José Carlos Mariátegui and the Lasting Impact of his European Travels

Abstract

Abstract:Mariátegui was a prolific writer who produced the most influential socialist literature in Latin America. Because of his political activism, he was forced to leave Peru to avoid imprisonment during Augusto B. Leguía’s dictatorship. Between 1919 and 1923, he traveled throughout Europe, witnessed some of that continent’s most transformative events, and met leading intellectuals who exercised a profound influence on his writings and thoughts. Employing Iain Chambers’s theory on identity, this article reexamines the role that Mariátegui’s European travels played in shaping his writings, a legacy that continues to exert significant literary, historical, and sociopolitical influence in contemporary Peru.