Manuel González Prada

Manuel González Prada
Jose Manuel de los Reyes González de Prada y Ulloa (Lima, January 5, 1844 – Lima, July 22, 1918) was a Peruvian politician and anarchist, literary critic and director of the National Library of Peru. The first writer to criticize the oligarchy within Peru, he is well remembered as a social critic who helped develop Peruvian intellectual thought in the early twentieth century, as well as the academic style known as modernismo.
He was born into the aristocratic class. He was close in spirit to Clorinda Matto de Turner whose first novel, Torn from the Nest approached political indigenismo, and to Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, who like González Prada, practiced a positivism sui generis.
Early life
González Prada was born on January 5, 1844, in Lima to a wealthy, conservative, aristocratic Spanish family. His father was the judge and politician Francisco González de Prada Marrón y Lombrera, who served as Member of the Superior Court of Justice of Lima and Mayor of Lima. His mother was María Josefa Álvarez de Ulloa y Rodríguez de la Rosa. His grandfather was an important administrative figure in the Viceroyalty of Peru.
Due to the political exile of his father, the family temporarily settled down in Valpariso, where he started his education at an English school. During his youth, González Prada would remove the "de" portion of his name in repudiation of his family's aristocratic background. Upon returning to Peru, his father was elected Mayor of Lima in 1857 and he continued his studies at the Seminary of Santo Toribio. Prada abandoned Santo Toribio and enrolled the liberal San Carlos Convictorium, where he studied law and letters.
He would go on to live much of his life in Lima, living in a city full of Spanish traditions and conservatism, though he would become estranged from much of his family.
Biography
Travel in south, solitude
For a period of time, González Prada traveled through Southern Peru, especially near Cerro de Pasco, where he met with peasants and some of the indigenous peoples of Peru, developing an opposition to centralismo in Lima. Following the death of his father in 1863, González Prada would live in the Tutumo hacienda of his family until 1869. During this period of solitude, he would experiment with a cehmistry lab, developing a profitable starch compund, became a more improved poet and received political literature from Europe that would influence him.
War of the Pacific
In 1879, he would release Cuartos de hora just prior to Chile's invasion of Peru, attacking the ruling class and Catholic Church. During Peru's impending defeat by Chile in the War of the Pacific, González Prada would stay in his home for three years, refusing to look at the foreign invaders occupying Peru. The conflict proved to him that Peru was a failure under the economic oligarchy and that large reforms were necessary to improve the nation. He would identify businessmen, clergy, military leaders and politicians as the upper class, saying that their wealth and power was gained through crony capitalism. González Prada saw the political elites in two fashions; the civilian elite who stole public funds through special interest groups and the militaristic caudillos who plundered state coffers blatantly. To enforce this system, he said that the elites utilized political repression through the police and military. Culturally, he said the elites were foreign to the majority of Peruvians since they adopted Spanish customs and continued colonial practices, including feudalism, continuing inequality and poor development in rural areas.
Literary Circle
He was an original partner in the Lima Literary Club and he participated in the foundation of the Peruvian Literary Circle, a vehicle to propose a literature based on science and the future. The Literary Circle saw themselves as freethinkers and that they were destined to change Peru, reaching out to González Prada, who immediately reoriented the groups direction. During his first address to the group at the Ateneo, he would criticize those who looked to the past, stating "Our liberty will be useless if we limit ourselves in torm to the exaggerated purism of Madrid, or if in substance we submit ourselves to the Syllabus of Rome. Let us rid ourselves of the tendency that induces us to prefer the foliage of words to the fruit of ideas." In 1886, he became the head of the Literary Circle, stating:
During Fiestas Patrias on 28 July 1888, González Prada's Speech at the Politeama, read by an Ecuadorian orator due to the writer's stage fright, received thunderous applause by the audience, with President of Peru Andrés Avelino Cáceres, who was in attendance, saying "l did not know whether to arrest him or embrace him". The publication of the speech was unsuccessfully censored by the Cáceres government.
His most famous book, Free Pages, caused a public outcry that brought González Prada dangerously close to excommunication from the Catholic Church. His mother, a devout Catholic, died in 1888 and his criticism became more vitriolic afterwards. He said the Church "preached the sermon on the mount and practiced the morals of Judas." In fact González Prada was part of a group of social reformers that included Ricardo Palma, Juana Manuela Gorriti, Clorinda Matto de Turner and Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera. These important authors were concerned with the enduring influence of Spanish colonialism in Peru. González Prada was perhaps the most radical of them all. The most radical work he published during his lifetime was Hours of Battle, translated as Hard Times.
National Union
In political life, González Prada was initially a member of the Civilista Party, but left to found with his friends, a radical party known as the National Union, a party of "propaganda and attack." The Literary Circle was transformed into National Union in 1891. González Prada was named as a presidential candidate, but had to flee to Europe following persecution. He would spend seven years in Europe, visiting France and Spain, finally returning to Peru in May 1898. Upon his return, he called for social revolution and the "greatest liberty" be brought through social reform. He stood as his party's Presidential Candidate in the Presidential election of 1899 and came in third with 0.95% of the vote, with aristocrat Eduardo López de Romaña receiving 97% of the vote. Following the presidential election, he was asked to work for the newly formed government.
In 1902, González Prada would leave National Union and instead chose to write for working-class newspapers. He began writing for Los Parias, a Peruvian anarchist newspaper, in 1904. He also took up the post of director of the National Library of Peru on Abancay Avenue and helped to improve and reorganise the library to one of international stature.
Later life
His books Minúsculas (1901) and Exóticas (1911) are often considered as modernista although his work transcends the scope of that movement. Some critics have suggested that his poetry is pre-proletarian. Baladas peruanas (1935), perhaps his best book, is a vindication of the Indian. His metrical and rhythmical innovations and experiments are remarkable in Spanish-American poetry. Horas de lucha (1908) is a good example of his prose.
Until his death, González Prada dedicated himself to educating university students and workers, holding Luz y Amor (Light and Love) discussion groups and sharing his writings with them. González Prada died of cardiac arrest on 22 July 1918 and was buried in the Cementerio Presbítero Matías Maestro as a Peruvian patriot. His writings on Anarchism, Anarquía, was posthumously released in 1936.
Political views
Upon returning to Peru from Europe in 1898, Gonzalez Prada would support anarchism, believing it provided more liberty compared to liberalism, which had prevented reform in Peru. He had similar anarchist thoughts as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Bakunin. An atheist, a follower of Darwin, Spencer, and Comte, Manuel González Prada was a powerful polemicist whose targets were the Catholic Church, the Spanish tradition, and, generally, any form of conservatism. He would describe anarchism as "a new Christianity ... without Christ" and that it would provide "unlimited freedom and the greatest well-being for the individual with the abolition of the state and private property".
Gonzalez Prada did not see the crisis facing Peru as a class conflict, saying that one class achieving power over the other would only mimic actual social justice. When giving the "El intelectual y el obrero" address to the anarchist group Federación de Obreros Panaderos during a International Workers' Day event in 1905, he would make the cautioning statement that "revolutions come from above, but are made operative from below ... every revolution once successful tends to become a government of force, every victorious revolutionary degenerates into a conservative".
After seeing the failures of nationalism, his strong moral values and after embracing anarchism, Gonzalez Prada concluded:
Legacy
The legacy of González Prada would not be recognized until later into the 20th century, influencing progressive movements within Peru. His writings would also influence indigenismo due to his criticism of the pervasive Spanish culture amongst the Peruvian elite. Linguistics scholar Bohdan Plaskacz would describe González Prada "as one of the greatest essayists of Latin America, champion of the rights of Peruvian Indians and spiritual father of the socialist movement of the following generation". Peruvian intellectuals influenced by González Prada include José Carlos Mariátegui and Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre. Víctor Andrés Belaúnde was influenced by González Prada's description of a superficial elite class. His intellectual and stylistic footprint can be found in the writing of Clorinda Matto de Turner, Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, José Santos Chocano, Aurora Cáceres, César Vallejo, José Carlos Mariátegui and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Following a curriculum change in the 1960s for the studies of the Peruvian Armed Forces, military students were taught the writings of González Prada and became disillusioned with the political elite, with officers ultimately overthrowing the government of Fernando Belaúnde in 1968 Peruvian coup d'état due to concerns of inequality.
Thomas Ward, director of the Latin American and Latino Studies at Loyola University Maryland, would say of González Prada:
Besides being a philosopher and a significant political agitator, González Prada is important as the first Latin American author to write in a style known as modernismo (modernista in Spanish, different from Anglo-American modernism) poet in Peru, anticipating some of the literary innovations that Rubén Darío would shortly bring to the entire Hispanic world. He also introduced new devices such as the triolet, rondel and Malayan pantun which revitalized Spanish verse. Besides his poetry, he cultivated the essay, and most recently Isabelle Tauzin Castellanos has published some of his hitherto unknown fiction.
Notable quotes
On Peru: "We have never initiated a reform, never announced a scientific truth, nor produced an immortal book. We do not have men but mere echoes of men, we do not express ideas but repetitions of decrepit and moth-eaten phrases."
On Revolution: "Revolutions come from above but are carried out from below. Their way lighted by the gleam on the surface, those who are oppressed in the depths see justice clearly and thrust forward to conquer it, without hesitating as to the means nor feeling fear as to the consequences. While the moderates and theoreticians imagine geometric evolutions or get all tangled up in the details of form, the multitude simplifies matters, taking them down from the nebulous heights and confining them to earthly practice. They follow the example of Alexander; they do not untie but cut the knot which binds them."
On Liberty: believed "that all liberty was born bathed in blood...Rights and freedom are never granted; they must be taken. Those who command give only what they must, and nations which sleep trusting their rulers to arouse them with the gift of liberty are like fools who build a city in the midst of a desert hoping that a river will suddenly flow through its barren streets."
References
González Prada, Manuel, Free Pages and Hard Times: Anarchist Musings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. (hardcover) and (paperback).
González Prada, Manuel, "The Slaves of the Church". Trans. Cathleen Carris. PMLA 128.3 (May 2013): 765-777.
Secondary bibliography
Rufino Blanco Fombona, Grandes escritores de América, Madrid, 1917.
Eugenio Chang-Rodríguez, La literatura política: De González Prada, Mariátegui y Haya de la Torre, Mexico, 1957, esp. pp. 51–125.
John A. Crow, "The Epic of Latin America," Fourth Edition, pp. 636–639.
Joël Delhom, "Ambiguités de la question raciale dans les essais de Manuel González Prada", en Les noirs et le discours identitaire latinoaméricain, Perpignan, 1997: 13-39.
Efraín Kristal, Una visión urbana de los Andes: génesis y desarrollo del indigenismo en el Perú, 1848-1930, Lima, 1991.
Robert G. Mead, Jr., Perspectivas interamericanas: literatura y libertad, New York, 1967, esp. pp. 103–184.
Eduardo Muratta Bunsen, "El pensamiento filosofico de don Manuel González Prada," en Filosofía y sociedad en el Perú, Lima, 2003: 128-143.
Luis Alberto Sánchez, Nuestras vidas son los ríos…historia y leyenda de los González Prada, Lima, 1977.
Isabelle Tauzin-Castellanos, ed., Manuel González Prada: escritor de dos mundos, Lima, 2006.
Marcel Velázquez Castro, Las máscaras de la representación: el sujeto esclavista y las rutas del racismo en el Perú (1775-1895), Lima, 2005, esp. pp. 249–264.
Thomas Ward, La anarquía inmanentista de Manuel González Prada. New York, 1998.
Thomas Ward, “González Prada: soñador indigenista de la nación”, en su Resistencia cultural: La nación en el ensayo de las Américas, Lima, 2004: 160-177.
Thomas Ward, “Manuel González Prada vs. Rigoberta Menchú: When Indigenismo meets Indigenous Thought.” Hispania 95.3 (September 2012): 400-423.
Thomas Ward, ed, El porvenir nos debe una Victoria. La insólita modernidad de Manuel González Prada. Lima, 2010.
External links
Manuel González Prada page. Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia (English)
Times of Struggle An ongoing translation project of Horas de lucha
El porvenir nos debe una victoria, a new website dedicated to Manuel González Prada replacing "Ensayos y poesía"
His most important collections of essays and poetry, archived from "Ensayos y poesía", Manuel González Prada
1844 births
1918 deaths
Politicians from Lima
Peruvian people of Spanish descent
Modernismo
Peruvian essayists
Peruvian male poets
Peruvian anarchists
National Union (Peru) politicians
Male essayists