Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality by José Carlos Mariátegui

Author:José Carlos Mariátegui [Mariátegui, José Carlos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 1971-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

6

Regionalism and Centralism

Basic Premises

HOW IS THE QUESTION of regionalism presented in our time? In some departments, especially in the south, there is an obvious regionalist sentiment. But regionalist aspirations are not defined in explicit and vigorous protests. In Peru, regionalism is a vague feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction, rather than a movement or a program.

This can be explained by our economic and social situation and by our historical development. The question of regionalism can no longer be approached in terms of the radical or Jacobin ideology of the nineteenth century.

I believe that our study of regionalism should start from the following premises:

(1) The dispute between federalists and centralists is as anachronistic as the controversy between conservatives and liberals. In theory and practice the battle has moved from an exclusively political to a social and economic terrain. The new generation is no longer interested in the form, the administrative mechanism, of our regime, but in its substance, the economic structure.

(2) Federalism does not appear in our history as a popular cause, but rather as a justification of gamonalismo and its clientele. The mass of Indians do not participate in it and its converts are limited to the bourgeoisie of the old colonial cities.

(3) Centralism is supported by regional bossism and gamonalismo, prepared on occasion to say or feel that they are federalist. Federalism recruits its followers among the caciques or gamonales in disfavor with the central power.

(4) One of the defects of our political organization is its centralism; the solution, however, does not lie in a federalism rooted and inspired in feudalism. Our political and economic organization needs to be completely revised and transformed.

(5) It is difficult to define the limits of regions historically existing in Peru as such. The departments originated in the artificial intendencias of the viceroyalty. They therefore have no tradition or reality derived from the Peruvian people and their history.

The idea of federalism has no deep roots in our history. The only ideological conflict, the only doctrinal difference in the first half-century of the republic, was that of Conservatives and Liberals. It did not reflect opposition between the capital and the regions but antagonism between large landholders, descended from colonial feudalism and aristocracy, and the mestizo demos of the city, heirs to the rhetorical liberalism of independence. This struggle spread, naturally, to the administrative system. By eliminating municipalities, the conservative constitution of Huancayo expressed the conservative position on self-government. But neither Conservatives nor Liberals of that time considered administrative centralization or decentralization to be a cardinal issue. Later, when the old landholders and aristocrats, allied with merchants made wealthy by contracts and business deals with the government, turned into a capitalist class, they recognized that the Liberal program was more suited to their interests and requirements than the aristocratic. Conservatives and Liberals, without distinction, declared themselves favorable or opposed to decentralization. In this new period, conservatism and liberalism, which were now not even given those names, no longer corresponded to class interests. In that curious period, the wealthy became somewhat liberal and the masses became somewhat conservative.

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