The Peru–Chile relationship is one steeped in histories of conflict, according to generations of scholarship. While conflict may certainly be a reality, recent work has pushed for a radical rethinking of the relationship, one that recognises difference but emphasises similarity and connections. Joanna Crow's book, Itinerant Ideas: Race, Indigeneity and Cross-Border Intellectual Encounters in Latin America (1900–1950), is a welcome addition to this rethinking.
Crow sets out to write a history of ‘how ideas travelled across national borders in early-twentieth-century Latin America’, with a specific focus on ideas on race and processes of ‘race-making’ (pp. 3, 5). These discussions and processes took place both on the national and transnational level, which in turn reveals ‘overlaps’ in ideas on race and shows how we can only understand these processes if we view them as part of a transnational dialogue (pp. 13, 7). While Crow builds on recent work putting Peru and Chile into new conversations, she also correctly points out that much of this work does not centre race in the analysis. Focusing on race allows Crow to examine histories of struggles over racial justice and bring Chile into Latin American conversations on indigenismo, a topic which often ignores Chile.
The book is organised into 12 chapters which fit within three parts, each part representing one subtheme. Part 1 deals with labour. Less about the labour movement than people discussing labour, the first third of the book puts into conversation many of the key Peruvian and Chilean players of the early twentieth century: José Carlos Mariátegui, Magda Portal, Ciro Alegría, Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Luis Alberto Sánchez, Moisés Poblete Troncoso, among many others. (The character list is long across the book, but every chapter contains a useful introduction which includes both some of the main arguments and a brief discussion of some of the main people in the chapter, as well as if they have made a previous appearance in the book.) Many Peruvian Apristas made their way to Chile due to political repression in Peru in the early decades of the century, and while in Chile they had an enormous impact on labour discussions. Following these exiles not only helps to show their involvement in Chilean circles; it also reveals how some of the central ideas of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, APRA) − and Mariátegui − developed within and through Chile (pp. 45, 55).
Part 2 moves to look at cultural heritage, in particular textiles, Machu Picchu and Cuzco, and museums. The overarching theme in this middle part of the book is that Chileans and Peruvians were in consistent conversations on how to interpret the past (more or less since the fifteenth century), and that different intellectuals used their interpretations of the Indigenous past to make arguments about the contemporary moment. Crow also delicately pulls out the nuances of these processes. In Chapter 6, for instance, Alberto Giesecke and Luis Valcárcel's letters point to the importance of personal relationships and how tensions between tourism and the ‘need to conserve and protect’ Pachacamac ‘replicat[e] colonialist and imperialist divides’ (p. 176).
The final part of the book focuses on education. Here we see a return of the Apristas in exile in Chile, their involvement in discussions on education, and Chilean authorities actively taking up these conversations. Framing this section is a well-done chapter on educational reform in Peru and Chile, who were behind these debates, and the overall goals. Chile made its mark on Peruvian intellectuals as a kind of model of reform, with Luis Enrique Galvalán writing in a 1928 article published in Amauta about the Chilean model ‘beckon[ing] a great future for our people in this continent of Manco and Columbus’ (p. 255). Crow unearths plenty of material to support the central claim of the continual conversations and mutual reliance between Peruvians and Chileans: ‘So, the Santiago-based Revista de Educación published updates on Peruvian developments and opinion pieces by Peruvian intellectuals, and Peruvians writing in Amauta disseminated the news of educational reforms underway in Chile’ (p. 256). One of the stories in Chapter 10 that deserves more scholarship, as Crow notes (pp. 273–5 and p. 275, fn. 17) is that of Ezequiel Urviola, a Mestizo who took on an Indigenous life, was involved in anarchism and the Comité Tawantinsuyo, and eventually went to Chile due to political repression. Unfortunately, we do not know much about his time in Chile.
The source base of Itinerant Ideas is largely printed primary sources. One of the many impressive aspects of the book is Crow's ability to sift through a wide array of periodicals, paying close attention to the authors, who they are referencing, and then constructing an analysis of political programmes, connections and influence that would be unseen by a less-keen eye. This close reading and understanding of broader contexts is a shining example of intellectual history as method.
Itinerant Ideas is a smart and timely book. Along with other recent scholarship, it forces us to re-examine the Peru–Chile relationship and alerts us to the centrality of race in these twentieth-century conversations. It is a significant achievement as a piece of research and covers a vast set of actors, with themes that would be relevant for many scholars of Latin America. Beyond Peru and Chile, Crow also shows the central place of Mexico – both as a location of conferences, discussions and experiences and as an idea – in the circulation of discourses on race. It is unfortunate that the publisher has placed a hefty price tag on the book, putting it out of reach for many.
