José Carlos Mariátegui and the origins of the latín american sociology

Abstract

José Carlos Mariátegui was a prominent figure in the origins of the Latin American sociology, during the twentieth century. He created an indigenist perspective, a new methodology, and a rooted reading of Marxism. With his Seven Essays to Interpret the Peruvian Reality (1928), Mariátegui produced a significant move from the typical “national studies” towards the analysis of “the problem of the indigenous people,” as well as a shift from positivism to Marxism. Moreover, this boosted the development of a conceptual paradigm that was later called the structural-historical method, the basis of dependency analysis. Eventually, in the midst of his contemporary social movements, this Peruvian essayist inaugurated the militant sociology that was to be developed across the region from the 1960s. This chapter suggests, accordingly, that Mariátegui should be considered as the founding father of this regional sociological tradition.