The years 1909–1930, the eleven-year presidency of the businessman-turned-politician Augusto B. Leguía, mark a formative period of Peruvian modernity, witnessing the continuity of a process of reconstruction and the founding of an intellectual and cultural tradition after a humbling defeat during the War of the Pacific (1879–1883). But these years were also fraught with conflict generated by long-standing divisions and new rivalries. A postwar generation of intellectuals and artists, led by José Carlos Mariátegui and galvanized by left-wing thinking and an avant-garde aesthetic, sought representation in the fields of politics and the arts, and participation in the process of reconstruction initiated by a Positivist oligarchy. New political and artistic conceptions raised their awareness of the fractured sense of nationhood in Peru and the need for a new project of nation-formation centered on a common political and cultural consciousness. They also gave rise to divergent political and artistic practices and projects. Amongst these, Mariátegui’s Indigenist-Marxist politics and Modernist-inspired poetics were pivotal in revitalizing, conciliating and channeling those of his cohorts and challengers. Comprising six full-length chapters, a comprehensive Introduction and Conclusion, this monograph is extensive in scale and scope. It provides fresh readings of key writings of Mariátegui, one of Latin America’s most important and revolutionary political, cultural and aesthetic theorists, through the lens of his poetics, emphasizing the value of this approach for a fuller understanding of his work’s political meaning and impact. It does so through detailed analysis of the poetic, expressive language employed in seminal political essays, aimed at forging a new Marxist position in 1920s Peru. Furthermore, it offers powerful and original critiques of understudied intellectuals of this time, especially aprista-Futurist, Socialist and Indigenist female writers and artists, such as Magda Portal and Ángela Ramos, whose work he championed. These readings are fully contextualized in terms of detailed critical study of complex sociopolitical conditions and positions, and bio-bibliographical, intellectual backgrounds of Mariátegui and his contemporaries. The monograph examines and underscores the fundamental importance of Mariátegui’s, and their, politico-poetic practices and projects for forging a national-cum-cosmopolitan, shared, yet also heterogeneous, political culture and cultural tradition in 1920s Peru.

Bread and Beauty is a study of the works and life of José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930), the autodidact Peruvian scholar and revolutionary activist frequently considered the most important Latin American Marxist.

José Carlos Mariátegui was born in Moquegua, Peru, to a poor mestizo family on July 14, 1894. Considered by many to be the father of Latin American Communism, he is celebrated for being the first person to utilize Marxist methods of analysis in order to better understand concrete reality in Peru and for carving a path to revolution based off of these particular historical conditions. As such, he was one of the first Latin American socialists to acknowledge the revolutionary potential of the peasantry and Indigenous peoples. Rather than take a paternalistic or humanitarian position, Mariátegui believed that these overlapping groups needed to be the architects of their own liberation and to do so using their own cultural knowledge, experience, and language.

A collection of new English translations of writings by José Carlos Mariátegui (1894 - 1930)