A vital form of public space

Mariátegui's revolution in modernity

pp. 143-186

in: Nicola Miller, Reinventing modernity in Latin America, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

Abstract

The question of how to develop an authentic alternative to the technocratic modernity favored by local elites and imperialist powers has long preoccupied the Latin American Left. By the 1920s, social democracy (discussed in chapter 3) was increasingly seen as deficient, not least because of the continuing readiness of the elites to repress even peaceful demonstrations of labor power. In this respect, a major turning point was Argentina's Semana Trágica (Tragic Week) of 1919, when the reformist Radical government—which was only in power at all because of an increase in working-class electoral participation— ordered the troops to fire on striking workers. Many Latin American radicals initially sought inspiration in Soviet Russia (both socialist and anarchist groups converted themselves into communist parties in the early 1920s), but the dogmatism of the Communist International quickly took its toll, hindering the efforts of Latin American communists to attract mass support. In the debates generated by disillusionment with the Soviet model, a great deal hinged on how revolution was conceived. For many on the Latin American Left, revolution was seen less in terms of an act of seizing state power but more as a process "in which intellectual and moral reform [was] an integral part rather than a possible consequence."²