Otra modernidad, otra geografía: una interpretación crítica de las influencias y orientaciones geográficas de José Carlos Mariátegui

Abstract

Scholars have consistently overlooked the problem of geographic relationships in the work of José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930).This silence can be summarized into two fundamental dynamics: Mariátegui's scarce reference in the geographical field and the predominance of historiographic, sociological, and literary approaches to his work. This article aims to question such inertia and bridge the gap between Mariátegui and Latin American geographical thought. It critically interprets the epistemic origin of Mariátegui's foremost geographical notions, recognizing the particular historical context and state of geography during the first decades of the twentieth century. Against the Eurocentric approaches of his time, Mariátegui was one of the first intellectuals to express thought from and for Latin America, but without neglecting fundamental contributions of European and Western traditions (Urquijo y Bocco, 2016). Indeed, Mariátegui questioned the possibility of an absolute Latin American or Latin Americanist thought, all the while confronting the challenge of understanding the “reality” of his country, constructing innovative theses on Peruvian society and culture in which, evidently, geography was not exempt. In his seminal work, Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana (Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, 1928), Mariátegui explains the antagonism and inequality between the coast and the sierra, he identifies the coexistence of three forms of economies (indigenous, colonial, and capitalist) that articulate different social geographies, and he outlines regional problems stemming from political alliances on different social levels, among other issues. Closely examining these analytical positions reveals a powerful geographic and human sensitivity yet to be explored in Mariátegui's thought, as well as the need to critically examine their argumentative origins. To date, the scarce research on theoretical relationships between Mariátegui and geography have only referred to three aspects of this problem. First of all, that Mariátegui's geographical influence comes from certain liberal intellectuals, reflected in a physicist and economistoriented vision of geography, based on localization and industrial growth of the positive “regions” (Ruiz, 2011: 144). Second of all, that Mariátegui elaborated a racist vision of Peru's territory based on the critical dualism of coast/white and sierra/indigenous, which avoided other interregional racial differences (Méndez, 2016). Thirdly, that Mariátegui's unique perception of geographic differences was circumscribed to the social and economic differences of Peruvian reality (Sanjinés, 2009). However, none of these proposals extensively analyze the situation of geography in Mariátegui's particular debate on modern imaginaries, focusing on other subjects of study that stray from strictly epistemological discussions of geography. Therefore, our proposal analyzes and explains the source of Mariátegui's geographic mechanism. Far from the kind of geography produced during the Republic or positivist inventories of natural and historical regions, Mariátegui recreates geography based on social and historical practices of Peruvian reality. In other words, he rids geography of its traditional sources and directions, transforming the discipline from a much larger categorical process that connects his own political trajectory and analytical exploration: he unambiguously rejects positivism as the only valid form of knowledge and attempts to construct an anti-imperialist socialism apt for Peruvian reality. Similarly, both positions are part of an alternative model of modernity which is defended and constructed from new content, such as recovering the value of indigenous roots for the future and challenging nationalisms that surrender to foreign capital and exploit indigenous communities. Therefore, Mariátegui's modernity implied profoundly questioning the dominant spatial order of nationalism and the possibility of revising the still prevalent colonial margins and representations. In other words, Mariátegui incorporated the problem of subjectivity into comprehending geographic reality in an age when geography was practiced without social subjects. Furthermore, he advocated for a socialist political project that integrated both regional-indigenous and urban-workers, crucial for a modernization that had always reflected geographic and provincial differences (Flores Galindo, 1980). Definitively, Mariátegui's conceptions of space and time are consistently open to political and imaginative possibilities (Germaná, 1994). As this article argues, such elements are key sources of Mariátegui's geographical influences.