propaganda, without committing themselves directly to it. Other ephemeral papers appear: “Simiente Roja,” etc. The only one that manages to acquire permanence is “La Protesta," which gives its name to the first anarchic group of persistent action.

The Federation of Bakers "Estrella del Perú" presents itself as the first guild which revolutionary ideas influence. It was at an action by the bakers that González Prada delivered, on May 1, 1905, His speech on Intellectuals and the Proletariat, reproduced in No. 8 of "Labor."

The billinghurista movement obtains the support of some elements participating in these ideological skirmishes; the most important of them is a former libertarian, Carlos del Barzo, an artisan who later intervened in the attempt to organize a Socialist Party and who once appeared as a workers' candidate for a deputation of Lima. Billinghurismo also had by its side the leader of the port strikes of that time, Fernando Vera; but, when he assimilated it, it made him into a "capitulero [vote seeker].” Under the [Guillermo] Billinghurst government, yellow mutualism, at the service of all governments, lent itself to an attitude of cordiality with the Chilean workers. A commission of these workers' societies, initiated by the government, visited Chile, where words of reconciliation and friendship were exchanged between more or less false representatives of one proletariat and the other. The anarchist group of Peru, which was then working to create a Peruvian Workers’ Regional Federation, sent to Chile, ignoring the official delegation approved by billinghurismo, an Otazú worker, who was received in the Southern country by workers of the same affiliation. It can be said, then, that the first manifestations of the internationalism of Peruvians corresponds to this time. And we must always take into account, in the first case, their character of public demonstrations connected with the policy of the foreign ministry, in dealing with that of Chile to mend the issue of Tacna and Arica.

After the fall of Billinghurst, against the military government of [Óscar R.] Benavides, González Prada publishes a weekly newspaper: "La Lucha"; and Carlos del Barzo, "El Mutín"; but both newspapers represent only a protest against the military regime, an interrogation against its abuses. Due to the ideological affiliation of its directors, it is nevertheless possible to relate them to the social movement. Del Barzo suffers imprisonment and deportation; and González Prada a trial of the printing press.

Under [José] Pardo's government, the effects of the European war on the economic situation influenced social unrest and ideological orientation. A syndicalist group predominates over the anarchists in the work among the masses. Barzo leads some strikes of shoemakers and organizes the union of workers of this industry in the capital. Anarcho-syndicalist propaganda penetrates the countryside of Huacho, producing an agitation bloodily suppressed by the authorities of Pardo. The struggle for 8 hours in 1918 allowed the anarcho-syndicalists to take their propaganda to the masses in an intense way. The textile guild, animator of the struggle, acquires an influential role in the class action. There are already multiple students who have joined the advanced workers' groups. In the face of the struggle for 8 hours, an official statement of the Federation of Students of sympathy with the workers' demands is produced. The mass of the students had not the slightest idea of the scope of these claims and believed that the role of the university students was to guide and direct the workers.

In this time, an effort to give life to a socialist propaganda and concentration group began in the editorial of the oppositionist newspaper, "El Tiempo,” very popular at that time. The management of the newspaper, linked to the political opposition groups, is estranged from this effort, which exclusively represents the orientation towards socialism of some young writers, outside politics, who tend to give the campaigns of the newspaper a social character. These writers are César Falcón, José Carlos Mariátegui, Humberto del Aguila and some others who, together with other young like-minded intellectuals, published a combat magazine in mid-1918: "Nuestra Época.” An anti-armament article by Mariátegui provokes a violent protest by the army officers who, in a large group, invade the editorial office of "El Tiempo" where the columnist works to attack him. "Nuestra Época" does not bring a socialist program; but it appears as an ideological and propaganda effort in this sense. After two issues, it ceases to be published, disapproved by the journalistic company to which its main editors provide their services; but they continue in their efforts to create a Socialist Propaganda Committee. They are joined by another editor of "El Tiempo,” Luis Ulloa from the former Radical Party, who on the occasion of his journalistic campaigns against the "starvers of the people" relates himself to the syndicalists. The Committee was set up with the support of Del Barzo and some workers close to him and of the two groups of students (already professionals) who had hitherto taken part in workers' agitation. The group tends to assimilate all the elements capable of claiming socialism without excepting those that come from gonzalez-pradista radicalism and maintain themselves outside of the political parties. A part of the elements that compose it, directed by Luis Ulloa, proposes the immediate transformation of the group into a party; the other side, which precisely includes the initiators of its foundation, sustains that it should be maintained as a Socialist Propaganda and Organizational Committee, as long as its presence does not have roots in the masses. The period is not proper for socialist organization; some of the elements of the committee write a newspaper: "Germinal,” which adheres to the leguíista movement; Mariátegui, Falcón and their comrades finally separate from the group that agrees to its appearance as a party on May 1, 1919.

At the same time as these efforts, some elements coming from billinghurismo and others, on behalf of an ex-democrat, a presumed candidate for the presidency of the republic, are conducting others in the creation of a Workers' Party. They propose to the socialist committee the merger of both groups, and it rejects it. The opening ceremony of the Party is set for May 1, 1918; but even after a popular assembly convened by the promoters of this party in a theater in the capital, [Nicolas] Gutarra, a unionist speaker, denounces the political and electoral backroom nature of their efforts and takes the crowd out into the street in a class demonstration.

The attempt of the socialist party failed because the demonstration of May 1919 was followed by the great general strike of the same month. (See "The Workers' Movement in 1919" by Ricardo Martínez de la Torre) in which the leaders of this group avoid all action, abandoning the masses and, rather, taking an attitude contrary to their revolutionary action. Luis Ulloa took absence from the country and Carlos del Barzo died, the party committee dissolved without leaving any trace of its activity in the workers' consciousness.

The student movement of the university reform brings, in the same way as in other Latin American countries, the student vanguard to the proletariat. The First Student Congress of Cuzco, held in 1919, agreed on the creation of the popular universities; and in 1921 the vanguard group of this congress, headed by [Victor Raúl] Haya de la Torre, founded the González Prada Popular University [Universidad Popular (U.P.)] in Lima and Vitarte. The Workers' Congress of Lima approves a vote of adhesion to the work of popular culture of these universities. But the workers do not have much confidence in the perseverance of the students; and in order not to arouse any misgivings, the people's universities abstain from all work in the ideological orientation of the proletariat. On the other hand, the majority of the students of the U.P. lack this orientation; as far as the social question is concerned, they will learn, rather than teach, at the side of the proletariat. A change begins with the action of May 23, directed and animated by the U.P. with the help of organized workers. Mariátegui returns from Europe at this time with the purpose of working for the organization of a class party. The U.P., who are at their peak, offer him their grandstand on the occasion of the May 23rd conference and he accepts it. He develops a course of lectures on the world crisis, in which he explains the revolutionary character of this crisis. The anarchists are hostile to this propaganda, above all because of the defense of the Russian Revolution to which they are partly opposed; but Mariátegui obtains the solidarity of the U.P. and its most enthusiastic adherents of the workers' organizations. As an organ of the free youth, but more precisely of the U.P., "Claridad" began to be published in April 1923. Its orientation is "clarificationist"; it corresponds, above all, to the spirit of student agitation. Having deported Haya de la Torre, on the occasion of the discovery of a conspiracy of the supporters of Don Germán Leguía y Martínez, which serves as a pretext to punish his action of May 23, falsely accusing him of having a relationship with politicians of the old regime, in the days when No. 4 of "Claridad" was being attacked, Mariátegui assumes its direction. No. 5 points to the principle of a frank doctrinaire orientation in which "Claridad" abandons the student tone. Since that issue, "Claridad" appears as an organ of the Local Workers' Federation. Persecuted by the police, the organized proletariat wanted to protect it with its formal solidarity. Mariátegui initiates the organization of a workers' publishing society for the publication of the magazine, and with a view to that of a newspaper; but at this time he becomes seriously ill and escapes death at the cost of the amputation of his right leg.

From the end of 1924 to the beginning of 1925 the repression of the student vanguard was accentuated. The most active members of the U.P. and the Student Federation were deported: [Oscar] Herrera, [Luis F.] Bustamante, [Eudocio] Rabines, [Jacobo] Hurwitz, [Nicolás] Terreros, [José] Lecaros, [Manuel] Seoane, [Luis E.] Heysen, [Enrique] Cornejo, [Esteban] Pavletich, etc. The secretary of the Local Workers' Federation, [M.A.] Arcelles, and two of the leaders of the Indigenous organization were also deported. The activities of the U.P. are, however, maintained by a spirited and persevering group. During this period, the foundation of APRA [Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana; American Popular Revolutionary Alliance] began to be discussed, at the request of its initiator Haya de la Torre, who from Europe addressed the vanguard elements of Peru in this regard. These elements accept, in principle, the Apra, which even by its title is presented as an alliance or united front.

In September 1926, as an organ of this movement, as a tribune of "ideological definition,” "Amauta" appeared. The Local Workers' Federation is calling for a second Workers' Congress. Mariátegui, director of "Amauta,” in a letter to this congress, which lacks serious preparative work, warns of the inopportunity of a debate of doctrinaire tendencies, proposing the organization of the workers with a program of "proletarian unity,” the constitution of a national Center based on the principle of "class struggle.” But the tendencies take their points of view to the Congress, engaging in a disorderly discussion about the class doctrine to which the organized proletariat should adhere. This is the moment that the Government Minister of that time, interested in increasing his political importance, threatened by the rivalries of circles, with a sensational performance, opts for a repression in great style. On the evening of June 5, a meeting of the workers' publishing society "Claridad,” which had been quoted as usual by the newspapers, was spectacularly surprised. On the same night, the most well-known and active militants of the workers' organizations and some intellectuals and university students were arrested at their homes. An official information announces, in all the newspapers, the arrest of all these people in a meeting, presented as clandestine. The Manchego Government Minister [Celestino] Muñoz affirms, without equivocation, that he has discovered nothing less than a communist plot. The civilist organ "El Comercio,” reduced to silence since the early days of the leguíista government, and known for its links with the plutocracy of the old regime, approved editorially of this repression as well as the measures that followed: the closure of "Amauta,” the closure of the workshops of the Minerva Publishing House where it was printed on behalf of its writer-editors, the detention of José Carlos Mariátegui who, given his health conditions, is staying at the Military Hospital of San Bartolomé. About 50 militants were taken to the island of San Lorenzo; many more suffered brief detention in the police cells; others, persecuted, had to hide. The police notified those who remained free that the Local Workers' Federation, the Textile Federation and other organizations of the same character should be considered dissolved and that all trade union activity was severely prohibited. They did not fail to express their applause for these measures, as did "El Comercio,” which had no qualms about expressly taking pleasure in the suppression of "Amauta,” the yellow mutualist elements, unconditionally at the orders of this as of all governments, as well as a self-styled and brand-new "labor party,” founded by some laid-off and careerist employees, with the cooperation of a few artisans. But the speciousness of the "communist conspiracy to destroy the social order" was so disproportionate to the very vague and individual papers that it was intended to be documented by that little by little, despite the newspapers being closed to all impartial information, the impression that it produced at first faded away. Only a brief letter addressed by Mariátegui from the Military Hospital found acceptance in the press, flatly and precisely denying, in all its parts, the police invention.

Two U.P. professors, Carlos M. Cox and Manuel Vásquez Díaz, were deported to the north. Magda Portal and Serafín Delmar had been embarked in the same direction before. And four months later, when there was no one left in the audience, a vestige of memory of the plot, the prisoners of San Lorenzo were released. In December 1927, "Amauta" reappeared, which now openly resumed its publication in Buenos Aires.

The June repression, among other effects, has the effect of promoting a revision of methods and concepts and an elimination of the weak and disoriented elements in the social movement. On the one hand, the tendency towards an organization, exempt from anarcho-union residues, purged of "subversive bohemia," is accentuated in Peru. On the other hand, the aprista deviation appears clear. One of the groups of Peruvian deportees, the one from Mexico, advocates the constitution of a Nationalist Liberator Party; Haya defines APRA as the Latin American Kuo Min Tang [Guomindang]. A discussion takes place in which the doctrinaire socialist tendency adverse to any formula of demagogic and inconclusive populism and personalist caudillaje [warlordism] is definitively affirmed. The attached documents illustrate the terms and results of this debate, from which the Peruvian leftist movement enters a stage of definitive orientation. "Amauta,” in its No. 17, the one of its second anniversary, declares the process of "ideological definition" completed, categorically affirming itself to be Marxist. In November 1918, "Labor" appeared as an extension newspaper for the work of "Amauta,” to gradually become an organ of the union reorganization.

Anti-Imperialist Viewpoint

Position paper presented to the First Conference of the Latin American Communist Parties, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina on June 1-12 of 1929. Written in Lima on May 21, 1929.²

1.—To what extent can the situation of the Latin American republics be assimilated to that of the semi-colonial countries? The economic condition of these republics is undoubtedly semi-colonial, and as their capitalism grows and, consequently, imperialist penetration, this character of their economy has to be accentuated. But the national bourgeoisie, who see cooperation with imperialism as the best source of profit, feel that they are masters of political power enough not to be seriously concerned about national sovereignty. These bourgeoisie, in South America, which has not yet known, except Panama, Yankee military occupation, have no predisposition to admit the need to fight for the second independence, as the aprista propaganda naively assumed. The state, or rather the ruling class, does not set out for less than a somewhat broader and more certain degree of national autonomy. The revolution of Independence is relatively too close, its myths and symbols too vivid, in the consciousness of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. The illusion of national sovereignty is preserved in its main effects. To pretend that in this there is a feeling of revolutionary nationalism, similar to the one that in different conditions represents a factor of the anti-imperialist struggle, in the semi-colonial countries subjugated by imperialism in recent decades in Asia, would be a serious mistake.

Already in our discussion with the leaders of the aprismo, rejecting their tendency to propose to Latin América a Kuo Min Tang [Guomindang], as a way to avoid Europeanist imitation and to accommodate revolutionary action to an exact appreciation of our own reality, we held to the following thesis more than a year ago:

"The collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and even of many feudal elements, in the Chinese anti-imperialist struggle is explained by reasons of race, of national civilization that do not exist among us. The noble or bourgeois Chinese feels endearingly Chinese. The white man's contempt for their stratified and decrepit culture corresponds with the contempt and pride of their millenary tradition. Anti-imperialism in China can, therefore, rest on the nationalist sentiment and factor. In Indo-América the circumstances are not the same. The Creole aristocracy and bourgeoisie do not feel solidarity with the people because of the bond of a common history and culture. In Peru, the white aristocrat and the bourgeois despise the popular, the national. They feel, first of all, white. The petty bourgeois mestizo imitates this example. The Lima bourgeoisie fraternizes with the Yankee capitalists, and even with their simple employees, at the Country Club, at Tennis and on the streets. The Yankee marries the Creole lady without any problem of race or religion, and she feels no qualms of nationality or culture in choosing marriage with an individual of the invading race. Nor does the middle-class girl have this scruple. The "huachafita [hubbub]" that a Yankee employed by Grace or the Foundation can capture does this with the satisfaction of one who feels their social status rising. The nationalist factor, for these objective reasons that surely escapes none of you, is neither decisive nor fundamental in the anti-imperialist struggle in our midst. Only in countries like Argentina, where there is a large and wealthy bourgeoisie, proud of the degree of wealth and power in its homeland, and where the national personality has clearer and neater contours for these reasons than in these backwards countries, anti-imperialism can (perhaps) easily penetrate the bourgeois elements: but for reasons of capitalist expansion and growth and not for reasons of social justice and socialist doctrine as is our case."

The betrayal of the Chinese bourgeoisie, the bankruptcy of the Kuo Min Tang, were not yet known in all their magnitude. A capitalist consciousness, and not for reasons of social and doctrinaire justice, demonstrated how little one can trust, even in countries like China, in the revolutionary nationalist sentiment of the bourgeoisie.

As long as imperialist policy manages to "manéger" the sentiments and formalities of the national sovereignty of these states, as long as it is not forced to resort to armed intervention and military occupation, it will absolutely count on the collaboration of the bourgeoisie. Although indebted to the imperialist economy, these countries, or rather their bourgeoisie, considered themselves as masters of their destinies like Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and other "dependent" countries of Europe.

This factor of political psychology should not be neglected in the accurate estimation of the possibilities of anti-imperialist action in Latin America. Its relegation, its oblivion, has been one of the characteristics of aprista theorizing.

2.—The fundamental divergence between the elements that in Peru accepted APRA in principle—as a plan for a united front, never as a party and not even as an effective organization—and those that outside Peru later defined it as a Latin American Kuo Min Tang, consists in the fact that the former remain faithful to the revolutionary economic-social conception of anti-imperialism, while the latter explain their position in this way: "We are leftists (or socialists) because we are anti-imperialists." Anti-imperialism thus turns out to be elevated to the category of a program, of a political attitude, of a movement that is sufficient for itself and that leads, spontaneously, we do not know by virtue of which process, to socialism, to the social revolution. This concept leads to an exorbitant overestimation of the anti-imperialist movement, to the exaggeration of the myth of the struggle for the "second independence,” to the romantic notion that we are already living the days of a new emancipation. Hence the tendency to replace the anti-imperialist leagues with a political body. From APRA, initially conceived as a united front, as a people's alliance, as a bloc of the oppressed classes, it is passed to APRA defined as the Latin American Kuo Min Tang.

Anti-imperialism, for us, does not and cannot constitute, by itself, a political program, a mass movement fit for the conquest of power. Anti-imperialism, while permitting that it could mobilize the nationalist bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie on the side of the worker and peasant masses (we have already categorically denied this possibility), does not nullify the antagonism between the classes, does not abolish their difference of interests.

Neither the bourgeoisie, nor the petty bourgeoisie in power can carry out an anti-imperialist policy. We have the experience of Mexico, where the petty bourgeoisie has ended up making a pact with Yankee imperialism. A "nationalist" government may use, in its relations with the United States, a different language than the government of [Augusto B.] Leguía in Peru. This government is frankly, unabashedly pan-Americanist, Monroist; but any other bourgeois government would do practically the same as it did, in the matter of loans and concessions. The investments of foreign capital in Peru grow in close and direct relation with the economic development of the country, with the exploitation of its natural riches, with the population of its territory, with the increase of communication routes. What can the most demagogic petty bourgeoisie oppose to capitalist penetration? Nothing but words. Nothing but a temporary nationalist intoxication. The seizure of power by anti-imperialism, as a populist demagogic movement, if it were possible, would never represent the conquest of power by the proletarian masses, by socialism. The socialist revolution would find its most bitter and dangerous enemy—dangerous because of its confusion, because of demagoguery—in the petty bourgeoisie established in power, won through its voices of order.

Without neglecting the use of any element of anti-imperialist agitation, nor of any means of mobilizing the social sectors that may eventually participate in this struggle, our mission is to explain and demonstrate to the masses that only the socialist revolution will oppose the advance of imperialism with a definitive and true hurdle.

3.—These facts differentiate the situation of the South American countries from the situation of the Central American countries, where Yankee imperialism, resorting to armed intervention without any qualms, provokes a patriotic reaction that can easily win over a part of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie to anti-imperialism. The aprista propaganda, personally conducted by [Victor Raúl] Haya de la Torre, does not seem to have obtained greater results in any other part of América. His confusionist and messianic sermons, which, although they pretend to be situated on the plane of the economic struggle, actually appeal particularly to racial and sentimental factors, meet the necessary conditions to impress the intellectual petty bourgeoisie. The formation of class parties and powerful trade union organizations, with clear class consciousness, does not appear destined in those countries to the same immediate development as those in South America. In our countries the class factor is more decisive, it is more developed. There is no reason to resort to vague populist formulas behind which reactionary tendencies cannot fail to thrive. Currently, aprismo, as propaganda, is limited to Central America; in South America, as a result of the populist, caudillista [warlordist], petty-bourgeois deviation, which defined it as the Latin American Kuo Min Tang, it is in a stage of total liquidation. What the next Anti-imperialist Congress in Paris decides on this, the vote of which must decide on the unification of the anti-imperialist organizations and establish the distinction between anti-imperialist platforms and agitations and the tasks of the competition of the class parties and the trade union organizations, will put an absolute end to the question.

4.—Do the interests of imperialist capitalism necessarily and fatally coincide in our countries with the feudal and semi-feudal interests of the landlord class? Is the struggle against feudalism necessarily and completely identified with the anti-imperialist struggle? Certainly, imperialist capitalism uses the power of the feudal class, insofar as it considers it the politically dominant class. But, their economic interests are not the same. The petty bourgeoisie, not excepting the most demagogic, if it attenuates in practice its most markedly nationalist impulses, can reach the same close alliance with imperialist capitalism. Finance capital will feel more secure if power is in the hands of a larger social class, which, satisfying certain pressing demands and hindering the class orientation of the masses, is in a better position than the old and hated feudal class to defend the interests of capitalism, to be its custodian and usher. The creation of small property, the expropriation of large estates, the liquidation of feudal privileges are not immediately contrary to the interests of imperialism. On the contrary, to the extent that the backwardness of feudalism entered the development of a capitalist economy, this movement of liquidation of feudalism coincides with the demands of capitalist growth, promoted by the investments and the technicians of imperialism; that the large latifundias disappear, that in their place an agrarian economy is constituted based on what bourgeois demagogy calls the "democratization" of land ownership, that the old aristocracies are displaced by a bourgeoisie and a petty bourgeoisie more powerful and influential—and therefore more apt to guarantee social peace—none of this is contrary to the interests of imperialism. In Peru the legal regime, although timid in practice in the face of the interests of the landowners and landowners, who largely lend their support to it, has no problem resorting to demagogy in complaining against feudalism and its privileges, in thundering against the old oligarchies, in promoting a distribution of the soil that will make every agricultural peon a small owner. It is precisely from this demagogy that leguíismo derives its greatest strength. Leguíismo does not dare to touch large property. But the natural movement of capitalist development—irrigation works, exploitation of new mines, etc.—goes against the interests and privileges of feudalism. The landowners, as the arable areas grow, as new foci of work arise, lose their main strength: the absolute and unconditional disposition of the labor force. In Lambayeque, where irrigation works are currently being carried out, the capitalist activity of the technical commission that directs them, and which is chaired by an American expert, Engineer [Charles] Sutton, has quickly come into conflict with the conveniences of the large feudal landowners. These big landowners are mainly sugar farmers. The threat that the monopoly of land and water will be taken away from them, and with it the means of disposing of the working population at will, throws these people out of their minds and pushes them to an attitude that the government, although closely linked to many of its elements, describes as subversive or anti-governmentalist. Sutton has the characteristics of the American capitalist businessman. His mentality, his work, clash with the feudal spirit of the landowners. Sutton has established, for example, a system of the distribution of water which rests on the principle that the domain of it belongs to the State; the landowners considered the right over the waters annexed to their right over the land. According to their thesis, the waters were their; they were and are the absolute property of their estates.

5.—What about the petty bourgeoisie, whose role in the struggle against imperialism is so outsized, as it is said, for reasons of economic exploitation, necessarily opposed to imperialist penetration? The petty bourgeoisie is undoubtedly the social class most sensitive to the prestige of nationalist myths. But the economic fact that dominates the question is the following: in countries of Spanish pauperism, where the petty bourgeoisie, because of its deep-rooted prejudices of decency, resists proletarianization; where the latter itself, due to the poverty of wages, does not have the economic strength to transform it partly into a working class; where empleomania prevails, recourse to the small state post, the hunt for wages and the "decent" job; the establishment of large enterprises that, although they greatly exploit their national employees, always represent a better-paid job for this class, is received and considered favorably by middle-class people. The Yankee company represents a better salary, the possibility of promotion, emancipation from state employeeism, where there is no future but for speculators. This fact acts, with decisive force, on the conscience of the petty bourgeois, in search of or in enjoyment of a position. In these countries of Spanish pauperism, we repeat, the situation of the middle classes is not the one observed in the countries where these classes have undergone a period of free competition, of capitalist growth conducive to individual initiative and success, to the oppression of the big monopolies.

In conclusion, we are anti-imperialists because we are Marxists, because we are revolutionaries, because we oppose capitalism with socialism as an antagonistic system, called to succeed over it, because in the fight against the foreign imperialisms we fulfill our duties of solidarity with the revolutionary masses of Europe.

Ideological Theses: The Problem of Races in Latin América

Position paper presented to the First Conference of the Latin American Communist Parties, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina on June 1-12 of 1929. The thesis was discussed during the session of June 8th. Part I, “Statement of the Issue,” was written entirely by Mariátegui. Part I was previously presented as part of the contribution of the Workers’ General Confederation of Peru [Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú (CGTP)] to the Constituent Congress of the Latin American Syndical Confederation, held in Montevideo, Uruguay from May 18-26 of 1929. Part II, “The Importance of the Racial Problem,” and the Parts following it were written in collaboration with Doctor Hugo Pesce. Pesce presented the paper to the Latin American sections of the Comintern in the stead of Mariátegui, who was battling an illness that would cause his death a year later.³

I. Statement of the Issue

The problem of races in Latin América serves, in bourgeois intellectual speculation, among other things, for covering up or ignoring the real problems of the continent. Marxist criticism has the imperative obligation to put it in its real terms, detaching it from any casuistic or pedantic misrepresentation. Economically, socially and politically, the problem of races, like that of the land, is, at its base, that of the liquidation of feudality.

The Indigenous races in Latin América are in a resounding state of backwardness and ignorance, due to the servitude that has weighed on them since the Spanish conquest. The interest of the exploiting class—first the Spanish, later the Creole—has invariably tended, under various disguises, to explain the condition of the indigenous races with the argument of their inferiority or primitivism. With this, that class has done nothing but reproduce, in this internal national question, the reasoning of the white race in the question of the treatment and tutelage of colonial peoples.

The sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, who reduces race to only one of the several factors that determine the forms of development of a society, has judged the hypocrisy of the idea of race in the imperialist and enslaving policy of the white peoples in the following terms:

"Aristotle's theory of natural slavery is also that of modern civil peoples in justifying their conquests and their domination over peoples and those so-called by them as of inferior race. And just as Aristotle said that there exist men who are naturally slaves and others masters, that it is convenient for the former to serve and the latter to command, which is also just and profitable for everyone, the perennially modern peoples, who gratify themselves with the epithet of civilized, say there are peoples who must naturally dominate, and that these are they, and other peoples who no less naturally must obey, and are those who they want to exploit; it being just, convenient and beneficial to everyone for the former to command, the latter to serve. It follows from this that an Englishman, a German, a Frenchman, a Belgian, an Italian, if he fights and dies for the fatherland, is a hero; but an African, if he dares to defend his fatherland against those nations, is a vile rebel and a traitor. And the Europeans fulfill the sacrosanct duty of destroying Africans, as for example in the Congo, to teach them to be civilized. Then there is no lack of those who blessedly admire this work ‘of peace, of progress, of civility.’ It is necessary to add that, with truly admirable hypocrisy, the good civil peoples pretend to do good for the peoples subject to them, when they oppress and even destroy them; and they devote so much love to them that they want to ‘free’ them by force. Thus the English liberated the Indians from the ‘tyranny’ of the Raja, the Germans liberated the Africans from the ‘tyranny’ of the Black kings, the French liberated the inhabitants of Madagascar and, to make them more free, killed many while reducing the others to a state that only isn’t slavery in name; thus the Italians liberated the Arabs from the oppression of the Turks. All this is said seriously and there are even those who believe it. The cat catches the mouse and eats it, but it does not say that it is doing this for the mouse's sake, it does not proclaim the dogma of the equality of all animals and it does not hypocritically raise its eyes to heaven to adore the ‘common Father’ ("Trattato di Sociologia Generale,” Vol. II).”

The exploitation of Indigenous people in Latin América is also justified on the pretext that it serves the cultural and moral redemption of the oppressed races.

The colonization of Latin América by the white race has had, as is easy to prove, only retarding and depressing effects on the life of the Indigenous races. The natural evolution of these has been interrupted by the degrading oppression of the white and the mestizo. Peoples such as the Quechua and the Aztec, who had reached an advanced degree of social organization, retrograded under the colonial regime to the condition of dispersed agricultural tribes. What remains of the elements of civilization in the Indigenous communities of Peru is, above all, what survives of the ancient autochthonous organization. In feudal agriculture, the white civilization has not created pockets of urban life, it has not always even signified industrialization and machinery: in the mountain latifundio, with the exception of certain cattle ranches, the dominance of the white does not represent, even technologically, any progress with respect to the aboriginal culture.

We call the feudal exploitation of the Natives in the large agrarian property the Indigenous problem. The Indian, in 90 percent of the cases, is not a proletarian but a servant. Capitalism, as an economic and political system, reveals itself incapable, in Latin America, of building an economy emancipated from feudal marks. The prejudice of the inferiority of the Indigenous race allows it a maximum exploitation of the works of this race; and it is not willing to give up this advantage, from which it obtains so many benefits. In agriculture the establishment of wages and the adoption of the machine do not erase the feudal character of large property. They simply perfect the system of the exploitation of the land and of the peasant masses. A good part of our bourgeoisie and "gamonales" warmly supports the thesis of the inferiority of the Indian: the Indigenous problem is, in their opinion, an ethnic problem whose solution depends on the crossing of the Indigenous race with foreign superior races. The existence of an economy resting on feudal bases, however, stands in irreconcilable opposition to an immigration movement sufficient to produce this transformation by its crossing. The salaries that are paid on the haciendas of the coast and the sierra (when the salary is adopted in the latter) rule out the possibility of employing European immigrants in agriculture. The peasant immigrants would never agree to work under the conditions of the Indians; they could only be attracted by making them small proprietors. The Indian has never been able to be replaced in the agricultural tasks of the coastal haciendas except with the Black slave or the Chinese "coolie.” The colonization plans with European immigrants have, for now, as an exclusive field, the wooded region of the East, known by the name of Montaña. The thesis that the Indigenous problem is an ethnic problem does not even deserve to be discussed; but it is worth noting to what extent the solution it proposes is at odds with the interests and possibilities of the bourgeoisie and gamonalismo, within which it finds its adherents.

For Yankee or English imperialism, the economic value of these lands would be much lower if, with their natural riches, they did not possess a backward and miserable Indigenous population that, with the help of the national bourgeoisies, it is possible to exploit to the extreme. The history of the Peruvian sugar industry, currently in crisis, shows that its profits have rested, before everything, on the cheapness of labor, that is, on the misery of the braceros. Technically, this industry has at no time been in a position to compete with that of other countries on the world market. The distance from consumer markets taxed their export with high freight rates. But all these disadvantages were largely compensated by the cheapness of labor. The work of enslaved peasant masses, housed in repugnant "rancherías,” deprived of all freedom and rights, subjected to an overwhelming working day, placed the Peruvian sugar growers in a position to compete with those who, in other countries, cultivated their lands better or were protected by a protectionist tariff or were more advantageously located from the geographical viewpoint. Foreign capitalism uses the feudal class to exploit these peasant masses to its advantage. But sometimes, the inability of these landowners (heirs of medieval prejudices, arrogance and arbitrariness) to fill the role of the heads of capitalist enterprises is such that it is forced to take into its own hands the administration of large estates and power plants. This is what happens, particularly, in the sugar industry, monopolized almost completely by an English company and a German company in the Chicama Valley.

Race has, before everything, this importance in the question of imperialism. But it also has another role, which prevents assimilating the problem of the struggle for national independence in the countries of the Americas with a strong percentage of Indigenous population to the same problem in Asia or Africa. The feudal or bourgeois elements, in our countries, feel the same contempt for the Indians, as for the Negroes and mulatos, as that felt by the white imperialists. Racial sentiment acts in this ruling class in a way absolutely favorable to imperialist penetration. There is nothing in common between the lordly or bourgeois Creole and his colored peons. The solidarity of class is added to the solidarity of race or prejudice to make the national bourgeoisie docile instruments of Yankee or British imperialism. And this feeling extends to a large part of the middle classes, who imitate the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie in disdain for the colored plebs, although their own mestizaje [racial mixture] is too obvious.

The Black race, imported to Latin América by the colonizers to increase their power over the Native American race, passively filled its colonialist function. Herself exploited harshly, she reinforced the oppression of the Indigenous race by the Spanish conquistadors. A greater degree of mixing, familiarity and coexistence with them in the colonial cities made her an auxiliary of the white dominion, despite any flash of turbulent or restless humor. The Negro or mulato, in his services as craftsman or domestic, composed the plebs that the feudal caste always more or less unconditionally disposed of. Industry, the factory, the trade union, redeem the Negro from this domesticity. Erasing the racial boundary between the proletarians; class consciousness raises the Negro morally, historically. The syndicate means the definitive rupture of the servile habits that instead keep him in the condition of artisan or servant.

The Indian, by their faculties of assimilation to progress, to the technique of modern production, is absolutely not inferior to the mestizo. On the contrary, they are generally superior. The idea of their racial inferiority is too discredited to merit, at this time, the honors of a refutation. The prejudice of the white regarding the inferiority of the Indian, which has also been that of the Creole, does not rest on any fact worthy of being taken into so much in the scientific study of the question. The cocamania and alcoholism of the Indigenous race, greatly exaggerated by their commentators, are nothing but consequences, results of white oppression. Gamonalismo fosters and exploits these vices, which under a certain aspect feed on the impulses of the struggle against pain, particularly alive and operative in a subjugated people. The Indian in ancient times never drank anything but "chicha,” a fermented corn drink, while ever since the white introduced cane cultivation on the continent, they have drunk alcohol. The production of cane alcohol is one of the most "sanitized" and secure businesses of latifundismo, in whose hands is also the production of coca in the warm mountain valleys.

The Japanese experience has long since demonstrated the ease with which peoples of a race and tradition different from those of Europe appropriate Western science and adapt to the use of its production technique. In the mines and factories of the Peruvian Sierra, the Indian peasant confirms this experience.

And Marxist sociology has already done summary justice against racist ideas, all products of the imperialist spirit. [Nikolai] Bukharin writes in "La théorie du materialisme historique":

"The theory of the races is first of all contrary to the facts. The Black race is considered an ‘inferior’ race, incapable of development by its very nature. However, it is proven that the ancient representatives of this Black race, the Kushites, had created a very high civilization in the Indies (before the Hindus) and in Egypt. The yellow race, which is also not in great favor, has created in the person of the Chinese a culture that was infinitely higher than those of their white contemporaries; the whites were then nothing but children compared to the Chinese. We know very well now all that the ancient Greeks took from the Assyrian-Babylonians and the Egyptians. These facts are enough to prove that the explanations derived from the argument of races are useless. However, it can be said to us: Perhaps you are right; but can you say that an average Negro equals an average European in his qualities? One cannot answer this question with a way out like that of certain liberal professors: all men are equal; according to [Immanuel] Kant the human personality constitutes an end in itself; Jesus Christ taught that there were neither Hellenes nor Jews, etc. (see, for example, in [Vladimir] Khvostov: "it is very likely that the truth is on the side of the defenders of the equality of men." from "La Théorie du processus historique"). Well, to strive for the equality of men does not mean to recognize the equality of their qualities, and, on the other hand, it always tends towards what still exists, because another thing would be to force an open door. We do not try at the moment to know what it should have to be. What we are interested in is to know if there is a difference between the level of culture of whites and Blacks in general. Certainly, this difference exists. Currently the ‘whites’ are superior to the others. But what does this prove? It proves that currently the races have changed places. And this contradicts the theory of races. In fact, this theory reduces everything to the qualities of the races, to their ‘eternal nature.’ If it were so, this ‘nature’ would have made itself felt in all periods of history. What can be deduced from this? That ‘nature’ itself is constantly changing, in relation to the conditions of the existence of a given race. These conditions are determined by the relations between society and nature, i.e. by the state of the productive forces. Therefore, the theory of races does not absolutely explain the conditions of social evolution. It appears here clearly that its analysis must begin with the study of the movement of the productive forces” (“La theorie du materialisme historique" p. 129-130).

From the prejudice of the inferiority of the Indigenous race, one then begins to pass to the opposite extreme: that the creation of a new American culture will be essentially the work of the Indigenous racial forces. To subscribe to this thesis is to fall into the most naive and absurd mysticism. To the racism of those who despise the Indian, because they believe in the absolute and permanent superiority of the white race, it would be foolish and dangerous to oppose the racism of those who overestimate the Indian with messianic faith in its mission as a race in the American Renaissance.

The possibilities for the Indian to rise materially and intellectually depend on the change in socio-economic conditions. They are not determined by race but by economics and politics. The race, by itself, has not awakened and would not awaken to the understanding of an emancipatory idea. Above all, it would never acquire the power to impose and realize it. What ensures their emancipation is the dynamism of an economy and a culture that carry within it the germ of socialism. The Indian race was not defeated, in the war of conquest, by an ethnically or qualitatively superior race; but it was defeated by its technique that was far above the technique of the aborigines. Gunpowder, iron, cavalry, were not racial advantages; they were technical advantages. The Spaniards arrived in these distant regions because they had means of navigation that allowed them to cross the oceans. Navigation and trade later allowed them to exploit some of the natural resources of their colonies. Spanish feudalism overlapped with Indigenous agrarianism, partly respecting its communal forms: but this same adaptation created a rapturous order, an economic system whose factors of stagnation were the best guarantee of Indigenous serfdom. Capitalist industry breaks this equilibrium, interrupts this stagnation, creating new productive forces and new production relations. The proletariat is gradually growing at the expense of handicrafts and serfdom. The economic and social evolution of the nation enters an era of activity and contradictions that, at the ideological level, causes the emergence and development of socialist thought.

In all of this, the influence of the race factor is obviously negligible next to the influence of the economic factor—production, technics, science, etc. Without the material elements created by modern industry, or if one wishes capitalism, would there be a possibility that the plan, even the attempt, of a socialist state would be outlined based on the demands, on the emancipation of the Indigenous masses? The dynamism of this economy, of this regime, which makes all relations unstable, and which with classes opposes ideologies, is undoubtedly what makes the Indigenous resurrection feasible, a fact decided by the play of economic, political, cultural, ideological forces, not racial forces. The greatest charge against the ruling class of the republic is the one that can be made against it for not having been able to accelerate, with a more liberal, more bourgeois, more capitalist intelligence of its mission, the process of transforming the colonial economy into a capitalist economy. Feudalism opposes its stagnation and inertia against emancipation, to the Indigenous awakening; capitalism, with its conflicts, with its very instruments of exploitation, pushes the masses along the path of their demands, encourages them into a struggle in which they are materially and mentally trained to preside over a new order.

The problem of races is not common to all Latin American countries, nor does it present the same proportions and characters in all those who suffer from it. In some Latin American countries, it has a regional localization and does not appreciably influence the social and economic process. But in countries such as Peru and Bolivia, and to a lesser extent Ecuador, where the majority of the population is Indigenous, the claim of the Indian is the dominant popular and social claim.

In these countries the racial factor is bound up with the class factor in a way that a revolutionary policy cannot fail to take into account. The Quechua or Aymara Indian sees their oppressor in the "misti,” in the white. And in the mestizo, only class consciousness is capable of destroying the habit of contempt, of disgust for the Indian. It is not uncommon to find in the very elements of the city that proclaim themselves revolutionary, the prejudice of the inferiority of the Indian, and the resistance to recognize this prejudice as a simple inheritance or mental contagion of the environment.

The language barrier stands between the Indian peasant masses and the white or mestizo revolutionary workers' nuclei.

But, through Indian propagandists, the socialist doctrine, by the nature of its demands, will soon take root in the Indigenous masses. What has been lacking so far is the systematic preparation of these propagandists. The literate Indian, whom the city corrupts, regularly becomes an auxiliary of the exploiters of their race. But in the city, in the revolutionary working-class environment, the Indian is already beginning to assimilate the revolutionary idea, to appropriate it, to understand its value as an instrument of emancipation of this race, oppressed by the same class that exploits the worker in the factory, in whom they discover a brother of class.

The realism of a secure and precise socialist policy in the appreciation and use of the facts on which it has to act in these countries can and must turn the race factor into a revolutionary factor. The current state in these countries rests on the alliance of the feudal landlord class and the mercantile bourgeoisie. Once latifundista feudalism has been overthrown, urban capitalism will lack the strength to resist the growing working class. It is represented by a mediocre, weak bourgeoisie, educated in privilege, without a combative and organized spirit, that cedes more and more of its ascendancy to the fluctuating intellectual layer.

Socialist criticism has introduced into Peru the new approach to the Indigenous problem, with the inexorable denunciation and repudiation of all bourgeois or philanthropic tendencies to consider it as an administrative, legal, moral, religious or educational problem ("Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality” and The Indigenous Problem; by J. C. Mariátegui). The conclusions on the economic and political terms in which this question is to be posed in Peru, and by analogy in other Latin American countries with a large Indigenous population, and the proletarian struggle to solve it, are the following in our opinion:

1. The Socio-Economic Situation of the Indigenous Population of Peru

There is no recent census that allows one to know exactly the current proportion of the Indigenous population. It is generally accepted that the Indigenous race makes up four-fifths of a total population estimated at a minimum of 5,000,000. This assessment does not strictly take race into account, but rather the socio-economic condition of the masses that constitute these four fifths. There are provinces where the indigenous type shows an extensive mestizaje. But in these sectors the white blood has been completely assimilated by the Indigenous environment, and the life of the "cholos" produced by this mestizaje does not differ from the life of the Indians themselves.

No less than 90 percent of the Indigenous population, so considered, works in agriculture. The development of the mining industry has resulted, in recent times, in an increasing employment of Indigenous labor in mining. But a part of the mine workers are still farmers. They are Indians from "communities" who spend most of the year in the mines; but who, at the time of agricultural work, return to their small plots, insufficient for their subsistence.

A feudal or semi-feudal labour regime still subsists in agriculture to this day. In the haciendas of the sierra, the wage system, when it exists, is so incipient and deformed that it barely alters the features of the feudal regime. Ordinarily, the Indians get only a small part of the product for their work. (V. in "Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality", in the chapter on The Problem of the Land, the different work systems used in the Sierra). The soil is worked in a primitive way in nearly all the latifundio lands; and furthermore the latifundistas always reserve the best ones, their yields, in many cases, are lower than those of the "community" lands. In some regions the Indigenous "communities" keep a part of the lands, but in too small of a proportion for their needs, so that their members are obliged to work for the latifundistas. The owners of the latifundios, owners of huge expanses of land, largely uncultivated, have in many cases had no interest in stripping the "communities" of their traditional properties, because the community annexed to the hacienda has allowed it to have a secure and "owned" labor force. The value of a large estate is calculated not only by its territorial extension, but by its own Indigenous population. When a farm does not have this population, the owner, in collaboration with the authorities, appeals to the forced recruitment of laborers who are paid miserably. Indians of both sexes, with the exception of children, are obliged to provide free services to owners and their families, as well as to the authorities. Men, women and children take turns in the service of officials and authorities, not only in the farm-houses, but in the towns or cities in which they reside. The provision of free services has been legally prohibited several times; but in practice it still exists today, because no law can contradict the mechanics of a feudal order, if the structure of it remains intact. The road conscription law has come to accentuate the feudal physiognomy of the sierra in recent times. This law obliges all individuals to work six days a half-year in the opening or maintenance of roads, or to "redeem themselves” by paying out wages according to the fixed rate of each region. The Indians are, in many cases, obliged to work at a great distance from their residence; which obliges them to sacrifice a greater number of days. They are the object of innumerable plunderings by the authorities under the pretext of the road service, which has for the indigenous masses the character of the old colonial mitas. .

In mining, wages are controlled. In the Junin and La Libertad mines, where the two large mining companies that exploit copper have their headquarters, the ”Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation" and the "Northern,” respectively, workers earn wages of S/. 2.50 to S/. 3.00. These salaries are undoubtedly high compared to the implausibly small ones (twenty or thirty centavos) that are customary on the haciendas of the sierra. But companies take advantage of the backward condition of the Indigenous in all forms. The current social legislation is almost null and void in the mines, where the laws on work accidents and eight-hour days are not observed, nor are workers recognized to have the right of association. Any worker accused of attempting to organize workers, even if only for cultural or mutualist purposes, is immediately dismissed by the company. The businesses of the gallery work generally employ "contractors,” who, in order to carry out the work at the lowest cost, act as an instrument for the exploitation of the braceros. The "contractors,” however, usually live in a cramped condition, overwhelmed by the obligations of their advances that make them permanent debtors of the companies. When a work accident occurs, the companies, through their lawyers, abuse the misery and ignorance of the Indigenous, as well as their rights, compensating them arbitrarily and miserably. The Morococha disaster, which cost the lives of a few dozen workers, has recently come to reveal the insecurity in which the miners work. Due to the poor condition of some galleries and the execution of works that touched almost to the bottom of a lagoon, a sinking occurred that left many workers buried. The official number of the victims is 27; but there is well-founded news that the number is higher. The complaints of some newspapers influenced the situation this time so that the Company was more respectful of the law than usual, in terms of compensation to the bereaved of the victims. Recently, in order to avoid further discontent, the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation has granted its employees and workers a 10 percent increase, for the duration of the current copper price. In remote provinces such as Cotabambas, the situation of miners is much more backward and painful. The "gamonales" of the region are in charge of the forced recruitment of the Indians, and the salaries are miserable.

The industry has penetrated very sparsely in the Sierra. It is mainly represented by the textile factories of Cuzco, where the production of excellent wool qualities is the greatest factor of its development. The staff of these factories are Indigenous, except for the management and the bosses. The Indian has perfectly assimilated to mechanism. He is an attentive and sober operator, which the capitalist exploits skillfully. The feudal atmosphere of agriculture extends to these factories, where a certain patriarchalism, that uses the protégés and godchildren of the master as instruments of the subjugation of their comrades, opposes the formation of class consciousness.

In recent years, due to the stimulus of Peruvian wool prices in foreign markets, a process of the industrialization of agricultural farms in the South has begun. Multiple hacendados have introduced a modern technique, importing foreign production, which has improved the volume and quality of production, shaking off the yoke of the intermediary merchants, establishing mills and other small industrial plants on their farms. For the rest, in the Sierra, there are no further industrial plants and crops other than those destined to the production of sugar, chancaca and liquor for regional consumption.

With the exploitation in the coastal haciendas, where the population is insufficient, Indigenous mountain labor is used on a considerable scale. By means of "hitchers" the large sugar and cotton farms are provided with the necessary braceros for their agricultural work. These braceros earn daily wages, although always very tiny: superior to those that are used in the feudal Sierra. But, for a change, they suffer the consequences of strenuous work, in a hot climate, with insufficient nutrition for this work and endemic malaria in the coastal valleys. The highland peasant hardly escapes malaria, which forces him to return to his region, often tuberculous and incurable. Although agriculture on these farms is Industrialized (the land is worked with modern methods and machines and the products are processed in "refineries" or well equipped centers), its environment is not that of capitalism and wage labor in urban industry. The hacendado retains their feudal spirit and practice in the treatment of his workers. They do not recognize their rights that the labor legislation establishes. There is no law on the estate other than that of the owner. Not even a shadow of a workers' association is tolerated. Employees refuse entry to individuals who, for any reason, the owner or manager distrusts. During the colonial period, these farms were worked with Black slaves. After slavery was abolished, Chinese coolies were brought in. And the classic hacendado has not lost their habits of a slave trader or a feudal lord.

In the mountains or forests, agriculture is still very fledgling. The same "hitching" systems of braceros of the Sierra are employed; and to some extent the services of the savage tribes familiar with the whites are used. But Montaña has, in terms of the work regime, a much darker tradition. In the exploitation of rubber, when this product had a high price, the most barbaric and criminal procedures of slavery were applied. The crimes of Putumayo, sensationally denounced by the foreign press, constitute the blackest page in the history of the "rubber tappers.” It is alleged that much was exaggerated and fantasized about these crimes abroad, and although an attempt at blackmail interceded the origin of the scandal, the truth is perfectly documented by the investigations and testimonies of Peruvian justice officials such as Judge [Carlos A.] Valcárcel and prosecutor [Rómulo] Paredes who verified the slavish and bloodthirsty methods of the Araos house’s foremen. And not even three years ago; an exemplary official, Dr. Chuquihuanca Ayulo, a great defender of the Indigenous race—Indigenous himself—was exonerated from his functions as prosecutor of the Madre de Dios department as a result of his denunciation of the slave methods of the most powerful company in that region.

This summary description of the economic and social conditions of the Indigenous population of Peru establishes that next to a small number of mining wage earners and a still incipient agricultural wage there exists a regime of servitude; and that in the distant mountain regions, the aborigines are subjected, in frequent cases, to a system of slavery.

2. The Indigenous Struggle Against Gamonalismo

When one speaks of the attitude of the Indian towards their exploiters, one generally subscribes to the impression that, debased, depressed, the Indian is incapable of any struggle, of any resistance. The long history of Indigenous insurrections and riots, and of the massacres and repressions that followed, is enough on its own to disprove this impression. In most cases the uprisings of Indians have had as their origin a violence that has forced them to revolt incidentally against an authority or a landowner; but in other cases it has not had this character of local mutiny. The rebellion has followed a less incidental agitation and has spread to a more or less extensive region. To suppress it, considerable forces and real massacres have had to be resorted to. Thousands of rebellious Indians have spread fear in the "gamonales" of one or more provinces. One of the uprisings that assumed extraordinary proportions in recent times was the one led by Army Major Teodomiro Gutiérrez, a mestizo mountaineer with a strong percentage of Indigenous blood who called himself Rumi Maqui and presented himself as the redeemer of his race. Major Gutiérrez had been sent by the [Guillermo] Billinghurst government to the Puno department, where gamonalismo was extreme in its exactions, to carry out an investigation regarding Indigenous complaints and to inform the government. Gutiérrez then entered into intimate contact with the Indians. The overthrow of the Government Billinghurst made him think that all prospect of legal claims had disappeared and he launched into revolt. He was followed by several thousand Indians, but, as always, unarmed and defenseless before the troops, condemned to dispersion or death. This uprising was then followed by those of La Mar and Huancané in 1923 and other minor ones, all bloodily suppressed.

In 1921, an Indigenous congress was held under government auspices, attended by delegations from various groups of communities. The purpose of these congresses was to formulate the demands of the Indigenous race. The delegates uttered, in Quechua, energetic accusations against the "gamonales,” the authorities, the priests. A committee "Pro-Rights of the Tawantinsuyu Indigenous" was constituted. One congress was held per year until 1924, when the government persecuted the Indigenous revolutionary elements, intimidated the delegations, and distorted the spirit and object of the assembly. The congress of 1923, in which conclusions worrying for gamonalismo were voted on such as those calling for the separation of church and State and the repeal of the road conscription law, had revealed the danger of these conferences, in the ones where two groups of Indigenous communities from various regions came into contact and coordinated their action. That same year the Regional Indigenous Workers' Federation had been formed, which aimed to apply the principles and methods of anarcho-syndicalism to the organization of the Indians and was, therefore, destined not to go beyond an essay; but it still represented a frank revolutionary orientation of the Indigenous vanguard, two of the Indian leaders of this movement having been exiled, others intimidated, the Regional Indigenous Workers' Federation was soon reduced to just a name. And in 1927 the government declared the Tawantinsuyu Indigenous Rights Committee itself dissolved, on the pretext that its leaders were mere exploiters of the race whose defenders they claimed to be. This committee had never been more important than that attached to its participation in the Indigenous congresses and was composed of elements that lacked ideological and personal value, and which on not a few occasions had made protests of adherence to government policy, considering it pro-indigenista; but for some "gamonales" it was still an instrument of agitation, a residue of the Indigenous congresses. The Government, on the other hand, oriented its policy in the sense of associating pro-indigenista declarations, promises of land distribution, etc. with a resolute action against all agitation among the Indians by revolutionary groups or groups susceptible to revolutionary influence.

The penetration of socialist ideas and the expression of revolutionary demands among the Indigenous people have continued despite these vicissitudes. In 1927 a pro-Indigenous action group called "Grupo Resurgimiento" was constituted in Cuzco. It was formed by some intellectuals and artists, along with some Cuzco workers. This group published a manifesto denouncing the crimes of gamonalismo. (See Paragraph 6). Shortly after its constitution, one of its main leaders, Dr. Luis E. Valcárcel, was arrested in Arequipa. His imprisonment did not last but a few days; but, in the meantime, the Grupo Resurgimiento was definitively dissolved by the Cuzco authorities.

3. Conclusions on the Indigenous Problem and the Tasks It Imposes

The Indigenous problem is identified with the problem of land. The ignorance, backwardness and misery of the Indigenous people are not, we repeat, anything but the consequence of their servitude. The feudal latifundia maintains the absolute exploitation and domination of the Indigenous masses by the owner class. The struggle of the Indians against the "gamonales" has invariably been based on the defense of their lands against absorption and dispossession. There is, therefore, an instinctive and profound Indigenous claim: the claim of the land. To give an organized, systematic, defined character to this claim is the task that we have the duty to actively carry out.

The ”communities" that have demonstrated truly amazing conditions of resistance and persistence under the harshest oppression represent for Peru a natural factor for the socialization of the land. The Indian has deep-rooted habits of cooperation: Even when community property is transferred to individual appropriation, and not only in the Sierras but also on the Coast, where a greater mestizaje acts against Indigenous customs; cooperation is maintained; heavy labor is done in common. The "community" can be transformed into a cooperative, with minimal effort. The allocation of the lands of the latifundios to the "communities" is the solution that the agrarian problem demands in the Sierra. On the Coast, where property is equally omnipotent, but where communal ownership has disappeared, there is an inevitable tendency towards the individualization of land ownership. The "yanaconas,” a kind of hard-exploited sharecroppers, must be helped in their struggles against the proprietors. The natural claim of these "yanaconas" is that of the soil they work. Exploited directly by their owners in the haciendas by means of peonadas, recruited partly in the Sierra, and to which in this part there is no unity with the soil; the terms of the struggle are different. The demands that must be worked for are: freedom of organization, abolition of the "hitch,” increase in wages, the eight-hour day, compliance with labor protection laws. Only when the peon has conquered these things will they be on the way to their definitive emancipation.

It is very difficult for union propaganda to penetrate the farms. Every hacienda is, on the Coast, as in the Sierra; a fief. No association that does not accept the patronage and protection of the owners and the administration is tolerated; and in this case only sports or recreational associations are found. But with the increase in automobile traffic, a gap is gradually opening in the barriers that previously closed the hacienda to all propaganda. Hence the importance that the organization and active mobilization of transport workers has in the development of the class movement in Peru.

When the peonadas of the haciendas know that they have the fraternal solidarity of the trade unions and understand the value of them, the will to struggle that they lack today and of which they have given demonstration of more than once will easily awaken in them. The nuclei of adherents to trade union work that are gradually constituted on the estates will have the function of explaining to the masses their rights, of defending their interests, of in fact representing them in any claim and of taking the first opportunity to shape their organization, within what circumstances allow.

For the progressive ideological education of the Indigenous masses, the working class vanguard has at its disposal those militant elements of the Indian race who, in the mines or urban centers, particularly in the latter, come into contact with the trade union and political movement. Their principles are assimilated and they learn how to play a role in the emancipation of their race. It is common for workers from the Indigenous environment to return temporarily or permanently to it. Their language allows them to effectively fulfill a mission as instructors of their race and class brothers. The peasant Indians will only truly understand individuals from their midst, who speak their own language to them. They will always distrust the white, the mestizo; and the white and the mestizo, in turn, will with great difficulty impose on each other the hard work of reaching the Indigenous milieu and bringing class propaganda to it.

The methods of self-education, the regular reading of the organs of the trade union and revolutionary movement of Latin America, their pamphlets, etc., their correspondence with comrades in urban centers, these will be the means for these elements to successfully fulfill their educational mission.

The coordination of Indigenous communities by regions, the relief of those who suffer persecution by the justice system or the police (the "gamonales" prosecute the indigenous people who resist them or those who want to dispossess them for common crimes), the defense of community property, the organization of small libraries and study centers, these are activities in which the Indigenous adherents to our movement must always have central and leading action, with the double object of giving serious directives to the class orientation and education of Indigenous people and avoiding the influence of disorienting elements (anarchists, demagogues, reformists, etc.).

In Peru, the organization and education of the mining proletariat is one of the questions that immediately arise with that of the agricultural proletariat. The mining centers, the main one of which (La Oroya) is on its way to becoming the most important profit center in South America, constitute points where class propaganda can advantageously operate. Apart from representing in themselves important proletarian concentrations with the conditions tied to wages, they bring the Indigenous braceros closer to industrial workers, workers from the cities, who bring their class spirit and principles to these centers. The Indigenous people of the mines, in large part, continue to be peasants, so that the adherent that is won among them is an element also won in the peasant class.

The labor, in all its aspects, will be difficult; but its progress will depend fundamentally on the capacity of the elements that carry it out and on their precise and concrete appreciation of the objective conditions of the Indigenous question. The problem is not racial, but social and economic; but race has its role in it and in the means of dealing with it. For example, because only militants who come from the Indigenous milieu can, by mentality and language, achieve an effective and immediate ascendancy over their comrades.

An Indigenous revolutionary consciousness will perhaps take time to form; but once the Indian has made the socialist idea his own, it will serve him with a discipline, a tenacity and a strength, in which few proletarians of other ways will be able to surpass it.

The safe and precise realism of a revolutionary policy, in the appreciation and use of the facts on which it is necessary to act in these countries in which the Indigenous or Black population has important proportions and role, can and should turn the race factor into a revolutionary factor. It is essential to give the movement of the Indigenous or Black, agricultural and industrial proletariat a clear character of class struggle. “It is necessary to give the enslaved Indigenous or Black populations”—a comrade from Brazil said—”the certainty that only a government of workers and peasants of all the races inhabiting the territory will truly emancipate them, since only it will be able to extinguish the regime of the latifundia and the capitalist industrial regime and definitively free them from imperialist oppression."

II. The Importance of the Racial Problem

The problem of races is not common to all of the countries of Latin América, nor does it present itself with the same proportions and characters in all those who suffer from it.

While in some countries it has a reduced importance or a regional localization that leads to it having no appreciable influence on the social-economic process, in other countries the racial problem is posed in a strict form.

Let us look at the geographical distribution and the main characteristics of the three major racial groups in Latin America.

1. Inka and Aztec Indians

The "Inka" Indians occupy, almost without having a character of continuity and forming quite compact conglomerates, a vast territory that extends into several states.

These Indians, mostly "serranos,” principally occupy Andean regions in the "sierra" or on the large plateaus, extending into the mountains of Peru, of Ecuador, of Northern Chile, in Bolivia, in some territories of Northern Argentina.

The economy of these Indians is predominantly linked to the land they have cultivated since time immemorial.

They live in a cold climate and are prolific: the intense destruction of the colonial era and the extensive mestizaje that had greatly reduced their number have not been able to prevent a considerable increase in the population from occurring again, which continues today despite the exploitation to which they are subjected.

They speak their own languages, rich and nuanced, related to each other, the main ones being Quechua and Aymara.

Their civilization had remarkable epochs of splendor. Today it retains important residues of pictorial, plastic and musical aptitudes.

These Indians, mainly in Peru and Bolivia, where they constitute 60 to 70 percent of the population, in Ecuador and Chile, where they also form important masses, are at the base of capitalist production and exploitation and therefore give rise to a problem of fundamental importance.

In Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and part of Bolivia, where they are linked to agriculture and livestock, their claims are primarily agrarian in nature.

In Bolivia and some regions of the Peruvian sierras, where they are mainly exploited in the mines, they have the right to the conquest of proletarian demands.

In these countries the racial factor is bound up with the class factor in a way that a revolutionary policy cannot fail to take into account. The Quechua or Aymara Indian sees their oppressor in the "misti,” in the white. And in the mestizo, only class consciousness is capable of destroying the habit of contempt, of disgust for the Indian. It is not uncommon to find in the very elements of the city that proclaim themselves revolutionary, the prejudice of the inferiority of the Indian, and the resistance to recognize this prejudice as a simple inheritance or mental contagion of the environment.

The language barrier stands between the Indian peasant masses and the white or mestizo revolutionary workers' nuclei. The soldier is, in general, an Indian and a part of the intimacy that the exploiting class has in the army, which supports the social struggle, born from the fact that they know the Indian soldier as more or less indifferent to the call of class solidarity when they are used against the mestizo and urban crowds.

But, through Indian propagandists, the socialist doctrine, by the nature of its demands, will soon take root in the Indigenous masses.

A bourgeois pseudo-pacifist writer, Luis Guilaine, who considers the Indian stratum in Latin América as the masses from which the impulse that can overthrow Yankee imperialism will be born, adds: "Bolshevist propaganda, present everywhere, has more or less reached them and they are accessible to it by an atavistic propensity, since the communist principle has mainly been the basis of the social organization of the empire of the Incas." (L'Amerique Latine et I'imperialisme americain, p. 206, Paris, 1928). The intellectual myopia that characterizes the French nationalists when they try to impose their own imperialism on the North American seems to dissipate. It is enough to allow them to spot such an obvious fact. Would it be possible for us to stop recognizing the role that Indian racial factors have to represent in the next revolutionary stage of Latin America?

What has been lacking so far is the systematic preparation of Indian propagandists. The literary Indian, whom the city corrupts, regularly becomes an auxiliary of the exploiters of his race. But in the city, in the revolutionary working-class environment, the Indian is already beginning to assimilate the revolutionary idea, to understand its value as an instrument of emancipation from this strange oppression by the same class that exploits the worker in the factory, in which they discover a class brother.

The Indians of the "Aztec Group" occupy a large part of Mexico and Guatemala, where they constitute a large majority of the population. Their historical evolution and their high civilization are quite well known. Their economy and characteristics, as well as their social importance and their current role, are analogous to those of the "Inka" Indians. Their importance in a "purely racial" sense is denied by the delegate of Mexico, who affirms that "there is no Indian problem in Mexico (except in the State of Yucatán), but there is the class struggle."

2. The Indigenous (Jungle-Dwelling)

These Indigenous people, who are often called "savages,” are ethnically very different from the previous ones.

They are distributed almost exclusively in the forest and river regions of the continent, with a warm climate, particularly in some Central American states, in Colombia (Chibchas) and Venezuela (Muyscas). In the Guyanas, in the Amazon region of Peru called "Montaña" (Campa), in Brazil and Paraguay (Guarani), in Argentina and Uruguay (Charrúas).

Their spread within the immense jungle regions in small groups and their nomadism, linked to the needs of hunting and fishing and almost ignoring agriculture, are characters clearly opposite to those of the Inka Indians.

Their ancient civilization probably did not reach anything but a very low level. Their numerous languages and dialects; generally poor in abstract terms, their tendency to the numerical destruction of the race; they are also opposite characters to those of the Inka Indians.

Their identity with respect to the population is, in general, of reduced importance; their contacts with "civilization" and their role in the economic structure of each country very scarce if not non-existent. Where Iberian colonization has not destroyed them directly, the race in its pure state has suffered decisive reductions through intense mestizaje, as especially happened in Colombia where 2 percent of pure Indigenous and 89 percent of mestizos are counted; as happened in Brazil, where the "jungle-dwelling" indigenous people make up just over 1 percent next to 60 percent of "mamelucos" or mestizos.

In Brazil, the current terms of the Indian problem and its importance have been evaluated and explained by the delegate of that country in the following terms:

“In Brazil the Indian did not endure the slavery to which the colonizers wanted to subject them and did not adapt to agricultural work. They would have always lived by hunting and fishing. Their knowledge of agriculture was very limited. It was impossible for them to fix themselves on a single point of the earth from one day to the next, since nomadism had been the predominant feature of their character until then. The chiefs of the ‘bandeiras’ understood this and in the seventeenth century began to preferentially attack the ‘reducciones’ of the Jesuits, which were composed of tame Indians, acclimatized to some extent to the works of mining and agriculture under the influence of different methods such as religious suggestion. But the struggles were bloody for everyone else and the crossing of the ‘sertones’ with the Indians recruited to the task was very difficult and painful, which almost always led to the waste of most of the human cargo dragged by the ‘bandeirantes.’ Those who arrived alive to the Seaboard soon fell under the weight of the arduous work to which they were subjected. Those who escaped from the claws of the conquistador went into the distant forests.

"There are no credible exact, or even approximate, estimates of the Indigenous population of Brazil, around the time of the discovery. It can be affirmed, however, without fear of making a mistake, that at least two thirds of the population has disappeared up to our days, either because of the crossing with the whites, or because of the killing that the colonizers did among Natives in their eagerness to conquer slaves and open roads for the mines of the interior. According to an optimistic assessment by General Cándido Rondón, Head of the Indian Protection Service, there are currently about 500,000 jungle-dwellers (Indians) in the country. These people live in small tribes, completely separated from the coastal civilization and penetrate more and more into the forest, as the latifundistas are extending their domains to the lands occupied by them.

"There is an official institution that theoretically protects the Indigenous. But it is in vain that one tries to find in the central division some information on practical works carried out by that Institute. It has not published a single concrete report on its activities to this day.

"In Brazil, the few thousand Indians who preserve their customs and traditions live isolated from the urban proletariat, their contact with the proletarian vanguard and their consequent incorporation into the revolutionary movement of the proletarian masses being impossible for now."

I think that for many of the Latin American countries that include a few groups of "jungle-dwelling" Indians, the problem presents approximately the same aspect as in Brazil.

For other countries, in which the "jungle-dwelling" indigenous people constitute a higher percentage of the population, and, before anything else, are incorporated into that process of the national economy which is generally agricultural, as in Paraguay, in the Guyanas and others, the problem presents the same aspects offered by the Aztec Indians in Mexico or the Inka Indians in Peru, and in the other countries or regions of the same group, aspects already pointed out in their special entity and features.

3. The Negroes

In addition to the two Indigenous races, the Black race is found in notable proportions in Latin América.

The countries where it predominates are: Cuba, the Antillean group, and Brazil.

While the majority of Indians are linked to agriculture, Negroes in general are found working preferentially in industries. In any case, they are at the basis of production and exploitation.

The Negro, imported by the colonizers, has no roots in the land like the Indian, has almost no traditions of their own, they lacks their own language, speaking Spanish or Portuguese or French or English.

In Cuba, Negroes constitute an extremely high percentage of the population, as well as in many of the Antillean countries. They are often distributed in all social classes, and they also integrate, although in small numbers, into the exploiting classes; this is observed most acutely in Haiti and Santo Domingo, whose the bourgeoisie are almost exclusively Black, especially in the first country.

In Brazil, pure Black people are relatively scarce, but Black mulato people, who make up 30 percent of the population, are numerous along the coast and are particularly concentrated in some regions, such as in Pará. The "light" mulatos are also very numerous. Here is what the fellow delegate of Brazil refers to in this regard:

"A large part of the population of the Brazilian coast is composed of mulatos; the type of pure Black is very rare today. The crossing is becoming more intense every day, producing lighter and lighter types since Black immigrants have not come to the country for about half a century.

"The preconception against the Negro assumes small proportions. Within the proletariat, it does not exist. In the bourgeoisie, in certain layers of the petty bourgeoisie, this evil allows itself to be perceived. It is translated into the fact that, in these spheres, the influence of the Indian on the customs of the country is viewed with sympathy, and the influence of the Negro with some ill will. Such an attitude, meanwhile, does not come from a real hatred of races, as in the United States, but from the fact that, abroad, they often refer to the country by calling it, with an obvious pejorative intention, "the country of the Blacks." This comes to excite the patriotic vanity of the petty bourgeois, who protests, striving to prove the opposite. But it is common to see that same petty bourgeois, on national holidays, extolling the value of their African ancestors.

"It should also be noted that there are countless Negroes and mulatos occupying prominent positions within the national bourgeoisie.

"It follows from there that it will not be possible to talk strictly, in Brazil, about racial preconceptions. It is clear that the Party must fight it in any circumstances whenever it appears. But a permanent and systematic action is necessary because for it to be very rarely manifested.

"The situation of Negroes in Brazil is not of such a nature as to demand that our Party organize campaigns of protest for Negroes, with special words of order."

In general, for countries that are influenced by large masses of Negroes, their situation is an important social and economic factor. In their role as the exploited, they are never isolated, but stand side by side with the exploited of other colors. The demands of their class are put forward for everyone.

4. Conclusions

In Latin América, which has more than 100 million inhabitants, the majority of the population is made up of Indigenous people and Negroes. But what means more: What is the social and economic category of them? The Indigenous and Negroes are in their great majority included in the class of exploited workers and peasants, and form almost the totality of it.

This last circumstance would be enough to bring into full light all the importance of races in Latin America, as a revolutionary factor. But there are other particularities that are imposed before our consideration.

The aforementioned races are present in all States and constitute an immense layer that, with its dual common character, racial and exploited, is widespread throughout Latin América, regardless of the artificial borders maintained by the national bourgeoisie and the imperialists.

Negroes, who are related to each other by race; Indians, who are related to each other by race, culture, language, and attachment to the common land; the Indians and Negroes, who are in common and equally the object of the most intense exploitation, constitute, for these multiple reasons, immense masses that, united to the exploited proletarians and peasants, mestizos and whites, will of necessity have to revolt in a revolutionary way against their meager national bourgeoisie and monstrously parasitic imperialism in order to sweep them away, cement class consciousness, and establish the government of workers' and peasants in Latin América.

III. Bourgeois and Imperialist Politics Against the Races

For Yankee or English imperialism, the economic value of these lands would be much lower if, with their natural riches, they did not possess a backward and miserable Indigenous population that, with the help of the national bourgeoisies, it is possible to exploit to the extreme. The history of the Peruvian sugar industry, currently in crisis, shows that its profits have rested, before everything, on the cheapness of labor, that is, on the misery of the braceros. Technically, this industry has at no time been in a position to compete with that of other countries on the world market. The distance from consumer markets taxed their export with high freight rates. But all these disadvantages were largely compensated by the cheapness of labor. The work of enslaved peasant masses, housed in repugnant "rancherías,” deprived of all freedom and rights, subjected to an overwhelming working day, placed the Peruvian sugar growers in a position to compete with those who, in other countries, cultivated their lands better or were protected by a protectionist tariff or were more advantageously located from the geographical viewpoint. Foreign capitalism uses the feudal class to exploit these peasant masses to its advantage. But sometimes, the inability of these landowners (heirs of medieval prejudices, arrogance and arbitrariness) to fill the role of the heads of capitalist enterprises is such that it is forced to take into its own hands the administration of large estates and power plants. This is what happens, particularly, in the sugar industry, monopolized almost completely by an English company and a German company in the Chicama Valley.

Based on the concept of the "inferiority" of race, in order to carry out intense exploitation, the colonial powers have sought a series of legal and religious pretexts to legitimize their attitude.

Too well known is the thesis of Pope Alexander VI, who, as the representative of God on earth, divided the power of Latin America between the Catholic monarchs of Spain and Portugal on the condition that they set themselves up as guardians of the Indigenous race. These Natives, as "idolaters,” could not enjoy the same rights as the loyal subjects of the Catholic majesties. On the other hand, it was not possible to sanction "de jure" the anti-Christian formula of slavery. Then the hypocritical formula of tutelage emerged with one of its economic expressions, among the most representative, being the "encomienda.” The most apt Spaniards were elevated into "encomenderos" of different territories that included a large Indian population. Their mission was twofold. In the spiritual order, the Indians had to convert to the Catholic faith by any means; the means of persuasion were provided whenever necessary by the doctrinaires. In the temporal order, the task was even simpler; each "encomienda" had to provide the Crown with a corresponding tribute, without any prejudice to the encomendero also taking out for themselves the amount they thought appropriate. Later we will see the specific characteristics of the "encomiendas" and the process by which they constituted a legal method of plundering the lands of the Indigenous, laying the foundations of the colonial and semi-feudal property that subsists to the present.

It is necessary to emphasize here, in this same process, an important factor in the subjugation of the aboriginal populations to the economic and political power of the invaders. The invading race that appeared protected by an almost invulnerable armor, mounted in a wonderful way on unknown animals, horses, fighting with weapons that threw fire; this race which overthrew and then quickly subdued, in a few tens of years, an immense empire like the Inka or numerous tribes like that of the Brazilian jungle-dwelling Indians; the Uruguayans, Paraguayans, logically had a great influence to impose their gods and their cult on the ruins of the Inka temples, on the defeated myths of the religion of the sun and the anthropomorphic fetishism of the other Indians.

The invaders did not neglect the loss of prestige that weapons had taken from the cross and quickly proceeded to chain consciences at the same time as enslaving bodies. This greatly facilitated economic subjugation, the primary object of the Catholic subjects. In this process it is interesting to note the results obtained by the invaders. Where the blind and brutal domination only managed to decimate the aborigines in a way that was alarming for production, it lowered their yield to the point of requiring the importation of the African race, especially for the work of the mines, a race that, on the other hand, turned out to be unfit for that work. Where the penetration was carried out in a more astute way and encouraged by the determined protection of the Crown, which looked to take over consciences, the religious congregations managed to establish flourishing plantations even in the heart of the jungles, where, where the Indian did not stop being fully exploited for the benefit of the invaders, the production rose and the amount of profits increased more and more. The historical example of the Jesuit colonies in Brazil, Paraguay, as well as the colonies that other religious congregations established in the jungles of Peru, is quite demonstrative in this regard. Nowadays, the religious influence does not cease to be an important factor of the subjugation of the Indians under the civil and religious "authorities," with the difference that the clumsiness of these, having elevated them today to the field of brazen theft, corporal punishment, the most shameful trades, has managed to give rise to a feeling of repulsion for the priest, as well as for the judge, a feeling that becomes more evident every day and that has erupted more than once into bloody revolts.

A large sector of the clerics, allied to the national bourgeoisies, continues to take up arms, based on the religious fanaticism that several centuries of propaganda have managed to establish in the simple spirits of the Indians. Only a class consciousness, only the revolutionary "myth" with its deep economic roots, and not an unfruitful anti-clerical propaganda, will succeed in replacing the artificial myths imposed by the ”civilization" of the invaders and maintained by the bourgeois classes, heirs of their power.

In Latin América, imperialism is beginning its turn at an attempt to give a solid and broader basis to its nefarious power in this regard as well. The Methodist and Anglican missions and the moralizing sports centers of the Y.M.C.A. have managed to penetrate even into the mountains of Peru and Bolivia, but with absolutely contemptible success and without the possibility of extending their action. A bitter enemy that this penetration encounters is the village priest himself, who sees his spiritual influence and the consequent pecuniary returns as being dangerously diminished. There were cases when the village priest managed to get the support of the civil authorities and banish the “anti-Catholic” Protestant mission for good.

Other factors linked to the Social character of the exploited have been employed by colonialism and been continued by a large section of the bourgeoisie and imperialism. Contempt for the Indian and the Negro has been inoculated by the white, by any means, into the mestizo. It is not uncommon to notice this same attitude in mestizos whose Indian origin is too obvious and whose percentage of white blood becomes difficult to recognize. There have been attempts to foment this contempt within the working class itself, which grows considerably as the mestizo occupies higher degrees with respect to the lowest layers of the exploited proletariat, without therefore diminishing the deep barrier that separates them from the white boss.

For the same purposes, feudalism and the bourgeoisie have fostered among Negroes a feeling of deep animosity towards the Indians, facilitated, as we have already said, by the role that the Negro came to fill in the countries with a small Indian population; as an artisan, as a domestic, as a watchman, always at the side of the bosses, enjoying a certain familiarity that conferred on them the "right" to despise everything that their boss despised.

Another opportunity that the exploiters have never rejected is that of creating rivalries between groups of the same race. American imperialism gives us a very harsh example of this tactic, in the rivalry it managed to create between the Negroes living in Cuba and those who come there periodically from Haiti and Jamaica to work, impelled by the harsh conditions of their country of origin.

Neither have some intellectual sectors that are identified with the bourgeoisie stopped looking for more weapons to denigrate the Indians, even denying the veracity of the most salient characters of their historical process.

They are not lacking in any of those who dedicated themselves to writing pseudo-historical works, to try to prove that one cannot talk about community structures among the Inka Indians. These people, of course, profusely contradicted by the vast majority of similar bourgeois sectors, tried to close their eyes to the existence of thousands of communities in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, in which millions of Indians continue to live after the collapse of the public order within which they were framed, after three centuries of colonization, after a century of bourgeois and ecclesiastical feudal plunder. The task of pulverizing these absurd theses, filled in large part by bourgeois criticism itself, will be taken over by the nascent Marxist critique of this problem, of whose historical studies we already have luminous signs in Latin América.

Later I will detail the main characteristics that primitive collectivism had and has in the Inka Indians.

But it is my duty to point out here that one of the most urgent tasks of our Parties is the immediate revision of all the current historical data accumulated by feudal and bourgeois criticism, elaborated for their benefit by the statistical departments of the capitalist states, and offered to our consideration with all its deformation preventing us from considering exactly the values that the primitive aboriginal races encompass.

Only the knowledge of concrete reality, acquired through the work and elaboration of all the Communist Parties, can give us a solid basis for laying the conditions on the existing, allowing us to draw the directives according to the real. Our historical research is useful, but most of all we must control the current and sentimental situation, sound out the orientation of its collective thinking, evaluate its forces of expansion and resistance; all this, we know, is conditioned by the historical background, on the one hand, but, mainly, by its current economic conditions. These are what we need to know in all their details. The life of the Indian, the conditions of their exploitation, the possibilities of struggle on their part, the most practical means for the penetration of the vanguard of the proletariat among them, the most suitable way in which they can constitute their organization; these are the fundamental points, the knowledge of which we must pursue in order to correctly fill the historical task that each Party must develop.

The class struggle, a primordial reality recognized by our parties, undoubtedly takes on special characteristics when the vast majority of the exploited consists of one race, and the exploiters belong almost exclusively to another.

I have tried to demonstrate some of the essentially racial problems that capitalism and imperialism exacerbate, and also some of the weaknesses owing to the cultural backwardness of the races that capitalism exploits for its exclusive benefit.

When the most severe economic oppression weighs on the shoulders of a producing class and the contempt and hatred to which it is the victim as a race is added, all that is needed is a simple and clear understanding of the situation, so that this mass rises up as one Man and throws off all forms of exploitation.

IV. Indigenous Political-Economic Development from the Inka Era to the Present

The Communities

Before examining what the social economic status of the indigenous populations is, and that form which is the most characterized institution of their civilization, the "communities,” I think it useful to draw a brief sketch of their formation and their historical development and to try to investigate the causes of their subsistence and persistence within and against antagonistic social economic structures.

Before the vast organization of the Inka Empire, there existed a regime of agrarian communism among the aboriginal populations that occupied the immense territory.

Ever since the primitive tribes passed from nomadism to fixed residence on the land, giving rise to agriculture, a regime of collective ownership and usufruct of the land was constituted, organized by groups that constituted the first "communities,” establishing the custom of dividing the land according to the needs of the tillage.

The Inka empire of the Quechuas, as it was progressively formed and extended, either through war or peaceful annexations, found this existing economic order everywhere. Only administrative and political needs, tending to strengthen the power of central control in the vast empire, impelled the government of the Inkas to specially organize that communist regime that had been functioning since a very distant time throughout the territory of the empire.

The economic and political power of the state, in the Inka empire, resided in the [Sapa] Inka, because his government regime was centralist. All the riches, such as mines, lands, livestock, belonged to him. Private property was unknown. The lands were divided into three parts: one to the Sun, one to the Inka and one to the People. All the lands were cultivated by the people. They preferentially attended to the lands of the Sun. Then that of the elderly, widows, orphans and soldiers who were on active duty. Then that of the people who cultivated their own land, and who had the obligation to help their neighbor.

After that, the lands of the Inka were cultivated. Just as the land was distributed, all kinds of riches, mines, livestock, etc. were distributed. It should be noted that the Inka state did not know money. A very wise disposition determined that any deficit in the Inka's contributions could be covered with what the granary of the Sun enclosed. The government's economy produced surpluses. These were destined to the warehouses, which in the time of scarcity, were provided to those individuals who had been plunged into misery by their illnesses or by their misfortunes. Thus, it is established that a large part of the Inka's income later returned, for one reason or another, to the hands of the people. The lands were divided into lots that were delivered annually: for each family member of both sexes an equal portion was added. No one could alienate the lands or increase their possessions. When someone died, the earth returned to the Inka. These distributions were made every year, in order to always keep in mind, in the sight of the people, that those lands belonged only to the Inka, who could deliver them to the people in the indicated way.

There are those who argue that before the empire, in some regions an insistence to persist in the attribution of the same lot of land to the same family was manifesting in the periodic distributions, a tendency whose spread was prevented by the theocratic authority of the Inka, but which managed to disappear during the empire, even leading to the division of the lot among the children at the death of the father, without this signifying individual property (since the right to freely make a will and the faculty of alienation are lacking), but yes, family property, germ of individual property: according to Ecuadorian historians, some Indians from that territory had already arrived at this at the time of the conquest.

Likewise, some writers want to emphasize the character of nascent feudalism, parallel to the tendency towards individual property, that would have had the power of the military chiefs, curacas or petty kings, caciques, etc., who were not part of the community, who owned the land in family ownership and whose development towards individual property was only restrained by the authority of the Inka.

They also wanted to see "the announcement of great quarrels and conflicts in the war of succession between Huáscar and Atahualpa: the struggle or opposition of the monarchy with the nobility.”

All these observations, some of which, those referring to feudalism, were also applied to Mexico, would tend to draw a picture of the Indo-American historical evolution, very analogous to that corresponding to the same period of European and Asian history. On the other hand, they would also affirm that the natural evolution of Indigenous collectivism would have led, through two great parallel phenomena—the transformation of collective property into family and individual property, the formation of feudalism—to institutions analogous to the burghers and municipalities, had it not been for the influence of the theocratic Empire that prevented that free development, unlike analogous powers in Europe. The conquest had precipitated and accelerated the crystallization of the fief, passed over to the Spanish, and of the residual Indigenous private property within the community or within the family in coexisting forms.

Obviously, this whole series of hypotheses is suggestive; there are facts that seem to confirm them. But how can we extend these conclusions to all Inka communities? How can we explain, within the violent process of conquest, the formation of "reducciones,” the vast and profound changes made by the "composiciones," the persistence of the communities? What more propitious moment did these then have to evolve along the indicated direction than the decrees of the new republics, all tending directly to the formation of private property? Truly, I do not think it can be said that the character of primitive collectivism has been to evolve to private property, when the communities, which have continued to be attacked and fragmented everywhere, by another century of bourgeois republican exploitation, subsist in such large numbers and show their vigorous and eternally young body at the dawn of a new collectivist stage.

But let us return to follow the development of the communities that formed the substratum of the Inka community at the end of the fifteenth century.

The Arrival of the Spaniards

They break the political and economic harmony of the Empire. The colonial regime that was established later disorganized and annihilated the Inka agrarian economy, replacing it by an economy of higher yields. Under an Indigenous aristocracy, the Natives made up a nation of 10 million men, with an efficient and organic state whose action reached all areas of their sovereignty. Under the colonial regime, the Natives were reduced to a scattered and anarchic mass of 1 million men fallen into servitude and “feudalism.” The ambition of the conquerors and especially of the Crown for precious metal sent large masses accustomed to the tasks of agriculture to the deadly work of the mines so quickly that in three centuries they were reduced to a tenth.

During this period, the Indigenous communities underwent a modification, leaving government, which previously resided in the Inka into the trust of to notable members of each "ayllu.” The "Laws of the Indies" protected Indigenous property and recognized its communist organization. Despite this, the encomiendas, the mitas, the ponguaje were established. The encomenderos who received lands, Indians, etc., with the obligation to instruct them eventually became large semi-feudal proprietors.

The advent of the Republic does not substantially transform the country's economy. A simple change of classes takes place: the courtly government of the Spanish nobility was succeeded by the government of the landowners, encomenderos and Creole professionals. The mestizo aristocracy wields power, without any economic concept, without any political vision. For the four million Indians, the emancipation movement of the metropolis goes unnoticed. Their state of servitude has persisted since the conquest up until our days, despite the laws dictated to "protect” them which could not be applied as long as the economic structure of the feudal-landowner survival persists in our social mechanism.

The new ruling class, avid and thirsty for wealth, is dedicated to enlarging its large estates at the expense of the lands belonging to the Indigenous community, to the point of making them disappear in some departments. Having been robbed of the land that all the families belonging to the ayllu owned in common, they have been forced to look for work, dedicating themselves to the yanaconazgo (landowners) and becoming peons of the landowners who violently dispossessed them.

From the ancient ayllu there is only one or another physiognomic, ethnic, customs, religious and social practices, which with some small variations, are found in countless communities that previously constituted the small kingdom or "curacazgo.” But if from this organization, which among us has been the intermediary political institution between the ayllu and the empire, all its coercive and solidarity elements have disappeared, the ayllu or community, on the other hand, in some underdeveloped areas, has preserved its natural idiosyncracy, its character of an almost familiar institution, within which the main constituent factors continued to subsist after the Conquest.

The communities rest on the basis of the common ownership of the lands on which they live and cultivate and preserve, made by covenants and by ties of consanguinity that unite the various families that make up the ayllu among themselves. The lands of crops and pastures belonging to the community form the heritage of that community. They live in it, they maintain themselves from its cultivation, and the continuous care that its members put into it so that it is not taken away by powerful neighbors or other communities serve as a sufficient incentive for them to always be organized, constituting a single body. For today, the communal lands belong to the entire ayllu, that is, to the set of families that make up the community. Some are distributed and others continue common real estate, the administration of which is carried out by the agents of the community. Each family owns a piece of land that it cultivates, but that it cannot alienate because it does not belong to it: it belongs to the community.

In general, there are two kinds of land, some that are cultivated in common for some "saint" or community and those that are cultivated by each family separately.

But it is not only in the existence of the communities that the collectivist spirit of the Indigenous is revealed. The secular custom of the "Minka" subsists in the territories of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile; the work that a landowner, even if they are not a communal farmer, cannot do due to a lack of helpers, illness or other similar reason, is carried out thanks to the cooperation and help of the encompassed landowners, who in turn receive part of the harvest product, when its quantity allows it, or other manual help at a later time.

This spirit of cooperation that exists outside the communities manifests itself in special ways in Bolivia where mutual agreements to cultivate the total of the lands in common and to share the product in common are established between poor Indigenous small owners. Another form of cooperation that is also observed in Bolivia is the one that takes place between a small Indian owner in the surroundings of the city, with nothing but his land, and another Indian who lives in the city, as a small artisan or relatively well-paid wage earner; the latter does not have time, but they can somehow get the missing seeds and farming tools; the former provides the land and their personal labor; at the time of harvest the product is distributed according to the proportion established in advance.

These and other forms of extra-community cooperation go together with the existence of numerous communities, (in Peru about 1,500 communities with 30 million hectares, cultivated by approximately 1,500,000 community members; in Bolivia an approximately equal number of communities, with fewer community members, many of them being uprooted to the land for mines), communities that in some regions take in an agricultural income higher than that of the latifundios, testify to the vitality of primitive Inka collectivism, capable tomorrow of multiplying its forces, applied to industrialized large estates and with the necessary means of cultivation.

The Sixth Congress of the Communist International has once again pointed out the possibility for economically rudimentary peoples to directly begin a collective economic organization without suffering the long evolution that other peoples have gone through. We believe that among the “backward” populations, none meets the conditions so favorable for primitive agrarian communism like the Inka indigenous population, subsisting in concrete structures and in a deep collectivist spirit, to be transformed, under the hegemony of the proletarian class, into one of the most solid bases of the collectivist society advocated by Marxist communism.

V. The Socio-Economic Situation of the Indigenous Population of Peru

[See Part I, “Statement of the Issue,” Section 1, “The Socio-Economic Situation of the Indigenous Population of Peru.”]

VI. The Socio-Economic Situation of the Indigenous Population of Other Countries

For the Indigenous populations of the "Inka" or “Aztec" type, who live in large masses in the states I have indicated, and who form an integral and basic part of the economy of the respective nations who it influences, the economic role and the social condition in all its aspects are analogous to those that we have already seen exist in Peru.

There are, however, some particular observations about each country, requiring specific differences proper to them.

In Bolivia, whose percentage of the Indigenous population is almost equal to that of Peru, the Indigenous suffer not only the same exploitation, but also the same contempt on the part of the white and the mestizo (there are almost no Negroes in Bolivia—0.2 percent—to show solidarity with the white in this). This causes, as in Peru the same feeling on the part of the Indigenous towards everything that is not of their race and distrust for the white, even stronger if some character related to governmental or administrative power is noticed. But in Bolivia it is important to point out a fundamental character, of an economic order, which reveals a difference with respect to Peru. While in Peru, the number of mining Indians does not reach 2 percent of the total number of Indigenous people, in Bolivia, it is much higher, and they constitute a strong Indian proletariat, which will not only come to feel their class consciousness more strongly, but will allow them at present to carry out a much more efficient propaganda than among the other agricultural Indians.

In Chile, there are also more favorable conditions in this regard than in Peru. In Ecuador, the Indigenous mass is essentially agricultural. Also in the northern provinces of Argentina.

In Mexico, contrary to the countries mentioned above, there is no animosity towards the Indian. The percentage of pure Indians is so strong and the mestizaje so especially extensive that the Indian racial characteristics are national characteristics. There were presidents of the Republic, generals and statesmen of pure Indigenous stock, and the Indian does not encounter the spiritual or gross resistances that weigh on him in other nations.

In Guatemala and in some other Central American states, the racial problem approaches, for the same reasons, closer to the conditions of Mexico than to that of the nations of the Inka group. In those states, as in Mexico, there is no Indigenous problem in the “racial” sense of the word.

Let us now examine the economic and social conditions of the indigenous populations of the “jungle-dwelling" type. Once again, I stress that the fact that the "civilized" sector of Latin América does not have extensive knowledge about this does not in any way justify our indifference towards these populations: on the contrary, it raises the duty to study their conditions sufficiently to be able to formulate, with some success, the objective findings that allow us to formulate an appropriate tactic.

I have indicated in broad strokes the regions that they inhabit and the specific characters that profoundly differentiate them, at present, from the Inkas or Aztec groups.

It is interesting to note a fact. These races, in some important cases, are the ones that have contributed the most to the ethnic formation of the nations that have been formed in their territory, having given rise to a very intense mestizaje with the invaders, reducing themselves to extremely scarce groups and at the same time segregated from the coastline and its economy and culture. This is observed in the most manifest way in Colombia, where they represent less than 2 percent to about 86 percent of mestizos; in Brazil, where they reach just over 1 percent compared to 66 percent of "mamelucos" (not including mulatos). All this biological cooperation has earned them almost the complete absorption of their race and the reduction of the "pure" nuclei to the state of "savages.”

In other nations, their contacts with the invaders have been brief and violent. The jungle-dwelling Indians, for the most part, have retreated to the interior and have contributed only tiny amounts to mestizaje, as happened in Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and other states.

In both cases, the result for the "pure" groups has been veriable. In economy and culture they have been isolated, limited to a smaller and smaller territory every day, by the invaders or by the mestizos themselves, since the conquest, with incessant rhythm, until our days.

The economy of these Indians, in most cases nomads, is limited to hunting and fishing. But there are groups of Indians, those who have been able to find suitable land for cultivation, who are dedicated to agriculture and feel the absence of land very strongly, especially when nowadays land is still being taken from them in the areas bordering the coastal "civilization.”

It is logical to affirm that their natural demands consist in demanding the return of all the land that they can cultivate.

Other tribes of Indians, in the river basin of the Amazon, have been reached bt the starving claw of the white or mestizo exploiters and enslaved for the work of collecting wood or extracting the "rubber.” I have mentioned, speaking of the Montaña region of Peru, the ignominious abuses committed there, which reached beyond the limits of the forests and had a worldwide resonance, without managing to produce the punishment of the guilty, but, on the contrary, the punishment of the defenders of the Indian.

These cases, in one form or another, persist in Peru, in Colombia, in Brazil, in the Guyannas and the day will come when the proletariat will help these Indians to definitively redeem themselves from the regime of slavery.

VII. The Political-Economic Situation of the Black Population

When talking about the importance of the Black race on the continent, I have pointed out its geographical distribution and its main characteristics.

The economic role of the Negro is generally predominantly linked to industry and within it, mainly to the industry of processing agricultural products. In Cuba, the number of Black agricultural wage earners does not differ much from that of industrial wage earners.

The Negro, in Latin America, does not suffer the same contempt as in the United States, where there is always resistance on the part of the other races to establish contact with them, and their condition does not translate into dispositions or, customs of isolation limiting their freedom under this concept. Nor does the prejudice about the inferiority or unfitness of certain occupations take root, since everyday observation proves that the Negro can fill all social functions very well as long as they are not prevented from preparing for them. In Brazil, the preconception about the Negro almost does not exist, because its percentage of mulatos reaches about 40 percent.

From the observation of its economic role and its social conditions, it follows the fact that in Latin America, in general, the Negro problem does not assume an accentuated racial aspect.

Their economic role as a producer, next to the mestizo and white worker, makes them assimilate themselves into the exploitation that they suffer and into the struggle they wages for their emancipation from capitalist oppression.

VIII. The Socio-Economic Situation of Mestizos and Mulatos

Although mestizos and mulatos do not constitute a race properly speaking, I think they incorporate part of the ethnic problem, because of the racial differences that separate them from Negroes, Indians and whites.

Mestizaje, in a broad sense of the word, has different aspects in each country.

There are countries, such as in Colombia, where it has been carried out between two races, the white and the Indigenous, almost producing the disappearance of the latter and leading to the formation of an intense and extensive mestizaje (about 85 percent of the population).

In other countries, such as Brazil, there was also an intense mestizaje of the invaders with the aborigines that led to the almost disappearance of the "pure” Indigenous race, but a third factor also intervened in it, the imported Black race. It is extremely difficult in Brazil to divide mestizos into the three categories that have been claimed: Indian-white, Black-white, Indian-Black. The truth is that these types have been fused repeatedly, giving rise to a range of racial types ranging from the pure Negro, through the mulato and mameluco, to the white.

However, the Negro and pure white are in an accentuated minority compared to the mulato population and that of the "mamelucos", which is somewhat outnumbered, between whom it is possible to establish a manifest difference.

In Peru, the mestizaje between two races also encompasses a scale of individuals quite rich in mestizo types. In Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, mestizaje is much less accentuated.

The mestizo and mulato population in Latin América is divided into all social strata, always leaving, however, the predominance within the exploiting class to the white race.

After the Indian and the Negro, they occupy a rather important position within the proletarian class. They have absolutely no social demands of their own, except to free themselves from the contempt that the white man heaps on them. Their economic demands are mixed up with those of the class to which they belong.

In the nations where they constitute almost the entire population, their existence as a large proletariat and peasantry provides them with an important role in the revolutionary struggle.

IX. The Character of the Struggle Sustained by the Indigenous and the Negroes

The struggle that the indigenous people have waged against the invaders since the days of the conquest has had several phases linked to their economic conditions, the systems of exploitation and the political strength of the oppressive powers. It has had its periods of remission and its periods of violent intensification.

The Mexican Indians, Mayans, Toltecs, Yaquis, etc., have always been distinguished by their spirit of combativeness and have constituted elements of insecurity for all the governments that oppressed them or dispensed with them. Everyone knows the very important role they played in the Mexican Revolution, managing, with their triumph, to obtain, although in a limited way, some lands and the satisfaction of some peculiar claims of theirs. Even today, apart from enjoying the possibilities of expansion, with their important unfulfilled aspirations they constitute a considerable revolutionary factor.

In Peru, the Indians, according to a 1920 statistic, have carried out 98 percent of their surveys for reasons related to the land.

I will go on to detail the Indian movement against "gamonalismo" or feudalism in Peru, which may give a fairly approximate idea of the struggle that they are waging in Bolivia, Ecuador and other countries.

When one speaks of the attitude of the Indian towards their exploiters, one generally subscribes to the impression that, debased, depressed, the Indian is incapable of any struggle, of any resistance. The long history of Indigenous insurrections and riots, and of the massacres and repressions that followed, is enough on its own to disprove this impression. In most cases the uprisings of Indians have had as their origin a violence that has forced them to revolt incidentally against an authority or a landowner; but in other cases it has not had this character of local mutiny. The rebellion has followed a less incidental agitation and has spread to a more or less extensive region. To suppress it, considerable forces and real massacres have had to be resorted to. Thousands of rebellious Indians have spread fear in the "gamonales" of one or more provinces. One of the uprisings that assumed extraordinary proportions in recent times was the one led by Army Major Teodomiro Gutiérrez, a mestizo mountaineer with a strong percentage of Indigenous blood who called himself Rumi Maqui and presented himself as the redeemer of his race. Major Gutiérrez had been sent by the [Guillermo] Billinghurst government to the Puno department, where gamonalismo was extreme in its exactions, to carry out an investigation regarding Indigenous complaints and to inform the government. Gutiérrez then entered into intimate contact with the Indians. The overthrow of the Government Billinghurst made him think that all prospect of legal claims had disappeared and he launched into revolt. He was followed by several thousand Indians, but, as always, unarmed and defenseless before the troops, condemned to dispersion or death. This uprising was then followed by those of La Mar and Huancané in 1923 and other minor ones, all bloodily suppressed.

In 1921, an Indigenous congress was held under government auspices, attended by delegations from various groups of communities. The purpose of these congresses was to formulate the demands of the Indigenous race. The delegates uttered, in Quechua, energetic accusations against the "gamonales,” the authorities, the priests. A committee "Pro-Rights of the Tawantinsuyu Indigenous" was constituted. One congress was held per year until 1924, when the government persecuted the Indigenous revolutionary elements, intimidated the delegations, and distorted the spirit and object of the assembly. The congress of 1923, in which conclusions worrying for gamonalismo were voted on such as those calling for the separation of church and State and the repeal of the road conscription law, had revealed the danger of these conferences, in the ones where two groups of Indigenous communities from various regions came into contact and coordinated their action. That same year the Regional Indigenous Workers' Federation had been formed, which aimed to apply the principles and methods of anarcho-syndicalism to the organization of the Indians and was, therefore, destined not to go beyond an essay; but it still represented a frank revolutionary orientation of the Indigenous vanguard, two of the Indian leaders of this movement having been exiled, others intimidated, the Regional Indigenous Workers' Federation was soon reduced to just a name. And in 1927 the government declared the Tawantinsuyu Indigenous Rights Committee itself dissolved, on the pretext that its leaders were mere exploiters of the race whose defenders they claimed to be. This committee had never been more important than that attached to its participation in the Indigenous congresses and was composed of elements that lacked ideological and personal value, and which on not a few occasions had made protests of adherence to government policy, considering it pro-indigenista; but for some "gamonales" it was still an instrument of agitation, a residue of the Indigenous congresses. The Government, on the other hand, oriented its policy in the sense of associating pro-indigenista declarations, promises of land distribution, etc. with a resolute action against all agitation among the Indians by revolutionary groups or groups susceptible to revolutionary influence.

In 1927 a pro-Indigenous action group called "Grupo Resurgimiento" was constituted in Cuzco. It was formed by some intellectuals and artists, along with some Cuzco workers. This group published a manifesto denouncing the crimes of gamonalismo. (See Paragraph 6). Shortly after its constitution, one of its main leaders, Dr. Luis E. Valcárcel, was arrested in Arequipa. His imprisonment did not last but a few days; but, in the meantime, the Grupo Resurgimiento was definitively dissolved by the Cuzco authorities.

The struggles carried out by Negroes in Latin América have never had and never will have the character of a national struggle. Rarely have their demands included any of a purely racial nature.

Their struggles, in Brazil, in Cuba, in the Antilles, have been carried out to suppress corporal punishment, to raise their living conditions, to improve their daily wage. In recent times they have also fought to defend their organizational rights.

In the regions of Brazil where Fordism has abandoned its philanthropic mask, to reveal, once again, its character of ferocious exploitation in a different way, the Black proletarians fight alongside the other proletarians to defend themselves against the brutal oppression that levels workers of different colors under its slaveholding yoke.

In every country, Negroes have to fight for their proletarian demands more strongly than against the prejudices and abuses to which they are victims as Negroes.

This is the character that comes forth with greater and greater precision every day in the struggle carried out by Black workers against capitalist and imperialist oppression.

X. Fundamental Conclusions and Tasks

The above report has tried to point out in broad strokes the general aspects presented by the "problem of races" in Latin America, the importance that races have in demography and production and their main racial characteristics, the economic and social conditions of the Indigenous or Black race, and outline their historical and economic development and their relations with imperialism; the mestizos or mulatos, the political level that these races have reached in the character of the struggles that they sustained; as well as the demands that they have pursued in the course of them.

With all of these elements, although outlined in a succinct and incomplete way, it is possible to try to face the solutions that the problem of races requires, and to establish, consequently, the tasks that concern the Communist Parties of Latin America.

This problem has an undeniable social aspect, since the vast majority of the productive class is made up of Indians or Negroes; on the other hand, this character is very distorted, whenever one refers to the Black race. They have lost contact with their traditional civilization and their own language; adopting the civilization and the language of the exploiter entirely; this race also has no deep historical roots in the land where it lives, having been imported from Africa. As far as the Indian race is concerned, the social character retains its physiognomy to a greater extent, due to the tradition linked to the land, the survival of an important part of the structure and of its civilization, the preservation of the language and of many customs and traditions, although not of the religion.

The purely racial aspect of the problem, as far as both races are concerned, is also strongly diminished by the proportion of mestizaje and by the presence of these same mestizo layers and even of white elements, in union with the Indian and Black elements, within the proletarian class, within the class of the poor peasants, within the classes that are at the base of production and are the most exploited.

I have pointed out all the cases in which the Indian and the Negro who happen to fill a more privileged function in production completely lose contact with their race, and tend to increasingly fill an exploitative function; I have pointed out all the cases in which the Indian; without raising their economic level, only by the fact of having forcibly abandoned their homeland (by being expelled from their lands or by military service) and having come into contact with the white civilization, is disconnected forever from their own race and struggles to erase all the traits that bind them to it, and tend to be mixed up with the white or mestizo; first in habits and customs, and later, if possible, in the exploitation of their racial brothers.

All the above-mentioned factors, if they do not completely do away with the "racial" character of the problem of the situation of the majority of oppressed Negroes or Indians, show us that at present the main aspect of the question is "economic and social" and it tends to be so increasingly every day, within the fundamentally exploited class of the elements of all races. The struggles developed by the Indians and Negroes confirm this point of view.

Having reached this point, the findings clearly spell out the fundamentally economic and social character of the problem of races in Latin América and the duty that all Communist Parties have to prevent the self-interested deviations that the bourgeoisies intend to imprint on the solution of this problem, orienting it in an exclusively racial sense, just as they have the duty to accentuate the socio-economic character of the struggles of the exploited Indigenous or Black masses, destroying racial prejudices, giving these same masses a clear class consciousness, orienting them to their concrete and revolutionary demands, moving them away from utopian solutions and demonstrating their identity with the mestizo and white proletarians as elements of the same productive and exploited class.

This clarifies, once again, revolutionary thinking in the face of the campaigns for the supposed current policy of the Indians and blacks.

The Communist International fought, as far as the Black race is concerned, these campaigns that tended to the formation of a "Black Zionism” in Latin América.

In the same way, the constitution of the Indian race into an autonomous state would not lead to the dictatorship of the Indian proletariat at the present moment, much less to the formation of a classless Indian state, as someone has claimed to affirm, but to the constitution of a bourgeois Indian state with all the internal and external contradictions of bourgeois states.

Only the revolutionary class movement of the exploited Indigenous masses will be able to give a real meaning to the liberation of their race from exploitation, one favoring the possibilities of their political self-determination.

The Indigenous problem is identified with the problem of land. The ignorance, backwardness and misery of the Indigenous people are not, we repeat, anything but the consequence of their servitude. The feudal latifundia maintains the absolute exploitation and domination of the Indigenous masses by the owner class. The struggle of the Indians against the "gamonales" has invariably been based on the defense of their lands against absorption and dispossession. There is, therefore, an instinctive and profound Indigenous claim: the claim of the land. To give an organized, systematic, defined character to this claim is the task that we have the duty to actively carry out.

The ”communities" that have demonstrated truly amazing conditions of resistance and persistence under the harshest oppression represent for Peru a natural factor for the socialization of the land. The Indian has deep-rooted habits of cooperation: Even when community property is transferred to individual appropriation, and not only in the Sierras but also on the Coast, where a greater mestizaje acts against Indigenous customs; cooperation is maintained; heavy labor is done in common. The "community" can be transformed into a cooperative, with minimal effort. The allocation of the lands of the latifundios to the "communities" is the solution that the agrarian problem demands in the Sierra. On the Coast, where property is equally omnipotent, but where communal ownership has disappeared, there is an inevitable tendency towards the individualization of land ownership. The "yanaconas,” a kind of hard-exploited sharecroppers, must be helped in their struggles against the proprietors. The natural claim of these "yanaconas" is that of the soil they work. Exploited directly by their owners in the haciendas by means of peonadas, recruited partly in the Sierra, and to which in this part there is no unity with the soil; the terms of the struggle are different. The demands that must be worked for are: freedom of organization, abolition of the "hitch,” increase in wages, the eight-hour day, compliance with labor protection laws. Only when the peon has conquered these things will they be on the way to their definitive emancipation.

It is very difficult for union propaganda to penetrate the farms. Every hacienda is, on the Coast, as in the Sierra; a fief. No association that does not accept the patronage and protection of the owners and the administration is tolerated; and in this case only sports or recreational associations are found. But with the increase in automobile traffic, a gap is gradually opening in the barriers that previously closed the hacienda to all propaganda. Hence the importance that the organization and active mobilization of transport workers has in the development of the class movement in Peru.

When the peonadas of the haciendas know that they have the fraternal solidarity of the trade unions and understand the value of them, the will to struggle that they lack today and of which they have given demonstration of more than once will easily awaken in them. The nuclei of adherents to trade union work that are gradually constituted on the estates will have the function of explaining to the masses their rights, of defending their interests, of in fact representing them in any claim and of taking the first opportunity to shape their organization, within what circumstances allow.

For the progressive ideological education of the Indigenous masses, the working class vanguard has at its disposal those militant elements of the Indian race who, in the mines or urban centers, particularly in the latter, come into contact with the trade union and political movement. Their principles are assimilated and they learn how to play a role in the emancipation of their race. It is common for workers from the Indigenous environment to return temporarily or permanently to it. Their language allows them to effectively fulfill a mission as instructors of their race and class brothers. The peasant Indians will only truly understand individuals from their midst, who speak their own language to them. They will always distrust the white, the mestizo; and the white and the mestizo, in turn, will with great difficulty impose on each other the hard work of reaching the Indigenous milieu and bringing class propaganda to it.

The methods of self-education, the regular reading of the organs of the trade union and revolutionary movement of Latin America, their pamphlets, etc., their correspondence with comrades in urban centers, these will be the means for these elements to successfully fulfill their educational mission.

The coordination of Indigenous communities by regions, the relief of those who suffer persecution by the justice system or the police (the "gamonales" prosecute the indigenous people who resist them or those who want to dispossess them for common crimes), the defense of community property, the organization of small libraries and study centers, these are activities in which the Indigenous adherents to our movement must always have central and leading action, with the double object of giving serious directives to the class orientation and education of Indigenous people and avoiding the influence of disorienting elements (anarchists, demagogues, reformists, etc.).

In Peru, the organization and education of the mining proletariat is one of the questions that immediately arise with that of the agricultural proletariat. The mining centers, the main one of which (La Oroya) is on its way to becoming the most important profit center in South America, constitute points where class propaganda can advantageously operate. Apart from representing in themselves important proletarian concentrations with the conditions tied to wages, they bring the Indigenous braceros closer to industrial workers, workers from the cities, who bring their class spirit and principles to these centers. The Indigenous people of the mines, in large part, continue to be peasants, so that the adherent that is won among them is an element also won in the peasant class.

The labor, in all its aspects, will be difficult; but its progress will depend fundamentally on the capacity of the elements that carry it out and on their precise and concrete appreciation of the objective conditions of the Indigenous question. The problem is not racial, but social and economic; but race has its role in it and in the means of dealing with it. For example, because only militants who come from the Indigenous milieu can, by mentality and language, achieve an effective and immediate ascendancy over their comrades.

An Indigenous revolutionary consciousness will perhaps take time to form; but once the Indian has made the socialist idea his own, it will serve him with a discipline, a tenacity and a strength, in which few proletarians of other ways will be able to surpass it.

In the same way, it can be affirmed that as the Black proletariat acquires class consciousness, through the sustained struggle to achieve their natural demands as an exploited class, realizing them through revolutionary action in union with the proletariat of other races, to the same extent the Black workers will have effectively done away with the factors that oppress them into "inferior" races.

Facing the problem in this way and thus posing its solution, I believe that the races in Latin América will have an extremely important role in the revolutionary movement that, headed by the proletariat, will come to constitute the workers' and peasants' government throughout Latin América, cooperating with the Russian proletariat in the work of the emancipation of the proletariat from world bourgeois oppression.

Based on these conclusions, I believe that the demands of the exploited Indian or Black workers can and should be put forward in the following form or in an analogous one elaborated by the Congress:

I.—The Fight for the Land by Those who Work It, Those Expropriated Without Compensation.

a) The latifundios of the primitive type: fragmentation and occupation by the neighboring communities and by the agricultural workers who cultivate them, possibly organized in a communal or collective way.

b) The Industrialized type of latifundias: occupation by the agricultural workers who work them, organized in a collective form.

c) The plot owners who cultivate their lands will remain in possession of them.

II.—The Formation of Specific Agencies:

Trade unions, peasant leagues, workers' and peasants' blocs, link these same above racial prejudices with urban organizations.

The struggle of the proletariat and the Indigenous or Black peasantry for the same demands that constitute the objective of their class brothers belonging to other races.

The arming of workers and peasants to conquer and defend their demands.

III.—The Repeal of Onerous Laws for the Indian or the Negro: The Feudal Slave Systems, Road Conscription, Military Conscription, etc.

Only the struggle of the Indians, proletarians and peasants, in close alliance with the mestizo and white proletariat against the feudal and capitalist regime, can allow the free development of the Indian’s racial characteristics (and especially of the institutions of collectivist tendencies) and will be able to create the connection between the Indians of different countries beyond the current borders that divide ancient racial entities, leading them to the political autonomy of their race.

1. José Carlos Mariátegui, “Antecedentes y desarrollo de la acción clasista” (Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú, May 1929), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/1929/may/antece.htm.

2. José Carlos Mariátegui, “Punto de vista anti-imperialista” (Primera Conferencia Comunista Latinoamericana, June 1929), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/oc/ideologia_y_politica/paginas/punto%20de%20vista.htm#3a.

3. José Carlos Mariátegui and Hugo Pesce, “Tesis ideológicas: El problema de las razas en la américa latina” (Secretariado Sudamericano de la Internacional Comunista, June 1929), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/oc/ideologia_y_politica/paginas/tesis%20ideologicas.htm#1a.