Times of Struggle

8/8/2019 Times of Struggle

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Times of StruggleManuel Gonzlez Prada

Thomas Ward, Editor


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Manuel Gonzlez Prada (Per: 1844-1918)1

By Harold Eugene Davis

For years Gonzlez Prada was the Peruvian conscience, denouncing the social and politicalerrors of Peru which had produced the weakness and anarchy responsible for defeat by Chile in1789, while leading a liberal intellectual and literary revival. Although in the general form of his

thought he is a social evolutionist, similar to other writers of his day, contacts with anarchist thoughtseem to have made him a revolutionist in spite of Comte, Darwin, and Spencer.

Born in Lima in 1844, he was the third son in a wealthy, conservative, and religious landowningfamily which had taken an active part in Peruvian affairs since long before independence. Hiseducation at the Colegio de San Carlos and in the law school of the National University exposedhim to the scientific rationalism (positivism) of the day, and he came to be an admirer of the free-thinking director of the National Library, Francisco Vigil, to the great distress of his pious motherand conservative father. Later contact with Renan in France helped to make his anti-clerical pen oneof the sharpest in all Spanish America. At first his activity centered in literary circles, but in 1891 heparticipated in organizing the Unin Nacional, a political party committed to Indian reforms, sociallegislation, and parliamentary government. After his return from France in 1898 his political writingand speaking increased, and his appointment as director of the National Library in 1912 was theoccasion of political as well as religious controversy.

While his social thought is basically that of scientific rationalism, he has combined with it astrong moral idealism having roots in the Liberal thought and utopian anarchism, as well as in thecontemporary idealistic reaction against the materialistic determinism of Darwinian and Spencerianthought. "To one who says the school, reply the school and bread." The old Liberal anti-clericalismhas been reinforced in Gonzlez Prada by scientific free-thinking, and he retains the positivist'sstrong opposition to religious superstition.

Gonzlez Prada wrote with the pen of a journalist, with sharp cutting sarcasm and subtle satirewhich is difficult or even impossible to translate adequately. The essay on the Indian which followsis particularly interesting as one of the early statements of the present day Indianism of Peru. But italso reveals other aspects of the author's thought which have been mentioned, especially hisrevolutionary moral idealism. Written in 1904, it was a product of the years of political activityfollowing his return from France. Never completed by the author, it was included only in the secondedition ofHoras de lucha, prepared by Adriana de Gonzlez Prada.

1961

1Harold Euguene Davis, "Manuel Gonzalez Prada",Latin American Social Thought(Washington:The University Press of Washington, 1961), pp. 195-196. Prepared for the WWW by Dawn

DeLeonardis
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Free Thought of ActionBy Manuel Gonzlez Prada

(This speech should have been read the 28 th of August of 1898 in the third Conference organized for

the League of Freethinkers of Peru. The lecture could not take place because the Governmentprevented it.)

Gentlemen:

I give the most sincere thanks to the members of the League for having honored me at theirassembly, especially so, since I am not a member of this body destined to have such a great impactin our social life.

I will say something of free thought, in its silent, and spoken varieties, but especially in its mostfar reaching sense, free thought of action, the one that produces the greatest fruits.

I

Freedom of thought in silence is not discussed, it is a given. Since no one can get into our brains

to scrutinize our thought process, we speak with ourselves without our inner voices resonating inthe eardrums of others, nor engraving itself in phonographic cylinders. Free from inquisitors andtyrants, we have a place where we can worship whatever gods please us, where we can build athrone for good, or a gallows for evil.

This kind of free thinking does not serve too much in lifes battles and the man that practices it isnothing more than a selfish philosopher, a barren brain, in a word, he is nothing. Why condemnsuperstitions in internal law, if in the world we approved of them tacitly? What is the benefit ofmaking believe we strangle criminals, if really we are extending a hand of friendship? What good isit to Humanity, if wise men get lost in themselves, without communicating their knowledge toanybody? Shuttered lanterns are only lit on the inside.

When a conviction is cherished, it is not guarded religiously like a familys jewel, nor is itpackaged hermetically like a very subtle perfume: it is exposed to the air and to the sun, it is leftwithin free reach of all intelligent beings. Humanity does not consist in secretly possessing itsmental riches, but in freeing them from the mind, dressing them with the wings of language so thatthey fly around the world to penetrate the minds of others. If all the philosophers had philosophizedin silence, humanity would not have left its childhood and societies would continue crawling in thelimb of superstitions.

Acquired truths for individuals do not constitute their personal patrimony: they form part ofhuman wealth. Nothing belongs to us, because of nothing we are the creators. The ideas that aremost our own, come to us from the intellectual world in which we breathe or from the artificial

atmosphere formed from reading. That which we give to one, we have taken from others: that whichseems like an offering is nothing more than a restitution to its rightful heirs. But, even if it were notso, is there any more valuable gift than thought? When giving our heart to those who love us, wepay them a debt; when offering thought to someone we dont know, to an adversary, to those whohate us, we follow the inexhaustible freedom of nature that lavishes its goods on the saint and on thesinner, to the dove and to the hawk, to the lamb and to the wolf.

It has been more than two thousand years since Chinese philosophers have said: Give much,receive little. This brave counsel involves a lesson of inexpressible generosity, of immense charity.But silent free thinkers dont want to enjoy the supreme delight1 of authorizing themselves withoutreserve, preferring to live in peace, and happy, never bothered because of their impieties ormeditations. Favoring them substantially, we should compare them with underground rivers thatflow to the sea, without calming a thirst nor fertilizing a seed.

II
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If mute free thought functions without disturbing the philosophers tranquility, the same is nottrue with free thought that is spoken and written. A person who speaks and writes with valiantindependence in retrograde societies, provokes recriminations and storms, taking a gamble in theface of the anathemas of the priest, the violent acts of the boss, and the impulsive fits of the popularbeast.

No one attacks a privilege nor ridicules a superstition without arousing thousands of protestingvoices nor thousands of threatening gestures. All condemn an error, all hurt from an injustice; butHumanity hides so many despicable acts and so much cowardice, that in the din of the fight it iscustomary to unite oneself with tormentors in order to fight the defenders. At times, there is nocrime so unforgivable as to speak what we think or to shout what we murmur in a low voice. In therealm of iniquity and falsehood, a verb is called for which severely censors the criminals; but, whenthe verb roars without hypocrisy nor adulation, only then the most fervent friends of the truth makethe greatest ruckus, thundering out the noisiest protests.

In order to deserve the title of good citizen and to figure in the classic list of wise men, it isnecessary to be satisfied with the uses and prejudices of ones time, venerating the absurdities of thereligion into which one is born, justifying the iniquities of the native country in which one has lived,

never breaking the antediluvian mold nor wanting to flap outside of the prehistoric cage. Forgetabout opposing someone or something, or of being intransigent: morality resolves itself bycompromising with the immortalities of ones medium, virtue is reduced to a hypocritical andmalleable opportunity. When it is said, then, of a man: He respects the law, translate: Servile nature.The moral perfection of almost all good gentlemen on the list is condensed in two words: LackeySpirits.

For that reason, expressing oneself with extreme independence reveals boldness and gives theappearance of sincerity. Nevertheless, the free thought of speakers and publicists suffers very cruelfalsifications: Perhaps the hypocrites of incredulity are more plentiful than the hypocrites of faith.Perhaps Tartuffe left less progeny than Homais. Sometimes there is more boldness in being called a

believer than in saying one is a freethinker.When speaking of the free thought, how can we not remember our national freethinkers? If the

millenarian history of Christianity is reduced to a monotonous and tedious enumeration of heresies,the brief annals of our free thought will be condensed to a series of getting caught in the act andpublic retractions. Compared to the firmness of a Vigil or of a Maritegui, how much corruption canwe expect in old age at the time of death! Where are the persevering and firm here? Those who havelived for some time and look back in search for those who one day had accompanied them in thefight for right and freedom, will only be able to make out a scattered legion of apostates andrenegades.

From eighteen to thirty years of age, ardent and fierce free thought germinates in many heads;

but from thirty on, goodbye struggles! Goodbye passion! And the infallible rule: the more one is alunatic, the more beautiful one becomes; backwards comes in proportion to the gap. From thepeaceful, we expect firmness, from the violent, we fear their capitulation.

Here reigns that which we would call Celphalism, which is to say, the incredulity of youth, theprudery of the old. Plato talks of a Cephalicus who, having begun laughing at vulgar superstitions,ends up taking them seriously when he saw for the first time his gray hairs and wrinkles. Even ifCervantes language still didnt exist, the good Cephalicus practiced a popular Castilian saying: A

young man to the palace, an old one to the church. This Greek man was born some centuries beforethe Christian era. Does not he serve as a model for many nineteenth century free thinkers? Here wehave proof that senility is possible in all nations and in all epochs. It is not so strange that todaysold faithfully imitate the old of yesterday: when getting along in years, we begin to fear death; whenwe think about heaven, we remember very little about the dignity of existence. The old man is a sadchild, old age is to infancy like the afternoon is to dawn.


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Some of our free thinkers do not need gray hairs nor wrinkles in order to revert towards thementality of grandmothers and wet nurses: a reverse of fortune is enough for them, the death of aloved one or the coming on of a serious illness. Fortunate beings! Efficient grace introduces itselfwith spores of the air and worms of the large sausage. Other free thinkers change sides, notevolving if illnesses or deaths do not overcome them. All they need is a good marriage. Suchfortunate beings! They find Catholicism in the dossier of a dowry. They discover God in the false

crest of a wealthy older woman.All of this does not shame them nor does it not interrupt any organic functions. There are inferior

animals that calmly follow their life even if we turn them inside out as we would with a glove orwith the cover of an umbrella. If we did the same with some Creole freethinkers, they wouldcontinue living with a single difference They would transform themselves into priests. The samewould happen with Peruvian masons; wherever one finds a great master of the Bible and a GreatArchitect, there lives a Jesuit or a Dominican. Let us say it again: both Creole freethinkers andbiblical or deistic masons, are inside-out priests.

In summary, almost all the national free thinkers lived preaching the excellencies of reason anddied receiving Catholic superstitions2: there were two types of these men the one of phrases and

the one of acts. Dumb or deaf lanterns did not cause good nor bad; but boisterous or histrioniccharacters of the pen and word have discredited the idea, producing enormous damage, causing menof good faith to become discouraged and quiet for fear of keeping such ridiculous and abominablecompany.

III

It is worthwhile to extend a hand to indicate the path where upon which we should march; but itis worth more to go ahead marking with your footprint the route to follow: a good guide is betterthan one hundred signs hanging on one hundred posts. To those who rise with propagandist andregenerative smoke, we do not ask them how they write and speak, but how they live: let usconsider the number of carats of unfailing actions not the number of kilometers of verbal heresies.

Do non-Catholics have a marriage law? Then use it in spite of all its deficiencies. Are there secularschools? Then do not educate your children in establishments founded by congregations. Do secularcemeteries exist? Then bury your dead without holy water or a funeral prayer. Do not try toreconcile Diderot with the parish priest, nor join Biblical fables with the laws of nature; and thinkthat the vitality of religions is based on the indolence of the non believers, just as the force ofwicked governments is based on the apathy of the masses.

Although free thinkers remain faithful to their doctrine and harmonize words with acts, theydeserve to be censored when they avoid social questions in order to live in fortified castles ofaggressive irreligiousness and even in what would be called an uncompromising phobia of theclergy. How can we not laugh at the red Torquemadas, of the Domingo de Guzmn on the other

extreme, of the lay inquisitors, reading to ignite the bonfires and to imitate the autos de fe? "Mandoes not live on bread alone", the Gospel says to us; it is our turn to say: the free thinker does notthrive on priests alone.

But some fanatics cant leave behind their anticlerical monomania. They live dedicated topersecuting cassocks in the cells of the nuns, or surprising petticoats in the alcoves of presbyters.Upon proving the inexistence of priests without mistress nor nephews, one imagines upon havingdemolished Catholicism. A new lineage Buddha, they are hypnotized by the contemplation of asolideo3. For them, neither social crime nor political extortion are important; the serious, theclamorous, the insufferable thing is that a tonsured4 person finds happiness with a housekeeper.Arrogantly, they reject the moral imposition of the religious power, while they humbly endure the

coercion of the civil power. They take pride in not kneeling down in a church, and they lick thecarpets of a palace; they rise up before a bishop, and they yield in the presence of a constable; theyfeel capable of slapping Jesus Christ, and they lack the courage to scold a doorman.
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We do not want to deny it, nor could we: the priest takes the role of a dismal and roughmountain, blocking the way toward light; consider the judge that sells justice, the parliamentarianthat adheres to the whims of the political boss, the capitalist that takes control of merchandiseproduced by the sweat of others; the soldier that fires his rifle into a mass of unarmed workers; donot these cause as many evils and do they not merit as much scorn as the priest? It is necessary topersecute the foxes, without forgetting the lions. When myths are collapsed and the heavens

disinfected, felines should be fought and the planet made sanitary. To achieve mans redemption, itis not enough to overthrow this impassible and egotistic God that eternally shakes his head in theInfinite; while the Universe twists in pain, desperation and death will persist.

The freethinker, called to political neutrality, who sees with indifference the inequities and thewastes of a tyrannical government, seems to us as censurable as the statesman who, allegingreligious neutrality, observes with Olympic serenity the predominance of the clergy and thediffusion of ultramontane ideas. Free thought should never renounce politics: politicians do notforget about the freethinkers. All politicians of bad law sense an adversary in all irreligious thinkers,a rational premonition, so he who revolts today against the authorities who presume to descendfrom the heavens, tomorrow will rebel against the despots who rise up from the land. Moreover, he

who lives on the banks of a river might not remember the waters; but the waters do not forget himwhen the river becomes a mother. Towers of ivory and mountains of inaccessible pinnacles serve nopurpose. When social convulsions explode on the scene, the moment arrives in which the mostpassive and indifferent sectors of society are shaken and crushed: having not wanted to act likepersons of the drama, they appear as victims in a fall of a building.

Free thought that works with a similar amplitude of sights stops being a narrow field wherereligious beliefs are debated, converting themselves into a wide enclosure where all humanquestions are elucidated; where all rights and liberties are pleaded for. When defending the right tospeak and write only, the interests of some privileged people are perhaps pleaded for. The crowdpays very little attention to the freedom of the pen because they do not write nor do they stay upreading; even less they are interested in freedom of speech because they do not give discourses nor

do they enjoy listening to them; they favor freedom of action because it is a necessity in order tosolve the most serious economic problems. That France of 1789 and of 1848, where demonstratorswith a red flag are fired upon, where a crowd of strikers is dissolved with a gun, shows that freedomof the pen and the word without granting that of action, is to deny and grant what is primary. Forthat reason, all freethinkers, if they do not want to be illogical, must declare themselvesrevolutionaries.

Let us repeat: this line of sight, free thought which (until today has not meant more thanirreligion and anticlericalism) becomes a new type of thought involving the total emancipation ofthe individual. It is the trend that we glimpse in the League of Freethinkers, on institution foundedand maintained by people who had acted or continue to act in associations as combative as the

Literary Circle5 and the National Union.6In conclusion, Gentlemen: since we have come together here for a few moments to expand our

spirits in an atmosphere of truth and tolerance, we will not separate without the great proposition ofour deeds coinciding with words. Sincerely and boldly, we form our convictions, without fear ofconsequences, without admitting division between that which should be said and that which must bekept quiet, without professing truths for the consumption of the individual and truths for the use ofthe multitudes. Let us eradicate from our hearts traditional prejudices, let us close our ears to thevoice of atavistic fears, let us remake the imposition of all human or divine authority. In a smallword, let us believe in a secular atmosphere unloaded by religious doctrine, where only splendors ofreason and science reign. Thus proceeding, we will live tranquilly, proud, and respected; and when

the hour sounds for our great trip, we will cross the dark portal of death, not with the timidity of theprisoner that advances in the tribunal of the Roman praetorians, but with the arrogance of theRoman victor when passing through an arc of triumph.
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1898

__________ Translated by Thomas Ward & Emily DePietro__________

1

Gonzalez Prada coins a neologism deleccin which we approximate as "delight" based on itsproximity to delectar, delectamiento, delectacin.

2Last Rites

3From Latin soli deo "only to God," silk skullcap worn by men of the church.

4A tonsured person, a priest, tonsure, the right of admission into the clerical state symbolized by thedipping of hair. This rite was suppressed in 1972.

5Gonzlez Pradas literary group.

6The political party into which the literary circle was evolving.
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The Intellectual and the WorkerBy Manuel Gonzlez Prada

Speech read on the 1st of May 1905 to the Bread Workers Federation

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Dont laugh if we begin by translating the verses of a poet.On a hot days evening, Nature dozes off in the Suns rays, like a women exhausted by herlovers caresses.

A young farm worker, panting and bathed in sweat, drives his oxen. But all of a sudden,he stops to speak to a young man who arrives singing a song:

Lucky you! You spend your life singing while I, from dawn until dusk, wear myself outplowing fields and planting wheat.

Oh farmer, how you deceive yourself! the young poet replies. We both are of the sameilk and can call ourselves brothers; because if your work is planting seeds in the ground,

mine is planting seeds in peoples hearts. Your work is as fruitful as my own: grains of wheatto sustain the body, the poets songs to delight and nourish the soul.

This poem teaches us that it is just as valuable to plant wheat in the fields as it is to spread ideasin our heads. Thinkers who work with their intelligence are not better than laborers who work withtheir hands. Instead of marching separately and thinking of each other as enemies, lawyers andfactory workers should walk united in a bond that cannot be broken.

But, is there any work that is either purely intellectual or exclusively physical? Workers thinkand ponder: blacksmiths making locks, bricklayers leveling walls, printers making proofs,carpenters refining their handiwork, miners striking a vein even potters think and ponder. There isonly one kind of mindless physical work that done by machines. Where workers use their hands,

they also use their heads. The reverse is true with the tasks we call intellectual. The mental fatigueof creative and thoughtful minds goes hand in hand with the physical fatigue of those who performphysical labor. They get tired and overwhelmed: painters by their brushes, sculptors by their chisel,musicians by their instruments, and writers by their pens even orators get tired and overwhelmedby the use of words. What could be less physical than prayer and ecstasy? Well, the mystic doesgive in to the effort of kneeling down and puts his arms on the cross.

Physical strength and mental energy create and sustain human works. In any set of railroadtracks, each cross tie represents the life of one person. As we travel along them, let us imagine thatwe coast in our car along rails nailed on the backs of a series of cadavers. However, as we travelthrough museums and libraries, let us also imagine that we pass through a kind of cemetery where

stones, statues, and books contain not only the thoughts, but the life of each author.You (we speak only to the bread bakers), you stay awake kneading flour and watching over the

dough rising and the ovens heating. At the same time, many people who dont make bread also stayawake sharpening their minds, using their pen and fighting off sleeps powerful advances. Theseare the journalists. When in the early hours of the morning the daily news leaves hot off the pressesat the same time as the sweet-smelling and provocative bread rises up from the ovens, we shouldthen ask ourselves: who made better use of the night, the reporter or the baker?

True, the newspaper contains the encyclopedia of the masses knowledge given in small dosesand science dressed in the simple language of the people. It is the book for those who do not have alibrary, the reading for those who hardly know or want to read. And what of bread? A symbol of

nutrition or of life, it is not happiness, but there is no happiness without it. Its absence bringsdarkness and creates discord at home. But its presence brings light and tranquility. When the fresh-baked bread arrives, children welcome it with cries of joy and the old with a smile of contented


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relief. Vegetarians, who loathe meat as unwholesome and reprehensible, bless bread as healthy andrestorative food. Some things cannot be replaced millionaires may expel pure crystal water fromtheir table, but they have not been able to find a substitute for it or do without it. Water is absolutelyrequired whether youre in Rothschilds home or a beggars shack. In ancient times of myth andlegend, queens used to bake bread and ration it out to hungry pilgrims. Today common people bakebread, and in Russia they offer it as a sign of hospitality to the czars when they visit the towns and

cities. Yet Nicholas II and his whole line of tyrants respond to this offering with whips, sabers, andbullets.1

If journalists claim that theirs is the greater task, we could reply: the mind cannot survive onthoughts alone; not everyone reads, but everyone has to eat.

II

When we extol the union or alliance of intelligence with manual labor we do not expect by wayof an illusory hierarchy that the intellectual will act as a tutor or instructor for the worker. We owethe idea that the brain performs a more noble function than the muscle to the caste system. Eversince the grand empires of the East there have been men who claim for themselves the right to

think, designating for the masses the obligation of believing and working.Intellectuals make use of light; but they should not work as though leading the blind, especially

in those tremendous social crises where hands carry out what the head thinks. True, the gust ofrebellion that moves the multitudes today comes from solitary thinkers, like it always did. Justice isborn of wisdom. An uneducated person does not know his or her own rights or the rights of anyoneelse, and believes that force is the law of the land. Constrained by this belief, humanity resigns itselfto suffer in silence. But all of a sudden, the echo of a great word rings out and all of the resignedturn to the saviors word, as insects are drawn to a ray of sunlight that pierces the darkness of theforest.2

The biggest obstacle facing intellectuals is their belief that they alone possess the right answers

and that everyone must walk where they want and as far as they command. Revolutions come fromabove and are fought from below. From the depths, the oppressed can see justice, illuminated by thelight on the horizon, and they assume the task of conquering it without stopping to consider themeans or the ends. While moderates and theorists picture geometric evolutions or involvethemselves with accuracy and details of form, the multitudes simplify the issues, taking them downfrom obscure heights and placing them in the realm of everyday concerns. They follow the exampleof Alexander the Great: Dont untie the knot; cut it with the stroke of the saber.

What do revolutionaries seek? To influence the masses, shake them up, wake them up and hurlthem into action. But it happens that people, once shaken from their repose, are not content withfollowing the initial movement. Instead they put their latent strength into play and march; and theycontinue marching until exceeding anything that their instigators thought or wanted. Those who sawthemselves as moving an inert mass discover a vigorous organism with a will of its own. 3 Themembers of this organism are of another mind, radiating their own light and setting down their ownlaws. From that point something very common in history occurs: people who were once bold andprogressive at the start of revolution become overly timid and reactionary in the clamor of the fightand in the hours of triumph. Thus Luther cowers as his doctrine prompts an uprising of Germanpeasants. French revolutionaries guillotine each other because there are a few who advance beyondthe rest. Almost all revolutionaries and reformers resemble children: they tremble before theapparition of the ogre that they alone evoked with their cries. It has been said that once it getsmoving, Humanity begins by beheading its leaders; it does not begin with sacrifice but usually endswith execution, since friends become enemies and what was once the driving force becomes the

greatest obstacle.All revolutions, once achieved, tend to turn into authoritarian governments, and every

triumphant revolutionary lapses into conservatism. What idea is not debased in application? What
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reformer does not give up his good name for power? People (especially politicians) do not makegood on their promises, nor does reality match the hopes and dreams of the destitute. Revolution isdiscredited the same day it triumphs, and the dishonorable are their own caudillos.

Once given the impulse, true revolutionaries should follow it through the whole process. Butpeople have a hard time letting go of their old convictions. To embrace new ideas goes againsthuman nature each person believes that he or she has a monopoly on the truth. We grow oldwithout feeling it and get left behind without noticing it, imagining that we stay young andinnovative and refusing to admit the broader perspective of those who come after us. Almost all ofour lives revolve around coffins that we take for cradles; or we die like caterpillars, without makinga cocoon or transforming ourselves into butterflies. We resemble the sailors who, in the middle ofthe Atlantic Ocean, told Christopher Columbus, We will not continue the voyage because there isnothing more out there. However, out there lay the shores of America.

But, while speaking of intellectuals and workers, we have slipped into a discussion aboutrevolution. Whats so strange about that? We reflect under the shadow of a flag that waves amidstfire and smoke from the barricades. We see ourselves surrounded by people who sooner or later willcry out in protest against the social order. We talk about the first of May, a day that has become a

kind of easter for revolutionaries.4 The celebration of this easter, not only here but in the entirecivilized world, shows us that Humanity is capable of setting aside its petty concerns in order todemand radical change. No one expects Parliament to provide for the well-being of the unfortunate,nor does anyone believe that government will provide the manna to relieve everyones hunger.Parliament enacts outrageous laws and institutes taxes that take more from those who have less; themachine of government does not work for the benefit of nations, but rather to the advantage of thedominant factions.5

Upon recognizing the insufficiency of politics to bring out the best in an individual,controversies and struggles about forms of government and government officials become relegatedto a level of secondary concern, or better said, they disappear. What endures is the social question,

the greatest question that the proletariat will resolve by the only means capable of effecting changerevolution.6 This is not about a local revolution that overthrows presidents or czars and converts arepublic into a monarchy or an autocracy into a representative government; but rather a globalrevolution that erases borders and eliminates nationalities and calls Humanity to the stewardshipand cultivation of the earth.

III

Before concluding, if it were necessary to summarize in two words the substance of ourthoughts; if we should choose one brilliant idea to guide us with sound reason through theintricacies of life, we should say: let us be just. Just towards Humanity, just towards the townwhere we live, just towards our family, and just towards ourselves, we can contribute so that

everyone captures and savors their piece of happiness, but not allowing anyone to pursue our shareand take it for themselves.

Justice is giving everyone what legitimately belongs to them; so then, give us our share ofEarths goods. Being born obliges us to live, and this obligation gives us the right to take not onlywhat is necessary, but what is pleasant and comfortable.7 Life is like a journey at sea. If Earth is aship and we are its passengers, we would make it possible to travel in first class, taking forourselves the good air, good cabins and good food. We would not confine ourselves to the depths farbelow deck, where a pestilent atmosphere breathes and hovers over wood rotting in the humidityand scraps from fortunate mouths waste away. Do provisions abound? How about if everyone eatsaccording to their needs? Do supplies run short? How about if food is rationed for everyone, from

the captain to the lowliest sailor?Resignation and sacrifice, unnecessarily practiced, make us treat ourselves unjustly. True, it is

because of heroic souls their sacrifice and self-denial that Humanity walks the path of justice.
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More than kings and conquerors, the simple individuals who put everyone elses happiness beforetheir own, those who flooded the deadly arena of egotism with the life-giving waters of love,deserve to live in history and in the hearts of the masses. If people could become superhuman, theywould achieve it by sacrifice. But sacrifice has to be voluntary. It is not acceptable if the haves sayto the have-nots: Sacrifice and win your place in Heaven, while we take over the Earth.

We should take what belongs to us because it is not likely that those who monopolize willconcede it in good faith or by a random act. Every 4th of August involves more ostentation thanreality: nobles renounce one privilege, and immediately reclaim two; priests renounce tithes today,and tomorrow demand both tithes and the first harvest. As a symbol of property ownership, theancient Romans chose the most important object a spear. This symbol has to be interpreted assuch: possession of a thing is not grounded in justice but in brute force; owners do not negotiate,they lash out. The hearts of landowners contain two ironclad qualities: durability and coldness.According to experts in the Hebrew language, Cain means the first landowner. We would not find itstrange if a socialist of the 19th century, seeing in Cain the first squatter and the first fratricide,takes advantage of this coincidence in order to infer a terrifying conclusion: Owning property ismurder.8

Well then: if some injure without reasoning, what will everyone else do? Since nations are notdenied the right to overthrow bad governments, Humanity should be allowed the same right in orderto shake off its inexorable exploiters. And today the granting of this right is a universal creed:theoretically, revolution is carried out because no one denies the inequities of the current regime,nor do they stop recognizing the need for reforms that improve the condition of the proletariat. (Isthere not even a Catholic socialism?). In practice, this will not come about without fighting orbloodshed because the same people who admit the just cause of social protestations do not give uptheir contradictions: they carry words of justice on their lips but keep wicked deeds in their hearts.

However, many people turn a blind eye to the movement that operates in the background ofmodern societies. The death of their beliefs means nothing to them, nor does the diminishing of love

for their homeland, or the solidarity of the proletariat who make no distinction of race or nationality.They cannot tell that the distant clamor is the cry of the hungry determined to win their bread; theyfeel the earth shake, but they do not understand that it is the march of revolution in motionbreathing in an atmosphere saturated by the stench of cadavers; and they do not understand that,together with all the rest of the worlds bourgeoisie, they are the ones giving off the odor of death.

Tomorrow, when waves of the proletariat rise up to charge against the walls of the old society,the plunderers and oppressors will sense that the hour of decisive battle has arrived and that it hascome without mercy. They will appeal to their armies, but the soldiers will count in the number ofthe rebels; they will cry out to the sky, but their gods will remain deaf and mute. Then they will fleeto fortify themselves in castles and palaces, believing that from some place help will come. Seeingthat it does not and watching the ominous waves of the proletariat as they swarm over the fourpoints of the horizon, they will look at each other and feel pity for themselves (those who never feltit for anyone else). In horror they will cry again and again: It is the flood of barbarians! But onevoice, formed by the roar of innumerable voices, will respond: We are not the flood of barbarity;we are the surge of justice.

1905

__________ Translated by Cathleen Carris__________
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1Nicholas II, Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov, became Tsar in Russia at the height of GonzlezPrada's most reflective period, when he was living in Europe, in 1894. On January 22 1905, just two

months before Gonzlez Prada offered this speech, a large group of workers was gunned down inSt. Petersburg by the Tsar's Imperial Guard. Nicholas would abdicate and be murdered by the

Bolsheviks the same year Gonzlez Prada died of a heart attack, in 1918 [TW].

2

The idea of the writer as savior, is indicative of a common rhetorical strategy in Gonzlez Prada'swriting, that is to say the secularization of Christian, theology, [TW].

3The idea of society as an organism was common during the late nineteenth century, for example inKrausist philosophy, a philosophy with which Gonzlez Prada was familiar [TW].

4The idea of a revolutionary easter is an even more blatant example of Prada's secularization ofChristian theology [TW].

5By differentiating government from the nation, Gonzlez Prada makes an important contribution topolitical theory: the state and the people are separate from each other and the former does notnecessarily respect the will of the latter [TW].

6Here Prada is making an attempt to differentiate political activity from social activity, censuringthe former and praising the latter [TW].

7The idea of taking "what is pleasant and comfortable" suggests Gonzlez Prada's debt to classicalliberalism. The quest for justice represents a radicalization of the liberal tradition [TW].

8The idea of property being murder comes from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), the firstFrenchman to declare, "I am an anarchist." Proudhon maintains that property is theft (I: 13) or inanother context that property is a suicide (I: 223). Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Oeuvres Compltes, 26vols., Paris: Librairie Internationale, 1873 Gonzlez Prada radicalizes this proposition by affirmingthat property is murder. For more on the influence of Proudhon in Gonzlez Prada, see Thomas

Ward,La anarqua inmanentista de Manuel Gonzlez Prada , Lima: EditorialHorizonte/Universidad Ricardo Palma, 2001, p. 191 [TW].
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OUR INDIANS1

BY MANUEL GONZLEZ PRADA

Translated by Harold Eugene Davis

I

The most eminent sociologists consider sociology a science in formation and call for the adventof its Newton, its Lavoisier, or its Lyell. Yet no other works pullulate such dogmatic and arbitraryassertions as those produced by the heirs and disciples of Comte.2 One might call sociology notonly the art of giving new names to old things but also the science of contradictory assertions. Ifone great sociologist announces a proposition, we may be certain that another no less greatsociologist will advocate the diametric opposite. Just as some pedagogues remind us of the teachersof [Eugene] Scribe, so many sociologists make us think of the physicians of Moliere - Le Bon 3 andTarde are not far from Diafoirus and Purgn.

We might mention the question of race as one upon which the authors differ most. While somesee it in the principle factor of social dynamics, others reduce ethnic influences to so small a scope

that they say with Durkheim: "We know no social phenomenon which falls unquestionably underdependence upon race."4 Novicow, in spite of considering the opinion of Durkheim exaggerated,does not hesitate to assert that race, like species, is to a certain point a subjective category of ourspirit, without external reality; and in a generous burst of humanity he exclaims: "All thosepretended incapacities of the yellow and the black people are chimeras of sick spirits." Whoeverdares say to a race, "Thus far you may come and no farther," is blind and stupid.

How convenient an invention ethnology is in the hands of some men! If one grants the divisionof humanity into superior and inferior races and recognizes the superiority of the whites and theirconsequent right to govern the planet, nothing is more natural than the suppression of the Black inAfrica, the Redskin in the United States, the Tagalog in the Philippines, or the Indian in Peru. Since

the supreme law of life is fulfilled in the selection or elimination of the weak and unadaptable, theviolent eliminators and suppressors are merely accelerating the slow and indolent labor of Nature.They abandon the pace of the tortoise for the gallop of the horse. Many, like Pearson, do not write itbut allow it to be read between the lines, as when he refers to the "solidarity among civilized man ofthe European race against Nature and human barbarism." Where you read "human barbarism," it isto be translated "man without white skin."

But not only is the suppression of black and yellow people decreed. Within the white race itself,classifications are made of peoples destined to live and prosper and peoples condemned to declineand die. Since Demolins published his book A quoi tient la supriorit des Anglo-Saxons, thefashion has been revived of glorifying the Anglo Saxons and depreciating the Latins. (Although fewLatins can really be called so - for example can Atahualpa be called Galician, or Montezuma,Provenal?)5 In Europe and America we see many Cassandras flourishing who live by prophesyingthe conflagration and destruction of the New Troy. Some pessimists, believing themselves theDeucalions of the next deluge or even the Supermen of Nietzsche, decree the disappearance of theirown race as if dealing with prehistoric beings or inhabitants of the Moon. It has not beenformulated, but an axiom follows [from this]. Crimes and vices of the English and the NorthAmericans are things inherent in the human species and do not forecast the decline of a people. Onthe other hand, crimes and vices of the French or Italians are anomalies and indicate racialdegeneration. Fortunately Oscar Wilde and General MacDonald were not born in Paris and theround table of the Emperor William was not held in Rome.

It seems unnecessary to say that we do not take seriously dilettanti like Paul Bourget normystifiers like Maurice Barrs when they thunder against cosmopolitanism and weep over thedecadence of the noble French race because the daughter of a syphilitic count and a consumptivemarquise allows herself to be seduced by a healthy and vigorous youth without a noble pedigree. In
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respect to Monsieur Gustave Le Bon, we should admire him for his very vast knowledge and hisgreat moral elevation, even though he represents an exaggeration of Spencer, much as max Nordaudoes of Lombroso and Haeckel of Darwin. He deserves to be called the Bossuet of Sociology, butthat is not to say the Torquemada or the Herod. If he had not made himself worthy of considerationby his observations upon occult matters (sobre la luz negra) we might say that he is to a sociologywhat doctor Sangrado [the ignorant physician of Gil Blas] is to medicine.

Le Bon warns us not in any way to take the term race in an anthropological sense, because pureraces have long since almost disappeared, except among savage peoples. And to give us a secureroad to march on, he decides: "Among civilized people there are only historical events." Accordingto the Le Bon's dogma, Hispanic American nations constitute one of these races, but a race soexceptional that it has passed dizzily from childhood to decrepitude, covering in less than a centurythe course run by other peoples in three, four, five, and even six thousand years. "The twenty-twoLatin American republics of America," he says in his Psichologie du socialisme, "although allsituated in the richest regions of the Globe, are incapable of developing their immense resources....The final destiny of that half of America is to return to primitive barbarism unless the United Statesdo it the great service of conquering it.... To debase the richest regions of the Globe to the level of

the black republics of Santo Domingo and Haiti, this is what the Latin race has accomplished in lessthan a century with half of America."6

It might be argued with Le Bon that he mistakes the skin eruption of a child for the senilegangrene of a nonagenarian, the hebephrenia of a youth for the homicidal mania of an old man.Since when do revolutions indicate decrepitude and death? None of the Hispanic American nationstoday displays the political and social misery which reigned in the Europe of feudalism. But thefeudal epoch is considered a stage in evolution, whereas the era of Hispanic American revolutions islooked upon as an incurable, final state. We might also answer by confronting Le Bon the pessimistwith Le Bon the optimist, [pitting] as one might say St. Augustine the Bishop against St. Augustinethe pagan. "It is possible ," affirms Le Bon, "that after a series of profound calamities, convulsionsalmost never seen in history," the Latin peoples, taught by experience, "may attempt the arduoustask of acquiring the qualities they lack in order henceforth to achieve success in life.... Apostles canaccomplish much because they succeed in changing public opinion, and public opinion is queentoday.... History is so full of the unforeseen, the world is undergoing such profound changes, that itis impossible today to foresee the destiny of empires." If it is impossible to foresee the fate ofnations, how then announce the death of the Hispanic American republics? What the Latin Empirescan achieve in Europe, may not the nations of similar origin attempt in the New World? Or are theretwo sociological laws, one for the Latins of America and another for the Latins of Europe? Perhaps.But happily, the assertions of Le Bon resemble nails which drive out each other.

It appears, then, that while August Comte intended to make of sociology an eminently positivescience, his heirs have converted it into a heap of ramblings without any scientific basis.

II

In his Der Rassenkamph (Race Conflict) Ludwig Gumplowicz says that every important andpowerful ethnic element seeks to make serve its ends any weak element found in its radius or whichpenetrates into it.7 First the Conquerors and then their descendants in the countries of Americaconstituted an ethnic element sufficiently powerful to subjugate and exploit the indigenes. Althoughthe statements of Las Casas are marred by exaggeration, it cannot be denied that in some Americancountries, thanks to the avaricious cruelty of the exploiters, the weak element was almostextinguished. The ants which domesticate grubs in order to milk them do not imitate the lack offoresight of the whites-they do not destroy the productive animal.

To the theory of Gumplowicz should be added a law which has great influence in our way oflife-when an individual rises above the level of his social class he usually becomes its worst enemy.During the time of black slavery there were no crueler overseers than the Blacks themselves. At the
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present time there are probably no harsher oppressors of the Indian than those very Indians who areHispanicized and invested with some authority.

The real tyrant of the masses, who uses certain Indians to exploit and oppress the others, is thehalf-caste, including in this term not only the cholo or mestizo of the sierra but also the mulatto andzambo of the coast.8 In Peru we see an ethnic stratification. Excluding Europeans and the smallnumber of national or Creole whites, the population is divided into two parts, very unequal inquantity, the dominating half-castes and the dominated indigenes. One or two hundred thousandpersons have been placed over three millions.

There is a real offensive and defensive alliance based on exchange of services between thedominant group of the capital and those of the province. The political bosses (gamonal) of the sierraact as political agents for the overlords in Lima, and the overlords of Lima defend the politicalbosses of the sierra when they barbarously abuse the Indian. Few social groups have committedsuch iniquities or have such a black record as the Spaniards and half-castes of Peru. Revolutions,squandering, and bankruptcy seem like nothing compared with the glacial cupidity of the half-castesto squeeze the blood out of human flesh. The suffering and death of their fellow creatures mattersvery little to them when that suffering and death yields them a gain of a few soles.9 They decimatethe Indian with their assessments and forced labor (mitas);10 they import the Black to make himgroan under the lash of the overseer; they swallow up the Chinese, giving him a handful of rice forten and even fifteen hours of work; they bring the East Indian from his islands to let him die ofnostalgia in the slave quarters of the haciendas; today they are trying to bring in Japanese.... TheBlack seems to decline [in numbers], the Chinese is disappearing, the East Indian has left no trace,and the Japanese gives no sign of lending himself to slavery. But the Indian remains, since threehundred to four hundred years of cruelty have not succeeded in exterminating him. The vile creatureobstinately insists on living!

The viceroys of Peru never failed to condemn the violations nor spared any effort to achieve theprotection, good treatment, and relief of the Indians. The Kings of Spain, yielding to the

compassion of their noble and Catholic souls, conceived humanitarian measures and backed thoseinitiated by the viceroys. There were more than enough fine proposals in royal cedulas. We do notknow whether the Laws of the Indies formed a pyramid as tall as Chimborazo, but we know the evilcontinued unchanged, even though some were punished as examples. And it could not be otherwise.The exploitation of the conquered was officially ordered, but humanity and justice were asked ofthe executors of the exploitation. It was pretended that it was possible to commit iniquitieshumanely and to carry out injustice with equity. To stamp out the abuses it would have beennecessary to stamp out the repartimientos and mitas, in a word, to change the whole colonialregime. Without the forced labor (faenas of the American Indian the coffers of the Spanish treasurywould have been empty. The wealth sent by the colonies to the Metropolis was merely blood andtears converted into gold.

The Republic continues the tradition of the viceroyalty. In their messages the presidents urge theredemption of the oppressed and they are called protectors of the native race. Congresses elaboratelaws which go beyond the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the ministers of government issuedecrees, send notes to the prefects, and appoint investigating commissions, all with the noblepurpose of assuring guaranties to the disinherited class. But messages, laws, decrees, notes, andcommissions are nothing more than hypocritical jeremiads, fruitless words, and overworkedmeasures. The authorities who send threatening orders from Lima to the departments know theywill not be obeyed. The perfects who receive the warnings from the Capital know that nothing willhappen to them for not carrying them out. What the Marquis of Mancera said in his Memoria in1648 could be repeated today, reading governors and hacienda owners for corregidores and

caciques. "These poor Indians have as their enemies the greediness of their corregidores, of theirpriests, and of their caciques, all trying to grow rich on their sweat; it would take the zeal andauthority of a viceroy for each of them. Relying upon the distance [from authority] they falsely
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pretend obedience and there is not enough strength or perseverance to register a second complaint."The phrase falsely pretending obedience has great significance in the mouth of a viceroy. But evenmore significant is the statement which escaped from the defenders of the Indians of Chucuito.

There are many friends of the Indian who in their individual and collective capacities behave likethe government in its official action. The groups formed to free the unredeemed race have been nobetter than political contrabandists, hiding behind a philanthropic banner. Defending the Indian,they have exploited the public pity as others have traded on patriotism by invoking Tacna and Arica.For the redeemers to act in good faith they would have to experience an overnight transformation,repenting the terrible measure of their sins, formulating a steady purpose of obeying the dictates of

justice, becoming men of tigers. Is this conceivable?

Meanwhile, as a general rule, the dominant group approach the Indian only to deceive him,oppress him, or corrupt him. And we should remember that not only the national half-caste acts withinhumanity and bad faith. When Europeans become wool traders, mine owners, or haciendaproprietors, they show themselves fine exactors, extortionists, rivaling the old encomenderos andthe present day hacendados. The white skinned animal, wherever he is born, is afflicted with thedisease of gold. In the final analysis he yields to the instinct of rapacity.

III

Does the Indian suffer less under the republic than under Spanish rule? While neithercorregimientos nor encomiendas exist, forced labor and its recruitment remain. What we make himsuffer is enough to call down upon us the execration of humanity. We hold him in ignorance andservitude, we debase him in the garrisons, we brutalize him with alcohol, we set him to destroyinghimself in civil war, and from time to time we organize hunting parties and massacres like those ofAmantani, Ilave, and Haunta.

It is an unwritten axiom that the Indian has no rights, only obligations. In his case a personalcomplaint is considered insubordination, a collective claim, a plot of rebellion. The Spanishroyalists killed the Indian when he tried to escape the yoke of his conquerors; we republicansexterminate him when he protests against onerous taxes or tires of enduring in silence the iniquitiesof some satrap.

Our form of government is in essence a great lie, because a state in which two or three millionindividuals live outside the law does not deserve to be called a democratic republic. While in thecoastal region one sees a shadow of protection under a feigned republic, in the interior the violationof all rights under a feudal regime is open. Here neither laws nor courts of justice rule, becausehacienda owners and political bosses (gamonales) settle everything, arrogating to themselves therole of judge as well as executor. The political authorities, far from protecting the weak and thepoor, almost always help the strong and the rich. There are regions where justices of the peace and[provincial] governors are servitors of the hacienda. What governor, what sub-prefect, what prefect,

even, would dare oppose a hacienda owner?A hacienda consists of small farms taken by force from their rightful owners. A landlord

exercises the authority of a Norman baron over his peons. He not only influences the selection ofgovernors, mayors, and justices of the peace, but also arranges marriages, designates heirs, dividesup inheritances, and imposes what is frequently a life-long servitude upon children to pay the debtsof their parents. He imposes punishments that are terrible such as shackles, flogging, stocks, anddeath; or are ridiculous, such as shaving the head and cold-water enemas. It would be a miracle forone who respects neither life nor property to respect the honor of women. Any Indian woman,married or single, may be the object of the seor's vicious desires. Violation and rape mean littlewhen one realizes that it is necessary to take the Indian women by main force. And despite all this

the Indian never speaks to the landlord without kneeling and kissing his hand. It cannot be said thatthe lords of the land act in this way through ignorance or lack of culture. The sons of some haciendaowners go to Europe in childhood to be educated in France or England, returning to Peru with all


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the outward aspects of civilized people. But once ensconced in their haciendas, they lose theEuropean varnish and proceed with more inhumanity than their fathers. When the son dons hissombrero, poncho, and spurs, the beast reappears. To sum up: the haciendas are kingdoms in theheart of the republic; the hacienda owners rule as autocrats in the midst of democracy.

IV

To justify governmental negligence and the inhumanity of the despoilers some pessimists of theLe Bon stamp a degrading stigma on the forehead of the Indian; they accuse him of being refractoryto civilization. Anyone could imagine that if splendid schools could be built in all our towns, withcompetent well paid teachers buzzing around in them, that the rooms would be plenty emptybecause the children, obeying the orders of their parents, would not hasten to receive education?Could one imagine, moreover, that the natives would fail to follow the fine moral example of theruling class and crucify without a scruple all who preach elevated and generous ideas. The Indianreceived what they gave him - fanaticism and liquor.

Now let us see what is understood by civilization. Over industry and art, over science andlearning, morality gleams like a shining light on the apex of a great pyramid. Not theologicalmorality based on punishment after death, but humane morality which seeks no sanction farremoved from the world. The essence of morality, for individuals as well as for societies, consists intransforming the struggle of man against man into a mutual accord for living. Where there is no

justice, pity, or benevolence, there is no civilization; where the struggle for life is made the law ofsociety, barbarism reigns. What does it avail to acquire the wisdom of an Aristotle if one's heart isthat of a tiger? What is there worthwhile in having the talent of a Michelangelo if one has the soulof a pig? It is better to go through the world distilling the honey of goodness than shedding the lightof art and science. The societies that deserve to be called highly civilized are those in which thepractice of the good has become an habitual obligation and the beneficent act instinctive. Have theyany right to consider the Indian incapable of civilization?

The political and social organization of the ancient Inca Empire astonishes revolutionary

reformers today. True, Atahualpa did not know his Pater Noster, nor had Calcuchima pondered themystery of the Trinity. But the cult of the Sun was perhaps less absurd than the Catholic religion,and the high priest of Pachacamac scarcely exceeded Padre Valverde in ferocity. If the subject ofHuayna Capac accepted civilization we see no reason why the Indian of the republic is inferior tothe native encountered by the conquerors; but moral depression because of political servitude is notthe same as an absolute incapacity by organic constitution to achieve civilization. In any case, uponwhom should the blame fall?

The facts give the lie to the pessimists. Wherever the Indian is educated in schools or simply bycontact with civilized persons, he takes on the same level of morality and culture as the descendantof the Spaniard.11We constantly meet yellow men who dress, eat, live, and think like the suave

gentlemen of Lima. We see Indians in legislatures, municipal governments, magistracies,universities, and scientific bodies who seem no more venal nor more ignorant than those of otherraces. It is impossible, in our national politics, to trace the lines of responsibility in totum revolutis[sic] so as to say what evil is caused by mestizos, mulattoes, and whites. There is such promiscuityof blood and color, each individual represents so many licit or illicit mixtures, that most Peruvianswould be puzzled to figure out the dose of black and yellow they carry in their veins. 12 No onedeserves the qualification of pure white, even though he may have blue eyes and blond hair. Weneed only recall that out president who had the broadest viewpoint belonged to the native race andwas called Santa Cruz.13 There were a hundred more, valiant to the stage of heroism like Cahuideor loyal even to martyrdom like Olaya.14

Novicow is right in saying that the supposed inferiority of Yellows and Blacks is a chimera ofdiseased minds. Actually, there is no cultural activity which cannot be performed by some black orsome yellow man, just as the most infamous act may be committed by some white. During the
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invasion of China in 1900 the yellow men of Japan gave lessons in humanity to the whites of Russiaand Germany. We do not recall whether the Blacks of Africa ever gave such lessons to the Boers ofthe Transvaal and the English of the Cape; but we do know that the Anglo-Saxon Kitchener showedhimself as ferocious in the Sudan as Behanzin in Dahomey. If, instead of comparing white-skinnedmasses with dark-skinned masses, we compare one individual with another, we see that savages andredskins at heart abound in the midst of white civilization. Suppose we name as flowers of the race,

or representative men, the King of England and the Emperor of Germany. Do Edward VII andWilliam II deserve to be compared with the Indian Benito Jurez and the Black BookerWashington? Those who lived in taverns, barracks, and brothels before occupying a throne, or fromthe summit of power ordered the pitiless massacre of children, women, and old people may be whitein skin but hide blackness in their souls.

Does the lowliness of the native race result merely from ignorance? Certainly national ignoranceis fabulous when it is recalled that in many towns of the interior not a single man is found able toread or write, that during the War of the Pacific the Indians believed the conflict of the two nationswas a civil war between General Chile and General Peru, and that not long ago representatives ofChucuito went to Tacna imagining that there they would encounter the president of the republic.

Some pedagogues (rivaling the sellers of panaceas) imagine that if a man knows the tributariesof the Amazon and the median temperature in Berlin, half the road to the solution of all socialproblems has been traversed. If, by some superhuman phenomenon, our national illiterates shouldarise some dawn not only knowing how to read and write but with university diplomas, the problemof the Indian would not be solved. A proletariat of bachelors and doctors would merely replace thatof the ignorant. [Even] in the most civilized nations physicians without patients, lawyers withoutclients, engineers with nothing to build, writers without a reading public, artists without buyers, andteachers without students abound, making up a numberless army of shining intelligences withoutbread for their stomachs. Where the coastal haciendas run to four or five fanegas and the estanciasof the sierra measure thirty or even fifty [square] leagues, the nation must be divided into lords andserfs.

Education does indeed usually change an impulsive brute into a reasonable and magnanimousbeing, teaching him and lighting for him the path he should follow in order not to get lost at thecrossroads of life. But to see a path is not the same as to follow it to the end; firmness of will andtoughness of feet are also necessary. A proud rebellious spirit is also needed, not the submission anddeference of the soldier and monk. Education may keep man in [a state of] meanness and servitude -the eunuchs and grammarians of Byzantium were educated. It is the right of every rational being tooccupy on the earth the decent place due him instead of accepting that which is assigned, to ask forand get his daily bread, to demand a roof and piece of land.

Nothing changes the psychology of man more quickly or more fundamentally than property.Upon escaping the servitude of hunger he grows a hundred palms. By merely becoming the ownerof something the individual rises several steps on the social ladder, because classes are essentiallygroups based upon the amount of wealth. Quite the opposite of a balloon - the more he weighs themore he rises. To one who says the school, reply the school and bread.

The problem of the Indian is economic and social more than educational. How is it to beresolved? Not long ago a German conceived the idea of restoring the Inca Empire. He learnedQuechua, made himself known among the Indians of Cuzco, began to gain supporters and might,perhaps, have attempted an uprising if death had not surprised him when returning from a voyage toEurope. But is there any place for such a restoration today? If it were attempted and carried out theresult would be a petty imitation of past greatness.

The situation of the native can improve in two ways. Either the heart of the oppressors relents tothe extent or recognizing the rights of the oppressed, or the spirit of the oppressed acquiressufficient vigor to chasten their oppressors. If the Indian were to spend for rifles and bullets what hewastes on alcohol and fiestas, or if he were to conceal a weapon in the corner of his hut or on the


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hollow of a rock, he might change his situation, making his property and life respected. To violencehe might then reply with violence, punishing the patron who steals his wool, the soldier who leviesin the name of the government, and the bandit who robs his cattle and beasts of burden.

To the Indian one should not preach humility and resignation but pride and rebellion. What hashe gained by three or four hundred years of conformity and patience? The less he is subject toauthority the more injury he escapes. It is a revealing fact that there is more well being in theregions most remote from the big haciendas and that the towns least often visited by the authoritiesenjoy greater peace and order.

To sum up, the Indian will be redeemed by his own efforts, not the humanization of hisoppressors. Every white, more or less, is a Pizarro, a Valverde, or an Areche.

1900

Translation 1961 Harold Eugene Davis; Critical Apparatus 2008 Thomas Ward

1Manuel Gonzlez Prada, "Nuestros Indios",Horas de lucha. Second edition (Callao: Tip. Lux,1924, pp. 311-338); Translation: Harold Eugene Davis, "Our Indians,"Latin American SocialThought(Washington: The University Press of Washington, 1961), pp. 196-208. For original

footnotes, please consult Davis' original text. The editor has slightly modernized this translation aswell as cleared up a few ambiguities. Prepared for WWW by Dawn DeLeonardis.

2Auguste Comte (1798 1857) was a French philosopher who developed a new social science,what he called positive science, and what he eventually labeled sociology. He is thus, the father ofsociology. During Gonzlez Pradas time, many sociologists were Comtian one way or another. Histwo foundational sociological works were Cours de philosophie positive (1830-1842) and Systmede politique positive ou Trait de sociologie (1851-1854) [TW].

3Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) was a French psychologist and sociologist whose writings werewell known for the explosive race theory they contained. Essential to his thought were analysis ofnational features that oftentimes degenerated into racial and even racist propositions. Among hispopular books can be foundPsychologie des foules (1895) translated into English as The Crowd: AStudy of the Popular Mind (1897) [TW].

4Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was a French sociologist roughly contemporary to GonzlezPrada. Durkheim was interested in behavior as exterior to the individual or as the result ofindividual consciousness, his favored view later in life. Like Gonzlez Prada, he viewed morality asintegral to social organization [TW].

5Gonzlez Prada signals a problem with calling people of Latin American heritage "Latins" or"Latinos," Latin being the language of the Ancient Roman Empire and the people that weredescended from it. Since people of indigenous origin such as the Inca Atahualpa were never a partof the Roman Empire nor were they even aware of Europe, calling them Latinos is assigningthem to a category to which they cannot possibly belong [TW].

6Santo Domingo is now called the Dominican Republic [TW].

7Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838-1909) another of the creators of sociology. Being a Jewish manfrom Krakw (then an independent republic, later Poland) he became aware of ethnic strife betweenGermanic and Slavic peoples and of course the treatment that Jews received [TW].

8The use of such explicit racial terminology can be shocking to the modern ear. Yet it was quitecommon during Gonzlez Prada's time, appearing in other important contemporary essayists such asJos Mart and Eugenio Mara de Hostos. The paradox consists in Gonzlez Prada using racial
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terminology to attack race theory. This seems clear to us today, but at that time (before civil rightsand the advances of the theories of heterogeneity, multiculturalism and diversity), it was hard to seethe colonialist forest for all the racist trees. Getting beyond the language problem, one can see thatGonzlez Prada continues a line of argument first established by the early seventeenth-centurychronicler Guamn Poma de Ayala who tells us that priests and mayordomos (stewards) and theircompanions all have mistresses, the result, of course, being that they have crowds of little mestizo

sons and daughters (Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and GoodGovernment, trans. & ed. David Frye (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2006, pp. 150, 185). LikeGuaman Poma before him and Jos Carlos Maritegui after him, Gonzlez Prada seems to preferpure-blooded indigenous peoples over mestizos in his plans for society [TW].

9The Sol or "Sun" was based on the Incan deity, "Inti." Times change and the Sol in GonzlezPrada's time and in our time is the unit of currency in Peru. The paradox in this is that what wasonce a spiritual entity is now a material count [TW].

10The mita was a form of tax labor in the Andes during the period before the arrival of theSpanish. After the conquest it became simply forced labor and in time grew into an institution calleddebt peonage [TW].

11Gonzlez Prada does not refer here to the elevated morality of the inhabitants of theTahuantinsuyo state. He is simply referring to the degraded condition in which the decedents of theInca's subjects continued to live [TW].

12 "licit or illicit mixtures," meaning offspring resulting from marriage or from concubinage,from marriage or rape [TW].

13Andrs de Santa Cruz (1792-1865), the Bolivian president between 1829 and 1836, had theforesight that in a political union Peru and Bolivia would be stronger politically. Thus, he formedand presided over the Confederacin Peruano-Boliviana during the years 1836 and 1839.Unfortunately, Chile opposed this union, as did many Creoles from Lima, setting the stage for itsfailure. Prophetically, down the road when Chile declared war on Bolivia and Peru in 1879, thesetwin nations would have been better prepared to wage war on the British-supplied Chile and wouldnot have both been destroyed economically and carved up geographically [TW].

14Jos Olaya was a martyr in the Peruvian war for independence. A fisherman from Chorrillos,he swam with messages from there to Lima. He was captured and executed in the Plaza de Armas inthe capital [TW].
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Bibliography in English1

By Harold Eugene Davis

Updated by Thomas Ward

Good News: After a century, Gonzlez Prada's major essays have been published in English in atranslation by Frederick Fornoff and edited by David Sobrevilla.

Manuel Gonzlez Prada.Free Pages and Hard Times: Anarchist Musings. Oxford/NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2003.

On Gonzlez Prada, see the brief sketches in William Rex Crawford,A Century of Latin AmericanThoughtand in Harold Eugene Davis,Makers of Democracy in Latin America. See also IsaacGoldberg, Studies in Spanish American Literature (New York: Brentano, 1920) and PedroHenrquez Urea,Literary Currents in Hispanic America (Cambridge: Harvard University press,1945). Also important is Phyllis Rodrguez Peralta, "Gonzlez Prada's Social and PoliticalThought",Revista Interamericana de Bibliografa 30.2 (1980), pp. 148-156. Efran Kristal's, The

Andes viewed from the City (New York: Peter Lang, 1989) inserts Gonzlez Prada into his socialand political context. For Gonzlez Prada's "positivism", see Thomas Ward, "Manuel Gonzlez

Prada: Devoted Follower or Insubordinate Partisan of Auguste Comte",Revista Hispnica Moderna94.2 (Diciembre 1991), pp. 274-279.

1Harold Euguene Davis, "Bibliography in English" ("Bibliographical Note"),Latin AmericanSocial Thought(Washington: The University Press of Washington, 1961), pp. 196. Updated byThomas Ward. Prepared for the WWW by Dawn DeLeonardis.
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