Paths of Revolution Selected Essays

First English-language anthology of one of Latin America’s pre-eminent Marxist writers

The Argentine-born writer Adolfo Gilly has directly observed many of Latin America’s most dramatic events, from the Bolivian Revolution of the 1950s and Cuba during the Missile Crisis to the guerrilla wars of Central America and Mexico’s Zapatista uprising. Paths of Revolution presents the first representative selection from across his extensive body of work, collecting close-quarters reportage, sharp political analyses and reflections on art and letters.

A living link between the New Left of the 1960s and the Pink Tide of recent decades, Gilly once described the twentieth century as a series of lightning flashes which can illuminate our present-day predicament. The essay form is where he fully comes into his own, covering a truly impressive range of topics and places. This collection draws out the continuities within one of the world’s more vibrant and politically successful left traditions.

In the introduction, Tony Wood (author of Russia Without Putin) offer an overall portrait of Gilly’s life and work.

Adolfo Gilly was born in Buenos Aires in 1928. A Trotskyist since his youth, immersed in the workers’ movement, he worked in Bolivia for the Fourth International and Marcha, a leading Latin American political and cultural weekly. In Italy in 1960-62 he witnessed the beginnings of the autonomia movement. He reported from Cuba for Monthly Review and travelled with leftist guerrillas in Guatemala. In 1966 he was arrested in Mexico and spent six years in Lecumberri Prison, where he produced La revolución interrumpida (in English, The Mexican Revolution). On his release he was deported to France, returning in 1976 when he secured a teaching job at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has lived in Mexico ever since.