By 1980, Maoism in Latin America was clearly in decline. However, there were two major exceptions. One was the Communist Party of Peru Sendero Luminoso, which in that year launched its long-lasting guerrilla war. The other was the Partido Comunista do Brasil (PC do B), which emerged in the late 1980s as the most important Communist organization in Brazil.
Maoism in Argentina
Argentine Maoism was distinctive for several reasons. First of all, unlike the situation in most countries, the Chinese appear to have given their “franchise” to two different groups, if publicity in Chinese media and “political tourism” to China by members of those organizations is any indication. Second, the first group to receive recognition from the Chinese differed from the Maoist groups in most Latin American countries in not having its origins in the local Communist Party. Finally, the oldest of the Maoist parties in Argentina was among the first to receive recognition from the Chinese party.
Maoism in Argentina gained the largest part of its support from students. One of the Maoist groups was founded largely by them. There was little possibility for Communists of any kind to gain any significant influence in the organized labor movement, which during the 1960s, 1970s, and thereafter was overwhelmingly controlled by forces loyal to Juan Domingo Perón while he lived, and to his memory thereafter. Even the traditional, proSoviet Communist Party of Argentina had at best a very marginal influence in the labor movement.
Vanguardia Comunista
The first Maoist group to appear in Argentina was the Vanguardia Comunista (VC; Communist Vanguard). It was established “probably in 1964” under the leadership of Elías Seman.[90] According to a leader of the pro-Moscow Argentine Communist Party, it was formed by a group of dissident Peronistas.[91] Other sources claim that it was originated as a split-off from the splintered Argentine Socialist Party.[92]
Elías Seman, the Political Secretary of VC, made a trip to China in September 1965, and published a pamphlet called China in the Fight Against Imperialism and Revisionism, in which he denounced the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for allegedly working in collusion with U.S. imperialism, and praised the Chinese party for being “in the forefront of the global battle against U.S. imperialism and modern revisionism.” The Chinese, he said, had “made great contributions to the achievement of the fundamental task for the day—the development of the national democratic struggle in Asia, Africa and Latin America, a struggle aimed at smashing the threat of the imperialists in those three continents.”[93]
With the outbreak of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, the VC expressed its support of that phenomenon. Its periodical, No Transar, published an article that “hailed the new developments in China and, of course, the thought of Mao Tse-tung.” It held that the Cultural Revolution was “a new victory of Mao’s thought. Mao’s thought was the ‘Marxism-Leninism of our era,” and for that reason revolutionaries everywhere were looking toward Peking, the center of China.” No Transar claimed that Marxist-Leninist organizations were “carrying out ideological revolutions to remold the thinking of revolutionaries and apply Mao Tse-tung’s thought to their political line.”[94]
In September 1967, the Peking Review, in an article entitled “Studying Chairman Mao’s Works in Latin America,” quoted one of the Argentine VC leaders as saying, “The study and application of Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s works in a creative way should become a regular activity in our organization. This is the principal means to prevent the growth of revisionism and to guard against it in our organization.” Writing in 1970, Cecil Johnson claimed that the VC was “one of the weakest of the pro-Chinese groups in Latin America.”[95]
However, the Yearbook on International Communist Affairs reported in the following year, that “Although it has few militants, it is said to have some influence in student and workers’ groups Ricardo de Luca, reportedly a VC member, is at present the press secretary of the ‘Opposition CGT,’”[96] that is, of the more militant trade union group that had broken with the orthodox Peronista-controlled Confederación General del Trabajo. It was reported that Elías Seman and other VC leaders played some role in the popular uprising in Córdoba in 1969, known popularly as the “Cordobazo,” in which unions of the Opposition CGT played a significant part.[97]
No Transar strongly supported the Opposition CGT, claiming that “despite its meager forces,” it could be important in opposition to the dictatorship of General Juan Carlos Ongañia, which was then in power. It urged that the Opposition CGT get rid of the “fifth column that proclaims the need to dissolve the Opposition CGT and to fight the CGT of the dictatorship from within.” The Yearbook on International Communist Affairs said that the argument was made in opposition to the suggestion of the proSoviet Communist Party that the two labor organizations merge.[98] The Opposition CGT disappeared in the early 1970s.
The Vanguardia Comunista reportedly held its first congress in 1970. At that time, it reflected its loyalty to the Chinese by following their line with regard to the Castro regime in Cuba. No Transar published an article denouncing the Cuban Communist Party for attending at the June 1969 Congress of Communist parties in Moscow, for its support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and in general for its “revisionist line of converting Cuba into a new colony of the Soviet Union.”[99]
Vanguardia Comunista continued to exist in the 1970s. However, it had little if any strength in the organized labor movement, and whatever influence it maintained was in the student movement.[100] At some point, apparently in 1976, it changed its name to Partido Comunista de Argentina (Marxista-Leninista).[101]
The party persisted in its loyalty to the Chinese, and continued to receive a certain amount of publicity from them. Thus, in May 1974, the Peking Review noted an article that had recently appeared in No Transar, which had argued, thus: “The struggle of the two superpowers for division of the world is the principal danger to world peace. Their shameless interference in the internal affairs of other countries brings the danger of a world war among the imperialist countries closer, while just revolutionary wars against the imperialists do not endanger world peace.”[102]
In October 1975, Hsinhua News Agency noted that the Vanguardia Comunista was one of several foreign “Marxist-Leninist” parties that had sent messages of greeting to “the great leader of the Chinese people, Chairman Mao, Premier Chou En-lai and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,” on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic.[103]
90
Nelly Stromquist, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1971, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 386.
91
Interview with César Dinant, Political Editor of
92
Kenneth F. Johnson, in
93
Cecil Johnson,
96
Nelly Stromquist, in
97
Kenneth F. Johnson, in