Abstract

The Peruvian Jose Carlos Mariategui was one of the most original Marxist thinkers in Latin America. His writings covered a wide variety of topics including political theory, revolutionary strategy, international relations, economics, land tenure, Indian problems, religion, art and literary criticism. His socialist ideas are basic to the new Latin American Marxism that began with the Cuban revolution. His interpretative theses of Latin American reality concur with current Latin American Marxist social theory. His ideas on the role of religion in politics are close to those of the modern theology of liberation. ;This dissertation focuses on the original contributions of Mariategui's intellectual work from 1923, the year he came back from Europe, to 1930. Its central thesis is that Mariategui revitalized the revolutionary character of Marxism in Latin America, unmasked political reformism in Peru, transformed Marxism into a theoretical instrument for interpreting Peruvian society within the context of international capitalism, created the basic elements for a revolutionary Marxist strategy in Peru, and underscored the role of non-rational factors in motivating people to revolutionary action. These five contributions focus on major themes still under discussion in current Latin American Marxism. The appendix in this dissertation contains a chronological list of Mariategui's works published by Editorial Amauta, except his correspondence. It consists of 529 entries