While reading Mariátegui’s “The Problem of the Indian: A New Approach”, I couldn’t help but make connections to Frantz Fanon. Though to be fair I think about Frantz Fanon a lot. While they were writing in quite different contexts, they are both fundamentally concerned with the liberation of oppressed peoples and the dismantling systems of exploitation while also confronting the underlying socio-economic and psychological forces that sustain oppression.

For Mariátegui, the root cause of Indigenous oppression lies firmly in the inequitable distribution of land and the entrenched power of the hacienda owners; true emancipation requires dismantling these feudal structures and redistributing land to economically empower the Indigenous population. Fanon on the other hand emphasizes how colonization fractures the identity of the colonized, creating a “Manichaean world” where the colonizer and the colonized exist in stark, antagonistic binaries. To Fanon, this division supersedes the socio-economic and is deeply psychological as well, stripping the colonized of their humanity. 

While Mariátegui focuses primarily on the material conditions and structural changes needed to uplift the indigenous population, Fanon adds to this conversation by reminding us that true liberation also requires reclaiming one’s identity and humanity. The existential anguish and dehumanization experienced by the colonized or oppressed cannot be fully alleviated by land redistribution alone. The indigenous people must see themselves not as passive recipients of reforms but as active agents in their liberation. This psychological shift is crucial for sustaining any socio-economic changes. The internalization of colonial inferiority must be confronted and eradicated, just as much as the external structures of feudalism. 

Both thinkers emphasize that the struggle for liberation must be wary of those who seek to replace one form of domination with another, merely changing the faces of the oppressors without dismantling the underlying systems of oppression. Fanon insists that reclaiming this humanity necessitates a violent upheaval. To Fanon,  it is through the act of violent rebellion that the colonized can reclaim their agency and self-worth.  Mariátegui, on the other hand, does not explicitly discuss violent revolution, focusing more strictly on a radical restructuring of the land tenure system, though he doesn’t necessarily dismiss it.  Fanon’s insistence addresses the psychological dimension of oppression that I find that Mariátegui’s economic focus overlook. 

Violent resistance serves as a means of reclaiming dignity and self-worth, which are systematically denied under colonial rule. the indigenous struggle in Peru is not just about redistributing land but also about confronting and dismantling the psychological structures of oppression.