L. Maitan | Trotskyist Writers | ETOL Home Page
Speech at a November 1967 Marxist Symposium in London.
Transcribed by Duncan Chapel.
Published at the Red Mile Substack
Copied with thanks.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
We must analyze every specific situation very carefully. However, looking at Latin America as a continent, we are fully justified in considering it a political entity on a continental scale. There is no doubt that a revolutionary, or at least pre-revolutionary, situation exists in Latin America today. This is true even in countries traditionally considered peaceful, such as Uruguay. Significant social and political tension has emerged there in recent years, and the situation today is very tense.
Aside from Uruguay, guerrilla movements continue to fight in
Guatemala, Colombia, and Venezuela. There are likely still some small
nuclei fighting in Bolivia, and in countries like Colombia, the scope
of the movement remains considerably large. In Guatemala, the
guerrilla movement seems to have overcome a difficult period in
recent months and is now reorganizing on a new foundation.
Everyone is concerned with Bolivia today for obvious reasons. What remains of the guerrilla movement there? What are the prospects for the next stage? What lessons can be drawn from the Che Guevara experience in Bolivia?
Some mistakes were probably made. We believe it is not our place to criticize mistakes made by the guerrilla movement in Bolivia, as we are not academics studying in libraries or merely discussing others’ experiences. We dislike amateur discussions of such serious, tragic problems as a guerrilla movement where people die and are defeated. The first to speak on this issue must be those who directly participated in the struggle. Their opinions should come first, and then we will express our own. When we say “our own opinion,” we refer to the opinion of our Bolivian comrades who have participated in the revolutionary struggle in their country for thirty years and have paid a significant price.
It is clear to us that the substantial opportunities in Bolivia were not fully exploited. We believe that the political leadership of the guerrilla – not the military leadership – made some sectarian mistakes, which prevented other political forces from immediately participating in the guerrilla movements. This facilitated the Barrientos regime’s task of militarily isolating the guerrilla movement. We believe that even when the Bolivian guerrilla began, it was possible to rectify some mistakes and launch the movement on a larger scale more or less immediately. This was not done for several reasons that we will discuss later.
What interests us today is whether it is possible to restart a revolutionary, a guerrilla movement, in Bolivia. As mentioned, some nuclei in Bolivia are probably still fighting, though I am not entirely sure if they still exist. In any case, it is a small movement. Practically, the guerrilla movement must start again from nothing. The objective conditions have not changed, because the Barrientos regime has not succeeded in re-establishing itself; it has not created stable power, and social tensions are as severe as before. A very important factor is the reaction of conscious working-class sectors, including peasants, to Che Guevara’s death and partial defeat. It was not a mood of demoralization; rather, it was a desire to prepare a new path for the revolutionary movement, to engage on a broader scale. Based on the available evidence, we believe that the guerrilla movement is still on the agenda in Bolivia. However, restarting the fight in Bolivia will be more difficult than the first time. The enemies have also gained experience and have organized their repression more effectively.
Despite these difficulties, the Bolivian situation probably remains the most favorable for launching a large-scale offensive against imperialism in Latin America. This would also aid Asian fighters, especially the Vietnamese, against imperialism. Fighting conditions in Latin America are extremely harsh, perhaps even harder than in Asia. It is infinitely more difficult for workers’ states to help Latin American fighters than Asian fighters, and imperialism can more easily concentrate significant resources in Latin America.
Advocates of the peaceful path to socialism today try to exploit
Che Guevara’s partial defeat in Bolivia to prove that their way
is the only way. They argue that while Che Guevara fought heroically,
his political line and strategic orientation were entirely false and
adventurist.
The only way to counteract imperialist initiatives is to engage imperialism simultaneously in many different fields. If imperialism can only deal with one or two countries, it still has the economic and military capacity to crush the revolution. But if it is engaged simultaneously in many sectors of the world, the situation becomes very difficult, even impossible, for them. This is the case now. American imperialism, as Pierre Frank has already stressed, still possesses significant capabilities. However, it is now engaged in many sectors of the world. Of course, it is directly engaged in Vietnam. But it is also engaged in Latin America, because the imperialist leadership cannot for a single moment forget what could happen there, not in ten years, but in ten months, or even next month, in some Latin American countries. And now, the situation is not so easy for American imperialism in Western Europe either, not to mention the domestic situation in the United States itself. This is not the main point of my contribution, but everyone understands that the socio-political equilibrium that existed in the United States for several decades is now completely broken. This is a revolutionary factor operating in the world today.
For us, the Cuban conception fully confirms our understanding of the world revolution. It is extremely important that the Cuban leadership reached this conclusion not from books or libraries, but from the living experience of their own struggle. For us, this has been clear since the very beginning of our movement. It was also clear to Lenin from the outset: the true global strategy to oppose imperialism is world revolution. However, for a historical period, world revolution seemed to be an abstraction, a historical aim of the communist and working-class movements on a global scale. Today, we are facing a real world revolution. The real revolution is a concrete reality today. Of course, the development of the world revolution is not “classical,” if you wish to use such terms. It does not follow norms, but it is reality.
When we speak of the possibility of fighting imperialism based on the concept of world revolution, we are not just engaging in propaganda. We are expressing a concrete possibility for today and tomorrow. Objectively, in many countries and sectors of the world today, it is possible to fight.
The Cuban leadership expressed this strategy in speeches by Fidel Castro and in Che Guevara’s last messages, calling for the formation of “two, three more Vietnams.” The real meaning of this strategy is very clear, especially to us. We must recall when this strategy was elaborated by the Cubans. If my memory serves, it was first expressed in a speech by Fidel Castro in January 1966.
At that time, the Vietnamese war had, of course, already started. 1965 was also the year of the San Domingo uprising and its repression by the American imperialists. The international situation, from the standpoint of the revolutionary movement, was not favorable in a specific sense. Of course, it remained favorable in a historical sense, but specifically, it was not, because we had the episode of San Domingo, where American imperialism succeeded in crushing the uprising of the San Domingan masses. At the same time, in October 1965, we saw the reaction in Indonesia: Suharto’s military coup d’etat. A year before, we had the major defeat of the mass movement in Brazil. You may recall that in some sectors of the revolutionary movement, not to mention the general broad mass movement, there was a mood of demoralization. This was because the imperialists, for the first time in many years, achieved some real success in defeating revolutionary movements in very large countries like Indonesia and Brazil, where strong mass movements had existed for many years, and where organized working-class parties and trade unions had played a very significant role for decades.
Today, people speak of peace in Vietnam. If negotiations continue, it is easy to foresee that advocates of peaceful coexistence will claim they were correct. They will argue that, in the final analysis, American imperialism was defeated in Vietnam without the creation of additional “two, three Vietnams.” Some of them have already written similar things. Something like that was published recently by the Italian Communist Party, one of the most advanced advocates of peaceful coexistence and peaceful transition to socialism.
However, it is easy for us to answer these propagandistic
arguments. First, if American imperialism was defeated in Vietnam, it
was basically due to the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people.
But it was also because American imperialism is seriously engaged in
other sectors of the world. There is no open war, of course, today,
but American forces or the American imperialists are engaged in, and
must take into consideration, this specific, concrete fact. On the
other hand, we are not at all sure about the conclusion of the
negotiation. It is only the beginning, just a truce. But even if the
Vietnamese war finishes, what about the general world situation?
Fighting conditions in Latin America are extremely harsh, perhaps even harder than in Asia. It is infinitely more difficult for workers’ states to help Latin American fighters than Asian fighters, and imperialism can more easily concentrate significant resources in Latin America. Repression in Latin America has been and continues to be very significant. Many revolutionary comrades, including Marxist and Trotskyist figures, have been jailed in the last year and remain imprisoned in countries like Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, and Argentina.
In Europe, we must understand that the problem of providing material aid to victims of repression is not only a moral issue; it is not just a matter of human solidarity. It is still a highly political problem. To materially help the revolutionary movement face repression means helping it maintain its structure and preventing people from being captured and jailed. This happens often: revolutionary cadres are arrested in Latin America because they lack the material resources to seriously organize their underground life, their illegal way of fighting. This plays a very significant role, because everyone with experience in underground work knows very well that organizing it requires much more money than organizing legal activity. Since Latin American people, like those in Asia and Africa, are very poor and cannot rely solely on their own resources, it is our revolutionary duty, the revolutionary duty everywhere – in Latin America, Western Europe, and especially North America – to generously help these people who are fighting, in the final analysis, for us too, for our victory.
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