In 1968, the 14th of June called for a boycott of municipal elections, which “only served the interests of a reduced group of capitalist exploiters and landholders,” calling instead for “active struggle of the masses and violent revolution,” which was not possible “without the thought of Mao.” In that same year, it condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as a “vulgar, imperialist action” that was a “flagrant violation of a nation’s rights, independence and territorial integrity.”[351]
In assuming that position, the 14th of June differed from the line of Fidel Castro, who gave a grudging endorsement to what had happened in Czechoslovakia. However, the leaders of the party were still reported to maintain close contact with Cuba. It had had a delegation at the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS) conference in Havana the year before.
In 1968 there was a further split in the 14th of June, with a group breaking away that was clearly Maoist. These dissidents formed the Red Line of the 14th of June. Its orientation was evident in its condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which it proclaimed was “the culmination of the entire process of political, ideological and cultural degeneration of the Soviet state and the Communist parties of both countries. … Similar cases will not occur in the People’s Republic of China or in Albania, where socialism and Marxism-Leninism is the most consolidated.” The new group also sent a message of solidarity to the People’s Republic on the nineteenth anniversary of its establishment.
On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the People’s Republic, the Red Line of the 14th of June sent a message to the Chinese party in which it greeted Mao as the “undeniable leader of the international proletariat.” It said that both the U.S. and Soviet “revisionists” were working “against the Chinese revolution and its Marxist-Leninist principles, frightened by the advances of socialism in China and its current influence throughout the world.”[352]
Before the 1970 presidential election, the Red Line appealed to the Dominican Revolutionary Party to endorse the line of “dictatorship with popular support,” which Juan Bosch was then expounding, and to join in a campaign for a broad abstentionist coalition, which would exclude only the “oligarchs” and the “revisionists of the PCD and PSP,” the two pro-Soviet parties.[353]
By 1972 another Maoist group had broken away from the 14th of June. This was the Red Flag. It joined with Red Line and Proletarian Voice, a splinter of the MPD, in April 1972, on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the 1965 civil war, in a call “to teach the people about the revolutionary heroism and patriotism of the combatants in the 1965 war.” The statement also called for the workers to form a labor party as an “indispensable step for the construction of a socialist society.”[354]
At the time of the 1974 election, Red Line, Red Flag, Proletarian Voice, and several other far Left organizations tried to organize a coalition of virtually all the political forces opposed to President Balaguer, to abstain. In an interview with the newspaper Ahora, Ivan Rodríguez of Red Line and Juan B. Mejía of Red Flag argued that they would not support Antonio Guzmán, candidate of the Dominican Revolutionary Party, because “(a) We maintain that the May elections are a farce and we oppose them; and (b) Mr. Antonio Guzmán is the candidate of the Parties… which divided the opposition.” They argued that until the “reelection apparatus” of the Balaguer government had been dismantled, elections would be a farce.
In justifying their efforts to get even right-wing parties that opposed Balaguer to join in the electoral abstention campaign, Rodríguez and Mejía said, “We Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries formulate our policy guided by the theory whose living soul is the concrete analysis of the concrete situation. In spelling out our positions a specific situation, we determined the objective to be attained by basing ourselves on an analysis of the correlation of existing forces. To start from any other premise would be to move from Marxism-Leninism.”[355]
In 1977, when President Balaguer sent a message to Congress repeal of the illegalization of the pro-Soviet PCD, spokesmen for the Red Line claimed that if the measure was passed, it, too, would carry out political activities publicly and openly.[356]
The Red Line received at least limited recognition from the Chinese party. In December 1976, the Peking Review published a letter from the Red Line congratulating Hua Kuo-feng on being appointed Chairman, and expressing support for the purge of the Gang of Four.[357] Also, in August 1977 a delegation from the Red Line that visited China was given a banquet by Li Hsien-chien, member of the Chinese Politburo.[358]
The Red Flag also received certain Chinese recognition. In April 1977, it, too, sent a delegation to China that was given a banquet by Li Hsien-chien. Later in the year, the New China News Agency gave publicity to a message from Juan B. Mejía congratulating the Chinese Party on its 11th Congress.[359]
In 1979, Red Line and Red Flag (rechristened Proletarian Flag) announced their intention of joining to form a new party, the Dominican Workers Party (PDT), and that they would immediately merge their periodicals, Lucha Obrera and Bandera Proletaria, into a new newspaper, Unidad Marxista-Leninista.[360] That new party was finally established in 1980. It ended up aligning with the Albanians against the Chinese.[361]
Meanwhile, a new group, Unión Comunista Revolucionaria, had been established. We have no information about its origins, but it became aligned with the orthodox Maoists supporting the Gang of Four.[362] In 1980, it signed the Joint Communiqueé calling for establishment of the first Maoist international organization,[363] the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), and in the early 1990s was listed as one of the sixteen parties belonging to that group.[364] However, in January 1995, the RIM periodical A World to Win announced that the Unión Comunista Revolucionaria had been “dissolved.”[365]
Conclusion
Maoism emerged in the Dominican Republic in the 1960s, taking the form of several competing parties, and for several years facing strong competition from Castroism. Recognition by the Chinese party came only shortly before the Chinese lost interest in fomenting International Maoism. Subsequently, the small Dominican group associated with the orthodox Maoist followers of the Gang of Four was “dissolved.”
Ecuadorean Maoists
Soon after the Chinese Communist Party began the policy of encouraging the formation of Maoist parties in other countries, such a group appeared in Ecuador. For a short while, the new party controlled the country’s Communist trade union group, and for a longer time, it dominated the university student movement. As was the case in most countries where Maoist parties emerged, the party that had been recognized by the Chinese continued to exist as long as the Chinese remained interested in fomenting International Maoism.
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