Investigative reading in the social sciences through paragraph-by-paragraph analysis and hermeneusis of the Introduction to Labradores, peones y proletarios by Gabriel Salazar

Abstract

The paper proposes—through the concrete case of analyzing the “Presentación” of Gabriel Salazar’s Labradores, peones y proletarios and the question of its continuing relevance—a way to orient the progression of reasoning when conducting an investigative reading, and it also provides a reusable dataset. Through paragraph- and sentence-level analysis, the study identifies the operations present in the text; the corpus is single and traceable. From within the analyzed text emerge: a critique of the identification the people = the nation; the notion of “the people” as the alienated part concentrating historical power by transfer; the distinction between tactical de-alienation and the horizon of humanization; and the centrality of solidarity and of “today” as operative time. The outcome is a verifiable matrix enabling replication and thematic querying. The discussion shows that the pedagogical and data aims were met and deliberately offers a partial answer to the question guiding the study’s case/example, conditional on avoiding totalizations and controlling the scope of the cut; limits are stated, and future contrasts are opened.