¿Y AHORA?

The Public Domain Review's collection of covers from Amauta, José Carlos Mariátegui's Lima magazine of 1926–30, ends on a sad note. The final issue, it says, came out "shortly after Mariátegui's death", with "a black-and-white wake-like scene" on the cover, and its first line of text reads "Now what?". I opened the last issues in the Archivo Mariátegui's scans. The words are right. The story they tell is different.

The last three covers

Amauta no. 30 cover: red and grey woodcut of a standing figure and a rising sun, numbered XXX — No. 30 · April–May 1930

Amauta no. 31 cover: a red Andean head in a knitted cap on cream, with a list of contents — No. 31 · June–July 1930

Amauta no. 32 cover: black-and-white woodcut of figures dancing in a ring inside a green frame; the first line of text reads ¿Y AHORA? — No. 32 · August–September 1930

Cover scans: Archivo José Carlos Mariátegui (mariategui.org), whose catalogue is published under CC BY-NC 4.0; the Public Domain Review labels these covers public domain.

1930, issue by issue

Mariátegui died on 16 April 1930. The next issue, No. 30, opens a "tercera etapa", a third era, and says so in its first line: "Con la muerte de José Carlos Mariátegui, AMAUTA ingresa a su tercera época" (with his death, AMAUTA enters its third era). Ricardo Martínez de la Torre is now listed as director-manager. Two more issues follow. The last, No. 32, came out four or five months after the death, with two numbers in between.

What the question asks

On the cover of No. 32, "¿Y AHORA?" stands on its own line. Every other line names an author ("por José Carlos Mariátegui", "por Ercoli", "por Julio Antonio Mella"). The contents page lists it the same way: "¿Y AHORA?" as an unsigned item, then Mariátegui's lecture on Italy's entry into the war as the next one. It is the editors' piece, and it begins:

AMAUTA, que ha contribuido a la formación de una vigorosa vanguardia política de clase del proletariado, no obstante la persecución de todos los días, la hostilidad del Estado burgués clausurando nuestra revista, interceptando nuestra correspondencia, retrasando nuestros envíos, violando las cartas que enviábamos y recibíamos, quiere también precisar sus puntos de vista… AMAUTA, which has helped form a vigorous political vanguard of the working class despite daily persecution, the bourgeois state closing our magazine, intercepting our mail, delaying our shipments and opening the letters we sent and received, also wants to set out its views… (my translation)

Its next paragraph names the occasion: "No vamos a circunscribir nuestra crítica al hecho físico de la caída del régimen leguiista", we will not confine our criticism to the physical fact of the fall of the Leguía regime. Augusto Leguía, who had ruled Peru since 1919 and whose government had shut Amauta down in 1927, was overthrown on 25 August 1930. So "And now?" is not a cry of grief. It is a question about what comes after a dictator, asked in the same month he fell.

The closure the editors mention is visible in the run: No. 9 is dated May 1927, No. 10 December 1927, and No. 10 begins by saying the magazine "ha dejado de publicarse desde junio hasta hoy", has not been published since June.

What stands on what

Claim	Source
Dates of Nos. 9, 10, 28–32; the "tercera etapa" line; the masthead; the contents page and editorial of No. 32	The Archivo Mariátegui's PDF scans of each issue (mariategui.org, "Números de la revista"), read in their text layer and, for the covers, by eye
Mariátegui died 16 April 1930	Wikipedia, José Carlos Mariátegui; No. 30 reports his funeral ("El sepelio de José Carlos Mariátegui")
Leguía in office 1919 to 25 August 1930	Wikipedia, Augusto B. Leguía
32 issues, 1926–1930	Wikipedia (es), Amauta (revista); the archive's collection record
The PDR's wording	Public Domain Review, "Peruvianizing Peru: Covers from Amauta Magazine (1926–30)"

A research agent helped me find the scans. It reported that "¿Y AHORA?" was the title of Mariátegui's article; the contents page shows otherwise, so that part is mine.