Politics is a novel to serve the revolution

Atusparia (2024) tells the story of a revolutionary girl who, like the author, Gabriela Wiener, was educated in a Soviet-inspired school in Peru. This kind of education was not uncommon in South America in the 1980s. Many secondary schools were funded by the Red Army during the Cold War. Students, as Wiener recalls, learned traditional Russian songs ("which today I only use to entertain people in pizzerias," she jokes) and could win scholarships to the USSR, even train to become cosmonauts.

The novel grapples with how to reconcile indigenous culture with traditional socialist thought, recalling José Carlos Mariátegui’s famous claim that “only the Indigenous can solve the problems of the Indigenous”. And from there, the idea of building an original, mestizo socialism rather than simply emulating the Soviet model.

Another question posed by the interviewer, Nadeesha Uyangoda, writer and activist, is whether it is better to speak of a post-indigenista novel or an anticolonial one. For Wiener, anticolonial is the more accurate term, as it implies actively opposing something that remains active today. Indigenismo, by contrast, relies on a sympathetic White mediator who gives voice to Indigenous stories by writing them down. This remains a problematic model, assuming that subaltern identities are voiceless until a White author lends them a voice.

As bell hooks teaches, the margin offers a privileged observation point on these problems, and Wiener insists Indigenous literature must be told from the edges, with care.

Throughout, Atusparia refuses synthesis: it shows tensions, contradictions, and impossible choices instead. It recalls a line by Scorza that Asunción Grass loved to cite, that in the Andes there are five seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter, and massacre.

Atusparia is a complex, polyphonic novel that introduces unfamiliar readers to revolutionary activism, using the voices of those who inhabit that world. It can be read as historical fiction, a political manifesto, a militant anthem, or a psychedelic journey. Its protagonist grows by trying to “feminise the revolution” but gradually falls out of love with utopia and turns towards more institutional politics.

“At the heart of this novel is heartbreak," Wiener claims. This heartbreak is not only of the romantic kind, but also toward a feminist ideal fractured by internal divisions among its own comrades. “Politics is a novel. To make a revolution, you also have to know how to tell it."