This book contests the depiction of Latin American Marxism as an alien ideology. Even in the Communist parties, Marc Becker argues, traces of an independent and indigenous Marxism are evident. As for the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions, the author believes these were primarily responses to each country’s national reality.
The Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930) is credited with showing how to apply Marxism to understand the unique conditions of a given country, and with establishing a legacy of independent Marxist theory in Latin America. Among the revolutionaries he directly influenced were Julio Antonio Mella, founder of the Cuban Communist party, and Augusto C. Sandino in Nicaragua, who in turn contributed to shaping the political thought of Fidel Castro, Ernesto Guevara, and the leaders of the Sandinista Front of National Liberation. Although this thesis is not original, Becker adds some interesting and useful details concerning the intellectual foundations of the Nicaraguan and Cuban revolutions.
Becker points to the continued vitality of revolutionary movements in Latin America—Peru’s Shining Path is a conspicuous example—as evidence for his thesis that they draw on roots markedly different from those in Eastern Europe. Therefore he does not anticipate that the crisis of socialism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union will adversely alter the chances for socialism in Latin America.
The evidence for indigenous Marxist movements, however, is one thing, and the evidence for the primacy of indigenous over alien roots is something else. Becker has not a shred of evidence for the latter. Indeed, he underestimates the extent to which these movements indirectly emanated from Moscow and the Communist International during the 1920s and 1930s. Their influence is evident in shaping not only Mella’s and Sandino’s political thought but Mariátegui’s as well.
Mariátegui’s writings are noteworthy for the absence of citations from the Marxist classics and for the appearance of independence from the Communist mainstream. Indeed, Mariátegui reflects the pervasive influence of the Communists’ ongoing revision of Marxism, which Becker misrepresents as “mechanical” and “dogmatic.” At most, Becker concedes that Mariátegui’s national Marxism stopped short of repudiating the ideology of the Communist International and that “Mariátegui … had learned from Lenin the importance of flexibility and the ability to fit ideas to new situations” (p. 62). But since Lenin is in vogue and Stalin is not, Becker fails to credit Stalin with the same flexibility. Unlike Sandino’s heterodoxy, which led to a rupture with the Communists, Mariátegui’s independence of the Communist International has been exaggerated ad nauseam by Latin American Marxists in a misguided effort to distance themselves from their unwanted benefactors.