Maria Alicia Rueda, The educational philosophy of Luis Emilio Recabarren : pioneering working-class education in Latin America [book review]

Abstract

Maria Alicia Rueda has made an essential contribution to education and Marxist studies with the publication of The Educational Philosophy of Luis Emilio Recabarren: Pioneering Working-Class Education in Latin America. By focusing on the early twentieth-century Chilean Marxist, the author showcases a lesser-known Communist leader and pioneer in working-class education. As the author states “the book is not a biography, nor does it approach him as a ‘great man’ but rather as ‘an organic intellectual’ of the working class”. Recabbarren was born in Valparaiso in 1876 and was schooled by French priests. From a family of modest means, he worked from a young age in a print shop, where his work as a typographer trained him for his lifelong work as a newspaper publisher and journalist. At the age of 15, he participated in the Chilean Civil War as a military recruit and having published anti-government propaganda, he was judged in a military court but exonerated. From that time onward, he was an engaged activist joining the Democratic Party in 1894, a party that represented working-class interests. Throughout his years in the Democratic Party, he identified himself as a “revolutionary socialist”. During his years in the party, he founded newspapers and was elected to Congress, the first working-class leader to achieve that distinction, but he did not take office when he refused to take a religious oath. [excerpt]