The crooked timber that bore fruit: Peruvian fascist intellectuals of the 1930s and the echoes of their influence nowadays
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César Castillo-García The crooked timber that bore fruit: Peruvian fascist intellectuals of the 1930s and the echoes of their influence nowadays April 2022 Working Paper 06/2022 Department of Economics The New School for Social Research The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the New School for Social Research. © 2022 by César J. Castillo-García. All rights reserved. Short sections of text may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit is given to the source.
The crooked timber that bore fruit: Peruvian fascist intellectuals of the 1930s
and the echoes of their influence nowadays
César J. Castillo-García
Department of Economics
New School for Social Research
In contrast to European and other Latin American experiences, researchers
understand Peruvian fascism as a simple mimicry (a political alternative of the
1930s that regimes and movements look to replicate) or the product of
transnational propaganda looking for public support to Mussolini and Franco. To
avoid this reductionism, this paper proposes a double-sided definition based on
Vajda (1976) and Paxton (1998) to understand fascism as a movement and an
ideology. That enables us to identify the Peruvian fascism by studying the
actions and ideas of three intellectuals who sympathized with it: José de la
Riva-Agüero, Raúl Ferrero Rebagliatti, and Víctor Andrés Belaúnde. I argue that
their discourse is a symbiosis between Peruvian authoritarian political tradition
and European fascisms. Even though these fascist intellectuals did not create a
strong political movement, they incepted political concepts regarding social
policy, the government, the nation, the relations between State and the church,
and anti-Marxism in public discussion. As a result, they passed on elements of
the political repertory supported by the current new right-wing populism in Peru.
Introduction: What stage to locate a non-fully developed fascism?
The study of fascism deals with the perils of specifying an ideal type that covers its
different analytical and historical features. Is fascism a set of fixed political ideas that
form a blueprint to replicate in different political contexts and times (Eley 1983, Griffin
1991, Sternhell 1994)? Would it be possible to understand it as a movement
concerned with a pragmatic modus operandi (a political practice) instead of a
vanguard led by an ideology (Paxton 1998, 2004)? Does fascism embody the
political organization of the petty-bourgeoisie par excellence, the mass movement
(Lukacs 1971, Vajda 1976, Hagtvet 1980)? Should we understand it as an emergent
outcome of the crisis due to monopoly capitalism after the First World War and the
response of the bourgeoisie in the form of state-capitalism (Bauer 1936, Pollock
1941, Neumann 1942)?
Even though researchers could identify fascism as either a movement or a specific
regime, they have focused on the experiences in which it gained and remained in
government. Hence, the methodological consensus assesses the features of the
definition of fascism by looking at the most representative regimes: Italy and
Germany. Furthermore, the comparative nature of the term fascism led the
researchers to study the different national cases. The list could include governments
that collaborated with both Italy and Germany, as France (Kedward 1971, Paxton
1972) and Austria (Botz 1980, Pauley 1980), or the so-called mimicries: Japan
(WIlson 1968, Hofman 2010), Portugal (Schmiter 1980, Pena Rodríguez 2017), or
Spain (Weber 1964, Kedward 1971, Payne 1980, de Lima Grecco 2020).
The analytical difficulties increase regarding this later step. When talking about
fascism outside central Europe, the authors struggle with the necessity of a stable
ideal type. The first caveat is the presence of historical cases that were not fascist,
but reproduce some symbols, practices and institutions of classical fascism
(mimicry). For instance, Paxton (1998: 3) refers that many regimes of the 1930s,
those which were not functionally fascists, borrowed elements of fascism to show an
1aura of force, vitality, and mass mobilization. Other authors provide alternative
concepts for experiences that do not fit completely to the classical ideal type but
share some elements in common. Germani’s (1978: 73) “functional substitutes of
fascism,” which refers to the Latin American authoritarian experiences of the 1930s
assumed by the military instead of the middles class. Also, Bertonha (2019) talks
about the Latin American experiences as fuzzy fascisms. For instance, he refers to
the classical fascist experience as a source of inspiration for the regimes and elites
of the region during the 1930s. Specially, he emphasizes that conservative elites in
the Andes found in fascism an alternative to modernize their societies.
On the other hand, some strategies look for anchoring a narrow characterization of
classical fascism in a sub-set of the previously defined features, so it could be the
case to include country cases that do not totally correspond to the classical fascist
ideal type. As an example, de Lima Grecco (2020:17) follows Griffin (1998) to
consider fascism as a modernist cultural project renewing the symbolic practices and
creating a new set of meanings against the liberal modernity. Hence, the author
looks at the cultural institutions of Franco’s regime, identifies their modernist
character and classifies it as a fascism. Pena Rodríguez (2017: 13) does the same
when focusing on the terror propaganda of Salazar’s regime in Portugal. In the same
way, Savarino (2010: 45) defines fascism as a political culture responding to the
socio-cultural problems of modernity that is grounded in politics, geopolitics, culture,
and aesthetics.
For the fascism to be coined as an -ism, the academic consensus relay on the study
of its historical manifestation and the critical analysis of the contents covered by its
ideology (regardless the fact that it could be written after the fascist movement
acquires the power). Without loss of generality, this paper follows such a double-
sided definition of fascism that focuses on its character as an ideology and a mass
movement. Following Vajda (1976), the approach identifies fascism as a political
alternative attempting to mobilize the middle-class (the petty-bourgeoisie) and related
strata (popular urban/rural classes and conservative intellectual elite) in order to
support a specific programme (not necessarily implemented) and an ideological
repertoire mainly focused on the nation, the corporatist economy [or the ‘virtual
conciliation’ of different classes interests], the anti-Marxism, and a selective racism.
In that sense, fascism as a movement is also subjected to the process of stages that
Paxton (1998: 11) describes as follow: (i) initially fascism emerges as a movement,
then (ii) it roots as a party in a political system, that could (iii) gain the government,
(iv) to exercise power, and finally (v) experiences the radicalization or entropy of that
power.
Mariátegui (1959) emphasizes that fascist theory emerges from the praxis, but not
the other way around. In contrast, I consider that there is a double movement
regarding the political life of fascism. While a fascist movement could emerge without
a proper program, it does not mean that fascism lacks any ideology. Such an
ideological defence of a particular fascist program does not necessarily make it
succeed (Vajda 1976: 16). Therefore, it is not impossible to use the category of
fascism to identify networks, movements, and collectives that were not capable of
gaining either elections or popular support. It also validates the use of the concept of
fascism to qualify political movements in countries where the structural conditions
were different from those in the Central European experience.
To fix a definition of fascism, I suggest looking for the family resemblances of the
different cases through space and time. First, fascist ideology emphasizes the
necessity of conciliating the interests of heterogeneous strata under capitalism,
especially the petty-bourgeoisie and the middle classes (Vajda 1976: 39-40, Antón
22016: 340). Such is an unfilled promise made by the bourgeoisie democracy under
liberal capitalism. Therefore, the fascist repertory praises the potential of corporatism
as the best method for organizing the socio-economic structure within the margins of
legality. Fascism does not look to destroy the constitutional order, but to adapt it to a
dual system of government (Fraenkel 2017 [1941]). Fascism shows a selective anti-
capitalist rhetoric: instead of rejecting the capital as such, it identifies the productive
capitals that play the role of sustaining the social base for the nation. In this regard,
fascists agree with the necessity of an intensive national capitalization process and
partially favour the native bourgeoisie against the foreign capitals. All of this is
commanded by means of a state that manages the market economy as in negation
of the materialist laws and tendencies of capitalism (Neumann 1942: 223).
In that sense, the macroeconomic policy reproduces a voluntaristic tendency of
fascist politics. The relation between the leader and the embodied nation matches
the predominant role of the political will to reconstruct the decadent society and its
culture. Fascism looks for overturning the social order and redistributing the political
and economic power among individuals belonging to different groups but sharing the
same race (or nationality). Fascism is not popular because it either defends the
interests of the lower classes or praises the construction of a new citizenry. In this
regard, it does not reject the social hierarchy allowing for the presence of elites. Also,
fascist Bonapartism does not mean the rise of middle- and lower-classes, but the
commission of a dictatorial government to a stratum without any relevant function in
civil society (Vajda 1976: 101). That does not imply a direct commitment to
totalitarianism. I suggest that it is even possible to identify fascist movements that
were not totalitarian when in government if we follow the three conditions stated by
Linz (1975: 70).
In cultural terms, fascist movements rely on the reaction against capitalist
modernization. Modernism in art and literature, the vitalist and intuitionist
philosophies countervail the liberal individualism tradition in politics and the
totalitarian Marxism. That is also why emotions have a role when mobilizing the
fascist mass. Discontent is the signal of social decadence, and pauperization
represents the conditions of the loss of dignity. The development of machinery and
technology is not what fascist movements deny in their repertoire. They do not
neglect capital accumulation but annunciate an alternative future of technological war
(Benjamin 2005 [1930]) and eugenics. In consequence, fascism claims patriots have
an active role in the regeneration and protection of society, a statement that may
materialize in the exaltation of violence and the creation of militias (allied with the
party). In this regard, fascism constructs an alliance with reactionaries and
conservatives, even though they all compete to gain the right-wing electorate
(Mariátegui 1959) and the latter stop fascism to capture the government (Bertonha,
2019).
For the fascisms to be identified as such, looking at fascist ideas suggest an
alternative route map to follow the traces of movements and intellectual networks,
regardless they were either successful to consolidate a mass basis or gain the
government in each country case. Also, it makes possible to understand the
inception of the fascist ideas in the public opinion and the competition between
different fascist groups. Consequently, the ideological side of the identification
strategy allows to classify varieties of fascism at the same time and space. On the
other hand, the instrumentalization of the concept “stages” emphasizes the
differences between country cases and the different patterns of development they
show. Rather than stressing that the presence of fascism in government is the main
criterion to verify its existence, the framework of “stages” enables the researcher to
recognize fascism in the country cases where it was not fully developed. For
3instance, we can talk about fascisms that get trapped in the first movement phase
(Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru) or those that when in-government (fourth phase)
get rid of the fascist allies (as in the cases of Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain).
Commonly, researchers study Peruvian fascism in two ways. First, they test if the so-
called fascist regimes and movements fit or mimic the European fascisms as in
Bertonha (2019). A second strategy evaluates if the Peruvian regimes of the 1930s
sympathize with European fascist governments as it appears in authors as Ciccarelli
(1990). In contrast, I study Peruvian fascism as an intellectual movement that
unsuccessfully attempted to initiate a mass mobilization in a society without
developed capitalism during the late 1930s. Even though there were national
movements (as either Acción Patriótica 1 or Legión Peruana 2 ) and political parties
(Unión Revolucionaria) that assumed a fascist programme, intellectual fascism got
locked in the first stage. Notwithstanding his lack of a mass base, this intellectual
movement found out the material conditions to coincide with the popular imaginaries
of the 1930s and to create long-standing institutions (Adorno 2020 [1967]: 14).
Therefore, I argue in this paper that to understand Peruvian fascism is necessary to
study the ideas, acts and speeches of intellectuals supporting it and that create
institutions embodying the principles and concepts that belongs to the fascist
ideology. The latter also produces a methodological gain: the possibility to validate
the presence of fascism in the past if we find traces of the fascist ideas and their
discursive legacies in the current political debate and the long-standing institutions
(Steinberg 1999, Coy, Woehrle, and Maney 2008). In that sense, the remainders of
the fascist repertory appear reproduced in the far-right movements of the present
Peruvian political debate (the right-wing extremism).
In what follows, I cover the analysis of fascist ideas in Peru supported by intellectuals
of the late 1930s and their discursive legacy. The second section introduces the state
of the art of studies of fascism in Peru. Most of the papers and books focus on either
(i) the research on fascist intellectual networks and their core ideas, (i) identifying the
fascist character of political movements and regimes as the Sánchez-Cerro (1931-
1933) and the Benavides (1933-1939) ones, and (iii) the diffusion of fascism as part
of the international propaganda and the ties between Peru and the European
colonies (German, Italian, Spanish). In the third section, I summarize the main
characteristics of the historical context under which the fascist ideas emerged in
Peru: the political crisis of the late 1930s tied to the Great Depression and the end of
Leguía’s dictatorship.
The fourth section presents the ideas of the main personalities of the Peruvian fascist
intellectual network: José de la Riva-Agüero, Raúl Ferrero Rebagliatti and Víctor
Andrés Belaúnde. During the first decades of the 20th century, Riva-Agüero and
Belaúnde shared the expectations of the positivist and liberal Generation of the 900.
1
The Acción Patriótica (Patriotic Action) was a personal project of José de la Riva-Agüero and aspired to become the
most reactionary force of the Peruvian politics contained in the 1936 elections following the model of Maurras’s
Action Française (Rivera 2017). The polarized context led Riva-Agüero to state that there was no alternative other
than taking a position in the Peruvian political debate against the populist and leftist movements. Nevertheless, the
movement joined other two right-wing forces to contain in the elections: the party of the agriculture businessmen
(Partido Nacional Agrario) and the Partido Nacionalista. The three gave birth to the Acción Republicana, an electoral
alliance whose presidential candidate was Manuel Vicente Villarán, a committed anti-Marxist but a more moderate
right-wing politician. This electoral alliance was the less voted option during the failed elections of 1936 (Candela
2011).
2
The Legión Peruana (Peruvian Legion) published a program written by Miguel Merino Schröder in 1939. There is
not any known study about this movement. Nevertheless, Peruvian intellectuals supporting corporatism were aware
of the Legión. For instance, Víctor Andrés Belaúnde published a very enthusiastic review of the program in the
Mercurio Peruano (Belaúnde 1939d). Likewise, the French economist Louis Baudin refers to the Legión as a
Peruvian movement inspired by the corporatist doctrine. According to Baudin, the Legión did not emphasize
corporatism as its organizational basis. Nevertheless, one of its leaders, Raúl Ferrero Rebagliatti, supported
corporatism in his political writings (Baudin 1941: 112).
4However, they supported an elitist form of government instead of a republican
version of the bourgeois democracy. After the 1930s, the two intellectuals and
Ferrero were committed to the political activism of the Catholic Church and
supported in their beginnings a catholic political party (Unión Popular, 1931)3 and the
Peruvian Catholic Action (1935) 4 . Belaúnde and Ferrero were editorial board
members of the Mercurio Peruano (1918), a journal that specialized in humanities
(literature, arts, and history) and defended conservative ideas. Ferrero was a disciple
of Belaúnde and showed an irrevocable commitment to corporatism. As Belaúnde,
he also found in Italian fascism a source of inspiration for reconstructing the Peruvian
state. Exploring the ideas of these intellectuals reveals the commonalities of their
thought with the discursive repertory of the current Peruvian radical right. I argue that
the latter inherited some elements from the political tradition that Peruvian fascist
intellectuals incepted in the 1930s.
Fascism in Peru: the state of the art
The debate on fascism in the Peruvian context appeared as a result on both the
political denunciation coming from the Left and reformist politicians and the active
propaganda of followers of fascism. For instance, the first reports about fascism
come from the experience of José Carlos Mariátegui abroad. In his essay of 1925,
compilated in the book La Escena Contemporánea [The contemporary scene] and
titled the Biology of fascism, the founder of the Peruvian socialism presents a
historical portrait of the Italian fascism5. He characterizes it as the Mussolini’s political
platform and vehicle. Fascism embodied the feelings of national disappointment and
depression that were conducive to a violent nationalist reaction (Mariátegui 1925). In
1927, Mariátegui published in the magazine Variedades an article titled The
Ideologues of Reaction and stated that the reactionary thinking that was born in the
late 1920s remained a direct consequence of the fascist practice: “(…) in Italian
fascism, reactionary theory is the child of the practice of the coup d’état.” (Mariátegui
1959). Another author discussing the question of fascism in the Peruvian public
sphere is Delgado (1939), who published his experiences about fascism in Europe
during the late 1930s.
In the APRA’s newspaper La Tribuna, the populist movement qualifies the interests
of the political ruling class as fascist. This denunciation represented a fuzzy attempt
to identify the bourgeoisie with the ghost of reactionary politics. However, they
3
Klaiber (1983) states that the Unión Popular was the first Catholic political party in Peru. Its creation was the joint
responsibility of both the laymen and the hierarchy of the Peruvian Catholic Church. They react against the
secularization process of the Andean country in the 1930s. They were also afraid of the rise of anticlerical politics in
Peru, as was the case of the Cristero War in Mexico. Curiously, this is an intuition that the author shares with
Gramsci (1992 [1929]: 224). The Unión Popular had public support from figures as Víctor Andrés Belaúnde, Raúl and
Rómulo Ferrero, and José de la Riva-Agüero because of their commitments with the Peruvian Catholic Action. The
party got inspiration from the Catholic Social Teaching of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. Therefore, its members
recognized corporatism as a third way between capitalism and atheist socialism.
4
A complete study of the Peruvian Catholic Action is Ara Goñi (2019). It assesses the Catholic Action’s political
participation, the publications it runs, and the sub-groups that it created. Even though the author does not identify any
fascist tendency in such a movement, there are cultural and political commonalities of the Catholic Action with
intellectuals that covered its actions in publications as the Mercurio Peruano and the weekly magazine Verdades.
5
Mariátegui lived in Italy from 1920 to 1922. By the time he left the country, Mussolini was already on his ascending
to power. The days in exile in Europe marked Mariátegui’s approach to fascism. Before arriving to Italy, he travelled
to France and met with Georges Sorel, from whom he took his voluntaristic approach to Marxism. Also, he wrote two
articles for the Peruvian newspaper El Tiempo in 1921. In “Escenas de la guerra civil [Scenes of the civil war]” of
June 29th, he mentions that “Fascism is the illegal action of the conservative classes, who are afraid about the
insufficient legal action of the state looking to defend its own subsistence. It is the illegal bourgeois action taken
against possible illegal socialist action: the revolution.” (Mariátegui 1987). In “La prensa italiana [The Italian
journalism]” of July 10th, he talks about the political polarization of that time: “In Italy, as in the whole Europe,
journalism is divided in two groups: the bourgeois journalism and the revolutionary one.” (Mariátegui 1987). See:
GARRELS, Elizabeth (2007) “Cronología. Vida y obra de José Carlos Mariátegui.”. En: José Carlos MARIÁTEGUI. 7
Ensayos de Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana. Caracas: Fundación Biblioteca Ayacucho, p. 326.
5misuse the concept to attack their electoral competitors during the last 1930s and
oppose the Benavides regime during its later years in the same way as the pro-
American propaganda against the political allies of the Axis (Ciccarelli 1988b: 381-
382). The apristas also produced some books against the fascist influence in
Peruvian society6. Communists also denounced the fascist movements advance in a
society in which the popular mass parties were born at the beginning of the 1930s
decade. However, orthodox Marxist interpretation assumes that fascism was merely
a discursive instrument, a dispositive of control that the dominant stratum used to
gain political power under foreign dependent conditions (Mendieta Pérez 2013: 3).
This perspective, which is also followed by non-Marxian historians, flaws because of
the dynamic nature of the capitalist crisis (Vajda 1976) and the constrained support
to Peruvian fascism.
The research about Peruvian fascism of the 1930s dates back to the 1970s. A first
mention appears in the fourth edition of Jorge Basadre’s magnum opus Historia de la
República del Perú (1822-1933) (Basadre 2014 [1968]). He includes a brief section
about the fascist character of Sánchez Cerro’s UR political discourse. Then, Pinto
Gamboa (1983 [1978]) studies the literary production of Peruvian intellectuals who
supported the rebels during the Spanish Civil War. He provides a selection of
quotations and excerpts of articles from the newspapers, books, essays, magazines,
and journals in which intellectuals appeal to the Spanish Nationalist cause during the
1936-1939 (the main newspapers in Lima were La Prensa, El Comercio, and La
Crónica.) He finds Víctor Andrés Belaúnde’s column “Mirador” in La Prensa.
Belaúnde used the pseudonym “Ajax” when he denounced the thread of the
Republican Marxists in the Iberian Peninsula and supported the German rescue of
the Reich’s “lost territories” during 1936-1937. Pinto Gamboa also exposes the work
of other intellectuals as Roberto Mac Lean, who wrote for the newspaper La Crónica
and the magazine Mundial, Carlos E. Paz Soldán of La Prensa, Carlos Miró-
Quesada Laos (“Garrotín” [tiny cudgel]), who praised the advance of both Franco
and Mussolini in his columns published by El Comercio.
Following the traces left by that research, López Soria (1981)7 published a study of
the Peruvian fascist thought in Peru. In his compilation, the researcher covers the
period 1930-1945 and characterizes 1934-1939 as the time of fascism’s full
deployment in Peru (it also relates to the closed ties of Benavides with the countries
of the Axis). López Soria identifies three varieties of fascism that emerged in Peru: (i)
the aristocratic fascism represented by José de la Riva-Agüero, (ii) the mesocratic
fascism of Raúl Ferrero Rebagliati, and (iii) the popular fascism represented by the
political ideas of the Unión Revolucionaria (UR). Additionally, he compilates a couple
of propagandistic writings of Miró-Quesada Laos and the papers of two
representatives of each the Italian and Spanish colonies.
The first strand of fascism was committed to a sound disavowal to democracy and
the repulsion of liberalism and communism. Its rejection of the masses in favor of the
government of the elites ties it with reactionary thought (Riva-Agüero admired
Peruvian conservative thinkers as Bartolomé Herrera and Alejandro Deustua).
Besides appealing to the Peruvian authoritarian tradition, Riva-Agüero appeals to the
restoration of the interests of the old aristocratic republicanism of land and financial
6
For instance, see the book of Fernando León de Vivero (1938) Avance del imperialismo fascista en el Perú. Mexico
D.F.: Manuel Arévalo.
7
This is a work referred by many authors including the same Castillo Ochoa (1990), Ciccarelli (1988b, 1990), Drinot
(2014), González Calleja (1994), Guarnieri Calò Carducci (2007), Muñoz Carrasco (2013), and Payne (1995).
6capital8. The second strand of fascism was spread to the urban middle-classes by
middle-class intellectuals in the educative institutions (Pontificia Universidad Católica
del Perú, and the Catholic high-schools), and the Catholic Action. López Soria
suggests this fascism was an attempt to elaborate an ideology for the professional
middle-class through the aspirations of public intellectuals. The mesocratic fascism
was the third way between two oppositions: the dichotomy between capitalism and
socialism and the opposition between elitism and populism. It also appeals to an
element of national integration: the mestizo identity, which conflates the indigenous
heritage of the Peruvian culture with the ideology of the Spanish conquerors.
Nevertheless, López Soria interprets the mesocratic fascism as a simple mimicry of
the Italian, German, and Spanish fascisms.
Finally, the popular fascism of the UR committed to a repertoire aiming to constraint
the popular aspirations of lower classes and create an environment of “concord and
peace” for all the social classes. It replicates the discursive strategies of Nazism to
praise its commitment to the proletarians competing with the Communism party and
the APRA. The UR discourse exalted heroism, highly weighted the nation, appealed
to irrationalism, and relied on authoritarian politics. In this regard, it got inspired by
the European fascisms and the political thought of Riva-Agüero. The fascism of the
UR represents the interests of the unemployed, the petty-bourgeoisie, and the new
urban classes coming from the countryside. In that sense, its discourse targets the
material interests of the poor and their negative emotions; it mobilizes the general
discontent and creates a public enemy: the Asian immigrant.
Muñoz Carrasco (2013) authored another compilation of pro-fascist statements. In
her book, she presented excerpts of documents written by Peruvian intellectuals
about the Spanish civil war. The principal publications of Lima extravagantly reported
the political event and related it with the future of Peru. The pro-Nationalist
columnists analyzed the conflict and related the rebels with the defense of the
tradition. Authors like Aurelio Miró-Quesada Sosa, Luis Lama, or Félix del Valle
applied symbols taken from the Spanish epic literature and wrote articles describing
Spanish cities and streets to catch the reader’s attention and translate it to ancient
space and time. There were also Spanish authors living in Peru who wrote historical
essays and chronicles with a feuilleton style and that they published in consecutive
issues. Gonzalo de Sandoval published in La Crónica (1936) articles of his “Pequeña
historia de la revolución española. (Notas de un testigo presencial)” and Joaquín
Arrarás wrote out the episode of the Alcázar of Toledo in “La epopeya del Alcázar: el
diario de los sitiados” (1936). Less known newspapers as Las Derechas published
articles relating the conflict between communists and nationalists in Spain with the
possible polarized future of Peruvian politics. Likewise, the newspaper of the
Archdiocese of Lima El Amigo del Clero denounced the murders perpetrated by the
Republicans and the violence against the Spanish religious.
Other authors have been studying Peruvian fascism by identifying a representative
political party (the UR) its relation to the brief government of Luis Miguel Sánchez
Cerro. Sánchez Cerro created the UR to run in the 1931 presidential elections. In
the beginning, the party did not publicly identify itself as a fascist option. Molinari
(2006a, 2006b) summarizes the transition of the movement to fascism, which
happened after the death of Sánchez Cerro. When the party lost its caudillo, the
lawyer and former ministry of defense, Luis A. Flores, took the lead. Then, the UR
transited to its fascist phase: the political organization created a group of storm-
8
For the fascination of Riva-Agüero with the monarchy as the form of government fitting to the Peruvian society and
the character of its reactionary thought see: Rivera (2011). “Charles Maurras et Montealegre. Un marquis péruvien
face aux Empires 1913-1914”. Rivista elettronica della Società Italiana di Filosofia Politica.
7troopers (the UR´s black shirts) and instrumentalized the xenophobic discourse
against the Asian immigrants (Drinot 2005). This description of the UR as
experiencing a transition process led Castillo Ochoa (1990) to consider it a
conservative populism rather than a fascist movement.
Nevertheless, Stein (1980: 119-121) explains that the first organizational base of UR
was formed by a group of right-wing nationalists, critics of both the left-wing populism
of APRA and the traditional 19th-century elites represented by the Partido Civilista
(those who lost the government during the Leguía dictatorship.) That group of right-
wing nationalists included members of the middle and upper classes, who gained
experience when taking an active role in university politics (for instance, Alfredo
Herrera and José Manuel García Bedoya). They shared an authoritarian view of
politics and emphasized class differences. However, they shared with the Apristas an
anti-imperialist feeling. This initial core created the newspaper Opinión to
complement the media campaign in favor of the UR led by El Comercio. One of the
journalists and editors of Opinión was Carlos Miró-Quesada Laos, the committed
fascist who admired Mussolini, Salazar, and other dictators and was a member of the
family owning El Comercio.
Another branch of historical research focuses on the transnational fascist
propaganda during the regime of Óscar R. Benavides. Documentary evidence shows
that European fascist regimes financed mass media in Latin American countries as
Peru, where European colonies gained social and economic influence. For the Italian
case, the main studies are those of Ciccarelli (1988a, 1988b, 1990) and Guarnieri
Calò Carducci (2007). The historians look at the correspondence between Italian
diplomats and Mussolini’s government and show the rise of Italian propaganda
operations in 1936 to gain Peruvian public support to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia
through the Nucleo di Propaganda. The historical documentation describes how this
propaganda targets the support of Latin American governments to refuse the
economic sanctions against Italy that the League of Nations enforced9.
The Italian government paid high dividends to make Lima’s main newspapers
endorse Mussolini and influence the views of the dominant coastal elites. The Nucleo
also financed the creation of Fasci in Lima and Callao, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura
di Lima (whose first head was José de la Riva-Agüero), and other fascist clubs for
the Italian immigrants. This pragmatic tactic runs together with the interest of the
Italian government to gain an ally in Benavides. The Peruvian president planned to
modernize the Peruvian social policy as a response to the economic crisis and some
of their technocrats were inspired by the Italian corporatist model (Drinot 2014). This
makes Guarnieri Calò Carducci (2007) to understand that Benavides government
experienced a “fascist temptation.” Regardless the cooperation between Benavides’s
government and the Italian bureaucracy10, the Peruvian dictator was not a committed
fascist. The Italian diplomats got disappointed when Benavides call for elections and
publicly supported the pro-American conservative Manuel Prado Ugarteche in 1939.
The reaction of the Peruvian conservatives to the Spanish Civil War and the role of
Spanish diplomats in propaganda also had a role in the diffusion of fascist and
conservative ideas. In contrast to other nations of the Andean region, Peru was not
9
During that time, the head of the Peruvian delegation before the League of Nations was Víctor Andrés Belaunde
(Hilton (Ronald) papers, Audiovisual File 1929-2003, Box 13, Hoover Institution, Stanford University).
10
After the Colombia-Peru war (1932-1933), the Peruvian government stops to buy armament to the USA, France,
and the UK because they supported Colombia. Hence, Benavides decided to start buying weapons from Italy. Also,
the Italian government sent missions to modernize the Peruvian army, the air force, and the police. Besides the direct
intervention of the Italian government, prominent figures of the Italian colony had closed ties with Benavides’s
cabinet. Hence, Guarnieri Calò Carducci (2007) shows that even before the Nucleo, Gino Salocchi (chief director of
the Banco Italiano) offered Benavides technical support for designing the financial reform of the 1933s.
8so close to Spain after the Independence war of the 1820s. Nevertheless, the
experience of the Republic in Spain was a model for Peruvian democrats, and the
reaction coming from the Spanish Nationalism became an example for the Peruvian
conservative elites. They interpreted the conditions for the Spanish Civil War as
representing an experience similar to the 1930s socio-political context in Peru
(Bonilla, 2014). However, Davies (1982) explains Peruvian intellectuals interpreted
the Civil War as simplistic combat between democracy and fascism rather than an
appropriate assessment of the ideological content of the Civil War. The
profranquistas (Belaunde, Ferrero, Riva-Agüero, Raúl Porras Barrenechea,
Guillermo Lohmann, Pedro Yrigoyen, Carlos Pareja Paz Soldán, Felipe Sassone,
Guillermo Hoyos Osores, among others) project their understanding of the
Manicheist combat between good and evil in the Peruvian society. These
conservatives maintained a “hispanizing” attitude. Intellectuals as Belaunde and the
authors of the Mercurio Peruano praised the necessity to construct closer bonds with
Spain to reduce the influence of the Anglo-Saxon utilitarian philosophy (Davies 1982:
207). They also thought about the Peruvian president Benavides as Franco's alter
ego, who fought against the Marxist international conspiration led by the APRA and
maintained the national peace in Peru.
González Calleja (1994) also reviews the debate in the Peruvian press, in which the
most read newspapers showed their support to the franquismo. The pro-Republican
support remained constrained due to the Peruvian Left (communists and the APRA)
being hidden from the government. There were some publications in defense of the
Republicans as Cadre (a bulletin published by the Amigos de los Defensores de la
República de Española) and España Libre [Free Spain] (a publication of the Comité
de Amigos de República Española). Nevertheless, Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre
prohibited the apristas from publishing anything in favor of the Republicans to avoid
being identified with the communists. González Calleja also states that the Peruvian
regime of Benavides was one of the most pro-Nationalists of the Americas: the
Peruvian government did not neglect the Spanish Minister Plenipotentiary to stay in
the official legation in Lima. Likewise, the Peruvian Minister Plenipotentiary and the
Peruvian consul gave political asylum to almost two hundred pro-Nationalists,
including aristocrats and the Peruvian Felipe Sassone (a columnist in the pro-
monarchist newspaper ABC by that time).
Furthermore, González Calleja (1994) documents that the conservative stratum of
the Spanish colony organized a support network for Franco’s cause. In Lima, they
created the Junta Nacionalista Española, which was supported by the Cámara
Española de Comercio, the Casino Español, and the Jesuit school Colegio
Inmaculada. The Junta published a magazine favorable to the Spanish nationalists,
¡Arriba España! (1937). At the same time, the Falange Española declared the
Delegación de Falange en Perú as a regional prefecture to channel the financial aid
for the Nationalist army coming from the Peruvians and the Spanish colony. The
Falange financed a radial program called “Habla Falange Española” in Radio Callao
(1937), the program “Momentos Españoles” in Radio Internacional de Lima (1939).
Even in the province of Sullana in the department of Piura, the local Falange
published a bi-weekly magazine titled Arriba. The Spanish wealthy families in Peru
organized the Ropero Peruano-Español, an institution created with chrematistic
goals, and many gatherings that personalities as Raúl Ferrero Rebagliatti, José de la
Riva-Agüero and Carlo Radicatti di Primeglio (secretary of the Italian Fascio and
professor of History at the Colegio Italiano and the Universidad Católica) attended.
The Peruvian church also supported the Franquismo. After the victory of the
Nationalist rebels, the Archbishop of Lima Pascual Farfán celebrated a Thanksgiving
mass.
9The political and social context in Peru during the 1930s
The 1930s period in Peru represents the confluence of national and international
events. (i) The fall of Leguía’s dictatorship (the regime of the Patria Nueva), (ii) the
emergence of mass politics in the Peruvian context (a consequence of the
constrained modernization patterns affecting the middle-class, the reduced
proletariat, and the indigenous stratum), (iii) the socio-political context of Europe
during the Interwar period, and (iv) the experience of the Great Depression, and.
Molinari (2006a), Mendieta (2013), and Drinot (2014) narrate that the traditional elites
lost their power during Leguía’s dictatorship. Such a situation made them uncapable
to canalize the discontent of the emergent urban proletariat suffering the
consequences of the economic crisis of the 1930s in a less developed economy as
Peru. The transition to democracy was impregnated with the influence of one of the
tutelary powers: the army. The general Sánchez Cerro attempted a coup d’état
supported by some members of the elite in 1930.
The regime of the Patria Nueva weakened the influence of the politicians of the
oligarchic Partido Civil. They gained the label of “traditional” bourgeoisie after
González Prada (an anarchist radical), and young intellectuals of the Generation of
the 900 denounced their incapability to construct a national project after the Peru-
Chile war. The Generation of the 900 was integrated by the young members of
former aristocratic families as Belaunde, Riva-Agüero, García Calderón, Gálvez, and
Villarán. They committed to constitute a liberal but elitist alternative to solve part of
the social problems faced by Peru during the first third of the 20th century: the
stabilization of the government (through the creation of a new Constitution and the
strengthening of the bureaucracy), the construction of a new idea of the nation, the
indigenous question (the necessity of including the indigenous peoples to the political
life), and the development of the private property through the means of the state
(Guarnieri Calò Carducci 2017). They were inspired by the cultural and political
ideals of José Enrique Rodó’s Ariel, a book praising the development of the pan-
Hispanic culture in Latin America against the Anglo-Saxon influence of the USA in
the hemisphere (Gonzales 1996). Contemporary events as the Mexican Revolution
(1910-1920), the Argentine University Reform (1918), and the Russian Revolution
(1917-1923) gained the attention of the public opinion as well.
Even though the Generation was influential in the political debate, their voice could
not gain the support of the lower classes. The thirties were the time of mass politics.
Sociologists identified new leftist and populist options competing with the traditional
right-wing parties and grassroots movements (Stein 1980, Balbi and Madalengoitia
1980). Sánchez Cerro’s UR, Haya de la Torre’s APRA, and Mariátegui’s Socialist
Party are the main political actors of these time. The emergence of the urban
proletariat and the mechanization of agriculture in the Coast increase the need for
political representation of the working class. Petty-bourgeoisie, mostly integrated by
urban nationals and members of the European and Asian colonies of the main cities,
gained notoriety. Hence, new ideologies and discourses were brought by a new
generation of politicians following the political debates in Europe and North America.
That is the context in which the Socialist Party of Mariátegui (1928) and the APRA
(1930) emerged as new political alternatives. For instance, Mariátegui was fully
aware of the political problems regarding Italian fascism and reactionary movements
as the Action Française (Garrels 2007). In the late 1920s, he met figures as Antonio
Gramsci, Benedetto Croce, and Georges Sorel as a Peruvian exiled in Europe. He
also found the Central General de Trabajadores del Perú (CGTP) and got involved in
a transnational polemic with members of the Comintern in 1929. APRA’s leader,
Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, was an exiled politician who gained experience abroad.
10In 1924, he arrived in Russia to learn more about the October Revolution. Between
1926 and 1927, he moved to England and studied economics at the London School
of Economics and anthropology at Oxford.
In this context, local oligarchies and the emergent middle class interpreted the
socialists and the leftist populism of the APRA as threatening the precarious
economic welfare of Peru. Therefore, the former young right-wing politicians and the
traditional oligarchy feared the possibility of any of these political alternatives to gain
to government and replicate scenarios like those of the Russian Revolution or the
Spanish Civil War. Hence, anti-Marxism or anti-Communism (which includes both
apristas and communists) became the main element to fight from the right-wing side
during the elections of 1931. In that sense, the conservative intellectuals as Riva-
Agüero considered the caudillo Sánchez Cerro as the appropriate option to defeat
Haya de la Torre. Besides, the identification of the internal enemy led the politicians
of the 1930s to praise the necessity of excluding progressive political parties from
public life (the APRA had more popular support than the Communist after Mariátegui
passed away.) As soon as he became president, Sánchez Cerro decided to outlaw
APRA and declare a state of emergency to persecute its militants at the beginning of
1932. As a result, the Minister of Marine and War, Luis A. Flores, captured APRA
congressmen and split the Constituent Assembly discussing the charter of 1933.
After an aprista militant assassinated Sánchez Cerro in March 1932, the police and
the army strengthened the hostility against APRA. In such a polarized environment,
the army extrajudicially executed apristas when the sanguinary events of the
Revolution of Trujillo took place at the end of 1932.
During the 1930s, the Peruvian economy experienced a constrained capitalist
modernization. That was a consequence of the government following an export-led
economic policy and the predominance of agriculture and mining (Drinot 2014). Peru
went through a boom cycle during WWI because commodity prices rose. Public
investment and infrastructure projects increased as Leguía backed them up with
American foreign aid. When the Great Depression began, the public deficit and the
high public debt made the government finances almost unsustainable. In this regard,
the duty of the governments of the 1930s was to recover the Peruvian economy. As
Drinot (2014) stated, this supposed a breakpoint in the economic policy followed by
the state. After the coup d’état of Sánchez Cerro, the government suspended the
payments of the foreign debt. The response of the American government was to
send a technical mission led by Edwin Kemmerer. As a result, the Peruvian
government created the basic structure for the Peruvian Central Bank after the
country left the gold standard in 1930. At the same time, to resume the financial flows
to the internal industries, the Junta de Gobierno of 1931 enacted the law creating the
Banco Agrícola (to finance the exporters initiatives in agriculture). When Benavides
became Peruvian president in 1933, he got involved in the financial reform of 1933
(Guarnieri Calò Carducci 2007) and created the Banco Industrial in 1937. Taking
Weimar’s Germany and the Italian fascism as models, Benavides governed under
the motto “order, peace, and work”. For instance, he created social welfare
institutions to protect both employed and unemployed workers as the Ministry of
Employment, Health, and Social Welfare, the unemployment juntas (Juntas Pro-
Desocupados), and restaurants run by the State (restaurantes populares) (Drinot
2005).
“You will know them by their fruits”: the discourse of the fascist
intellectuals
11The precedent section summarizes the social, political, and economic conditions that
the Peruvian fascists faced. The agonistic environment of the 1930s made the rightist
Peruvian intellectuals explore new alternatives to solve the crisis and re-establish
modernization patterns in the country. In this section, I consider the emergence of
fascist ideas in Peru as the product of a symbiosis between the authoritarian tradition
cloaked in the ideology of rightist intellectuals, who attempted to construct modern
Peruvian state and nation, and the imported fascism that Riva-Agüero, Belaúnde,
and Ferrero learned. The merge of both repertoires gave us a characterization of the
topics embodying the Peruvian fascist ideology. I summarize Peruvian fascist
discourse in five points: (i) the concern with a stable state (against its weakness as a
sign of the decadence); (ii) the debate about corporatism as the best social policy
fitting the Peruvian society; (iii) the idea of the nation and the constitution of a
national identity (the peruanidad [peruvian-ness]); (iv) the resilience of close relations
between the State and the Church; and (v) the inception of anti-Marxism (anti-
Communism) in the public discussion.
I choose to study these intellectuals because they both praised the necessity of a
middle-class elite (that they sometimes label as the aristocracy of the intelligence) to
take the power on behalf of the traditional ruling class. Hence, they match the
sociological characterization of fascism made by authors as Vajda (1976). On the
other hand, they were influential personalities in the construction of public institutions
and incepting new ideas to the Peruvian political discourse without dropping the elite
political aspirations of the late 19th century (the experience of the Generation of the
900). In that sense, they gained a predominant position to influence the public
opinion of the 1930s and beyond. As a result, these intellectuals provided new ways
of talking about politics and social policy in Peru that I interpret as discursive legacies
(Coy, Woehrle, and Maney 2008). A discursive legacy is a set of ideas embodying
well-established, repetitive, restrictive, and culturally recognized ways of talking and
writing about a particular issue over time. The discourse of the Peruvian fascist
intellectuals of the past matters in current public debate. Therefore, nowadays
extreme right-wing discourse in Peru is indebted to this symbiotic fascism: it defines
the topics and normative elements (e.g., patriots versus communists, how a true
Peruvian must vote) embodied in the repertoire of new populist social movements.
The contents of the fascist symbiosis are exposed in the writings, speeches, and
actions of the personalities this paper studies. The study focuses on papers written
during 1920-1950 but emphasizes those published in the 1930s. During that time, the
Peruvian intellectuals publicized their sympathy for the fascist ideology coming from
Europe. The three published several books on Peruvian politics. Ferrero’s main work
is titled Marxismo y nacionalismo. Estado nacional corporativo (1938). It was his
dissertation to obtain the doctoral degree in Political Science and Economics. In this
work, Ferrero proposed a national project for Peru based on the corporatist blueprint
and the case of Italian fascism. Riva-Agüero’s Por la verdad, la tradición y la patria.
Opúsculos (1937) that includes their speeches, columns, and essays supporting
Italian fascism, and Escritos Políticos (1975 [1944]) that also covered their
interventions regarding their project of the Acción Patriótica of 1936 and the diffusion
of fascism in Peru 11 . The most prolific author was Víctor Andrés Belaúnde, who
11
When checking the list of books donated by Riva-Agüero to the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and
retained in the Instituto Riva-Agüero it is possible to find Alfredo Rocco’s La Transformazione dello stato : Dallo stato
liberale allo stato fascista (1927), a Spanish translation of Adolf Hitler´s Mein Kampf (1934), Spanish translations of
Benito Mussolini’s Lo Stato Corporativo (1938 [1933]), Quattro Discorsi Sullo Stato Corporativo (1934), and El
fascismo: su doctrina, fundamentos y normas legislativas en el orden sindical corporativo, económico y político (with
prologue and epilogue written by José Antonio Primo de Rivera) (1934), Carlos Radicati di Primeglio’s De las
antiguas a las modernas corporaciones (1937), Raúl Ferrero’s Marxismo y nacionalismo : estado nacional
corporativo (1938), a book of sonnets titled Corona de sonetos en honor de José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1939).
There are several books of Maurras, Chateubriand, Gabrielle d’Annunzio, Donoso Cortés, and Bossuet.
12published a critique of Mariátegui’s 7 Ensayos titled La Realidad Nacional (1931). In
1932, he published the first edition of Meditaciones Peruanas as a compilation of his
papers on the social and political affairs of the period 1910-1920. Some of these
papers were previously published in the Mercurio Peruano. Then, he wrote the first
edition of the book Bolívar and the Political Thought of the Spanish American
Revolution (1938) and a new edition of La Crisis Presente 1914-1939 (1940). The
latter included his opening lecture of the 1914 academic year at the Universidad
Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and papers about the political state of affairs of
thirties Peru.
Ferrero and Riva-Agüero were prominent researchers in historical and literary
studies. The latter became famous after publishing his bachelor’s dissertation
Carácter de la literatura del Perú independiente (1905). In the book, Riva-Agüero
understands Peruvian literature as a mixture of Hispanic and American (creole)
traditions. Almost a study of Peruvian sociology, the Carácter describes a
conservative idea of the Peruvian identity that also Riva-Agüero will have replicated
in La Historia en el Perú (1910) and Paisajes Peruanos (1926). His position was
criticized by Mariátegui in a couple of sections of the 7 Ensayos de interpretación de
la realidad peruana (1928). On the other hand, Ferrero published a summary of his
lectures on ancient history in a book titled Culturas orientales y poemas homéricos
(1935). A decade after, he published another book on historical matters titled
Renacimiento y Barroco (1948). He also wrote articles on the Spanish poetry of the
Siglo de Oro (Ferrero 1945a) and Classical literature (Ferrero 1945c). Belaúnde also
published the first edition of Peruanidad (1942), a work about national historical
affairs (estudios peruanistas). In its preface, he states that his main goal is to
challenge Peruvian materialism as a doctrine that inherited elements from positivism
and Marxism. Such a radical theory neglects the value of tradition, hates
Christianism, and reproduces social and political ressentiment (Belaúnde 1987c
[1932]: 3).
These intellectuals also had important roles as bureaucrats, educators, and leaders
of the Catholic movement in Peru. Besides its role as a leader of the right-wing
political movement, Riva-Agüero was appointed Mayor of Lima (1930-1932) and
head of the unemployment junta of Lima. During the 1931 presidential elections, he
supported the UR of Sánchez Cerro. In 1933, Benavides appointed Riva-Agüero as
the Prime Minister. In 1934, he became advisor for the Commission reviewing the
books for primary and high school. An enthusiastic of the Catholic movement, he
supported the Peruvian Catholic Action. During 1934-1944, Riva-Agüero was the
President of the Peruvian Academy of Language, which is an institution with the
function of preserving the unity, integrity, and growth of the Spanish language in
Peru. Riva-Agüero also was a famous professor of the Faculty of Letters at the
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Therefore, after he died in 1944 their
colleagues and disciples found the Instituto Riva-Agüero, an institution that has
specialized in historical and literary studies up to the present time. Víctor Andrés
Belaúnde was the first president of the Instituto.
Riva-Agüero showed his commitment to fascism in several opportunities. In 1934, he
gave an address before the attendants of an exhibition about the Italian book. He
condemned both the socialist collectivism and the liberalism for initiating the Italian
crisis. The redemption came from the fascism of D’Annunzio and Mussolini. Riva-
Agüero emphasizes the latter understood the two essences of the Italian soul were
the historical right and the eternal Catholicism (Riva-Agüero 1937b: 483-484). In
1937, Riva Agüero acted in support of the Nationalist cause during the Spanish Civil
War. In a letter to Miguel Lasso de la Vega Marquis the Marquis of Saltillo, he
mentions that he frustrated that Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, president of the Spanish
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