However, by 1974 it was reported that “Changes in Chinese Communist foreign policy since 1970 evidently led to some internal dissension within the PCRCh, and to the spread of ’petty-bourgeois’ and ‘revisionist’ ideas among the party members.”[261] By 1978, William Ratliff noted that “confusion over the direction of Chinese international policies” was weakening the party.[262]
There are indications that the PCRCh was particularly alienated by the friendly attitude of the Chinese to the Pinochet dictatorship.[263] There is no indication that the Chilean party sent any message to Hua Kuo-feng congratulating him on becoming Mao’s successor and on overcoming the Gang of Four.[264] After death of Mao, the PCRCh denounced the Three Worlds Theory as “revisionist.”[265]
At first, the PCRCh was apparently attracted by the Albanian Party of Labor in its growing quarrel with the Chinese. It was one of the seven Latin American “Marxist-Leninist” parties that was represented at the 7th Congress of the Albanian Party of Labor in November 1976, and signed a joint statement with these other organizations. That declaration claimed, “Progressive forces around the world, assisted by Socialist China and Albania, are building a broad international front in opposition to both superpowers.” The parties concluded their statement by expressing sorrow over the death of Mao Tse-tung and their support for the “brilliant success” of the Albanian party’s congress.[266]
However, although alienated from the Chinese successors of Mao Tse-tung, the Partido Comunista Revolucionario de Chile did not become an “Albanian” party. Rather, it joined the far Left group of former pro-Chinese parties.
The Chilean party joined with the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) of the United States in efforts to establish an international organization of Maoist parties disillusioned with the successors of Mao Tse-tung. In 1980, they drew up a joint document with the RCP setting forth “Basic Principles for the Unity of Marxist-Leninists and for the Line of the International Communist Movement.”[267]
According to Carl Dix, the National Spokesperson of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States, the PCRCh subsequently underwent a split, and went out of existence in the 1980s.[268]
During that decade there did exist a small Chilean group, the Partido Comunista de Chile (Acción Proletaria) that was aligned with the Albanians. It was represented at the 1986 Congress of the Albanian Party of Labor.[269] We have no information as to whether this group was formed as a result of a split in the PCRCh. However, by the 1990s Maoism appears to have ceased to exist in Chile.
Maoism in Colombia
After the late 1940s, Colombia was a permanent center of guerrilla conflict of one kind or another. For a decade, this consisted of fighting between competing groups loyal to the traditional Liberal and Conservative parties. After 1957, when those two parties struck a compromise, by which they alternated in power for sixteen years, armed conflict degenerated for some years into rural banditry without much ideological content. By the late 1960s, however, there were clearly at least three ideological tendencies among the rural guerrillas—orthodox pro-Moscow Commnunits, pro-Chinese Communists, and Castroites. By the late 1970s and 1980s, the situation became even more complicated by the growth of the illegal cocaine cartels based in Medellin and Cali, which had their own relationships with at least some of the guerrilla groups.
It is against this background that the history of the Colombian Maoists developed. To a very considerable degree, the quarrel between them and the pro-Soviet Communist Party of Colombia centered on conflicting views of the role that guerrilla activities should play in the struggle for the Colombian Revolution. At the same time, the Maoists differentiated themselves from the Fidelistas with regard to the nature of the rural guerrilla activity.
Origins and Development of Colombian Maoism
The Maoist split in Colombian Communism began in the party’s youth organization. As early as July 1963, the Chinese sought to influence a visiting three-man delegation from the Colombian Communist youth against the leadership of the very proSoviet Secretary-General, Gilberto Vieira. Although the three Colombians died in an air crash in the Soviet Union on their way home, word of the proselytizing by the Chinese nonetheless reached the Colombian Communist Party leadership and provoked a protest from that leadership.[270]
Nonetheless, Maoist proselytism continued. The result of this was summarized by the French periodical Les Informations Politiques et Sociales in April 1964. It wrote “A few weeks ago, at the end of February, the partisans of Moscow and of Peking confronted one another at the Fifth Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth, producing a controversy which ended with a split. The pro-Soviets purged the organization, expelling the militants of the opposing tendency. But if they were able to take firmly in their hands the reins of the organization, they did not claim a victory. On the contrary, the communiqué which they published indicated anxiety, accusing the Chinese of ‘fractional’ activity in the Communist organizations.”
The report went on, “The anxiety of these militants is easy to understand, if one takes into account the fact that the partisans of Peking expelled from the organization did not remain inactive. In their turn, they had a meeting and named the Central Comittee of a new organization: the Juventud Comunista Colombiana, in frank opposition to the Juventud Comunista de Colombia, of Muscovite tendency. And in their first communiqué they denounced the policy of the ‘leadership of the Party,’ accusing it of being ‘rightist,’ at the same time inviting all militants to fight against the present line of the CP.”[271]
The Peking Review hailed the split in the Colombian Communist youth group. It published an article on it entitled “Revisionist Line of Colombian CP Leadership Denounced.”[272]
The struggle soon shifted to the Communist Party itself. In September 1964, the Maoists tried unsuccessfully to gain control of the party organization in Bogotá, the national capital, resulting in the expulsion of a number of their leaders. However, the Maoists claimed to have won over regional organizations in Magdalena and North Santander, as well as “decimating” the pro-Soviet ranks in a number of other parts of the country.
Shortly afterward, the Maoists called the “First Extraordinary Conference of the Regional Committees” of the party. A resolution of that meeting indicated that regional party groups in Magdalena, Guajira, and North Santander had attended, and that there had been favorable “public declarations of many zones and cells throughout the country.” At this conference, the Colombian Communist Party-Marxist-Leninist (PCC-ML) was estabhshed.[273]
267
See
268
Interview with Carl Dix, National Spokesperson for Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States, New York City, December 15, 1992.
270
Cecil Johnson,