Socialism, Land and the Indian in the 7 Ensayos

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Fall 1976

Abstract

José Carlos Mariátegui's 7 ensayos en interpretación de la realidad 'peruana has been called "one of the great Latin American books of the twentieth century" (Harold Eugene Davis, Latin American Thought, 1972, p.189). It is, at the very least, one of the best analyses of Peruvian society yet written and one of the outstanding ensayos to appear in Latin American letters in this century. Since its publication in 192.8 (Lima: Biblioteca Amauta), it has gone through some thirty editions, and has been translated into five foreign languages, including English and Russian. 1 By most calculations, the 7 Ensayos is the most widely read work by a Peruvian author. It not only broke ground by basing its analysis on data from census records and other empirical (rather than impressionistic) sources, but was the first extensive study of Latin American reality from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. As such, it can be seen as the forerunner of the Marxist and dependency analyses which have come to dominate much of Latin American writing in the social sciences.

Was this content written or created while at USF?

Yes

Citation / Publisher Attribution

Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispánica, v. 1, issue 4, art. 12

Share

COinS