Although several groups and “parties” that considered themselves Maoist, continued to exist in Mexico, they gained little attention locally or internationally. Evidence of this is the fact that after 1972, the Yearbook on International Communist Affairs did not consider them of sufficient significance to be mentioned in its entry on Mexico.
However, in March 1978 a pro-Albanian party, the Partido Comunista Mexicano (Marxista-Leninista) was formed through merger of two small far Left groups. It professed to be inspired by the ideas of Enver Hoxha.[436]
Barry Carr, an Australian student of Mexican Communism, has indicated that the importance of Maoism in Mexico was not to be found in the small parties that were formed on the basis of seeking association with the Chinese (or Albanian) party. Rather, it was in the wider diffusion of Mao’s ideas in the Mexican Left.
Professor Carr wrote in 1993, “I believe that the influence of Maoism was quite considerable in that country, especially in the period from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s. The influence came, however, not from the minuscule Maoist split from the Communist Party (PCM) that occurred in the 1960s, but was more diffuse—more an assimilation of Maoist precepts and style which was propagated in the urban popular movement and in some kinds of peasant organization by groups which were shaped by (among many influences) Maoist ideas—like the Linea Proletaria, Organización de Izquierda Revolucionaria and Linea de Masas. These two latter organizations eventually merged.”[437]
In a subsequent letter, Professor Carr wrote that “one thing is clear—that diffuse Maoism was a critical influence in a whole series of urban social movements, grass roots movements of the urban poor and marginalized and poor peasant organizations, especially in Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo León and then Oaxaca and Chiapas.”
Professor Carr added, “Linea Proletaria and many of the figures involved in it and similar organizations with Maoist antecedents were interesting because they combined political and union militancy with a flexible (some would say opportunist) approach to forming alliances and ‘coincidences’ with sectors of the ruling PRI and its constellation of mass (peasant and workers) organizations. The ‘moderation’ and ‘populism’ of Linea Proletaria gave rise to a good deal of criticism by other groups on the left.”
Two important movements during the 1980s and 1990s were particularly influenced by “diffuse Maoism,” according to Professor Carr. One of these was the revolt within the PRI-aligned teachers union, the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE), which succeeded in bringing about the fall of the long-standing SNTE leader, and rank-and-file representation in the highest reaches of the union.
The other of these movements was the Indian peasant revolt in the southern state of Chiapas, led by the Federación de Liberación Nacional, the so-called Zapatistas, which broke out in January 1995. Concerning this, Professor Carr wrote that “the southern ‘maoists’ of Linea Proletaria eventually joined their efforts with radical Christians, Trotskyists and school-teacher activists and helped build a new network of peasant unions (Union of Unions) in Chiapas in 1980. The Maoist-influenced cadres and their followers succeeded in merging liberation theology, armed struggle (via an organization known as the FLN), indigenous peasant self-management decision-making and the participatory ‘go to the people—learn from the people’ tradition of maoism—to form a political and ideological style of popular consultation through village assemblies that the Zapatistas eventually drew on.”[438]
Maoism in Panama
The traditional Communist Party of Panama has since World War been known as the Partido del Pueblo de Panamá (PPP). It remained loyal to the Soviet party. However, a pro-Chinese faction did develop at some point, and took the name Partido Comunista Marxista-Leninista). We have no information on when this party was founded or its membership or early activity, although it is clear that it did not gain any significant influence in the organized labor movement or general Panamanian politics.
Marian Leighton reported in 1985 that “Another party that was not very active in 1984 was the Maoist Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). During 1982 this party launched a violent attack on the PPP, accusing it of being nonrevolutionary, collaborationist, and acting against the interests of the people.”[439]
We have no information on the subsequent history of that party.
Paraguayan Maoism
During the 1960s and 1970s, Paraguay was under the control of the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner, who had been President of the Republic since 1954. Communism of any sort was severely persecuted by the Stroessner regime, and Paraguayan Communism was very largely an exile movement, located principally in Argentina and Uruguay. Lynn Ratliff estimated that in 1970 only about 10 percent of the Paraguayan Communists were actually in Paraguay.[440]
The first “outbreak” of Maoism in the ranks of the Paraguayan Communist Party (PCP) took place in 1963, when a small group broke away from the PCP to establish the Paraguayan Leninist Communist Party. Cecil Johnson, who traced the early evolution of Maoist parties in several Latin American countries, apparently had no information concerning this group. There is no indication that it had any direct contact with the Chinese, and in 1969 it was reintegrated into the pro-Moscow branch of Paraguayan Communism.[441]
The Oscar Creydt Maoist Party
In August 1965, Oscar Creydt, the long-time Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Paraguay was faced with the formation of the Commission for the Defense and Reorganization of the Paraguayan Communist Party, which was led by Obdulio Barthe and Miguel Angel Soler, and had Soviet backing. This group claimed “that the majority of the party leadership under Secretary-General Oscar Creydt had left the Soviet fold, held a meeting with the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, gone over to the enemy territory of calumny and insult against the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and to acts of provocation.”[442]
This committee undertook to “expel” Oscar Creydt from the party. It “accused Creydt of being too lenient with dissident pro-Chinese members of the party and of acting in a highhanded, dictatorial manner in the conduct of party affairs.” Lynn Ratliff noted, “Creydt, followed by many of his colleagues, then established what he claimed was the legitimate PCP. The party, however, remained securely under the control of the pro-Soviet leaders.”[443] Creydt was reported to have taken with him “most of the young members.”[444]
Oscar Creydt’s party claimed to have the support of the majority of the Paraguayan Communists, both inside the republic and in exile. Exaggerating its influence, it claimed to have the backing of “the masses of workers and peasants” of the country. It stated that the pro-Soviet party was “an insignificant rightist group… totally isolated from and disdained by the working class and by all truly democratic forces.”[445]
In its early years, the Oscar Creydt version of the Paraguayan Communist Party, although anti-Soviet, was not clearly aligned with China. It continued to show sympathy for the Cuban party considerably after the Chinese had broken with Castro. Thus, in 1968, Creydt wrote to Fidel Castro, supporting his expulsion from the Cuban party of a pro-Soviet “microfaction.” In January of the following year, the Central Committee of Creydt’s party ended its New Year message “with a salute to the tenth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.”
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