Guillermo Carnero Hoke


Guillermo Carnero Hoke was a Peruvian writer, political revolutionary, and indigenous activist.

Early life

Carnero Hocke was born in Piura, Peru, on June 17, 1917, to a Peruvian father and an Irish mother. He grew up in Talara, where he joined the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance in 1931 at the age of 14. In 1933 he travelled to Lima and joined the Communist Youth. He remained a communist until 1939, when he re-joined APRA.

Early activism and first exile

From 1944–1947, he was a member of a student group affiliated with APRA called The Poets of the People. Other members included his brother-in-law Gustavo Valcárcel, Eduardo Jibaja, Julio Garrido Malaver, Mario Florian, Felipe Arias-Larreta, Abraham Arias-Larreta, Luis Carnero Checa, Antenor Samaniego, Ricardo Tello Neira, Juan Gonzalo Rose, Manuel Scorza, Alberto Valencia and Felipe Neira. During this time, he published two poetry books, Epopeya to Atahualpa and Agrocantos.
After a failed uprising against President José Bustamante y Rivero during October 1948, Carnero Hoke was disciplined and then removed from APRA for criticizing the party.
Between 1950 and 1955, Carnero Hoke lived outside Peru, first in Guatemala, and later in Mexico. While in Mexico, he helped plan an armed insurrection of Peru that ultimately failed when the group was captured upon returning to Peru. He and his companions were imprisoned and tortured. During this period, he became disillusioned with APRA, as APRA politicians had sided with the state against the revolutionary current.

Peruvian Revolutionary Nationalist Party

Upon his release from prison in 1957, Carnero Hoke founded the Peruvian Revolutionary Nationalist Party with several other ex-APRA members. The new party declared itself to be "anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-oligarchical".
The Peruvian Revolutionary Nationalist Party was based in Lima. The PRNP Organizing Committee was initially composed of Carnero Hoke as general secretary, Alberto Bolognesi as Deputy General Secretary, Victor Ortiz Rodriguez, Carmelo Salvatierra and Francisco Martínez Arbalza, Carlos Jiménez and Héctor Carcovich, Rogger Mercado, Asuntos Indígenas, José Castro Guillén, Lino Pedro Pastrana and Oscar Calderón, María Salazar Moscoso and Hebé Heredia C, Ernesto Elias, José Dodero, German F Minaya and Luis Fernando Diaz. The PNRP organized a revolutionary current within the Peruvian armed forces and sought to build a 'free territory for the Indians".

Later life and second exile

In 1960 Carnero Hoke returned to exile in Mexico, where he founded the Latin American Liberation Movement with other Latin American prospective revolutionaries. In 1966, he published La Madrastra Europa: Tesis para la liberación de América Latina, a book outlining the ideology of the MLL. In 1967 he published El método revolucionario y la conciencia histórica, a compilation of articles supporting the previous work.
In 1968, Carnero Hoke returned to Peru from exile in Mexico and published Nueva teoría para la insurgencia. On December 23, 1968 the PNRP National Council declared the party dissolved.
In 1974 Carnero Hoke founded the Peruvian Indian Movement with another indigenous activist, Virgilio Roel Pineda, but the organization never reached a broad audience.
Carnero Hoke had the first in a series of strokes in 1976, resulting in a month's hospitalization. He survived a second, but his third caused a cerebral infarction that resulted in his death on March 31, 1985.