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Peking and the Latin American Communists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

“The anti-imperialist revolutionary struggles of the people in Asia, Africa and Latin America,” says the Proposal Concerning the General Line, “are pounding and undermining the foundations of the rule of imperialism and colonialism. … In a sense therefore the whole cause of the international proletarian revolution hinges on the outcome of the revolutionary struggles of the people of these areas, who constitute the overwhelming majority of the world's population.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1967

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References

1 The CCP's Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement, June 14, 1963, reproduced in Griffith, William E., The Sino-Soviet Rift (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1964), p. 265Google Scholar.

3 Published in Peking Review, III, 37, 09 14, 1960Google Scholar.

4 Reprinted in Peking Review, III, 52, 12 27, 1960Google Scholar.

5 See Peking Review, IV, 4, 01 27, 1961Google Scholar.

6 Griffith, , op. cit., p. 265Google Scholar.

7 Peking Review, VIII, 36, 09 3, 1965Google Scholar.

8 Peking Review, V, 7, 02 16, 1962Google Scholar.

9 Peking Review, VIII, 36, 09 3, 1965Google Scholar.

10 I am indebted to Professor Uri Ra'anan for drawing my attention to this interesting difference. For the concept of the “national-democratic state” as evolved in the Declaration and subsequently employed by the Russians, see Zagoria, Donald, The Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956–1961 (New York: Atheneum Press, 1964), pp. 360362Google Scholar, and Lowenthal, Richard, “National Democracy and the Post-Colonial Revolution,” in London, Kurt, Ed., New Nations in a Divided World (New York, London: Praeger, 1963), pp. 5674Google Scholar.

11 Quoted from the manual Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2nd ed., 1963), pp. 421–22Google Scholar.

12 See inter alia the speech of Wu Hsiu-chuan on August 19, 1960, at the Eighth Congress of the Cuban People's Socialist Party (Communist), reported in Peking Review, III, 34, 08 23, 1960Google Scholar, and Chu Tu-nan's speech on December 26, 1960, at the Peking rally in honour of the China-Latin America Friendship Week, reported in Peking Review, III, 52, 12 27, 1960Google Scholar.

13 In his speech on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion, reported in Revolución, Havana, 04 17, 1961Google ScholarPubMed.

14 “The Chinese government once again solemnly assures the Cuban government that the Cuban people … in defence of their socialist revolution, will forever enjoy the all-out support of the 650 million fraternal Chinese people”: Peking Review, V, 39, 09 28, 1962Google Scholar.

15 Peking Review, V, 49, 12 7, 1962Google Scholar.

16 Peking Review, V, 49, 12 7, 1962Google Scholar.

17 People's Daily editorial of February 10, 1962. on the second Havana Declaration, as reported in Peking Review, V, 7, 02 16, 1962Google Scholar.

18 Only in recent years has the strongest of the Latin American parties, that of Chile, assigned cadres to systematic work in the countryside and obtained a considerable measure of success in this work.

19 Only the Chilean working class has a continuous tradition of several generations of militancy. From the first years of the 20th century onwards socialist, anarchist and IWW influence was strong among the workers of the nitrate fields in the northern deserts of Chile. After the collapse of the nitrate mining industry in the 1920s, the miners flocked south to central Chile, where they were finally absorbed into the new industries which sprang up in the late 1930s and 1940s.

20 With the exception of Argentina, where it was built up to considerable strength by the dictator Peron.

21 Peralva, O., O Retrato (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Globo, 1962)Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., pp. 24–25.

23 Ibid., p. 118.

24 Ibid., p. 117.

25 Ibid., p. 120 et seq.

26 Ibid., p. 120.

27 Hoy, Havana, September 4, 1959. For this and numerous other details on the relations between Cubans, both Communist and Castroite, and Red China, I am indebted to Dr. Andrés SuáYez' valuable study on Castro and the Communists, shortly to be published by the M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass.

28 The text of Corvalan's self-criticism as quoted from the Chilean Communist Party's ideological periodical Principios, September–October 1963, in the present writer's Nationalism and Communism in Chile (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1965), pp. 104105Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., p. 104.

31 Osvaldo Peralva gives the following account of the means by which the Russians financed the Brazilian Communist Party: (1) the money of the Peace Prizes, which the recipients, if party members, were obliged to hand over to the party; (2) payments for the Brazilian edition of the Cominform journal (until April 1956) which were far higher than the actual expenses incurred; (3) payments for the organisation of peace and other fellow-travelling congresses, also regularly higher than the actual expenses incurred; (4) payments in money or gifts in kind to the Brazilian Communist Party delegates to various Soviet Party and other congresses (O Retrato, p. 262 et seq.). There does not, on the other hand, appear to have been any regular subsidy to the Communist Party of Brazil.

31 They were Czechoslovak arms.

32 In his speech of April 16 on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion. See Revolución, Havana, April 17, 1961.

33 In the slogans for the Moscow May Day parade of 1963, published in Pravda on April 8, 1963.

34 In his speech of the July 26 celebrations of 1960, which was staged in the Sierra Maestra, the mountain range which had been Castro's stronghold in his two-year guerrilla struggle against the Batista dictatorship, Castro said: “Here, face to face with the unconquerable mountain range, face to face with the Sierra Maestra, we vow to continue making our Fatherland the example which shall convert the Andes Mountain Range into the Sierra Maestra of all the Americas”: Revolución, Havana, July 27, 1960.

35 Translated from Guevara, Ernesto, La Guerra de Guerrillas (Havana: Ediciones Minfar, 1960 [?]), p. 11Google Scholar. The published English translations of Guevara's book are unfortunately inadequate.

36 Ibid., p. 16.

37 Ibid., p. 13.

38 Ibid., p. 16.

39 This alone is sufficient to disprove the persistent claims that Guevara was “an agent of international communism” infiltrated into the Castro movement in order to bring it under Soviet control. No trained Communist would commit the dreadful sin of forgetting the leading role of the party. Besides, no factual evidence has so far been produced that before the victory of the Cuban Revolution, Guevara had ever been a member of, or in any way associated with, a Communist party or one of its affiliated organisations. Guevara is a free-lance revolutionary of a specifically Latin American type.

40 Guevara, , op. cit., p. 116Google Scholar.

41 Ibid., p. 14.

42 Ibid., p. 123.

43 Ibid., p. 160.

44 See Debray's, Régis articles “Le castrisme, la tongue marche de l'amerique latine,” in Les Temps Modernes, Paris, No. 224, 01 1965Google Scholar, and “America latina: algunas problemas de estrategia revolucionaria,” in Casa de las americas, Havana, 0608 1965Google Scholar.

45 Bonilla, Frank, in his study of the shanty-town dwellers of Rio de Janeiro, “Rio's Favelas,” American Universities Field Staff reports service, East Coast South American Series, Vol. VIII, No. 3, 1961Google Scholar, comes to the following conclusions: “Thus the faveloado, however unrealistically, does not feel hopelessly trapped in the fayela. He sees the chances for escape of his children as good. But the apparent faith in the possibilities for economic and social advance is not matched by the belief in the potential benefits to come through political actions. Nearly half of the favelados said there is nothing to be gained by political activity …; about the same proportion of skilled workers said they attach little or no importance to their political opinions and activities. Thus neither the skilled worker nor the favelado is highly politicised; the skilled worker differs politically from the favelado chiefly in his participation in an organisation (his union) that is set up to defend his interests.”

46 As always in such cases, some sons and daughters of the ruling oligarchy also fall under the spell of the movement.

47 Since Guevara's book was first published in 1960, the Castroites have made certain ideological concessions to the Communists. Following Castro's lead they have proclaimed their adherence to Marxism-Leninism. And in the second declaration of Havana Castro conceded that “the peasantry … requires the revolutionary and political leadership of the working class and the revolutionary intellectuals.” See the Second Declaration of Havana, Leaflet, Havana, February 4, 1962. But in practice they have maintained their own, separate organisation, never submitting to the leadership of the Communist parties and to their strategy of peaceful “mass struggle.”

48 See, for instance, the articles by the party leader, Corvalan, Luis, in World Marxist Review, Vol. V, No. 12, 12 1962Google Scholar, and World Marxist Review, Vol. VI, No. 12, 12 1963Google Scholar.

49 See, for instance, the Colombia party leader's, Vieira's, Gilberto, article in the World Marxist Review, Vol. VIII, No. 8, 08 1965Google Scholar, and the Peruvian party leader's, Prado's, Jorge Del, article in World Marxist Review, Vol. VII, No. 5, 05 1964Google Scholar.

50 “Left-wing Communism—An Infantile Disorder,” in Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, Vol. 31 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), p. 94Google Scholar.

51 For this, see Dtaerstein, Herbert, Soviet Policy in Latin America, Memorandum RM 4967, Santa Monica, The Rand Corporation, 05 1966Google Scholar.

52 According to the Tass International Service of January 6, 1966, Rashidov stated “that the Soviet people supported people's wars, and the struggle of oppressed peoples for freedom and independence.”

53 See Survey of the Chinese Mainland Press (SCMP) (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate-General), No. 2222, 03 23, 1960Google Scholar.

54 Peking Review, Vol. III, No. 43, 10 25, 1960Google Scholar.

55 Peking Review, Vol. IV, No. 34, 08 25, 1961Google Scholar.

56 New China News Agency (NCNA), September 23, in SCMP, No. 2588. These and the following quotations from the NCNA bulletins and the newspaper Hoy, Havana, are given as reproduced in Dr. Andrés Suárez' above-mentioned manuscript.

57 NCNA, September 25, in SCMP, No. 2590.

58 Hoy, Havana, 10 3, 1961Google ScholarPubMed.

59 NCNA, October 2, in SCMP, No. 2594.

61 The Second Declaration of Havana, leaflet, Havana, February 1962.

63 See SCMP, February 3, 8, 10, 12, 15, 19, 1962.

64 As reproduced in Peking Review, Vol. V, No. 7, 02 16, 1962Google Scholar.

65 Actually the People's Daily translation is incorrect. The text of the declaration reads: “Los sectores mas progresistas.…” This is the superlative, i.e., the most progressive sectors, and it is indeed rendered in this form in the official translation of the Declaration.

66 Peking Review, Vol. V, No. 17.

67 See Peking Review, Vol. V, No. 39, 09 28, 1962Google Scholar.

68 See Griffith, , The Sino-Soviel Rift, p. 100Google Scholar.

69 For a—widely exaggerated—account of the initial successes of the Venezuelanguerrilla campaign, see Wen, Yen Erh, “Armed Struggle Flames in Venezuela,” in Peking Review, Vol. VI, No. 13, 03 29, 1963Google Scholar.

70 The PTG, Partido Guatemalteco Bel Trabajo.

71 See the Guatemalan party statement in World Marxist Review, Vol. VIII, No. 4, 04 1965Google Scholar.

72 In the 1963 presidential elections in Peru the Communists, who had put up a radical candidate of their own in the previous election, supported the moderate candidate, Belaunde Terry; in Argentina the Communists broke with their Peronista allies in order to give qualified support to President Illia, also a moderate. For this, see Halperin, , Nationalism and Communism in Chile, pp. 8586Google Scholar.

73 See ibid. p. 94 et seq.

74 See, for instance, the highly revealing report to the Chilean Central Committee on the Moscow 1960 Conference of 81 Communist parties by the Chilean delegate, José Gonzalez, quoted in Halperin, , op. cit., p. 68Google Scholaret seq. Excerpts from this secret report were published by the Chilean Communist Party in 1964.

75 Quoted from Halperin, , op. cit., pp. 9596Google Scholar.

76 See Halperin, , op. cit., p. 102Google Scholar.

77 Quoted from Halperin, , op. cit., pp. 111112Google Scholar.

78 Quoted from Halperin, , op. cit., p. 110Google Scholar.

79 See ibid. p. 107 et seq.

80 Quoted from Griffith, , op. cit., pp. 382384Google Scholar.

81 Quoted from ibid. p. 270.

82 Quoted from Peking Review, Vol. VII, No. 2, 01 10, 1964Google Scholar.

83 The date of this letter is not known. The above passage was quoted by Corvalan, Luis in an article in World Marxist Review, Vol. V, 12 1964Google Scholar.

84 A resolution of this party of August 1964, quoted in Peking Review, Vol. VIII, No. 22, 05 28, 1965Google Scholar, says that the Communist Party of Brazil “was rebuilt in February 1962.” A Prensa Latina (Havana) dispatch from Montevideo, dated March 14, 1962, reports that the founding convention of the party was held in São Paulo.

85 Arruda had taken over the factual leadership of the party as early as 1940. See Peralva, , O Retrato, pp. 203204Google Scholar.

86 The most dynamic of the Stalinists and the only one of them with real leadership qualities, Diogenes Arruda, had retired from political activity and refrained from joining the splinter party.

87 According to an East European diplomatic source in Havana, whose identity I am not at liberty to disclose, Luis Carlos Prestes, during his visit to Cuba in March 1963, managed to persuade the Cubans to stop their subsidies, thus making the dissident party dependent on Chinese aid alone.

88 For this tradition, see also Amado's, Jorge three-volume novel Os Subterraneos da Liberdade, 10th ed. (Sao Paulo, Livraria Martins, 1964)Google Scholar. At the time when he wrote this novel, Amado was a fervent and disciplined Communist, who accepted the constant slights and insults aimed at the intellectuals by the party leadership in a spirit of contrition, apparently regarding them as entirely justified.

89 Through his military exploits at the head of a column of insurgents from 1925 to 1927 Prestes had become a legendary figure and one of the great names of Brazilian history years before he became a Communist.

90 For this, see Pereira, Fernando: 31 Março, Civis E Militares No Processo Da Crisis Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Jose Alvaro, Editor, 1964), pp. 167179Google Scholar. A striking example of this influence is the latest book by Brazil's leading economic historian, Prado, Caio Junior, A Revoluçāo Brasileira (Sāo Paulo: Editoria Brasilense, 1966)Google Scholar. In this book, Caio Prado, himself a rigid Marxist, devotes an entire chapter of 82 pages to a detailed analysis and criticism of certain theses contained in the 1928 programme of the Comintern, a 1933 declaration by the South American Bureau of the Comintern, the 1954 programme of the Brazilian Communist Party and other party documents. In what other country do leading intellectuals take old Communist party programmes so seriously? And even the works of authors like Celso Furtado and Helio Jaguaribe, whom it would be asinine to regard as Communists, abound in terms lifted from Communist party leaflets, which these writers treat with the respect due to accepted scientific categories.

91 See Peking Review, Vol. VI, No. 14, 04 5, 6, 17, 26, 1963Google Scholar.

92 Recognition appears to have been afforded in the course of 1964. In October 1964 Peking Review, Vol. VII, No. 42, published a resolution by the Communist party of Brazil denouncing the Soviet decision to hold a world meeting of the international Communist movement.

93 See Griffith, W. E., “Sino-Soviet Relations, 1964–1965,” The China Quarterly No. 25(0103 1966), p. 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 See the People's Daily of that date.

95 See Peking Review, Vol. VII, No. 7, 02 14, 1964Google Scholar.

96 A summary of this report was later published in Peking Review, Vol. VIII, No. 18, 05 1, 1964Google Scholar.

97 Quoted from Peking Review, Vol. VIII, No. 34, 08 20, 1965Google Scholar.

98 After the victory of the coup the seven members of the Chinese trade mission and two Chinese newsmen were arrested in Rio de Janeiro; they were only released and repatriated nine months later. No convincing proof of their participation in the activities of the pro-Chinese splinter Communist party of Brazil has been made public by the military authorities who conducted the investigation against them.

99 Quoted from Peking Review, Vol. VIII, No. 19, 05 8, 1964Google Scholar.

100 See Peking Review, Vol. IX, No. 18, 04 22, 1966Google Scholar.

101 See also World Marxist Review, Vol. VIII, No. 8, 08 1965Google Scholar, where the secessionists were attacked as “fanatics who see in armed forces of struggle the only way of winning power” and as “ultra left dogmatists.”

102 In the Argentinian Communist Party newspaper, Nuestra Palabra, Buenos Aires, 08 25, 1965Google Scholar.

103 This is rivalry of long standing. Already early in 1956 the Russians, according to Peralva, Osvaldo (op. cit., p. 163)Google Scholar, tried to replace the independent-minded Creydtby Barthe, who appeared “more loyal and pliant than Creydt to the bureaucracy of the CPSU.” At that time the manoeuvre failed because of the slackening of discipline in the international Communist movement and the dissolution of the Cominform.

104 See the communique of the conference in Pravda, January 15–19, 1965. The other countries named were Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti.

105 In Soviet Policy in Latin America,” Memorandum RM 4967-PR, 05 1966, the Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif., p. 28Google Scholaret seq.

106 For this, see the Albanian Communist Party newspaper, Zeri i Popullit, 02 16, 1965Google Scholar.

107 See Hoy, Havana, March 16, 1965.

108 For this, see Castro's government statement of February 6, 1966, reproduced in Peking Review, Vol. IX, No. 9, 02 26, 1966Google Scholar.

109 Personal observation during visits to Cuba in 1961 and 1963.

110 For this and for further evidence of Cuban-Soviet rapprochement in 1965, see Tretiak, Daniel, “Cuba and the Soviet Union: The Growing Accommodation,” Memorandum RM 4935-PR, July 1966, The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif.Google Scholar

111 Ibid., pp. 20–28.

112 See Granma, Havana, January 18, 1966.

113 The accusation is probably based on fact. The Latin American Trotskyites emphatically claimed the November 13 movement as their own, and the movement's grandiloquent “Declaration of the Sierra Minas” published in the mimeographed journal, Revolution Socialista (organ of the November 13 movement), January 1965, is phrased in Trotskyist terminology. Thus the Communist-dominated countries are termed “workers' states” (Estados Obreros), an expression habitually used by the Trostkyites alone.

114 Peking Review, Vol. IX, No. 3, 01 14, 1966Google Scholar; also the Cuban government statement of February 6, 1966, as reproduced by Peking Review, Vol. IX, No. 9, 02 25, 1966Google Scholar.

115 See Peking Review, Vol. IX, No. 6, 02 4, 1966Google Scholar: “If the Cuban side … genuinely hoped that China would export more rice to Cuba in 1966 it could very well have raised the matter in negotiations at a higher level as it did in the past.”

116 See Granma, January 3, 1966.

117 Quoted from the English translation of the Castro statement in Peking Review, Vol. IX, No. 9, 02 25, 1966Google Scholar.

118 Quoted from the English translation of the Castro statement in Peking Review, Vol. IX, No. 9, 02 25, 1966Google Scholar.

119 Translated from Granma, Havana, April I, 1966.

120 See Granma, Havana, May 27, 1966.

121 The Moscow May Day slogans of that year for the first time listed Cuba among the countries actually “building socialism”: see Pravda, April 8, 1963.