The Problem of Race in Latin America
Approaching the Issue
Ch. 4 (p. 46-79) of Selected Works of José Carlos Mariátegui. 2021. Published by Iskra Books.
In bourgeois intellectual speculation, the problem of race in Latin America serves, among other things, to cover up or ignore the true problems of the continent. Marxist criticism has an urgent obligation to state it in its real terms, detaching it from any casuist or pedantic misrepresentation. Economically, socially, and politically, the problem of race, like that of land, is, at its base, that of the liquidation offeudalism.
The Indigenous races in Latin America are in a clamorous state of backwardness and ignorance, due to the servitude that weighs on them, since the Spanish conquest. The interest of the exploiting class, first the Spanish and later the creole, has invariably tended, under various guises, to explain the condition of the Indigenous races with the argument of their inferiority or primitivism. By employing this, that class has done nothing but reproduce the reasoning of the white race on the issue of the treatment and care of the colonial peoples in the national debate on this issue.
The sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, who reduces race to just one of the several factors that determine the forms of the development of a society, has judged the hypocrisy of the idea of race in the imperialist and enslavement policies of white people in the following terms:
Aristotle's theory of natural slavery is also the theory put forward by modern civilized peoples to justify their conquests of peoples whom they call inferior and their domination over them. Aristotle said that some men are naturally slaves and others masters, and that it is proper for the former to obey and the others to command, which is just and of benefit to all concerned. So say the modern peoples who decorate themselves with the title "civilized." They assert that there are people—themselves, of course—who were intended by nature to rule, and other peoples, those whom they wish to exploit, who were no less intended by nature to obey, and that it is just, proper, and to the advantage of everyone concerned that they do the ruling and the others the obeying. Whence it follows that if an Englishman, a German, a Frenchman, a Belgian, an Italian, fights and dies for his country, he is a hero; but if an African dares to defend his homeland against these nations, he is a contemptible rebel and traitor. So the Europeans are preforming a sacrosanct duty in exterminating Africans in an effort to teach them to be civilized. And there are always plenty of people to admire such work "of peace, progress, and civilization," with mouths agape! It is necessary to add that, with truly admirable hypocrisy, these blessed civilized people claim to be acting for the good of their subject races when they oppress, and even exterminate, them; and they dedicate so much love to them that they want them "free" by force. Thus the English freed the Indians from the "tyranny" of the Raja, the Germans freed the Africans from the"tyranny" of the black kings, the Italians liberated the Arabs from the oppression of the Turks, the French freed the inhabitants of Madagascar and, to make them freer still, they killed many and reduced the others to a state of slavery in all but name. Such talk is said in all seriousness and there are even those who believe it. The cat catches the mouse and eats it, but it doesn't say it does so for the mouse's sake. It does not proclaim a dogma of the equality of all animals nor hypocritically raise its eyes to heaven in worship the Father of us all.#1
The exploitation of Indigenous people in Latin America is also justified on the pretext that it serves the cultural and moral redemption of the oppressed races.
Meanwhile, as it is easy to prove, the colonization of Latin America by the white race has only had a delaying and depressing effect on the lives of the Indigenous races. The natural evolution of these people has been interrupted by the degrading oppression of whites and mestizos. Peoples such as the Quechua and Aztecs, who had reached an high degree of social organization, reverted, under the colonial regime, to the condition of dispersed agricultural tribes. The elements of civilization that remain in the Indigenous communities of Peru are, above all, what survives of the ancient autochthonous organization. With a feudal agricultural system, white civilization has not created pockets of urban life, much less industrialization and mechanization. In the highland latifundios,#2 with the exception of certain cattle ranches, white domination does not represent, even technologically, any progress with respect to aboriginal culture.
What we call the Indigenous problem is the feudal exploitation of the natives on the large agrarian properties. The Indian, in 90 percent of the cases, is not a proletarian but a serf. Capitalism, as an economic and political system, is incapable of building an economy emancipated from feudal flaws in Latin America. The perception of the inferiority of the Indigenous race allows for a maximum exploitation of the workers of this race. Those that benefit from it are unwilling to give up this advantage. In agriculture, the establishment ofwages and the adoption of the machine, do not erase the feudal character of the large landholdings. They simply perfect the system of exploitation of the land and the peasant masses. Many of our bourgeois and gamonales warmly support 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 superior foreign races. The subsistence of a feudalbased economy is presented, however, in irreconcilable opposition with an immigration movement sufficient to produce this transformation by crossing. The wages paid on the coastal and highland estates (when wages are adopted in the latter) rule out the possibility of employing European immigrants in agriculture. Peasant immigrants would never come to work under the conditions of the Indians; they would only be attracted to this work by making them small landowners. The Indian could never be replaced in the agricultural tasks of the coastal estates but with the black slave or the Chinese "coolies." The colonization plans for European immigrants are, for now, exclusively in the wooded region of the East known as the Montana. The thesis that the Indigenous problem is an ethnic problem does not even deserve to be discussed, but it should be noted to what extent the solution proposed is at odds with the interests and possibilities of the bourgeoisie and the gamonalismo, in whom it finds its adherents.
For Yankee and English imperialism, the economic value of these naturally rich lands would be much less if they did not possess a backward and miserable Indigenous population, which is extremely exploitable with the help of the national bourgeoisie. The history of the Peruvian sugar industry, currently in crisis, shows that its profits have rested, above all, on the cheapness of labor, that is, on the misery of the laborers. Technically, this industry has never been ina position to compete with that of other countries on the world market. The distance from the consumer markets burdened their exports with high freight costs. But all these disadvantages were largely compensated by the cheapness of the workforce. The work of enslaved peasant masses, housed in disgusting shanties, deprived of all freedom and rights, subjected to an overwhelming journey, placed Peruvian sugar producersin a position to compete with those who, in other countries, cultivated their lands better or were protected by a protectionist tariff or more advantageously located from a geographical point of view. Foreign capitalism uses the feudal class to exploit these peasant masses to its advantage. More often than not, the inability of these large landowners (heirs of prejudice, medieval arrogance, and arbitrariness) to fill the function of heads of capitalist companies, is such that they are forced to take the administration of large estates and plants into their own hands. This is particularly the case in the sugar industry, monopolized almost entirely in the Chicama Valley by an English and a German company.
Race, above all, has great importance in regards to imperialism. But it also has another role that prevents the struggle for national independence in Latin American countries that have a high percentage of Indigenous population from being seen as parallel to the same problem in Asia or Africa. The feudal or bourgeois elements in our countries feel the same contempt for the Indians, Blacks, and mulattos, as the white imperialists. Racial sentiment operates in this ruling class in a way absolutely favorable to imperialist penetration. Between the lord or the creole bourgeois and his colored pawns, there is nothing in common. Class solidarity is added to the solidarity of race or prejudice to make the national bourgeoisie docile instruments of Yankee or British imperialism. And this sentiment extends to a large part of the middle classes, which imitate the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie in disdain for the colored commons, even though their own miscegenation is too evident.
The black race, imported into Latin America by the colonizers to increase their power over the American Indian race, passively filled its colonialist role. Themselves harshly exploited, they reinforced the oppression of the Indigenous race by the Spanish conquerors. A greater degree of mixing, familiarity and coexistence with them in the colonial cities, made the black race an auxiliary to white dominance, notwithstanding any rush of their turbulent or restless spirit. Blacks or mulattos, in their role as artisans or domestic servants, composed a plebeian class that was always more or less unconditionally disposed to the feudal class. Industry,factories, and unionsredeemblack people from this domesticity. In erasing racial boundaries between proletarians, class consciousness historically has raised black morale. The union means the definitive rupture of the servile habits that otherwise would keep Blacks at the level of craftsman or servant.
The Indian is in no way inferior to the mestizo in their ability to assimilate progress of the modern techniques of production. Onthe contrary,they are generally superior. The idea of their racial inferiority is currently too discredited to deserve the honors of a refutation. White and creole prejudice toward perceived inferiority is not based on any facts worth taking into consideration in a scientific study of the question. Coca addiction and alcoholism of the Indigenous race, greatly exaggerated by its commentators, are nothing but consequences, results of white oppression. Gamonalismo encourages and exploits these vices, which in a way are fed by the need to fight against pain that is particularly alive and active in a subjugated people. The Indianin ancient times only drank"chicha," a fermented corn drink, whereas it was the whites who implanted the cultivation of sugarcane and alcohol production on the continent. The production of cane alcohol is one of the most "healthy" and secure businesses for large landholders, in whose hands also lies the production of coca in the warm mountain valleys.
Long ago, the Japanese experience demonstrated the ease with which peoples of race and traditions distinct from Europe took to western science and adapted to the use ofits productive techniques. In the mines and factories of the Peruvian highlands, the Indian peasant confirms this experience.
And Marxist sociology has already summarily dismissed racist ideas that are products of the imperialist spirit. Bukharin writes in Historical Materialism:
In the first place, the race theory is in contradiction with the facts. The"lowest" race, that which is said to be incapable, by nature, of any development, is the black race, the Negroes. Yet it has been shownthat the ancient representatives of this black race, the so called Kushites, created a very high civilization in India (before the days of the Hindus) and Egypt; the yellow race, which now also enjoys but slight favor, also created a high civilization in China, far superior in its day to the then existing civilizations of white men; the white men were then children as compared with the yellow men. We now know how much the ancient Greeks borrowed from the Assyro-Babylonians and the Egyptians. These few facts are sufficient to show that the "racial" explanation is no explanation at all. It may be replied: perhaps you were right, but will you go so far as to say that the average Negro stands at the same level, in his abilities, as the average European? There is no sense in answering such a question with benevolent subterfuges, as certain liberal professors sometimes do, to the effect that all men are of course equal, that according to Kant, the human personality is in itself a final consideration, or that Christ taught that there are no Hellenes, or Jews, etc. To aspire to equality between races is one thing; to admit the similarity of their qualities is another. We aspire to that which does not exist; otherwise we are attempting to force doors that are already open. We are now not concerned with the question: what must be our aim? We are consideringthe question of whetherthere is a difference between the level, cultural and otherwise, of white men and black men, on the whole. There is such a difference; the"white" men are at present on a higher level, but this only goes to show that at present these so called races have changed places.
This is a complete refutation of the theory of race. At, bottom, this theory always reduces itself to the peculiarities of races, to their immemorial "character." If such were the case, this "character" would have expressed itself in the same way in all the periods of history. The obvious inference is that the"nature" of the races is constantly changing with the conditions of their existence. But these conditions are determined by nothing more nor less than the relation between society and nature, i.e, the condition of the productive forces. In other words, the theory of race does not in the slightest manner explain the conditions of social evolution. Here also it is evident that the analysis must begin with the movement of the productive forces.#3
From the assumption of the inferiority of the Indigenous race, one 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 alone. To subscribe to this thesis is to fall into the most naive and absurd mysticism. It would be foolish and dangerous to oppose the racism of those who despise the Indian because they believe in the absolute and permanent superiority of the white race with the overestimation of the Indian with messianic faith in their mission as a race in the American renaissance.
The possibilities for the Indian to rise materially and intellectually depend on changes in socioeconomic conditions. They are not determined by race but by economy and politics. Race by itself has not awakened nor will it awaken the understanding of an emancipatory ideal. Above all, it will never acquire the power to impose and carry it out. What ensures their emancipation is the dynamism of an economy and a culture that carries within it the germ of socialism. The Indian race was not defeated in the war of conquest by an ethnically or qualitatively superior race; it was defeated by technology that was far above the technology of aboriginal people. Gunpowder, iron, and cavalry were not racial advantages; they were technical advantages. The Spanish arrived in these distant regions because they had means of navigation that allowed them to cross oceans. Navigation and trade later allowed them to exploit some of the natural resources of their colonies. Spanish feudalism superimposed itself over Indigenous agrarianism, although it did in part respect its communal structures. But this very adaptation created a static order, an economic system whose factors of stagnation were the best guarantee of Indigenous servitude. Capitalist industry breaks this equilibrium, disrupts this stagnation by creating new productive forces and new relations of production. The proletariat grows gradually at the expense of artisanship and servitude. The economic and social evolution of the nation enters an era of activity and contradictions that, on an ideological level, causes the emergence and development of socialist thought.
In all this, the influence of the race factor is evidently secondary to the influence of the economic factors —production, technology, science, etc. Would it be possible to outline the plan or intentions of a socialist state based on demands for the emancipation of the Indigenous masses without addressing the material elements of modern industry or, if you like, capitalism? The dynamism of this economy, of this regime, which renders all relations unstable, and which sets ideologies and classes in opposition, is undoubtedly what makes the Indigenous resurrection feasible. The play of economic, political, cultural, ideological forces, not racial ones, is what decides this reality. The greatest charge against the ruling class of the republic is its failure to accelerate, with a more liberal, bourgeois, more capitalist intelligence of its mission, the process of transformation of the colonial economy into a capitalist economy. Feudalism opposes emancipation, the awakening of Indigenous peoples from their stagnation and inertia. Capitalism, with its conflicts and its own instruments of exploitation, advances the thinking of the masses and their demands, forcing a struggle in which they are materially and mentally trained to preside over a new order.
The problem of race is not common to all Latin American countries, nor does it present the same proportions and characteristics in all those who suffer from it. In some Latin American countries it is more localized or regional and does not appreciably influence social and economic processes. But in countries like Peru and Bolivia, and somewhat less in Ecuador, where the majority of the population is Indigenous, the Indian's demands are the dominant popular and social demands.
In these countries the race factor is compounded by the class factor in a way that revolutionary politics cannot fail to take into account. The Quechua or Aymara Indian sees his oppressor in the mestizo and the white person. 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 prejudice against the Indian or the resistance to recognize this prejudice as a simple inheritance or mental contagion of the environment among the very urban elements who proclaim to be revolutionary.
The language barrier stands between the Indian peasant masses and the white or mestizo nuclei of revolutionary workers. 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 until now is the systematic preparation of these propagandists. Literate Indians, corrupted by the city, regularly become accessories to 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 for the emancipation of their race, which is oppressed by the same class that exploits the worker in the factory, whom the Indigenous workers discover to be a class brother.
The realism of a safe and precise socialist policy for assessing and using the facts on which they have to act in these countries can and must turn the race factor into a revolutionary factor. The current state structures in these countries rest on the alliance of the feudal landowning class and the mercantile bourgeoisie. Once this landed feudalistic structure is defeated, ur ban capitalism will lack the strength to resist the rise of the workers. It is represented by a mediocre and weak bourgeoisie, formed in privilege, without a combative and organized spirit that daily loses its ascendancy over the fluctuating intellectual caste.
Socialist criticism in Peru has initiated a new approach to the Indigenous problem with the inexorable denunciation and rejection of all bourgeois or philanthropic tendencies to consider race as an administrative, legal, moral, religious or educational problem.#4 The economic and political terms on which this issue and the proletarian struggle to resolve it are raised in Peru, and by analogy in other Latin American countries with large Indigenous populations, in our opinion are the following:
1. Socioeconomic Situation of the Indigenous Population of Peru
There is no recent census that allows us to know exactly the current size of the Indigenous population. It is generally accepted that the Indigenous race makes up four-fifths ofa total populationcalculated at a minimum of 5,ooo,ooo. This assessment does not strictly take race into account, but rather the socioeconomic condition of the masses that make up these four fifths. There are provinces where the Indigenous typology shows an extensive intermixing. But in these sectors, white blood has been completely assimilated by the Indigenous environment and the life of the cholos#5 produced by this miscegenation does not differ from the life of the Indians themselves.
No less than 90 percent of the Indigenous population work in agriculture. The development of the mining industry has recently resulted in the increasing use of Indigenous labor in mining. But part of the mining workers are still farmers. They are "community"#6 Indians who spend most of the year in the mines, but at the time of agricultural work return to their small plots that are insufficient for subsistence.
Today, a feudal or semi-feudal work system still exists in agriculture. In the haciendas of the Sierra, wage labor, when it exists, appears so incipient and deformed that it hardly alters the features of the feudal regime. Indians typically do not obtain but a petty part of the fruits for their labor.#7 The soil is worked in a primitive way in almost all the large estates. Even though those estates always keep the best lands, in many cases their yields are lower than that of the Indigenous communities. In some regions Indigenous communitiesretain part of the land but in meager proportion to their needs so that their members are obliged to work for the large landowners.
These estate owners, owners of vast tracts of largely uncultivated land, in many cases have not stripped the communities of their traditional properties because if a community is attached to an estate, it can then securely count on its "own" labor supply. The value of a large estate is calculated not only from its territorial extension, but from its own Indigenous population. When an estate does not have this population, the owner, in accord with the authorities, resorts to the forced recruitment of poorly paid peons. Indians of both sexes, including 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 the gamonales and authorities, not only in the hacienda 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 remains to this day, because no law can counteract the mechanics of the feudal order as long as this structure remains intact. Recently, the road conscription law has accentuated the feudal structure of the highlands. This law requires all individuals to work six days every six months in the building or maintenance of roads or to "redeem" themselves by paying taxes according to the established rate in each region. In many cases Indians are forced to work long distances from their homes, which forces them to sacrifice a greater number of days. Road conscription, which for the Indigenous masses has the character of the old colonial mitas#8, provides the authorities with pretext to plunder.
Wage labor prevails in the mines. In the Junin and La Libertad mines, where the two large mining companies (the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation and the "Northern," respectively) exploit copper, the workers earn wages of 2.50 to 3.00 soles. These wages are undoubtedly high compared to the unbelievably low wages (twenty or thirty cents) that are customary in the highland estates. But companies take advantage of the backward condition of Indigenous peoples in all forms. The current social legislation is virtually null in the mines, where the laws on work accidents and eight-hour days are not observed, nor is the right of association recognized for workers. Every worker accused ofattempting to organize the workers, evenif only for cultural or mutual purposes, is immediately fired by the company.
The companies usually employ "contractors" to the work in the galleries who, in order to carry out the work at the lowest cost, act as an instrument of exploitation of the manual workers. The "contractors," however, typically live in austere conditions, overwhelmed by the obligations to repay their advances which make them permanent debtors of the companies. When an accident at work occurs, companies use their lawyers to dodge their responsibilities, abusing the misery and ignorance of Indigenous people to deny themtheir rights, payingthemarbitrary and miserable wages. The Morococha disaster, which cost the lives of a few dozen workers, has recently lead to the denunciation of the insecurity in which the miners work. The poor condition of some tunnels and work that almost touched the bottom of a pond, caused a collapse that left many workers buried. Officially, there were 27 victims, but there are reports that the number was greater. The allegations of some newspapers led the company to be more respectful of the law than usual in regard to legal compensation to the victims' families. Finally, in order to avoid further unrest, the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation has granted its workers a 10 percent increase as longas the current copper price continues to hold. In remote provinces like Cotabambas, the situation of the miners is much more backward and distressing. The gamonales of the region are in charge of the forced recruitment of Indians, and the wages are miserable.
Industry has barely penetrated the Sierra. It is represented mainly by the fabric factories of Cuzco, where the production of excellent qualities of wool is the main factor in its development. With the exception of the management and bosses, the working staff of these factories are entirely Indigenous. The Indian has been perfectly assimilated to mechanization. They are careful and sober operators whom the capitalist skillfully exploits. The feudal atmosphere of agriculture extends to these factories, where a certain patriarchalism uses the proteges and wards of the master as instruments for the subjugation of their colleagues and to oppose the formation of class consciousness.
In recent years, a rise in the prices of Peruvian wool in foreign markets has initiated a process of industrialization of southern agricultural estates. Several landowners have introduced modern technology, importing foreign livestock that have improved the volume and quality of production, shaking off the yoke of commercial intermediaries, and establishing mills and other small industrial plants on their farms. Apart from this, in the highlands there are no more industrial plants and crops other than those used for the production of sugar, molasses, and liquor for regional consumption.
Indigenous highland labor is used to a considerable extent for the operation of the coastal haciendas where the population is insufficient. Large sugar and cotton estates use enganchadores [labor recruiters] to supply the necessary laborers for their agricultural activities. These workers earn wages that, though always very meager, are higher than wages typically paid in the feudal highlands. But in return they suffer from strenuous work in a warm climate, a diet inadequate for the job, and malaria, which is endemic in the coastal valleys. Its hard for the highland peon to escape malaria, which forces them to return to their region, often with an incurable case of tuberculosis as well.
Although agriculture in these estates is industrialized (the land is worked with modern methods and machines and the products are processed in "mills" or well-equipped plants), the environment is not that of capitalism and wage labor in urban industry. This system retains its feudal spirit and practice in the treatment of workers. Estate owners do not recognize the rights established by labor laws. On these haciendas there is no law other than that of the owner. No shadow of workers' association is tolerated. Employees deny entry to individuals who, for any reason, mistrust the owner or manager. During the colonial period, these haciendas were worked with Black slaves. Once slavery was abolished, they brought in Chinese coolies. The traditional landowner has not lost their habits of slave trader or feudal lord.
In the forests of the montaña region, agriculture is still nascent. It uses the same enganche#9 system used in the highlands, and to some extent uses the services of tribes familiar with whites. But in terms of work regime, the montana has a far grimmer tradition. The most barbarous and criminal slavery procedures were applied in the exploitation of rubber when this product was selling for a high price. The crimes of Putumayo, sensationally denounced by the foreign press, constitute the blackest page in the history of rubber tappers. It is alleged that much about these crimes was exaggerated and fantasized abroad and that an attempt to blackmail was at the origin of the scandal. But the truth is perfectly documented by the investigations and testimonies of Peruvian justice officials such as Judge Valcarcel and Prosecutor Paredes who verified the slaving and bloodthirsty methods of the Araos overseers. Less than three years ago, an outstanding official, Dr. Chuquihuanca Ayulo, a great defender of the Indigenous race—Indigenous himself —was relieved of his duties as prosecutor in the Department of Madre de Dios as a consequence of denouncing the slave-like 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 alongside a small number of wage. earning miners and a still incipient system of agricultural wage-labor there is a system of servitude. In the distant montaña regions, the Aboriginals are frequently subjected to a system of slavery.
2. The Indigenous Struggle Against Gamonalismo
When talking about the attitude of the Indians toward their exploiters, the impression is generally that debased and oppressed Indians are incapable of any form of struggle or resistance. The long history of Indigenous insurrections and riots, and the subsequent massacres and repressions, alone is enough to disprove this impression. In most cases, the uprisings of Indians have originated from violence that incidentally forced them to revolt against a particular authority or a landowner. But in other cases it has not had this character ofa local mutiny. The rebellion has followed less incidental upheaval and has spread to a more or less extensive region. To repress uprisings, it has been necessaryto appeal to substantial forces and true massacres. Thousands of rebellious Indians have spread fear in the gamonales in the provinces. Army Major Teodomiro Gutierrez, a highland mestizo with a high percentage of Indigenous blood who called himself Rumimaqui and presented himselfas the redeemer of his race, led one of the recent uprisings that assumed extraordinary proportions. The Billinghurst government sent Major Gutierrez to the Puno department,#10 where the gamonalismo carried out exploitation to an extreme, to carry out an investigation into the Indigenous complaints and inform the government. Gutierrez then entered into intimate contact with the Indians. With the Billinghurst government overthrown, he thought that all prospect of legal claims had disappeared and he launched a revolt. Several thousand Indians followed him, but, as always unarmed and defenseless against the troops, were condemned to dispersal or death. This uprising has been followed by those of La Marand Huancane in 1923 and other minor uprisings—all of them bloodily repressed.
In 1921, delegations from various community groups attended an Indigenous congress held under government auspices. The purpose of the congress was to formulate the claims of the Indigenous race. In Quechua, delegates delivered strong accusations against the gamonales, authorities, and priests. They created a Tawantinsuyu'#11 Indigenous Rights Committee. Annual congresses were held until 1924, when the government persecuted the revolutionary Indigenous elements, intimidated the delegations, and distorted the spirit and purpose of the assembly.
The 1923 Congress, which voted for conclusions that were disturbing for gamonalismo, such as calling for the separation of church and state and repeal of the road conscription law, revealed the danger of these conferences in which groups of Indigenous communities of various regions came into contact and coordinated their action. That same year, Indians formed the Regional Indigenous Workers' Federation with the intent to apply the principles and methods ofanarcho-syndicalism to the organization. It was, therefore, destined not to succeed. But it nevertheless represented a revolutionary orientation of the Indigenous vanguard. With two of the Indian leaders of this movement exiled and 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 dissolved, on the pretext that its leaders were mere exploiters of the race that they claimed to defend. This committee never had more importance than that attached to its participation in Indigenous congresses. It was made up ofelements that lacked ideological and personal valor, and on many occasions had protested in adherence to government policy, considering them to be in favor of the Indians. But for some gamonales, it was still an instrument of agitation, a remnant of the Indigenous congresses. The government, on the other hand, directed its policy in the direction of associating with pro-Indigenous declarations, promises of land distribution, etc. This was a resolute act against any agitation among the Indians by revolutionary groups or those susceptible of revolutionary influ
ence.
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 [Resurgence Group] was founded in Cuzco. It was composed of several intellectuals and artists, along with some Cuzco workers. This group published a manifesto denouncing the crimes of gamonalismo.#12 Shortly after its creation, one of its main leaders, Dr. Luis E. Valcarcel, was arrested in Arequipa. His imprisonment lasted only a few days, but meanwhile, the Grupo Resurgimiento was definitively dissolved by the Cuzco authorities.
3. Conclusions on the Indigenous Problem and the Tasks Involved
The Indigenous problem is identified with the land problem. The ignorance, backwardness and misery of the Indigenous people are, we repeat, only the consequence of their servitude. The feudal latifundio maintains the absolute exploitation and domination of the Indigenous masses by the landowning class. The struggle of the Indians against the gamonales has invariably been in the defense of their lands against absorption and dispossession. There is, therefore, an instinctive and profound Indigenous demand: the demand for land. Giving an organized, systematic, defined character to this demand is the task that we have the duty to actively carry out.
The communities that have demonstrated a truly amazing persistence and resistance under the harshest oppression represent anatural factor for socialization of the land in Peru. The Indian has an ingrained habit of cooperation. Even when community ownership passes to individual ownership, cooperation is maintained and the heavy work is shared. This is true not only in the highlands, but also on the coast, where a higher level of mixing acts against Indigenous customs. With minimal effort, the community can become a cooperative. Awarding latifundios to the communities is the solution to the agrarian problem in the highlands. On the coast, where large landholders are also omnipotent but where communal ownership has disappeared, the inevitable tendency is to the individualization of land ownership. The harshly exploited tenants known as yanaconas#13 should be supported in their struggles against the landowners. The natural demand of these yanaconas is to own the land they work. The struggle is different on large estates that owners exploit directly with peon labor they recruit partly in the highlands among those that lack a link to the land. The demands for which they must work are: freedomofassociation, abolition of enganche, wage increases, the eight-hour day, and enforcement of protective labor laws. Only when the peons of these estates have won these demands will they be on the path to final emancipation.
It is very difficult for union propaganda to penetrate the haciendas. Each estate, on the coast as in the highlands, is a fiefdom. No association is tolerated that does not accept the patronage and guardianship of the owners and management, and only the sport or recreational associations are found on estates. But with the increase in automobile traffic, a gap gradually opens in the barriers that previously closed the hacienda to all propaganda. This points to the importance of organizing and actively mobilizing transportation workers in the development of the class movement in Peru.
When the peons of the estates know that they have the fraternal solidarity of the unions and understand the value of the unions, it will easily awaken in them the will to fight that today is missing but that more than once they have proven exists. The nuclei of labor union members that are gradually formed on the estates will have the function of explaining to the masses their rights, of defending their interests, of effectively representing them in any claim, and of taking advantage of the first opportunity to shape their organization to the degree circumstances permit.
For the progressive ideological education of the Indigenous masses, the workers' vanguard has those militant elements of the Indian race who, in the mines or urban centers, come into contact with the union and political movements. Their principles are assimilated and they are trained to play a role in the emancipation of their race. Workers from an Indigenous milieu often return temporarily or permanently to their communities. Their language allows them to effectively fulfill a mission as instructors of their race and class brothers. Indian peasants will only understand individuals who speak their own language. They distrust whites and mestizos, and, in turn the whites and the mestizos distrust the Indians.
Methods of self-education, regular reading of the periodicals and of the union and revolutionary movement in Latin America, and correspondence with comrades in the urban centers will be the means by which the Indigenous masses will successfully complete their educational mission.
Indigenous members of our movement must always take a principal and leadingrole in various activities with the dual objective of giving a serious direction to the class orientation and education of Indigenous peoples and avoiding the influence of misleading elements (anarchists, demagogues, reformers, etc.). Activities also include coordination of Indigenous communities by region, aid for those who are persecuted by courts or the police (gamonales prosecute Indigenous peoples who resist them or whose lands they wish to take), defense of communal property, and the organization of small libraries and study centers.
In Peru, the organization and education of the mining proletariat is, together with that of the agricultur. al proletariat, one of the most pressing issues. The mining centers, the largest of which (La Oroya) is on the way to becoming the most important profit center in South America, constitute points where class pro. paganda can advantageously operate. Apart fromrepresenting themselves in substantial proletarian concentrations with the conditions similar to wage owners, Indigenous day laborers work alongside industrial workers who bring the class spirit and principles to those centers. The Indigenous people of the mines, to a large extent, continue to be peasants, so that the adherents won among them are also elements won among the peasant class.
This work, in all its aspects, will be difficult. But its progress will fundamentally depend on the ability of the activists who carry it out, and their precise and concrete appreciation of the objective conditions of the Indigenous question. The problem is not racialbut rather social and economic. But race has a role in it and in the means of confrontingit. For example, only militants from the Indigenous milieu can, because of their mentality and language, achieve an effective and immediate influence over their comrades.
A revolutionary Indigenous consciousness will perhaps take time to form, but once Indians have made the socialist idea their own, they will serve it with a discipline, a tenacity, and a strength, that few other proletarians of other milieus will be able to surpass.
The reality of grounded and precise revolutionary politics in which the appreciation and utilization of the circumstances on which one must act in countries where the Indigenous or Black population has an important size and role can and must turn the factor of race into a revolutionary factor. It is essential to give the movement of the Indigenous and Black proletariat, whether agricultural or industrial, a clear character of class struggle. "One must give Indigenous or enslaved Black populations," said a Brazilian comrade, "the certainty that only a government of workers and peasants of all races who inhabit the territory will truly emancipate them, since only that will terminate the rule of large estate owners and the industrial capitalist system, and definitively liberate them from imperialist oppression."
Bourgeois Colonial and Imperialist Policy Concerning the Races#13
To carry out intense exploitation, the colonial powers have sought a series of legal and religious pretexts to legitimize their attitude, starting from the concept of racial "inferiority."
Too well-known is the thesis of Pope Alexander VI, who, as a representative of God on Earth, divided among the Catholic kings of Spain and Portugal, the power over Latin America, on the condition that they become the tutors of the Indigenous race. These Indigenous people, 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 "by law" the anti-Christian formula of slavery. The hypocritical formula of guardianship then emerged with one of its most representative economic expressions-the "encomienda." The fittest Spaniards were elected "encomenderos" from different territories that comprised a large Indian population. Their mission was twofold. In the spiritual order, they should convert the Indians to the Catholic faith; the means of persuasion were provided whenever necessary, by the doctrineros. In the temporal order, the task was even simpler; each "encomienda"' should provide the crown with a corresponding tribute, notwithstanding that the encomendero will also take out the amount he deems 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 natives, laying the foundations of the colonial and semi-feudal property that subsists until today.
In this process, it is necessary to underline here an important factor in the submission of aboriginal populations to the economic and political power of the invaders. The invading race that appeared protected by almost invulnerable armor, mounted marvelously on unknown animals, the horses, fighting with weapons that threw fire; this race that demolished in a few decades and then quickly subdued an immense empire like the Inca and numerous jungle tribes such as those of Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay, logically had a great ascendency to impose their gods and their cult on the ruins of the Incan temples, on the defeated myths of the religion of the sun and the anthropomorphic fetishism of other Indians.
The invaders did not neglect the loss of prestige they had brought upon the the cross with their weapons and quickly proceeded to enchain the souls all the while enslaving the bodies. This greatly facilitated economic submission, the primordial object of the Catholic minions. In this process, it is interesting to note the results obtained by the invaders. Wherever a blind and brutal domination decimated Aboriginal people in alarming ways for the sake of production, the yield of production declined to the point of requiring the importation of the African race, especially for the work of the mines. However, the newly imported slaves were often ill-equipped for that sort of work.
Where the penetration of the land was carried out more shrewdly and fostered under the determined protection of the Crown, they looked to take possession of consciences. The Catholic missions managed to establish flourishing plantations even in the heart of the jungles where, if the Indian did not cease to be exploited, production and the amount of benefits to the invaders increased progressively. The historical examples of the Jesuit colonies in Brazil and Paraguay, as well as the colonies that other religious congregations established in the jungles of Peru, are quite demonstrative in this regard. Today, the influence of religion is still an important factor in the submission of the Indians to the civil and religious "authorities." The difference being that, in their heightened idiocy, these authorities have taken to the land this shameless robbery carried out by corporal punishment and are taking part in the most shameful of business practices, thereby managing to create a feeling of revulsion for the priest, as well as for the judge, a feeling that is becoming more evident every day and has burst more than once into bloody revolt.
A large sector of the priests, allied to the national bourgeoisie, continues to use their weapons, based on religious fanaticism, that several centuries of propaganda have managed to ingrain in the consciousness of the Indians. Only class consciousness, only the revolutionary "myth" with its deep economic roots, and not an infectious anti-clerical propaganda, will be able to replace the artificial myths imposed by the "civilization" of the invaders and maintained by the bourgeois classes—the heirs of their power.-
Imperialists have also attempted to build a more resilient and pervasive base in Latin America for their ominous power. The Methodist and Anglican missions and the moralizing sports centers of the YMCA have even managed to penetrate the mountains of Peru and Bolivia, but with absolutely negligible success and without the possibility of extending their action. A fierce adversary to such penetration was found in the village priest, who saw the danger of diminishing his spiritual influence and the consequent pecuniary revenues. There were cases in which the village priest managed to obtain the support of the civil authorities and definitively banish the"anti-Catholic" Protestant missions.
Other factors linked to the social nature of the exploited have been employed by the colony and continued by a large sector of the bourgeoisie and imperialists. The contempt for the Indian and the black has been inoculated by the white, by all means, to 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. This contempt that has been fostered within the working-class, grows considerably as the mestizo occupies higher degrees with respect to the last layers of the exploited proletariat, without thereby diminishing the deep barrier that separates them from the white population.
For the same purposes, the feudalist and bourgeoisie have fed a deep feelingof animosity for Indians to Black people, facilitated, as we have already said, by the role that the latter filled in countries with small Indian populations: craftsmen, domestic servants, watchmen, always next to the bosses, enjoying a certain familiarity that gave them the "right" to despise everything their employers despised.
The exploiters have also never neglected the opportunity to create rivalries between groups of the same race. American imperialism gives us a concrete example of this tactic in the rivalry that it managed to create between Blacks residing in Cuba and those who periodically come from Haiti and Jamaica to work, impelled by the harsh conditions of their country of origin.
Nor have some intellectual sectors identified with the bourgeoisie ceased to seek more weapons to denigrate the Indians until they deny truthfulness to the most salient characters of their historical process.
Authors dedicated to writing pseudo-historical works assert that one cannot talk about community structures among the Inca Indians. These people, of course, intended to close their eyes to the existence of thousands of communities in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, where millions of Indians still live after the collapse of their public order, three centuries of colonization, and a century of bourgeois and ecclesiastical feudal pillage. The task of pulverizing these absurd theses, largely consisting of the same bourgeois criticism, will be taken over by the nascent Marxist critique of this problem, whose historical studies we already have bright signs of in Latin America.
Later on, I will detail the main characteristics that the primitive collectivism had and has in the Indians.
What is more, it is my duty to point out that one of the most urgent tasks of our parties is the immediate revision of all the histories accumulated by the feudal and bourgeois critics, whichis elaborated to their benefit by the Department of Statistics of the capitalist states and offered for our consideration in all its deformity, thereby impeding our understanding of the values of the aboriginal races.
Only knowledge of concrete reality, acquired through work and the development of all Communist parties, can enable us to draw directives based off of existing conditions. Our historical research is useful, but most of all we must control the current state and sentiment, probe the orientation of its collective thinking, evaluate its forces of expansion and resistance. All this, we know, is conditioned by historical background, on the one hand, but, mainly, by its current economic conditions. We should understand these conditions in all their detail. The life of the Indian, the conditions of their exploitation, the possibilities of struggle on their part, the most practical means of immersing the proletariat vanguard among them, the most apt way in which they can constitute their organization; here are the fundamental points, whose knowledge we must pursue to accurately fill the historical task that each party must carry out.
The class struggle—a fundamental reality that our parties recognize—undoubtedly has special characteristics when the vast majority of the exploited are constituted by 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 deepen as well as some of the weaknesses, due to the cultural deprivation of the races, that capitalism exploits to its exclusive benefit.
The hardest economic oppression weighs on the shoulders of the producing class and is compounded by racial contempt and hatred. A simple and clear understanding of such situations is needed so that this mass may rise as one being and throw off all forms of exploitation.
Notes
1 Pareto, Vilfredo. The Mind and Society: A Treatise on General Sociology (1935), pp. 626-27.
2 This region is know as the Sierra, which is considered one of Peru's three natural regions along with the coast and montaña.
3 Bukharin, Nikolai. Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology (1925), pp. 127-128.
4 See Mariátegui's "The Problem of the Indian" in Selected Writings.
5 A person with mixed Indigenous and European heritage.
6 This is a reference to ayllu, a traditional Andean community based on networks of families. This form of social organization predates the Incan Empire and is still in existence.
7 See Mariátegui, "The Problem of Land” in Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1971).
8 Periods of forced labor of Indigenous peoples under Spanish colonizers.
9 A system of indentured servitude through debt peonage.
10 Guillermo Billinghurst (1851-1915) was the 31st President of Peru and member of the Civilista Party. Due to his administration's social reforms, he was overthrown by a military coup in 1914. The Department of Puno is located in southeast Peru and has a large population the Aymara Indians.
11 Queche term for the Incan Empire.
12 Published in Amauta No. 6.
13 Yanaconazgo/Yanacona. a feudalistic sharecropping system; tenant farmer or worker
14 This section was written primarily by Dr. Hugo Pesce using an outline provided by Mariátegui.