Thinkers Timeline

José Carlos Mariátegui was a Peruvian thinker, journalist, and political activist. He was one of the most original political writers in Latin American history. He was born on 14 June 1894 in Moquegua, in southern Peru. His family was poor. His father left when he was young, and his mother raised him and his siblings. As a child, Mariátegui suffered a serious injury. Some reports say he fell; others say he was struck. The injury to his left leg became infected and never healed properly. He spent much of his life in pain. Later, the same leg had to be amputated. He used a wheelchair for his final years. He was also a small man, thin, often tired. Yet from this broken body came some of the boldest thinking in Peru's history. He left school at fifteen to work at a newspaper, first as a copy boy, then as a writer. He taught himself through reading. By his early twenties, he was already a well-known journalist in Lima. The Peruvian government sent him to Europe in 1919, partly to get him out of the country because his writing had become too critical. He spent four years in Italy, France, and Germany. He witnessed the rise of Italian fascism. He read Marx, Lenin, Sorel, and many other European thinkers. He returned to Peru in 1923 transformed. Back in Lima, he founded the journal Amauta ('wise teacher' in Quechua) in 1926. It became the most important cultural and political magazine in Peru. He wrote his major book, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, in 1928. He helped found the Peruvian Socialist Party in 1928. He died on 16 April 1930, aged only 35, from complications of his long illness. In thirty-five years, he had produced a body of work that is still read and debated today.