Proletarians of all countries, unite!
THE NATIONAL PROBLEM
How to see this in the light of the theory developed by Comrade Stalin and recognized by Lenin. What we need is also to combat the right-wing, revisionist, opportunist, bourgeois modality in general as the national problem is being posed, deforming it behind the so-called criteria of national identity. In Marxist theory, experience teaches us that a bourgeois deviation leads to reducing the national problem to a cultural issue and that these positions were supported by elements of the old revisionist gang in World War II; Those positions were taken by the powers to exercise and maintain their dominance.
In Peru, we must remember how they tried to undo the democratic revolution by specifically going against Mariátegui's line in the 1930s; Ravines and others begin to raise the problem of Quechua and Aymara nationalities, conceiving them as nations that had to develop by creating republics. There we clearly see how the national problem was separated from the land and there is no national problem without the land question, as Comrade Stalin very well said. Later in the 70s, these issues of the Quechua and Aymara nation began to move again, linked to Vanguardia Revolucionaria, today PUM, being linked to the so-called new left that never took a position for Marxism. In recent times the problem is being raised again under these forms of culture and focusing on it under the name of national identity. It has developed more under what European imperialism, particularly French, dictates as its direction.
The text ENCOUNTERS provides informative material. Interviews with several Peruvian intellectuals by Carlos Arroyo from “Cambio”.
Not all intellectuals are equal, but those criteria prevail. The prologue “Rescue of tradition” is by Alberto Flores Galindo, who says that making Peru only a subject of study is the price one pays to be admitted to the national or international intellectual world. This type of intellectual receives payment for their services in defense of order and their price varies depending on their contribution. This derives from his words. Hard but real. He then states that the Andean aspects of yesterday and today are in debate. That is what they want to turn into the direction to follow with a set of deformations. Flores Galindo rightly criticizes Carlos I. Degregori who proposes a kind of mental revolution, of popular modernity through the traditional myth of progress, the myth of progress that would move the Andean world. We see how it tries to cover up the problem of class struggle, of the fight for land as part of a democratic, anti-imperialist revolution that is expressed and developed. Flores Galindo, when criticizing, raises the problem of the community linked to criteria with populist roots and that is also expressed when coming to the city, he says that there is a transplant of that. He states that it is premature to consider the past dead and that the challenge involved in how the Andean utopia enables one's own path and quotes Mariátegui. Traffic with Mariátegui, the problem is the development of the new, it is covered that from those Andean, peasant and Marxist entrails, the new develops vigorously, combining with the process of this country. We see shameful covert reissues of proposing that Marxism can only develop in large cities by twisting what Mariátegui said.
Flores Galindo criticizes Degregori who is based on a certain Bergman who has analyzed the situation of New York in the Bronx, of oppressed minorities and transplanted to Peru, he says that San Martín de Porres or Lima do not obey the New York model. Degregori places the immigrants from Lima as a recessive disintegration of the democratic re-composition. The mountain people would be a recessive disintegration, as far as they go! They are within the nation culture criteria. It is good that he diverges with Degregori, but they have the same direction, because he is going to propose that other options could also be considered, revolution for example. For him, revolution is not the only option. Then he says there is a risk in praising modernity in a veiled defense of capitalism. It is an open and covert defense of bureaucratic capitalism, depending on the case. You must be clear in what you say when you propose that social change or revolution should be put at the center of the debate. The revolution is on the table, social change is an old imperialist theory to oppose the revolution. There you can see where all this leads, to collide with the revolution.
Flores Galindo criticizes Fernando Iwasaki, an arch-reactionary as part of that new right that wants to deny the Peruvian historical process by mechanically transferring that liberal economy to the field of culture. Fernado Iwasaki in his book “Peruvian Nation Entelechy or Utopia” says that Andean culture will survive if it plays a role in social representation and the division of labor in the expansion and development of capitalism. He reduces the national problem to Andean culture and says that it will survive if it serves the expansion of capitalism. He reduces the national problem to Andean culture and says that it will survive if it serves the expansion of bureaucratic capitalism and its development. Imperialism uses these positions through those university professors like Iwasaki.
The problem of national identity is a deformation of the national problem, the contradiction between bourgeois socialist that proposes an Andean utopia, national identity like Flores Galindo himself and others, enter into collusion and struggle with imperialism, a position defended by Fernando Iwasaki who uses these theses to tell them that behind that there is Marxism and in this way, since Marxism according to them is in the doldrums, it is an outdated thing and Andean culture can only serve the development of bureaucratic capitalism. It is not a Marxist position, both are in collusion and conflict and support each other. The speculations that bourgeois socialism, that revisionism makes imperialism use, especially if it is about opening an ideological field in Peru. The point of view of these bourgeois socialists after their Andean utopia that has then evolved into a national identity that is a right-wing deviation of nation or culture, they undo the revolution, they undermine Marxism, hence they talk about new ways of seeing Marxism (in traditional forms) because Marxism in traditional forms according to them has failed.
Flores Galindo criticizes Iwasaki's positions; like Ghersi, Cateriano led by Federico Salazar who is the head of all of them, not because of the expiration of their ideology and their connection to imperialism and the Peruvian reaction, but because of their difficulty of not seeing the future creatively. What is the position of this group? What background do you find them? At the last minute it is about how to promote bureaucratic capitalism, some as acomprador bourgeoisie, others as a bureaucratic bourgeoisie or serving it by dressing up as false socialists.
Flores Galindo writes in his Sur Magazine “House of Studies of Socialism”. He declares himself a socialist. He is the standard bearer of the National Identity which is nothing more than a bourgeois form of right-wing deviation as the national problem is being presented here, to the influence paid by mainly French imperialism. There is no Marxist position seen in any way in the so-called national identity. There is no such. There is no such thing, they do not see, one can see from a Marxist point of view the problem of how to concretize, shape, complete the formation of the Peruvian nation, nor do they understand that this can only be developed with the revolution led by the proletariat through its two stages. But the culmination of the first defines the formation of that nation and the base is the people, the worker-peasant alliance led by the PCP. They oppose, undermine, fight in the people's war, which is the highest form that the historical process has developed to overthrow imperialist domination, sweep away semi-feudality, confiscate bureaucratic capitalism and forge the nation taking from the past that which serves the future, all the good tradition of the people, of serving the people's war, is the problem of culture, of art, of the popular intellectual movement. That is a real, concrete process and as historians they would have the elementary obligation to understand, recognize and serve, otherwise the nation is not shaped. We are the ones who are completing the formation of the nation on the basis of the land, destroying imperialism that serves interests contrary to their own status as intellectuals.
ARGUEDAS. It is good to see a few paragraphs because we cannot allow trafficking. He was not a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, one cannot help but recognize that he did feel the feeling of the people, the main thing in him that he felt, lived, expressed was the indigenous people, the peasantry as no one among the Peruvian intellectuals has done. The limitation is not having been a Marxist. It expresses that basis of the democratic revolution but does not manage to take the proletarian political ideological guideline and therefore to take its organization. It has to do with a period in the history of Peru. It would be necessary to study it more in other works.
Antonio Cornejo Polar, who has written “La Novela Peruana” declares himself an admirer of Arguedas but tries to use him because of his position linked to the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, thus he became rector of San Marcos, he cut his losses and later became a professor in the United States. It says “all blood” unity of opposites and new opposition. These right-wing deviations from national identity traffic in this of all blood, it is to deny class character that is also expressed in a nation that is a people that is made up of classes and promote large undifferentiated units and cover up the interests of the exploiters of the big bourgeoisie of the landowners and imperialists. Here we must strike that they conceal, that they reject, the class struggle, the revolution, they want to unravel everything for culture. Sinesio López, Degrogori, Flores Galindo, what position do they have regarding the people's war? Armed process that the Peruvian nation is carrying out, that there is a long way to go, yes, in terms of art, culture, intellectuality, and we have to develop policies to serve the conquest of power, because it is essential, we have a good basis based on what comrades, combatants, masses who fight in the popular war have done and take that immense base of truly popular tradition.
Cornejo says that in Todos las Sangres Arguedas makes a conclusion about how to merge the indigenous world with the non-indigenous world; Between his work “Los Ríos Profundos” and “Todas las Sangres” an integrative vision will be given, Arguedas taking stock of the first indigenism of the 1920s says: “In that sense the current narrative that begins as indigenista has ceased to be such in that it encompasses the description and interpretation of the destiny of the total community of the country.” For him, he has stopped being an indigenous person, wanting to see only that world and from that interpret the entire country. He continues, "but he could continue to be described as indigenist as long as he continues to reaffirm the excellent human values of the native population and the promise that they mean or constitute for the final result of the unleashing of the social struggles that in Peru" and other similar countries in Latin America, are being debated.
It is correct, the peasantry is the main force of the revolution in Peru, in very beautiful terms it reveals an advance in its understanding, but Cornejo reduces it to that it is an adherence to the Andean man, to the Indian. But if Arguedas himself says that after living 30 years in Lima he can write about Lima, this means that he has a broader vision and that this experience allows him to believe that the peasantry, the indigenous mass, is a promise for the final result of the social struggles of Peru, but Cornejo also says that in all bloods what was previously expressed as homogeneous begins to be seen as internal bankruptcy, a cracking of that universe. Specifically, Don Bruno and Don Fermín, both were landowners, one continues to be one and the other is linked to imperialism, to the mine. Arguedas records that.
Cornejo says that Arguedas's last work “Zorro de Arriba y…” would be the final effort to achieve a narrative discourse that encompasses the entire world. This is a key work by Arguedas that the PUM has trafficked.
“From Garcilaso to Arguedas.” Upon receiving the Inca Garcilaso award, José María Arguedas gave a speech in 1968. Shortly after that, he committed suicide, it is a very beautiful text, it would be good to get it in its entirety, because the Commission has to study it and delve into this text. Arguedas makes his individual course and says that he tried to “convert the written language from what he was as an individual, into a living, strong link, capable of individualizing himself from the great surrounded nation and the generous, human part of the exploiters, it would be, the good thing, that we are going to take the positive of the above, but it can also be misinterpreted. He continues “the fence could and should be destroyed, the wealth of the two nations could and should be united”, we think that Arguedas is looking for the nation there, therefore what there is is a nation in formation. He continues "and the path did not have to be, nor was it possible, only that which was demanded by the empire of victors, plunderers, that is, that the defeated nation renounced its soul even if only in appearance, formally, and took it that of the victors, that is to say that it was hidden. This is key.
We do not agree that he should be compared to Garcilaso Inca, no matter how much he talked about the Incanato, he felt Spanish and he was, he went to Spain very young and never returned. This is not the case of Arguedas, it is another union, another root, another much richer experience that leads him to see the entire country as a unit and considers how it can be united. It is key how he states that the peasantry is the main force of the Peruvian revolution in this quote. From his way of seeing, which is not guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, he considers the role of the peasantry, which it can and will fulfill. It would be necessary to re-study All the Bloods, Zorro de Arriba y Zorro de Abajo and the speech when he was given the Garcilaso de la Vega prize, see it in full to have a full understanding of his thoughts. It is not good that they traffic with Arguedas with the idea that all blood is a union without class differences, much less that they seek to distort Arguedas as they have done with that debate of Zorro de Arriba and Zorro de Abajo, those from the IU, those who practice reducing nation to culture.
REPORT BY PRESIDENT GONZALO: PREPARATORY SESSION, II PLENARY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU
Peru, August 90