Anthology of Manuel González Prada

In this Anthology of Manuel González Prada, one of the most influential Peruvian thinkers. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he wrote his most combative essays. In them he works on the most varied topics; from the philosophical and religious to the political and aesthetic.
Below we comment on some of the texts collected in this volume:

• In the “Discurso del Politeama” (1888) González Prada displays his indefatigable activism echoing the cry: “The old men to the grave; young people to work!”, which became the motto of his generation and his time.
• “Discurso del Teatro Olimpo”, from the same year, fiercely criticizes the Peruvian literary situation.
• His campaign in favor of the Indians increases during these years and ends up becoming a popular essay “Our Indians” (1904); This text and others in favor of the same cause are key pieces in the development of Hispanic American political thought: they are the first indisputable samples of an indigenismo that had overcome the sentimental and philanthropic tone.
• Also in “The Intellectual and the Worker”, a lecture given on the first of May 1905 at the Federation of Bakery Workers of Peru, he reveals his fervent defense of the anarchist utopia.

González Prada’s prose, although combative, is refined and already accuses the influences of modernism in the transformation of the Spanish language.
Manuel González Prada received numerous criticisms for impregnating all his philosophical, literary and moral discourse with politics. But this is precisely an essential part of his thinking. For him

“Political truth is no different from moral truth, because if politics is not a morality in action (then) it is the art of deceiving and exploiting men.”