In the 1979 election, the CPB (M-L) supported ex-President Víctor Paz Estenssoro. The party’s Central Committee announced that it “fully supports the resolution unanimously approved by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Front of the Left [FRI] to participate in a political alliance with the MNR, the PDC [ Christian Democratic Party] and the Authentic Revolutionary Party. … The FRI and especially the PCB (M-L) assume with this alliance the commitment to defend the interests of the working class and peasant masses, as well as those of vast sections of the petite bourgeoisie.”[154] In the 1979 election, Oscar Zamora was elected to the Senate.[155]
By the late 1970s, the PCB M-L still had some following in organized labor. At the May 1979 congress of the Central Obrera Boliviana (Bolivian Labor Central; COB), there were 175 delegates who belonged to the party. They walked out of the meeting, because they “accused the leaders of the conference of acting out of parochial interests and violating COB statutes.”[156]
The Bolivian Maoist party still existed in the late 1980s, and Oscar Zamora continued to sit in the Senate. However, I wrote that the party “did not play any major role in national politics.”[157]
PCB (M-L) Adherence to Maoism
The Partido Comunista de Bolivia (Marxista-Leninista) remained loyal to the Chinese party and regime, in spite of the shifts in policy by Mao and his successors in the 1970s. However, there were some minor schisms in the party as a result.
In March 1969, after reported armed clashes on the Soviet-Chinese frontier, the PCB (M-L) issued a statement: “The Partido Comunista de Bolivia firmly condemns the revisionist Soviet aggression against the Chinese People’s Republic, and expresses its sincere solidarity with the people, the Communist Party and the government of China who, directed by President Mao Tse-tung, are constructing socialism and directing the struggle against imperialism and revisionism in the world.”[158]
In 1975, it was reported that the PCB (M-L) “remains an unshaken admirer of Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist Party. Its expressed positions on international issues have paralleled those of the Chinese Communists.”[159] However, from time to time there were groups in the party that disagreed with this position. As early as 1973 there existed a “rival PCB (M-L)” that was “apparently set up in early 1971 by Jorge Echazú Alvarado, although there is no indication of the exact issues provoking this split.”[160]
By 1977, “According to reports from La Paz, a large dissident faction, led by Rodolfo Sinani, split with Zamora due to disapproval of a variety of Chinese Communist activities since the visit of U .S. President Richard Nixon to China in 1972. The most recent Communist action to cause trouble within the party ranks was the Chinese opposition to the MPLA in the Angolan civil war.”[161]
Following the death of Mao-which brought a message of condolence from the Bolivian party—the dominant group in the PCB (M-L) supported his successors. William Ratliff reported “The proChinese Communist Party has long been torn by dissension. The faction headed by Oscar Zamora Medinacelli has given its blessing to Hua Kuo-feng and continues to be recognized by the People’s Republic of China.” The party had a delegation at the Albanian party’s congress, which participated with six other proChinese parties in Latin America in a conference that issued a “joint declaration of Marxist-Leninist parties of Latin America.”[162] However, there is no indication that the PCB (M-L) or any significant part of it subsequently joined the international dissidence in International Maoism led by the Albanian Party of Labor. Nor did any Bolivian group participate in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), established in the 1980s by the orthodox Maoist supporters of the so-called Gang of Four.
Maoism in Brazil
Nikita Khrushchev’s speech denouncing Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party early in 1956 had a great impact in the ranks of the Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Comunista do Brasil; PC do B). It led to intense internal discussion, and within the next six years resulted in two major splits in the party’s ranks, the second of these bringing about the establishment of a Maoist party in Brazil.
The Communist Party had been established in 1922, principally by a group of young anarchist trade unionists and intellectuals. It gained some influence in the organized labor movement in the 1920s. At the time of the Revolution of 1930, which brought Getúlio Vargas to power for the first time, it opposed that movement, as did Luiz Carlos Prestes, who had been one of the principal leaders of a group of young military men, the Tenentes, who had revolted twice in the 1920s. Prestes, who went into exile in Buenos Aires after the defeat of the second Tenente revolt, was courted by both the Communist Party and by a Trotskyist group that had broken away from it in the late 1920s. He ended up going to Moscow, where he was co-opted into the Executive Committee of the Communist International, and finally returned to Brazil in 1935 to become Secretary-General of the Communist Party, a post he continued to hold until 1980.
In 1935, the Communists attempted a military uprising, which Vargas suppressed. During the following decade, the party was all but driven out of existence during the “New State” dictatorship that Vargas proclaimed in November 1937. But when Vargas began the process of restoring democracy early in 1945, a deal was struck between Vargas and the Communists that legalized the Communist Party and allowed it to participate in elections at the end of 1945. Its presidential candidate got 10 percent of the vote, Prestes was elected Senator, and several other Communists were elected to the Chamber of Deputies.[163]
However, in 1947 President Eurico Dutra had the Communist Party outlawed. It remained illegal for almost thirty years, but until the Revolution of 1964 was able to function more or less freely. Between 1947 and the late 1950s, Luiz Carlos Prestes remained in hiding. The actual running of the party was in the hands of what Osvaldo Peralva has called the “directing nucleus.” He identified Diógenes Arruda, Pedro Pomar, João Amazonas, Mauricio Grabois, and Carlos Marighella as the principal members of that group.[164] However, Prestes’s prestige among the party members remained very high, and they regarded him as the undisputed leader of the party.[165]
Impact of Khrushchev’s Speech to the 20th Congress
When word reached Brazil of the Khrushchev speech, the Brazilian party sent a delegation to Moscow to find out more details about the speech. When they were convinced that it was genuine, there were bitter discussions in the Central Committee, not only concerning how the Soviet party had fallen into the situation that Khrushchev had revealed but also on the reflections this had had in the Brazilian party, including its sectarianism.[166]
158
William E. Ratliff, in
160
Lynn Ratliff, in
162
William E. Ratliff, in
163
For a more detailed account of Brazilian Communist history to the mid-1950s, see Robert J. Alexander,
165
Interview with Agildo Barata, onetime Treasurer of Communist Party of Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, August 20, 1965.
166
Interview with Astrojildo Pereira, a founder of Communist Party of Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, October 19, 1965.