In this article, Augusto Salazar Bondy (1925–74) reflects on the concept of “culture” on the basis of a new definition published in the dictionary of the French Academy. The text is one of a series of articles that Salazar Bondy published in the early seventies in the newspaper Expreso, which had been appropriated by the military government. The articles attempted to explain the ideological foundations of the cultural policies backed by General Juan Velasco Alvarado and his administration, which were geared to revalorizing the image of the peasant and of peasant lifestyles as opposed to cultural forms considered “Western.”
In a number of texts, Salazar Bondy developed the thesis that Latin American philosophical thought “lacked originality” due to economic and ideological domination. He proposed, in response, a “philosophy of liberation” that could study in depth the causes of that dependence and contribute to the development of autonomous thinking in Peru and Latin America as a whole. In that stance, he was close to the policies of the so-called Gobierno Revolucionario de las Fuerzas Armadas under General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75). Indeed, Salazar Bondy was one of the principle intellectuals behind that administration, especially in education and culture—fields in which he attempted to put into effect the ideas and reflections fundamental to his “philosophy of liberation.” He was appointed vice president of the Comisión de la Reforma de la Educación and president of the Consejo Superior de Educación in 1970, and in 1972, he was instrumental in the passing of the Ley General de Educación, which was later repealed during the second administration (1980–85) of Fernando Belaúnde Terry.