Mariategui could be the mascot for LFS

When I first started reading Mariategui, I was worried I wouldn’t understand him because I have no background in economics. But it is turning out to be so much more than that. I find that what Mariategui does well is that, even though his focus is clearly on economics, he understands and articulates food and land as systems — as a web of economics, geography, culture, and social organization — rather than as mere commodities.

He writes about economic place and space; about how the location of the economic centre of Peru has shifted with the shifting social landscape and needs of different imperial powers. The Spanish wanted precious metals, the British wanted guano and nitrates (AKA fertilizer), and the Americans wanted petroleum (as usual). He also writes about how foreign investment in cotton and sugar drastically reduced the production of food crops, especially traditionally and culturally important Indigenous foods. He writes that, in 1925 at least, Peru’s largest import was wheat. Wheat was introduced to Peru with the arrival of the Spanish and is not a part of Indigenous food systems. For example, the Incan food system depended on other grains native to the Andes, such as quinoa, maize, tarwi, and kiwicha. Mariategui moreover writes about how Indigenous food systems are developed in such a way that independent communities are able to support themselves through the communal working of community lands; a system which the lasting legacy of haciendas has continuously disrupted, and a system which cannot be restored by land reform that distributes land to individuals. He hits on a point that I struggle to express, and that is true not only in Peru, but also globally: our modern agriculture is only dependent on large properties, expensive machinery, and copious amounts of synthetic external inputs because that is the kind of agriculture we have invested and continue to invest in.

In a way, I understand the hippies when I read Mariategui. Maybe the way forward is to return to communal, agrarian life. But not on stolen lands; not without the return of the right to determine what happens on their land to the Indigenous peoples who have had relations there since time immemorial.

Mariategui also answered some questions I had. My parents asked why people farm mainly on the valley floors rather than the terraces now, even when the terraces aren’t part of protected ruins. Mariategui explains the Spanish settled in the valleys because they “feared and distrusted the Andes, of which they never really felt themselves masters”, a legacy which I presume has lasted to this day. I wondered why the only coastal city I knew was Lima. Mariategui explains how the hacienda structure directly counteracts all the necessary ingredients for the formation of a town. I wondered why there’s a larger Chinese presence in Peru than I expected. Mariategui explains, “The Peruvian coast received contingents of Chinese immigrants who replaced the Negro slaves imported during the viceroyalty and emancipated partly as a result of the transformation from a feudal to a more or less bourgeois economy.” I thought it had something to do with BRICS and China’s recent focus on exerting its soft power in South America and Africa.

Mariategui also leaves me with questions. I understand that his focus is on the economic realm, but I personally wonder about the environmental legacy left by these economic realities. With the overexploitation of guano, how were the birds impacted? Has the extensive cultivation of cotton and sugar impacted the fertility of the soil?

P.S. I found out that Mariategui had an accident at school when he was 8 years old, which resulted in stiffness and rigidity in his left leg for the rest of his life. Since he couldn’t engage in outdoor recreational activities typical of children his age, he spent most of his time reading and thinking. Mariategui was physically incapable of touching grass and as a result, grew up to defend the grass.