Peruvian Socialist Party (1928)
페루 사회당 (1928)
A Peruvian Marxist party founded on 7 October 1928 by José Carlos Mariátegui in Barranco, Lima. Anti-feudal and anti-imperialist, it saw the peasantry as well as the proletariat as its main actors and laid the basis for the General Confederation of Workers of Peru. After Mariátegui’s death in 1930 it was renamed the Peruvian Communist Party under Eudocio Ravines.
In depth
According to the Spanish source, on 7 October 1928 in Barranco, Lima, José Carlos Mariátegui founded the Peruvian Socialist Party together with Julio Portocarrero, Avelino Navarro, Ricardo Martínez La Torre, Bernardo Regman and others. A Marxist, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist party, it strongly reflected Mariátegui’s idea of building in Latin America a socialism “neither copy nor imitation”, applied to each country’s concrete reality. It saw the peasantry as well as the proletariat as its main actors and laid the basis for the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP), with great influence on the labour movement. In the founding organisation chart Mariátegui was secretary general, Martínez La Torre propaganda secretary and Regman treasurer.
At the 1929 Comintern conference of Latin American parties in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, party delegates Hugo Pesce and Julio Portocarrero presented Mariátegui’s thesis on “the problem of races”, but the Comintern rejected it, and after Mariátegui’s death in April 1930 it was forgotten within the party as well.
In February 1930, while Mariátegui was preparing a trip to Buenos Aires, Eudocio Ravines was appointed secretary general in his place. Ravines notified the Comintern of the change of name agreed at the Central Committee plenum of 4 March 1930, turning the party into the Peruvian Communist Party and formalising its adherence to the international communist movement. The English source notes that the Peruvian Communist Party still exists and is distinguished from other communist parties by the name “Unity”.