By YURI MARTINS-FONTES, JOSE FERNANDO SIQUEIRA DA SILVA & FREDDY GIOVANNI ESQUIVEL CORELLA*

Entry from the “Dictionary of Marxism in America”

Life and political praxis

José Pío Tamayo Rodríguez (1898-1935) was born on April 5, 1898 in El Tocuyo, in the southwest of the state of Lara – an agricultural and livestock region. Son of José Antonio Tamayo Pérez and Sofía Rodríguez, the eldest of eleven siblings, he was taught to read and write by his aunt, the teacher Juana Francisca Rodríguez. Influenced by his mother, he had contact with literature from an early age, which awakened in him the possibility of a less restricted life than that reserved for him by the family business in commerce and rural production.

In his hometown, he continued his studies at Bolivar High School and at school The Concord. At the age of 12, when I used to skip school to read at the neighborhood library, published his first text.

As a teenager, under the pseudonym “Júpiter” (inspired by the initials of his name – JPTR), he edited the periodicals The Youth, Heels and Earrings e Ayacucho, which circulated in the state of Lara. In 1912 he transferred to the college La Salle, from Barquisimeto. At the time, he was already working in typography with his brothers Juan and Joaquín Falcón.

In 1913, alongside his companions Roberto Montesino and Hedilio Lozada, he founded the printing house Gil Blas, in Barquisimeto. He also collaborated with the Tocuyano newspaper The Cosmopolitan, in which he wrote about poetry and political criticism, in addition to having been an editor of The Ideal, printed by the typography The Torcaz.

In the mid-1910s, due to the death of his father, he had to return to El Tocuyo to take care of the family farm business – during which time he tried to promote a peasant cooperative there. The eldest son of a landowning family and immediately guided by his father to this activity, it was in literature that Pío found a space to broaden his horizons beyond the economic activities carried out in the countryside and in commerce. He then began to actively participate in social activities and literary centers both in his city and in Barquisimeto – collaborating with publications such as Don Quixote (1914) Minerva (1914-1915) and daydreams (1915)

At this time, World War I had broken out. Anxious for news of the conflict, Pío Tamayo joined forces with his fellow political and literary activists – among others, Alcides and Hedilio Losada, Ernesto Nordhoff, Rafael Elías Rodríguez, Agustín Gil Gil, Roberto Montesinos and Jesús García – to form the literary circle The Barrel of Diogenes. In this space for reading and dialogue, young people would organize literary discussions, political debates and philosophical studies, in addition to creating a literature magazine. Renacimiento, which was short-lived. The meetings of this group marked the beginning of a period in which Pío began to be frowned upon by the government of Juan Vicente Gómez – dictator who ruled the country between 1908 and 1935. Despite this, being a member of a renowned sugar-producing family, Pío did not initially suffer any major retaliation.

In 1917, he wrote the poems “El poema del cosmos”, in which he addressed the worrying conditions of the world; and “Las canciones del sexo”, in which, through sensual images, he “sang” life, recognizing the “bestial noise” of history. During this period, he contributed to several periodicals – notably The Cosmopolitan, The Diary e El Tocuyo –, dealing with topics such as the end of World War I (1918) and the impact of the Spanish flu epidemic (including taking on tasks at the Red Cross).

In early 1922, he finished and began to promote his first novel among his acquaintances, The pain of the granaries [The pain of scoundrels], in which he exposed the miserable condition of the peasants. The work – which would only be published by a publisher in 1998 – gained good repercussion, which is why Pío Tamayo's actions began to be identified as “subversive” and “communist”.

Faced with the risky situation, in July 1922 he left for Puerto Rico, under the pretext that he would study “cultivation techniques” and specialize in the sugar business. However, outside of Venezuelan territory, he would dedicate himself especially to what he really wanted: literary work and contact with Venezuelan political exiles.

Living in Puerto Rico – staying at the property of Venezuelan Rafael W. Camejo, a sugar merchant –, he directed the magazine Charts e Bohemia. There, he simultaneously dealt with two disparate activities: his technical-agricultural professional training, and his political-journalistic and literary contributions. The conflict between both works was expressed by Pío in several letters from the period.

After nine months in Puerto Rico, in May 1923, he continued his journey, heading to the United States. He spent five months in New York, working in a printing shop and as an editor for the newspaper Prensa Latina, in addition to having met Venezuelan political exiles.

In October 1923, Pío Tamayo went to Cuba. This was a very intense moment in his trip, when he became familiar with Marxist theories and became involved with the international communist movement. Settling in Havana, where he lived for seven months, he established a relationship with the revolutionaries who the following year would create the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas (LADLA), linked to the Communist International (CI). He also became involved in the debates and organization of the collective that, in 1925, would found the first Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) – becoming a comrade of Marxists such as Julio Antonio Mella. He also contributed to the political education of his compatriots, who opposed the Gomecist dictatorship, in addition to networking with other Latin American exiles and collaborating with the magazines Free Venezuela (directed by lawyer and journalist Francisco Laguado Jaime) and University (in which Alejo Carpentier participated).

In May 1924, he traveled from Cuba to the Caribbean city of Barranquilla, Colombia, where he lived for two months. His goal was to meet with Venezuelan general Emilio Arévalo Cedeño, who was planning an expedition to Venezuela to develop guerrilla actions. There, he contributed to the founding of the Venezuelan Workers Union (UOV), a revolutionary organization inspired by Marxism.

Continuing his journey, in September 1925 he arrived in Panama, where he would spend three months, having participated as a delegate of the Congress of Bolivarian Students. On the occasion, he met delegates from Federation of Students from Peru, with whom he established a relationship of friendship and companionship: Nicolás Terreros López, Víctor Recoba, Esteban Pavlevich and Luis F. Bustamante (the last two companions and disseminators of the ideas of communist leader José Carlos Mariátegui). Now more economically stable, he helped organize a tenants' strike – an action that would lead to his arrest and expulsion from the country, along with other foreign leaders who participated in the mobilization.

By this time, Pío was already recognized as an internationalist – being considered a revolutionary and an agent of international communism – a fact that made it difficult for him to settle in the countries he visited. In 1925, he arrived in Guatemala, where he tried to stay for a while; however, within a few weeks he was expelled again – by the government of President José María Orellana (a pro-American conservative).

After brief stays in El Salvador, where he lived for a month, and Nicaragua, where he spent a few days, Pío Tamayo arrived in Costa Rica in December 1925. He settled in San José for about eight months, collaborating with the periodicals Wasps e New Press, in addition to editing the Sunday Silhouettes, in which he published poems (a magazine that would generate losses for him, caused by a partner). During this period of intense activity, among several letters, he wrote one addressed to Federation of Students from Havana in which he expressed his commitment to the Cuban liberation movement and the Americas.

On January 6, 1926, Luis Bustamante sent him a letter stating the need for him to return to Venezuela, “in order to learn the exact situation of the country and the possibilities for progress of the revolutionary movement” – information that would be the basis for obtaining the support of the CI. Shortly thereafter, on January 23, Pío received a letter from Salvador de la Plaza – a Venezuelan leader exiled in Cuba, who operated alongside Julio A. Mella in the so-called Revolutionary Centers –, communicating his appointment as “secret commissioner” of the Internal Defender Core, which was supposed to prepare the insurgency in Venezuela.

During this final part of his wandering period, between 1925 and the beginning of 1926, Pío Tamayo composed a collection of verses dedicated, among others, to his poet friends Alcides Losada, Roberto Montesinos, Isabel Jiménez Arráiz and Andrés Eloy Blanco, entitled Songs from 30 Dawns: and a balance of verses for day 31 – poems that marked the beginning of the series Sunrises, continued in the following years.

Finally, in October 1926, thanks to an amnesty, Pío Tamayo was able to return to his country. After a rich period of travel, political activities and deepening of revolutionary ideas, the Venezuelan activist, now decidedly communist, returned to his country with the conviction that it was necessary to carry out the fight to overthrow the Gómez dictatorship. To this end, he believed it was necessary to encourage the training of students in the process of popular resistance.

After staying in his hometown, El Tocuyo, he moved to Caracas in 1927, with the mission of forming a nucleus of revolutionary support through which the first cells for the foundation of a Communist Party could be built. In the capital, he began contributing to the magazine Elite and with the newspaper World, while trying to organize workers and students.

In January 1928, he published the novel Charles Lindbergh arrived in Venezuela, whose print run soon sold out. He was then invited to participate in the organization of the Student week, engaging in the event. Continuing its series Sunrises, wrote a poem addressed to young people: “Amanecer del estudiante” (1928), in which he portrayed themes such as love, courage, struggle and revolution, addressing the reality of modern cities – among factories, crowds and demonstrations. In the verses he called for the political opening of the country and the return of exiles; he demanded bread, work and progress for the people, with direct references to the Mexican and Russian revolutions, as well as the avant-garde movement in Europe and the Soviet Union.

The following month, during the inaugural ceremony of the Week – at the Municipal Theater of Caracas –, Pío recited his poem that would become one of his best-known: “Homenaje y demanda del indio” (Homenaje y demanda del indio). This text, with its strong critical content, was the justification on which the dictator Gómez based his accusation of being a “conspirator” – an allegation that led to his arrest in February, along with more than 200 young students who had participated in the event. Following his arrest, Pío Tamayo was sent to the prison in the castle of Puerto Cabello (in the state of Carabobo) – where he would remain in a dungeon, below sea level, for almost seven years. Communist propaganda was banned throughout Venezuelan territory, and anyone who broke this law was considered a “traitor to the country.”

Even while imprisoned, Pío continued his revolutionary activity, founding in 1929 a space for communist training called Red Carp [Red Tent], alongside fellow prisoners. As a basis for structuring this process of political studies, he relied on the knowledge he had accumulated during his pilgrimage through the Americas – largely derived from the dialogues established with the founders of the PCC in Havana, in addition to those held with Nicaraguan and Peruvian revolutionaries. As part of this training group, Pío offered his fellow prisoners courses, which he taught daily, on topics such as History, Political Economy, and State Theory; and gave lectures in which he discussed the ideas he had come into contact with during his travels, such as the foundations of Marxism and Leninism. Among his companions and disciples were the students Rodolfo Quintero, Miguel Acosta Saignes, Juan Bautista Fuenmayor, Kotepa Delgado, and Ángel Márquez – who, after obtaining their freedom in 1929, created the first clandestine communist groups in the country and, shortly thereafter, founded the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), in 1931.

During this period of intense social unrest, many of the young men who had been imprisoned were released and sent into exile. Pío Tamayo, however, remained in prison. His long years of detention led to serious physical deterioration and chronic sinusitis, which contributed to his contracting a lung infection.

Already in poor health, he was released in December 1934. But he could not cope with the disease and died shortly afterwards, in October 1935, at the age of 37.

Decades later, his work in political education among the PCV's party bases would be recognized by the party, which in 1978 would grant him the title of honorary militant.

Contributions to Marxism

The articulation between the activity of poet, writer, thinker and socialist activist, intensified from the 1920s onwards, characterizes José Pío Tamayo's contribution to the Latin American Marxist tradition.

Coming from a family of merchants, an activity to which he also dedicated himself, Pío Tamayo's life trajectory was impacted by a series of historical events, such as the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), World War I (1914-1918), the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), the great capitalist crisis of 1929 and the rise of Nazi-fascism in the early 1930s. It was also marked by the political situation in Venezuela itself, then under the dictatorship of General Gómez; and by the Latin American context as a whole (of extreme exploitation, dependence and subject to imperialism).

His deepening of the paths of literature was boosted in the mid-1910s with the formation of the literary circle The Barrel of Diogenes. These were times of immersion in a vibrant cultural environment – ​​especially sparked by the revolutions in Mexico and Russia – in which debates were held on the events that were transforming the world. In his group, they discussed literature, philosophy and history, reading authors such as: León Tolstói, Jean Jaurés, Ferrer Guardia, Anatole France, Gui de Maupassant, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Charles Darwin, Henri Barbusse and Gabriel Miró. In 1917, many evenings of the collective were dedicated to the debate on the Mexican Revolution and, later, to the little and confusing information that reached them about the Russian Revolution – at a time when Alexander Kerensky was the group's reference, while Lenin was still a mystery to them.

In this complex international scenario, Pío Tamayo's education was consolidated as he became familiar with the reality of Latin America and began to reflect on the historical possibility of revolution in nations on the periphery of capitalism (strongly subject to imperialism). After leaving Venezuela to travel around the Americas (between 1922 and 1926), his approach to and understanding of the Marxist concepts of the time gradually gained consistency. During this intense experience, he was able to interact with and learn about the ideas of socialist groups and leaders – directly or indirectly linked to Marxism – who were committed to thinking about transformations for the nations of the Americas.

The high point of this journey was his Cuban experience – when he made contact and participated in discussions with the group that organized the creation of the first Communist Party of Cuba. The importance of this moment is evident in his reflections on the reality of the Latin American peoples, in writings that expose a central idea: that a revolutionary must act as a teacher-pedagogue – someone who fights and guides the work of critical education, especially for young people.

His stay in Panama is also worth mentioning, where he met Peruvian socialist leaders close to Mariátegui. With them, he realized that armed insurrection “in and of itself” would be meaningless if it were not part of a revolutionary program that included the massive participation of workers: “this class, and no other, is the one that should lead the revolution,” says Pío Tamayo, at a time when voluntarist uprisings were frequent in Venezuela.

In exile, through dialogue with key figures of Latin American Marxism, his revolutionary and internationalist positions, his commitment to his land, his people and the international proletariat, intensified. Upon returning to his country, he was imprisoned for a long period. He then dedicated himself to the task of an educator, passing on to his fellow prisoners the practical experience and theoretical foundations he had learned. A breeding ground for historical activists, the communist collective Red Carp, created by Pío in 1929, is considered one of the pillars of the founding of the PCV (carried out two years later). And although he did not live long enough to become a member of the party, his work at the grassroots level in its construction was emblematic, and he was recognized as an honorary militant.

Combining literature and politics, Marxist thought and revolutionary poetry, Pío Tamayo did not develop a systematic body of work. In general, his thought followed the American insurgent tradition of Marxism – in the path of revolutionary communists such as Julio Mella and JC Mariátegui.

Regarding the Latin American national question, one of the central aspects addressed by the Venezuelan Marxist is the theme of the socio-historical conditions of exploitation of peasants, with attention to indigenous populations. This subject involves colonial plunder, the “Europeanized oligarchy” and the large landholding configurations that developed in the region, in which extractivism and a process of annihilation of ancient cultural heritages were implemented. It is worth noting that Marx, in Critique of Political Economy, already denounced the extermination to which the American populations were subjected at the root of the original accumulation, in the face of the erosion of the European feudal mode of production. Pio's understanding is that the class struggle, in order to abolish capitalist logic, must confront the monopolistic forces of imperialism.

In his essay-correspondence entitled “Letter to a Friend of Mine” (1930), Pío defines four Venezuelan social classes: the “Gothic oligarchy,” which, committed to saving “its inherited privileges,” resorts to the “military leader”; the “military caste,” supported by “demagogue intellectuals,” from which the leaders who hold power are selected; the “independent producers, aristocrats, and the wealthy middle class,” allies of the military, who, without directly getting involved in politics, take advantage of the “order of things,” exploiting labor and promoting popular ignorance; and the “working class proper,” made up of workers, peasants, artisans, and indigenous people, “subject to a system of servile labor” from the “slavery period,” and who serve the leader.

As a way of confronting this state of affairs, Pío Tamayo – based on his travels, dialogues and political struggles – understood the importance of the masses in the revolutionary construction, and began to defend as fundamental the structuring of popular parties with the capacity for popular mobilization. He denounced illiteracy, abuse and exploitation to which the working classes are subjected, and also the systematic practice of strangling any efforts at political articulation with a social bias – especially communist ones. In this sense, he called on students and intellectuals, peasants and proletarians to rise up against the unequal and violent society, sustained by coercion and repression, that the bourgeoisie tries to create. naturalize. Because of his combativeness, he was persecuted and banished, imprisoned and killed.

Jóvito Villalba (1908-1989), member of the Venezuelan generation of 1928 – a group of students who organized demonstrations against the dictatorship in 1929 – highlights that Pío was a cultured person, a constant reader of refined literature, a militant who introduced young Venezuelans to Lenin, the revolution and Russian literature.

Fernando Key Sánchez, one of the Marxist’s disciples, testifies that it was in prison – “through the teachings of Pío Tamayo” and the reading of revolutionary books that they had access to there – that the students of the 1928 generation began to have a clearer idea of ​​what “capitalist and imperialist exploitation” was. With him, they understood the need to promote the “destruction of capitalism and the construction of socialism”, and learned about the ways of “organizing the proletariat to conquer power”, and then began to reflect on the “immediate and future objectives of a Communist Party”.

In his poetic work – inseparable from politics – Pío Tamayo sought to translate into verse his ideals about the “future”: the revolution. An avant-garde poetry of confrontation and defense of indigenous culture; with a spiritual and ideological bias, aspects that together constitute his proposal for the revolutionary future. During his imprisonment, the poet would characterize his literature as being of “emotion”: exercised as a “musical parenthesis” to endure the “desperate” condition.

However, as Freddy Castillo, a scholar of the Marxist's work, observes, "the political Pio is more important than the writer" - and if the "Pío of communist ideas" and "expert in Marxism" was omitted from historiography for a long time, the reason for this was the country's repression. In fact, during his time as a prisoner, Pio referred to the collective Red Carp as being a school of “advanced ideality” – avoiding the term “communist”.

Pío Tamayo was a Marxist concerned with the concrete and urgent problems faced by the Latin American people. He was a militant intellectual-poet, capable of articulating literature with pressing social issues: popular organization, the formation of class consciousness among workers, anti-imperialism, internationalism and revolutionary construction. His work, however, remains little known, which is due, among other things, to the hegemonic process that tends to make the communist tradition invisible, especially in peripheral areas.

Comment on the work

Having produced his work in the heat of the struggle, amid persecution by the dictatorship, while traveling and in prison, much of Pío Tamayo's writings have been lost. His political, journalistic and literary work – dispersed in magazines and newspapers in various countries, and partly collected in anthologies – consists of articles, conferences, poems, novels, literary criticism and chronicles, as well as correspondence.

Only half a century after his death, Pío Tamayo had his main writings compiled and published in three volumes. The first – A fight for life (Caracas: Cátedra Pío Tamayo/UCV, 1984), edited by Mery Sananes, Agustín Blanco Muñoz, Clementina Tamayo and Jesús Mujica – contains the novelistic, critical, poetic and chronicle works of the Marxist. The second volume, Diary of the flower grower – part I (Caracas: CPT/UCV, 1986) contains Pío's correspondence with his mother and with his girlfriend and confidant Rosa Eloísa. The third, Diary of the flower grower – part II (Caracas: CPT/UCV, 1986) brings together his correspondence with his brothers and other companions and family members.

Initially, Pío's literary life was manifested in journalistic publications, but from the creation of the literary circle The Barrel of Diogenes, the young author began to reveal his poetic and literary wealth.

The soap opera The pain of the granaries – written in 1922 (s./l.: s./e.), but only published editorially seven decades later (El Tocuyo: Unión Editorial Gayón, 1998) –, amidst the literary narrative, implicitly contains a sociopolitical critique. The plot takes place in a rural setting with sugar production (like the one he lived in). The protagonists are typical peasants, dark-skinned, indigenous, mixed-race; one of them is the son of a maid and a landowner. The text deals with economic, ethnic-racial and gender conflicts; social inequality, religious influence, authoritarianism and military repression. In the voice of one character, he states: “The poor should not come into the world.”

As soon as he left Venezuela, in Puerto Rico he wrote literary criticism – among which “El paisaje y el paisajista de Puerto Rico” (May 1923), about Juan Rosado, an original artist, free from “conventional formulas” and attentive to the country’s natural scenery. He also wrote chronicles, of which the highlights are “La partiu” (October 22, 10) and “La visión del terruño” (October 1922, 29). In both – included in A fight for life – he speaks tenderly of his homeland, of the work of his people, and of the difficulty of leaving it. He tells of the “legends of rebellion” he heard in his childhood and which taught him about “human dignity”; and that he left because he understood that it was necessary to “continue the march”.

Between 1922 and 1923, living in Puerto Rico and the United States, he contributed to the magazines Bohemia e Free VenezuelaLittle is known about the content of these writings, although they were dedicated to fomenting resistance to the Venezuelan dictatorship.

Newly arrived in the Cuban capital, he met the Marxist and student leader Julio Mella, then responsible for the José Martí Popular University. Then, Pío Tamayo would dictate the Conference at the Centro Obrero de La Habana (06/11/1923), in which he dealt with the situation of workers and the revolutionary task. He states that his “Hispanic-Americanism” led him to consider himself as a “citizen of any nation on the continent, from the Rio Bravo to Patagonia”.

Between 1925 and 1926, Pío wrote the collection of verses Songs from 30 Dawns: and a balance of verses for day 31, poems that marked the beginning of the series Sunrises, which he would continue. In the introduction to the work, he writes that it is a book “by an outcast who does not want to cry, to live one day at a time”; to live “an infinity in each date”, “an ethic in each stone”, “a continent traveled” – “and above all the restlessness that increases with solitude”. With this series, Pío Tamayo inaugurates the so-called “new structures”, with a view to subverting the cultural environment of Gomecist Venezuela – and “piercing the sky”. These compositions are influenced by the European and Soviet avant-garde movements with which he came into contact during his travels marked by revolutionary and literary agitation.

Also included in the series Sunrises, there is the aforementioned poem in which Pío dialogues with the students, “Amanecer del estudiante” (January 1928). “Being a student is being a renewed urgency to open new paths/ youthful anxiety of the peoples that are born/ red cry of Mexico and Moscow/ guitars strumming the protests of the poor” – the verses state –, it is “a whirlwind swept away by the revolution”, “thirst for the bonfire and for infinity”. It ends by urging the young people to “read Marx and Lenin”, to “doubt a little Spengler and all the philosophers”, and to “love the Indian, the slave” – by joining “unions where workers manufacture the future”. Here we can see the impact that the Mexican and Russian revolutions had on the poet; as well as his search to transcend the traditional aesthetic plane and approach a type of poetry – like that experimented since the 1920s by the Soviet “vanguards” – that involved revolutionary philosophical and political questions.

At the beginning of 1926, having arrived in São José, he wrote a letter to Federation of Students from Havana reiterating his commitment to the liberation movement in Latin America. In the letter, which has a strong poetic tone, he expresses his solidarity with the revolutionary cause, stating that “there is still much to be done there, in the enemy’s camp”, and that he would therefore “enter it” – even though he knew that if they caught him, he would be shot. But “it doesn’t matter”, he says: “we are humanity’s debtors”, so that “the four shots that pierce my chest will be the four roses that humanity will place as an ornament on my tomb”.

In “Homenaje y demanda del indio”, recited in 1928 at the Teatro Municipal de Caracas, Pío Tamayo celebrates freedom – arousing the distrust of the dictatorship that was watching him and had information about his activities abroad. The poem highlights the repression suffered by the natives and affirms the future of a humanity that needs to be built – in an invitation for students to join the resistance against the dictatorship. In the voice of an indigenous man, the verses affirm the brotherhood that unites him to the students, and then express the sadness that he, an “Indian”, brings from the highlands, because his “bride”, “Liberty”, was stolen. He concludes by stating: “I will continue marching”, because with the strength of youth, “the future is established!” – a theme taken up by the Argentine musician Atahualpa Yupanqui (1908-1992) in his song “Los hermanos”.

Also in 1928, his second novel was published, Charles Lindbergh arrived in Venezuela (Caracas: Litografía y Tipografía Vargas, 1928), which quickly sold out. It deals with the American aviator who first crossed the Atlantic in 1927 – the “conqueror of the skies”, in the author’s suggestive poetic image – and who would visit Venezuela the following year, at the invitation of the dictator Gómez.

During the long period of his captivity in the castle of Puerto Cabello (1928-1935), Pío Tamayo produced several writings, of which few were preserved and were published. Among them, we highlight some that denote the author's main concerns at that time.

 On September 21, 1930, he wrote a letter to his sister – “Letter to Magdalena Tamayo” (25/11/2008) – in which he stated his idea that a good revolutionary must be, above all, a teacher, an educator, and that Venezuela needs a “pedagogical generation” to become “free”: a “cradle of civilized humanity.” “If we want to fulfill the revolutionary mission that life imposes on us and that our conscience demands, we must be schoolteachers,” and this “in the broadest sense of the term.” The “true revolution” lies in this gesture of forging “the child’s soul”: in this “forge of men.” We must be teachers “in the classroom, in the newspaper, in the countryside, in the cities, in the towns, inside the factories and in the middle of the halls.” Being a teacher means teaching children the “textbook,” but also the knowledge that awakens in them “beauty, justice and love.”

Shortly after, Pío wrote the well-known “Letter to a Friend of Mine” (19/11/1930), a letter-essay in which he expressed the need to create a revolutionary party in which the working class would play a leading role. Before that, it would be necessary to create political cells, schools of revolution, and in this sense, revolutionaries should join the “great advanced group” – that is, the vanguard of the student movement – ​​in order to prepare the work of planning the “future”. He also emphasized that those who were absent from this task would become “isolated individuals” to be “swept away by the new revolutionary current that is at once destructive and constructive”: “The future will be ours; for those of us who grasp the future with our hands to shape it along the lines of the new sciences and arts”.  

In his poem-testament – ​​“I say here my testamento” (1932) –, dedicated to his mother, Pío Tamayo claims the “justice” of his ideas and actions. He accuses the tyrants of “persecution”, saying that they will eventually be held accountable. And he dedicates the “actions” of his life to the “revolution” – “which gave music to my tastes”.

In the same year, he wrote to his brother – “Letter to Juan” (August 10, 1932) –, considering that his thinking is that of “new men”; “new” both in energy “for hard work” and in “ideological orientation”; “new” in the “fruitful restlessness” that becomes “action”. “Our children” – he concludes – “will reap and multiply” these fruits. 

In August 1934, in yet another letter to his mother, he denounced: “I die murdered by executioners who also murder Venezuela”; but “with each day of imprisonment, I prepare myself better” – with a view to the “call of the future”.

A few months after his release, Pío Tamayo gave an interview to journalist Carlos Zavarce (August 1935, two months before his death), in which he reported that, after the release of the students detained with him, the prison commander was replaced by a “real executioner” – and from then on, life in prison was a “purgatory”. It was in this “calamitous” situation that a study of “Venezuelan sociology” that Pío was writing was lost, taken by the prison guards. He stated that he held no grudge against the dictator, because he only felt like a “shipwreck victim” faced with a “force of nature” – faced with this “irresponsible” and “inevitable” being, a “thing” that does not deserve grudges.

On September 28, 1935, from Barquisimeto, where he lived his final days, Pío wrote to his brother Toño what would be his last letter. Knowing that his health would not allow him much longer, he expressed words as if he were saying goodbye. “There is not a single act that I regret,” he said, “I followed the orders of my conscience and if I have ever made a mistake, human imperfection must be blamed, but never intention”; “I die peacefully and in accordance with my conscience.” He advised his brother: “Always cultivate in the rich soil of your spirit the noble qualities that distinguish you; flee from petty satisfactions and you will live a life full of inner contentment, which is the purest of pleasures.”

*Yuri Martins-Fontes Professor and PhD in Economic History (USP/CNRS). Author, among other books, of Marx in America: the praxis of Caio Prado and Mariátegui (Mall). [https://amzn.to/3xI8JjL]

*Jose Fernando Silva is a professor at the São Paulo State University (Unesp). He organized the collection Social Service, theoretical foundations and trends (Cortez).

*Freddy Giovanni Esquivel Corella is a professor at the University of Costa Rica. Author, among other books, of Introducción al Trabajo Social (Publisher of University of Costa Rica).

Originally published on the Praxis Nucleus-USP.

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