José Carlos Mariátegui was the most influential Latin American Marxist of the twentieth century. From 1914 to 1920 he worked as a journalist in Lima, Peru. Persecuted by the government, he travelled to Europe in 1920, where he studied Marxism in depth as a result of contact with socialist artists and intellectuals. In 1923 he returned to Peru persuaded of the importance of implementing socialism in the country. However, rather than following a European pattern, he developed a national variant of socialism that combined Marx’s ideas with the communal collectivism of indigenous culture.