Freire, Marti, and Mariategui: an integrative analysis of the Campesino a Campesino movement.

The history of Latin America is tumultuous, full of its revolutions and independence movements. Against the backdrop of this history, certain influential voices have stand out. This paper is an analysis of three influential Latin American intellectuals, and how their ideas are being realized currently in Latin America. The Campesino a Campesino movement, throughout Mesoamerica, Central America, and the Caribbean, offers a relevant case study for this research. Paulo Freire, Jose Marti, and Jose Carlos Mariategui are three intellectual figures in Latin America’s history. Their ideas, as well as their works, explored the oppression of Latin American peoples, as well as the possibility for change. This paper explores the burgeoning Campesino a Campesino, peasant movement and how they have built a movement based on: dignity, land and labor reform, and the preservation of local cultures. The paper suggests that the ideas of Freire, Marti, and Mariategui have been in some way realized through this peasant movement.

The Campesino a Campesino movement started in the later part of the twentieth century, amid chaotic political, social, and economic change. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century Latin America was transformed by: the green revolution, neo-liberal economic policies, and free-trade agreements. Throughout Latin America, farmers and peasants suffered tremendously as they lost their land and livelihood to ‘development’. The Campesino a Campesino movement developed as a program of resistance towards conventional development. It is now a growing movement that strives to create development that works together with the environment, and preserves local cultures.

Each of the intellectuals explored in this paper have been important voices in Latin American in one way or another. Paulo Freire is world-renowned for his pedagogical theories that attempt to raise political and social awareness. His theories attempt to empower impoverished people through education. Jose Marti is known as the voice of Cuban Independence movement in the nineteenth century. Through his passionate speeches and essays he advocated a return to the land, as well as a self-sufficient Latin America. Jose Carlos Mariategui was a short-lived, yet prolific Marxist who primarily wrote about the relationship between indigenous peoples and land. Mariategui argued that as long Peruvian lands were controlled by those in power, indigenous, farming peoples would remain oppressed. Though the aim and scope of these visionaries differ, they were all concerned with social and political problems of Latin America, and they were also able to envision an alternative to these problems.

This paper, then, attempts to synthesize the ideas of three ideologues into a contemporary and growing movement in Latin America. Both the ideas of these intellectuals and the Campesino a Campesino movement provide an alternative model to development that has devastated much of the developing world.