Castroism and communism in Latin America, 1959-1976: the varieties of Marxist-Leninist experience

264 Pages·1976·11.24 MB·English

by  William E. Ratliff

AEI-Hoover policy studies
CASTROISM AND
COMMUNISM IN
LATIN AMERICA,
1959-1976
The varieties of Marxist-Leninist experience
William E. Ratliff
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CASTROISM AND
COMMUNISM IN
LATIN AMERICA, 1959-1976
AEI-Hoover
policy studies
The studies in this series are issued jointly
by the American Enterprise Institute
for Public Policy Research and the Hoover
Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.
They are designed to focus on
policy problems of current and future interest,
to set forth the factors underlying
these problems and to evaluate
courses of action available to policy makers.
The views expressed in these studies
are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the staff, officers
or members of the governing boards of
AEI or the Hoover Institution.
CASTROISM AND
COMMUNISM IN
LATIN AMERICA, 1959-1976
The varieties of Marxist-Leninist experience
William E. Ratliff
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Washington, D.C.
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
Stanford University, Stanford, California
AEI-Hoover Policy Study 19, November 1976
(Hoover Institution Studies 56)
ISBN 0-8447-3220-6
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 76-28554
© 1976 by American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Washington, D.C. Permission to quote from or to reproduce materials
in this publication is granted when due acknowledgment is made.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
PREFACE . vii
TABLE OF ACRONYMS . xv
INTRODUCTION . 1
INTERNATIONAL MARXISM-LENINISM: THE
SOVIET UNION AND THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC
OF CHINA. 7
The Soviet Union 7
The People’s Republic of China 17
Conclusions 25
INTERNATIONAL MARXISM-LENINISM: CUBA .... 27
Origin and Early Development of Castroism 28
Cuban Retreat from Castroism 34
Cuban Support for Revolution 38
Cuba and the Socialist World 43
Conclusions 48
PRO-SOVIET PARTIES IN LATIN AMERICA . 53
Background 53
Party Organization 56
Party Activities 59
Strategy and Tactics 63
Attacks on Critics 77
Conclusions 82
A PRO-CHINESE ORGANIZATIONS IN
T- LATIN AMERICA . 87
Background 87
Strategy and Tactics 89
Critiques of Marxist-Leninist Rivals 93
Conclusions 98
^ CASTROISM: RURAL GUERRILLA WARFARE .... 99
Background 99
Strategy and Tactics 102
Conclusions 130
^ CASTROISM: URBAN GUERRILLA WARP ARE. 133
Strategy and Tactics of the Urban Groups 133
The Strategy of Abraham Guillen 146
Conclusions 152
7 CASTROISM AND COMMUNISM IN CHILE. 155
The Communist Party 157
Movement of the Revolutionary Left 169
The Socialist Party 177
Communist-Castroite Relations 179
Conclusions 185
CONCLUSIONS . 189
APPENDIXES
A. Conference of Latin American Communist Parties,
Havana, November 1964 . 195
B. Latin American Solidarity Organization Conference,
July-August 1967 . 199
C. The Founding of the Revolutionary Coordinating
Committee, February 1974 . 209
D. Conference of Communist Parties of Latin America
and the Caribbean, June 1975 . 217
Preface
The emergence of the Sino-Soviet dispute in the early 1960s ushered
in an era of intense conflict and competition among leftist revolu¬
tionaries throughout the world. By the mid-1960s no vestige remained
of the largely united international communist movement that had been
fostered in earlier decades by the Communist International (Comintern,
1919-1943) and the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform,
1947-1956). Earlier challenges to the leadership position of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) by the exiled Leon
Trotsky and by Tito’s Yugoslavia paled in comparison to the opposition
after 1960 from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a variety
of other Marxist-Leninist organizations.
Events and rival doctrines produced greater diversity among
Marxist-Leninists in Latin America than in any other part of the
world. This diversity owed much to the Sino-Soviet conflict, which
raised substantive strategic and tactical issues, as well as (on a lower
but sometimes equally important level) owing much to intra-party
power struggles, which had their origins in personal conflicts and indi¬
vidual ideological and leadership rivalries. The diversity issued also
from the activities and objectives of the revolutionary government
established in Cuba in 1959, chiefly in the persons of Fidel Castro
and Ernesto Che Guevara. To a significant number of Latin Amer¬
icans, the Cubans, not their own local communist (or other) parties,
seemed to understand the strategy and tactics for national independence
and for political, economic, and social transformation.
The parties and organizations covered in this book are those that
fall at least loosely within the two main lines of Marxism-Leninism in
Vll
Latin America—communism and castroism. The former present no
problem. They are the parties that over the decades have consciously
aligned themselves with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
originally in the Comintern and subsequently in less formal but equally
revealing ways, as, for example, attendance as a recognized delegation
at the June 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers’
Parties in Moscow. The pro-Chinese parties and organizations that
emerged during the 1960s are so classified on their own testimony.
In some cases the Chinese Communist Party granted what might be
considered recognition to pro-Chinese (so-called “Marxist-Leninist”)
communist parties, and these are the main organizations examined as
pro-Chinese in this volume. However, since the application of the words
“pro-Chinese” or “Maoist” represents a judgment passed on the Latin
American party, not on the Chinese, several groups are mentioned below
that have professed adherence to the “invincible thought of Mao Tse-
tung” without apparent recognition from Peking.
“Castroism” is a little more complicated. Castro calls himself a
communist, but fully developed castroism as a road to the seizure of
political power—which is the primary concern here—is not the road
of either the pro-Soviet or pro-Chinese parties in their distinctive phases.
The castroite road has its own distinguishing characteristics, not all of
which were originated by Castro, Guevara, and Debray, the chief formu-
lators of the castroite line in the 1960s. Indeed, after his endorsement
of the Soviet bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Castro moved
gradually away from the remaining castroites of Latin America. In
June 1975 the Cuban prime minister was host at a meeting of twenty-
four pro-Soviet communist parties and signed a declaration which
(following upon his statements and policies of the early 1970s) placed
him unequivocally in the pro-Soviet camp with marked and significant
differences from the existing castroite and pro-Chinese lines. In an
effort to break the one-to-one mental association between Castro the
revolutionary leader and castroism, I have used a lower case “c” in
castroism throughout this study.
The reader may wonder why, in that case, I have not lower-cased
Maoism and Marxism-Leninism in these pages. The answer is
that Mao and the Chinese communists have been and still are the
guiding forces and dominant influences on most Maoist groups in Latin
America, while my point is precisely that during many of the years
covered in this study Castro and the Cuban communists did not occupy
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