In May 1975, a delegation of the Central Committee of Vanguardia Comunista, under the leadership of Oscar Fleitas, visited China. They had “a cordial and friendly conversation” with Yao Wen-yuan, member of the Chinese Politburo, who gave a banquet in their honor. According to the Peking Review, they visited Changsha, Shaoshan, Anyuan, Kwangchow, Shanghai, Tientsin, and Yenan during their stay.[104] In the following year, Elías Seman and the Secretary-General of the Partido Comunista (MarxistaLeninista) de Argentina, visited China, where they were received by Chairman Hua Kuo-feng. Another VC delegation visited China and Kampuchea at about the same time.[105]
The VC was driven underground by the military regime of General Jorge Videla, which came to power with the overthrow of President Isabel Perón in April 1976.[106] It was reported that Elías Seman and VC Secretary General Roberto Cristiana were among those who were “disappeared by the regime.[107]
In November 1978, Gabriel Valdéz Valdéz, identified as President of the Delegation Abroad of the Communist Party (MarxistLeninist) of Argentina, sent a letter to Hua Kuo-feng, congratulating him on being appointed Chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, which was publicized in Peking Review. Among other things, the letter said that “it is our firm belief that the Chinese Communist Party and all the Chinese people, under the leadership of Comrade Hua Kuo-feng, will carry on the cause left behind by Chairman Mao and achieve new and brilliant victories.” It expressed “the fervent hope that the solid ties between our two Parties based on MarxismLeninism and proletarian internationalism will be more consolidated.”[108]
It was reported that the PCA (M-L) endorsed the Three Worlds Theory, and that a delegation from the party visited China in April 1978.[109]
Partido Comunista Revolucionario
The second Maoist party established in Argentina resulted from a split in the pro-Moscow Communist Party of Argentina (PCA) and its youth group, the Federación de Juventud Comunista (FJC). This was the Partido Comunista Revolucionario (PCR; Revolutionary Communist Party), which was originally called the Partido Comunista de Recuperación Revolucionaria (PCRR; Communist Party of Revolutionary Recovery), which was founded on January 6, 1968.
Led by César Otto Vargas, the PCRR claimed “to have the support of ‘significant sectors’ in the federal capital and the provinces. Early in 1969, the dissident PCA and the FJC members. … asserted that their party had attracted 75 per cent of the FJC membership in the capital, 60 per cent in the province of Buenos Aires, and 80 per cent in Córdoba; and important groups in Tucumán. The PCRR reportedly had links with extremist Christian organizations within the country, including the ‘Camilo Torres Command’ and the ‘Third World Priest Movement.’”
At its inception, what became the Partido Comunista Revolucionario reportedly had contacts with both Cuba and China. However, from the beginning it rejected the foco theory of insurrection preached by the Cubans. Rather, “the PCRR believes that the central position in the revolutionary struggle must be occupied by the communist party. The PCRR advocates armed insurrection as the only means of achieving revolutionary change.”[110]
It apparently took some time for the PCR to adopt a clearly Maoist rather than a Castroite position. In the beginning, it sought association with the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS), which the Castro regime had organized in the mid1960s.
As might have been expected of an organization originating among the Communist Youth, the PCR was very strong in the student movement. At its inception, it had control of the Argentine University Federation (FUA). However, late in 1969, in elections in the FUA, it faced the opposition of virtually all other groups in the Federation and was able to elect only one member to the FUA Executive Committee.[111] Its defeat was attributed to “a rejection of the pro-guerrilla line advocated by the PCR but also to the PCR student leaders’ strong emphasis on revolutionary goals to the detriment of students’ demands.”[112]
In 1972, Nelly Stromquist noted, “The PCR advocates armed struggle to gain power, but believes that the leadership in the revolutionary movement must be held by the party. The PCR favors only urban guerrilla struggle, contending that the ‘wide plains’ of Argentina’s interior and the highly developed agriculture on the coast’ would not permit successful operations by peasant guerrillas.”[113] There is no indication, however, that the PCR ever attempted to launch any kind of urban guerrilla activity. Nevertheless, some elements split away from the PCR in its early years, to form the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), which reportedly received military training and political indoctrination in Cuba.[114]
Although in the beginning the PCR was not clearly aligned with the Maoists, rather than the followers of Fidel Castro, by the middle 1970s it had clearly joined the pro-Chinese camp. In August 1974, the Peking Review reported the visit to China at the invitation of the Chinese Central Committee, of a delegation from the Argentine PCR, headed by Guillermo Sánchez. The delegation met with Chang Chun-chiao, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party, with whom they were reported to have had “cordial and friendly conversation.” Chang Chun-chiao subsequently gave a banquet in honor of the visiting Argentines, that was attended, among others, by two ranking members of the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Central Committee.[115]
In 1975, the Hsinhua News Agency announced that among the cables it had received congratulating the Chinese on the 26th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic was one from the Argentine PCR.[116] In 1978, a delegation of the PCR again visited China, where they were received by Vice Chairman Li Hsien-nien and Keng Piao, a Communist Party Central Committee member.[117]
In June 1974, during the administration of President Isabel Perón (following the death of her husband, President Juan Perón), the PCR strongly supported the regime. At one point it called upon the workers “to be together with the Peronista people, defending the president, Isabel Perón, against any menace.” The Associated Press noted, “The decision of the PCR provoked commentaries in the sense that the ‘Maoists’ have had a strategy in Latin America directed more to impeding the growth of Soviet influence than combating the political and economic hegemony of the United States.”[118]
Perhaps as a consequence of its support of Isabel Perón, the PCR was outlawed by the military regime that overthrew President Isabel Perón, headed by General Jorge Videla, in its Communiqué #15, soon after seizing power.[119] Thereafter, the Partido Comunista Revolucionario functioned, to the degree that it was able to do so at all, deeply underground.
The PCR maintained its pro-Chinese and anti-Soviet position. In May 1974, the Peking Review reported on an article that had appeared in the PCR’s Nueva Hora commenting on a recent meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Leonid Brezhnev. That article said, “The peoples who are struggling for their liberation cannot remain indifferent to these meetings between the superpowers. … the Arab peoples, especially the Palestinian People, know that the superpowers are conspiring against their destiny. The countries of Europe also have serious cause to remain vigilant because today the real essence of the superpowers’ struggle for world domination is for hegemony over Europe.”[120]
105
Kenneth F. Johnson, in
106
Kenneth F. Johnson, in
113
Nelly Stromquist, in