he is rarely depicted so as to meet the viewer's gaze.
It is noteworthy, then, that it is Sabogal's woodcuts (not his paintings) that captures Mariátegui's attention: solid, stylized figures – like his Chimu‐inspired fishermen (Figures 3.1 and 3.2) – that reimagine and modernize the iconography of the ancient inhabitants of Peru. These works, writes Mariátegui, “reveal how an art this ancient can still yield modern realizations” (1959c, p. 93; 1994, Vol. I, p. 584). With them, Sabogal “revives elements of Inca art, so deeply connected is he to his native themes” (1959c, p. 93; 1994, Vol. I, p. 584).
This kind of commitment, in fact, is all that one could reasonably expect from indigenist art. As Mariátegui saw it, indigenism, because of its origin, was an art of transition, meant to give way to a properly indigenous art in the future. Following this rationale, he found it mistaken to accuse the indigenist writers of having wrongfully usurped the representation of the Indians. In a telling passage from the last of the 7 Essays – the one devoted to literature and occupying almost a third of the book's pages – he argues that “… a critic could commit no greater injustice than to condemn indigenist literature for its lack of autochthonous integrity or its use of artificial elements in interpretation and expression” (1959a, pp. 291–292; 1971, p. 274; 1994, Vol. I, p. 150). Indigenist literature was bound to idealize and stylize the Indian because it was still a literature made by mestizos: “If an indigenous literature finally appears, it will be when the Indians themselves are able to produce it” (1959a, p. 292; 1971, p. 274; 1994, Vol. I, p. 150).
Figure 3.1 José Sabogal, Chimu Fishermen, 1929. Woodblock print, 23 × 24 cm. Colección Isabel María Sabogal Dunin Borkowski.
Figure 3.2 José Sabogal, Caballito, Huanchaco, 1929. Woodblock print, 24.5 × 25.5 cm. Colección Ana Sabogal Dunin Borkowski.
Without going into further details, Mariátegui nonetheless advances here a remarkable conceptualization of art as a practice of social empowerment. When he states that true indigenous art is (or will be) an art made by Indians themselves, he is not claiming that only indigenous people have the ability (or the right) to tackle indigenous themes. His point, rather, is that artistic creation is key to human emancipation. The Indians of Peru ought to be freed from exploitation so that they could have the chance to access the spheres of artistic production and consumption. They ought to be given the opportunity to create and be recognized as creators. What Mariátegui sets out to defend here is not primarily the expression of racial or cultural identity but a right to which he accords the highest importance: the right to self‐development. No other, to his mind, would allow the Indians to fully become agents – masters of their own destiny.
Be that as it may, Mariátegui's argument for constructing the future of the Peruvian nation on an indigenous foundation did not go unchallenged. Perhaps his most biting critic was Luis Alberto Sánchez, who found it unfair to define “Peruvian‐ness” solely on the basis of its indigeneity. Although Creole traditions, he remarked, had been introduced by the Spaniards, over the course of four centuries they had taken roots in the country and had the right to be called “Peruvian” as well. Sánchez, in other words, accused Mariátegui of clinging to an overly narrow idea of Peru that not only discounted the country's enormous cultural diversity but also revived the “archaic dilemma” that opposed the highlands and the coast (Mariátegui and Sánchez 1976, p. 70). It should be noted, however, that Mariátegui was not advocating for the withering away of all nonindigenous elements in Peruvian society, nor did he believe in the racial or cultural superiority of the indigenous population. In fact, he considered any kind of sociopolitical analysis supported by racial or cultural categories (the language of the time made no consistent distinctions between race and ethnicity) to be little more than pseudoscientific mystification:
From the prejudice 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 autochthonous racial forces. To subscribe to this thesis is to fall into the most naïve and absurd mysticism. It would be foolish and dangerous to oppose the racism of those who despise Indians because they believe in the absolute and permanent superiority of the white race with a racism that overestimates Indians with a messianic faith in their mission as a race in the American renaissance.
(1969, p. 30; 1994, Vol. I, p. 171; 2011, p. 313)
If Peruvians were obliged to recognize the indigenous population as the cornerstone of their nation, Mariátegui believed, it was because of a long‐overdue historical debt but also because no people or nation could possibly aspire to produce a plausible picture of itself by ignoring its majorities.
The search for national autonomy did not, then, entail the elimination of all external influences. Defending the autochthonous did not mean rejecting all things Western, only those ideas and values of the West that supported the systems of feudality and dependence (Rochabrún 2007, pp. 549–550). Non‐Western peoples seeking a legitimate political option should not be wary of embracing socialism: “Socialism is certainly not an Indo‐American theory. But no theory, no contemporary system, is or could be. And socialism, although born in Europe as was capitalism, is neither specifically nor particularly European. It is a worldwide movement from which none of the countries that move in the orbit of Western civilization can escape” (1969, p. 248; 1994, Vol. I, p. 261; 1996, p. 89).
3.3 Conclusion: Mariátegui, His Times and Beyond
As discussed previously, two ideas lie at the heart of Mariátegui's thought. First, the idea that every epoch, as it develops, unfolds a concept that configures its historical identity, and second, the idea that revolutions are pivotal junctures that mark the transition from one epoch to another – critical circumstances that engender new forms of individuality and collectivity. What emerges out of these two notions is a concept of revolutionary epochs as periods marked by formidable explosions of creative energy that eventually crystallize in new institutional frameworks.
Revolutions, for Mariátegui, occur before any armed action or effective transformation of the institutional order. A major consequence of this account is that, in order to forge a new sensibility, one need not wait for the organized masses to seize power or for the means of production to be socialized. It is rather the opposite: revolution – the dawn of a new subjectivity – is the engine that drives the renewal of political structures. Another important implication is that art, in this view, acquires a unique status among all human activities as well as a space of relative autonomy with respect to the orders of politics and economics. This argument, however, is not one that seeks to isolate art from the workings of external forces. Mariátegui's point, rather, is that true art escapes the realm of ideology because its mission is not to impose truths but to question the established order. If ideology is oppressive because it defends the status quo, art is emancipatory because it awakens our creative powers. It follows, then, that the sole idea of putting art at the service of the revolution is absurd: “artists and technicians are much more useful and valuable to revolution the more artists and technicians they remain” (1959b, p. 200; 1994, Vol. I, p. 725). And, by the same token, it is similarly absurd to propose, even as a provisional measure, that artistic and creative freedoms be suspended in order to support revolutionary objectives.
These particular reflections suggest that Mariátegui would not have understood
