First Published: The Call, December 6, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The right of Chicano people to regional autonomy, like the demand for full democratic rights for all oppressed minorities and self-determination for the Afro-American nation, must be raised by workers of all nationalities. The fight for regional autonomy is key to building unity in the common struggle of the Chicano people and the whole working class against the imperialist system.
Like the right of self-determination, regional autonomy is a principle of Marxism-Leninism. It means the right of national minority peoples to hold political power in the areas where they are concentrated. History has shown that regional autonomy is a revolutionary program that can unite the whole multi-national working class on the basis of equality in the struggle to make revolution and build socialism.
The Mexican-American national minority, known as the Chicano people, is one of many oppressed national minorities in the U.S. They have been severed from their national homeland to live in scattered concentrations throughout the U.S. “The persons constituting a nation,” said Lenin, “are frequently divided into groups and ... interspersed among alien national organisms.” In these countries, he pointed out, they form national minorities.
The Chicano people developed their national identity as a part of the Mexican nation. The development of capitalist economic relations in Mexico formed the Indian, Spanish and African peoples living there into one nation-the Mexican people. Over a historical period of several hundred years, the Mexican people became one stable community-inhabiting a common territory, common economic ties, and identifying themselves as Mexicans, a people with a common psychological makeup and a common culture.
In 1848, the U.S. government, wielding a superior military force, annexed almost one half of the territory of the Mexican state. Under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, what had been the sparsely settled region of northern Mexico became the Southwest territory of the United States.
As a result of the newly redrawn border, some 100,000 Mexican people came to reside outside their homeland and became a national minority in the U.S. Since that year, millions of Mexican people have fled their imperialist-ravished country to search out a livelihood across the border. Today Chicanos are over nine million strong, second in size only to the Afro-American people among all oppressed nationalities.
Starvation wages, bad education, suppression of their language and culture, rotten medical care, dilapidated housing, and repression at the hands of both police and immigration agents are all used by the imperialists against Chicanos, to increase their profits and sow divisions among the workers of different nationalities.
Every fight for Chicano equality must be linked to the demand for regional autonomy and the struggle against national oppression.
Regional autonomy for oppressed nationalities in the Soviet Union, for example, was the program implemented by the socialist government after the Bolshevik revolution to guarantee national freedom. Its aim was to abolish inequality in order to unite the national minorities under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Now that the USSR has restored capitalist rule, the national minority people once again suffer special oppression and have been denied the right to self-government by the new czars.
In a resolution to the Tenth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on the national question, Lenin described the tasks of the party in regard to the national minority peoples and nations.
Among these were: “to develop their own Soviet state system in forms consistent with the national social conditions of these peoples; to develop and consolidate their own courts, administrative bodies, economic organs and government organs, functioning in the native language and recruited from among local people acquainted with the customs and psychology of the local population; to develop . . . cultural and educational institutions . . . functioning in the native language ...”
Socialist China has successfully implemented regional autonomy following the principle of “national equality and unity.”
Chicano political power in the Southwest would assure an end to deportations as a tool of the imperialists to divide the workers. Regional autonomy would enforce the return of lands stolen from Chicano families and guaranteed them under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Both the Spanish language and Chicano culture would flourish.
Under the supervision of Chicano institutions – courts, law-making bodies, etc. – Chicano workers would not face discrimination in hiring and promotion, and Chicano youth would not be deprived of an education.
But although regional autonomy must be fought for now under capitalism, only a government of the working class under socialism can guarantee that this right will be recognized and protected.
Stalin explained that under capitalism, “national states cannot exist without oppressing their own national minorities.” This means that the imperialists, even if forced to grant regional autonomy to the Chicano people as a concession to the revolutionary struggle, would never stop trying to undermine this “autonomy” and take back the gains which had been won.
The working class is the only class able to lead the Struggle for multi-national unity and to create the basis for such unity by guaranteeing the right to regional autonomy under its rule. This is why the fight for full democratic rights and regional autonomy must always be combined with the fight for the rule of the working class as a whole. The movement for Chicano liberation must be led by and in the interest of all the working people.
The revisionists and opportunists of all stripes try to liquidate the revolutionary character of the Chicano people’s struggle and turn it from the struggle for political power towards the road of reformism. In order to deceive the masses of Chicanos whose revolutionary consciousness is rapidly rising, these various reformist theories are often packaged in a “Marxist” disguise.
The Communist Party U.S.A., for example, denies that Chicano national oppression is a product of the imperialist system itself and poses certain “structural reforms” of capitalism and “breaking down of prejudices” as the solution. They blame the oppression of Chicanos on the working class, claiming that “racist ideas” in the mind; of white workers are the cause. At the same time they preach that Chicanos should rely on the liberal politicians for their emancipation.
The revisionist CP attacks the revolutionary aspect of Chicano nationalism, opposing the national sentiments of the people directed against imperialism and opposing the demand for regional autonomy. This kind of chauvinism from so-called “communists” is exactly what breeds anti-communism and narrow nationalism and make the CPUSA the most dangerous enemy within the Chicano struggle.
This chauvinism of the CPUSA is reflected in the practice of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), although the claim to oppose the revisionists. The RCP has never broken from the great-nation chauvinism of the CPUSA and has become notorious for their opposition to school integration and their opportunist support for the racist anti-busing movement.
These opportunists fail to take up the demands of the Chicano people for their “national rights” and promote ideas that divide the working class. They claim “that the nationalism of the oppressed peoples is a more dangerous enemy than white chauvinism and thereby neglect their special duty to combat white chauvinism.
The flip side of this type of opportunism on the Chicano national question comes from groups like CASA and the August 29th Movement (ATM) who both promote the most narrow type of nationalism and the outlook of the petty-bourgeoisie.