The “indigenous problem” in Severo Martínez Peláez and Mario Payeras

Abstract

Severo Martínez and Mario Payeras were two Guatemalan intellectuals who addressed different aspects of the political problem in their country. Martinez was interested in the problem of the oppressed during the colonial era, as a space of resistance and struggle; while Payeras, in his political texts, was concerned with analyzing the indigenous to integrate them into the National Liberation guerrilla project that he led. This marks some conceptual differences in their respective analyses. This paper seeks to understand the approaches of both in order to point out the uses they give to the conceptualization of the indigenous problem. This article is a product of the research program "C0195 - The long Cold War in Costa Rica: state, social democratic populism, representations and international communism, 1934-1978", registered in the Central America’s Historical Research Center (CIHAC) of the University of Costa Rica.