How long will Peru last? History weighs on today’s events
By Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein
The writer was the director of international relations in Venezuela’s presidential office and the country’s ambassador to Nicaragua. Currently, he is a guest professor at Shanghai University in China. This article was posted at sergioro07.blogspot.com on Nov. 13. Translation: Michael Otto.
Mariategui’s magazine, Amauta. Credit: Juan Fajardo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In his “Seven Essays on the Interpretation of Peruvian Reality,” José Carlos Mariátegui explains how the Spanish colonizers destroyed the “phenomenal production machine” of the Incas in Peru without being able to replace it. [The Inca empire created 25,000 miles of roads and stretched from the current borders of Colombia and Ecuador through Peru and Bolivia to northwest Argentina and Chile in the south.]