This is a biographical study of Jose Carlos Mariategui, one of Latin America's greatest literary figures, which is organized around the Lima scandal of 1917. At the time he was a young journalist of 23, an autodidact intellectual with an insurrectionary character. The scandal erupted when he led a small group to the General Cemetery where a dancer gave her interpretation of Chopin's Funeral March. This study focuses on the scandal in the context of Peruvian society in 1917.