Marta Harnecker

Marta Harnecker (2011)

Marta Harnecker Cerdá (* 1937 in Chile ; † June 15, 2019 in Vancouver ) was a Chilean Marxist-Leninist sociologist , journalist and activist .

Harnecker was considered a pioneer of various communist and radical left movements in Latin America since the 1970s.

Life

Marta Harnecker grew up as the daughter of Austrian immigrants, studied psychology at the Catholic University of Chile and was a leader in the Asociación de Universitarios Católicos / Juventud Estudiantil Católica , the Catholic student movement in her country. She visited Cuba in 1960, shortly after the revolution, and was fascinated by the social upheavals. From 1963 to 1968 she studied at the École normal supérieure in Paris with Louis Althusser , while her defining worldview changed from Christianity to Marxism. In 1969 she published her first book, Introduction to the Basics of Historical Materialism , with which she achieved great international success with a circulation of over a million copies in several translations. She then became a professor at the Chilean University , became involved in the Socialist Party , which professed Marxism-Leninism, and was the editor of the left-wing weekly newspaper Chile Hoy . She later referred to Fidel Castro as a source of inspiration for her revolutionary struggle for another society at the time.

After the Pinochet coup in 1973 , she went into exile in Cuba. There she married Manuel Piñeiro , who participated in the revolution, a government official and head of the secret service, and lived in Havana until 2003. In 1991 she founded the Memoria Popular Latinoamericana (MEPLA) research center, which she headed until 2002.

From 2003 to 2009 she worked as an advisor to the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez until she quit her job and later left the country due to differences of opinion about his authoritarian style of government.

Harnecker has published over 80 books and numerous articles and saw her main occupation less in science than in popular education . From 1996 she was an active contributor to the internet platform rebelion.org .

She lived with her partner Michael Lebowitz in Vancouver (Canada) and temporarily with her daughter, the economist Camila Piñeiro Harnecker, in Havana. The painter and gallery owner Inés Harnecker (* 1938), who lives in Santiago, is her sister.

She died of cancer in Canada.

Publications

• Haciendo posible lo imposible: La izquierda en el umbral del siglo XXI. Siglo Veintiuno Editores, Mexico City, 1999, ISBN 968-23-2187-5 .
• América Latina, izquerda y crisis actual: Izquierda y crisis actual. Siglo Veintiuno Editores, Mexico City, 1990, ISBN 968-23-1635-9 .
• Fidel Castro's Political Strategy. Translated by Margarita Zimmerman. Pathfinder Press, New York, NY, 1987, ISBN 0-87348-666-8 .
• Estudiantes Cristianos e Indígenas en la Revolución. Siglo Veintiuno Editores, Mexico City, 1987.
• Nicaragua - Los Cristianos en la Revolución Sandinista. Ediciones Al Frente, Buenos Aires, 1987.
• La Revolución Social: Lenin y América Latina. Siglo Veintiuno Editores, Mexico City, 1986, ISBN 968-23-1385-6 .
• The basic concepts of historical materialism. Dept. of General Philosophy, University of Sydney, 1976.

documentary

• Luis Acevedo Fals: Marta Harnecker: La voz de los pueblos. 2011, 37 minutes (Spanish).

Web links

• Literature by and about Marta Harnecker in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin
• Literature by and about Marta Harnecker in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Gintarė Malinauskaitė: Marta Harnecker - Tireless intellectual “guerrillera”. In: Continent of Liberation? In search of traces after 1968 in Latin America. Latin America Institute of the Free University of Berlin, Association A, ISBN 978-3-935936-88-0 , 1980 . 
• Article by Marta Harnecker in the Monthly Review
• Eleonora de Lucena: Interview with Marta Harnecker on the Latin American Left. In: Upside Down World. September 12, 2012 (English, originally published in Folha de S. Paulo ). 
• La página de Harnecker. In: Rebelion.org. Archived from the original on May 25, 2012 (Spanish, article collection). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Daniel Giovanaz: Morre, aos 82 anos, a educadora marxista chilena Marta Harnecker. In: Brasil de Fato. June 15, 2019, accessed June 17, 2019 (Portuguese). 
2. ^ Esteban Valenzuela Van Treek: Cristianismo, revolución y renovación en Chile. El Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria (MAPU) 1969-1989 . Diss., Universitat de València 2011, p. 150.
3. ↑ Marta Harnecker: Fidel y sus grandes aportes sobre el tema de la Unidad. In: Rebelión. August 14, 2015, accessed June 17, 2019 (Spanish). 
4. ↑ Un día maravilloso en Maipú: reflexión del padre Carlos Cox. In: Website of the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile. September 6, 2013, archived from the original on September 28, 2013 ; Retrieved June 17, 2019 (Spanish). Inés Harnecker. In: Website of the Galería del Cerro. Retrieved June 26, 2013 (Spanish). 
    
5. ^ Farewell to Marta Harnecker. In: Junge Welt . June 17, 2019, p. 2 , accessed June 17, 2019 .