In From the Cold
IN NOVEMBER 1917, WHEN BOLSHEVIK SOL- diers and workers stormed Petrograd's Winter Palace and overthrew the Provisional Government of Socialist Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky, Latin America was...
...In 1925, a representative of Amtorg, the New Yorkbased Soviet trade company, arrived in Buenos Aires and began to acquire hides and agricultural products for export...
...3 " I UZHAMTORG'S OPERATIONS LEFT AN overwhelmingly favorable balance for its South American partners...
...In December 1935 Uruguay broke relations, charging that Soviet representatives in Montevideo had been behind the November uprising in Brazil led by Luis Carlos Prestes and the Brazilian CP...
...Communist influence grew in the labor movement and with the election in 1938 of seven CP deputies and one senator...
...Iz instruktsii Iuzhno-Amerikanskogo Sekretariata Kominterna Kompartiiam Latinskoi Ameriki," Latinskaia Amerika Biulleten' Lat.Amer...
...The following year it elected six deputies to the Constituent Assembly...
...There were also breaks in relations between the Soviet Union and Brazil (1947), Chile (1947), Colombia (1948), Cuba (1952) and Venezuela (1952...
...But recognition of the USSR was never seriously considered, despite support by the CP, its labor federation and some elements in the Radical Party...
...Claudin, p.396...
...The Chilean Party was at first a continuation of Luis Emilio Recabarren's Workers Socialist Party, which voted at its fifth National Congress in 1922 to rename itself the Communist Party of Chile and to accept the 21 conditions required for membership in the Comintern...
...Even in the 1920s and 1930s...
...But in 1931, police raided Iuzhamtorg's offices and arrested its entire staff, accusing the firm of economic warfare and promoting Communism...
...156-157...
...Vacs, pp...
...Like Argentina to the south, Uruguay's grain-, wool- and meat-based export economy was a natural complement to a Soviet economy which, with several years of drought in the mid-1920s, suffered chronic food shortfalls...
...a representative of the Comintern-sponsored Anti-Imperialist League, the Salvadorean Agustin Farabundo Marti, joined Augusto Ctsar Sandino's army in the fight against the U.S...
...N MEXICO, THE PCM, WHICH HAD CONdemned President Lizaro Cirdenas as a "national fascist," proved reluctant to suddenly adopt the new line...
...5 In Mexico and Argentina, which did not freeze out the Soviet Union in the postwar period, the CPs came under increasing pressure and were ultimately repressed...
...Soviet Russia was both a nation state and the self-proclaimed headquarters of world revolution...
...Ibid., p. 110...
...Initially independent from the Comintern, many parties arose spontaneously...
...Once seen merely as host to a worldwide conspiracy, the Soviet Union was increasingly viewed as an important actor in the international arena, a state with which it was possible and indeed desirable to maintain relations...
...A Comintern journal declared that Batista "no longer represents the centre of reactionary drive...
...Cole Blasier, The Giant's Rival: The USSR and Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983), p. 1 4 . The Comintern's 21 conditions, promulgated at its Second Congress in 1920, required that member parties sever ties to social democratic parties, take the name "Communist Party," provide unconditional support to Soviet Russia and accept as binding all decisions of the International, including those regarding their membership...
...In the latter part of the decade it was a major force in the principal labor federation, the Mexican Workers Confederation led by Vicente Lombardo Toledano who, after a 1935 visit to the USSR, returned home praising Stalin and moved ever closer to the PCM.' 3 In 1934, even before the PCM threw support behind CArdenas, the USSR and Mexico began a series of discussions about re-establishing diplomatic links.4 Like the USSR, Mexico supported the Republicans during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War and welcomed thousands of refugees...
...2 Nevertheless, the country's Radical Party Administration, under first Hip6lito Yrigoyen and then Marcelo Alvear, was open to expanding economic ties...
...z3 The hoped- for support from the "progressive bourgeoisie" never materialized, probably because they were strongly rep resented in the Vargas regime.24 Meanwhile the Brazi- lian party was virtually wiped out and Prestes was im- prisoned until 1945...
...Vania Bambirra and Theotonio dos Santos, "Brasil: nacionalismo, populismo y dictadura," in GonzAlez Casanova, Medio siglo pp.140-143...
...In 1929, two major conferences set the tone: the May meeting of the Latin American section of the "Profintern" or Red International of Labor Unions in Montevideo, and the first congress of Latin American Communist Parties, drawing delegates from 15 countries to Buenos Aires in June...
...The prestige of the USSR soared as it bore the brunt of the attack of Hitler's armies in Europe...
...Arnoldo Martinez Verdugo, "De la anarquia al comunismo," in A. Martinez Verdugo, ed., Historia del comunismo en Mexico (Mexico: Grijalbo, 1985), pp.24-32, 69-70...
...Alvaro Tirado Mejia, "Colombia: siglo y medio de bipartidismo," in Mario Arrubla, ed., Colombia hoy (Bogota: Siglo XXI, 1978), p. 1 5 8 . 37...
...Rapoport, p.246...
...Sizonenko, "Sovetskaia Rossiia i Latinskaia Amerika v 19171924 gg.," Voprosy Istorii (Moscow) 6 (1973), p.82...
...In 1932, the newly formed Communist Party led by Marti was the main force behind the peasant uprising that shook western El Salvador...
...propaganda blitz...
...Embassy...
...After the Central Intelligence Agency began to organize an exile army to overthrow Arbenz, Guatemala acquired a modest load of Czech rifles...
...Aldo C6sar Vacs, Discreet Partners: Argentina and the USSR Since 1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), p.3...
...Mario Rapoport, "Argentina and the Soviet Union: History of Political and Commercial Relations (1917-1955)," Hispanic American Historical Review Vol.66, no.2 (1986), p.241...
...2 8 These tentative beginnings did not lead to full ties...
...Sashin, Boliviia: ocherk noveishei istorii (Moscow: Mysl', 1976), pp...
...Stein refused and was relieved of his duties, though the Argentines continued to recognize him until 1928...
...In a few countries, the CPs established a base among the peasantry, notably in the Mexican campesino leagues of Veracruz and Michoachn and in the Colom- bian "independent republics...
...But the rise of nationalist move- ments in a few key countries-the revolution in Mexico, barllismo in Uruguay, Radicalism in Chile and Argentina and Liberalism in Colombia-created a limited commonality of interests between the USSR and governments of diverse progressive outlooks...
...A number of countries which never exchanged missions with the USSR, such as Ecuador and Costa Rica, did not bother to formally break ties...
...The twentieth Soviet Communist Party Congress in 1956, best known for Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism, ushered in important changes in Soviet foreign policy...
...In this "third period" of Comintern history, CPs in developed countries were told to es- chew alliances with social democrats and other left forces, which were characterized as "social fascists...
...In some cases, as with Batista in Cuba, the Communists managed to coexist with the regimes...
...Its requests for U.S...
...7 In Brazil, the Communist Party-founded in 1922 at the urging of Syrian Comintern emissary Abilio de Nequete, who also represented the Uruguayan CP-evolved from anarcho-sindicalist groups toward Bolshevism...
...This changed at the sixth Comintern Congress in 1928, where Nikolai Bukharin pointed to the significant Latin American participation as a new and important phenomenon...
...In August 1930, perhaps at the urging of the Argentine government, Iuzhamtorg offered to sell 250,000 tons of oil at or below international prices...
...But there were other reasons for the Soviet company's acceptance in Argentina...
...Yrigoyen, re-elected in 1928, was also negotiating intergovernmental trade and payments agreements with the Soviet Union and Britain, a policy opposed by foreign companies that favored free trade...
...A progressive labor code, in particular, brought Ar6valo into conflict with the United Fruit Company and the U.S...
...Munck, p. 19...
...And therefore, the people who are working for the overthrow of Batista, both in the United States and in Cuba, are no longer acting in the interest of the Cuban people...
...During World War II, Latin American CPs had come under the strong influence of Earl Browder, secretary general of the U.S...
...PGT members were most prominent in the agrarian reform agency (where they numbered about 26 out of 350 staff members), worked in other government departments and were among the president's advisers, but they held no cabinet positions and can hardly be said to have exercised control...
...The Communist Parties remained influential in a few countries, particularly in labor unions...
...The International's theorists were largely unfamiliar with Latin America and although Haya de la Torre's APRA in Peru was viewed as a kind of American Kuomintang with which alliances could be forged, Latin American Communists received little specific direction from the center...
...Thomas Anderson, Matanza: El Salvador's Communist Revolt of 1932 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), chap.5...
...Aguirre's Administration enacted a broad program of social legislation and founded a state Production Development Corporation intended to encourage import substitution industrialization...
...The Comintern imposed a self-criticism on the Mexican Communists and in a short time they hailed Cirdenas' labor laws and agrarian reform and characterized his Administration as "a national-reformist government with left positions...
...A more typical attitude was reflected by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, who boasted in advertisements in The New York Times that "There is no known Communist in the Dominican Republic...
...Sizonenko, ed., Rossiia, SSSR-Argentina: 100 let otnoshenii (Moscow: Institut Latinskoi Ameriki, 1985), p.51...
...In October of the same year, Cuba became the second Latin American country (after Colombia) to recognize the USSR, although without exchanging missions...
...In November Mexico and the USSR renewed relations, although it was not until the following June, with the arrival of Soviet ambassador K.A...
...Barbara Stallings, Class Conflict and Economic Development in Chile (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978), p. 2 9 . 21...
...This sparked an anti-government campaign which many observers believed was financed by Western oil interests...
...After the fall of dictator Jorge Ubico, young officers led by Jacobo Arbenz and Francisco Javier Arana seized power, calling elections in which Juan Jos6 Ar6valo was chosen president in 1945 by a large majority...
...Cole Blasier, The Hovering Giant: U.S...
...Batista's figurehead Carlos Mendieta...
...Mexico-recently emerged from its own revolution and with strong natural sympathies for the Bolsheviks-became the first Latin American nation to recognize the Soviets...
...In 1926 Uruguay, then under the influence of the reformist nationalist Jos6 Batlle y Ord6fiez, became the second regional government to recognize the Soviet Union, with an exchange of telegrams promising full ties and an exchange of missions...
...governments and limited labor activism...
...10-13...
...Sizonenko, Ocherki, pp.196-197...
...Quoted in Aguilar, p.237...
...The Soviets believed that the Rumanian Embassy, where Navellian was based, was supporting the Whites in the Civil War...
...Quoted in John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York: Macmillan, 1965), p.143...
...Robert A. Potash, The Army & Politics in Argentina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), p.52...
...Uruguay re-established the ties to the USSR that had been broken seven years earlier, although the two nations did not immediately exchange diplomats...
...Soviets were duly established in a number of sugar regions, although on the eve of the harvest the government ordered the Army to move against them...
...Francie Chassen de L6pez, Lombardo Toledano y el movimiento obrero mexicano (Mexico: Extemporineos, 1977), p. 6 8 . 44...
...Rapoport, p.243...
...Sizonenko, "Sovetskaia Rossiia," pp.87-88...
...I don't know what in hell we were thinking.I9 In Chile, Marmaduque Grove's short-lived Socialist Republic-set up in 1932 by young military officersenjoyed considerable working class support and enacted social legislation that later served as a basis for reforms implemented by Salvador Allende's Popular Unity government in the early 1970s...
...Ar6valo established press freedom, where little had existed under Ubico, broke relations with several of the region's dictatorships and implemented a broad program of social reform...
...In Bolivia, the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) seized power in 1952 and nationalized the tin mines, the country's main source of foreign exchange...
...intervention in Cuba...
...The Cuban Communists conceded that their failure to support the GrauGuiteras Administration was "thus objectively facilitating the seizure of power by the present reactionary government" [i.e...
...5 4 Dictators Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in Colombia, Marcos P6rez Jim6nez in Venezuela, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay and Manuel Odria in Peru epitomized this age of reactionary despotism...
...In 1934, however, peasants and Mapuche Indians who had been organized by the Com- munists began an uprising in the south that was crushed almost immediately by the Army...
...Despite Comintern agitation in the Far East, many Bolsheviks held that the proletariat in the developed world would have to rise up before the "semi-colonial" countries would experience revolution...
...When Arbenz was elected president and succeeded Ar6valo in 1951, the conflict with the United States and United Fruit intensified, as the new president sought to carry out an agrarian reform by expropriating the company's idle lands...
...Sergo A. Mikoian, SSSR-Meksika: 60 let sotrudnichesrva (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1984), p. 4 3 . 27...
...Nikolai S. Leonov, Nekotorye problemy politicheskoi istorii Tsentral'noi Ameriki XX stoletiia (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), p.100...
...The Embassy was seized and Navellian was arrested three times on espionage and other charges be- fore he was finally deported in 1920.' Although the Soviets made several overtures to Argentina in the fol- lowing years, relations remained frozen until 1927.5 Brazilian-Soviet affairs were also troubled...
...Luis Carlos Prestes, "How I Became A Communist," World Marxist Review (Prague), Vol.16, no.1 (January 1973...
...Convinced that Per6n enjoyed broad popular support and unwilling to forego an important diplomatic opportunity, the Soviets established ties with Argentina two days after Per6n's inauguration...
...The attack culminated in Browder's expulsion from the CPUSA and a shift toward a more militant line in the international Communist movement...
...J. Encamaci6n P6rez, "El sexenio de CAirdenas," in Martinez Verdugo, ed., Historia del comunismo, pp...
...Batlle was responding to Uruguayans sympathetic to the Soviet Union, but also sought to increase trade and limit dependence on the capitalist powers, especially England and the United States...
...Headquartered in Argentina, it had offices in Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay and Chile...
...8 Eight years later it gained an important adherant, who was to become its leader: Luis Carlos Prestes, head of the famous "invincible column" of rebellious junior Army officers that in 1924-1927 led a 25,000 kilometer march through the Brazilian interior, demanding elections, higher wages for workers and peasants and land reform.' The Mexican party, unlike most Latin American CPs, was established in 1919 by a group that consisted primarily of foreigners, including Comintern representatives Mikhail Borodin from Russia, Manabendra Nat Roy from India and Frank Seaman from the United States, who were all involved the same year in founding the Mexico-based Pan American Bureau of the Comintern...
...Jorge Basadre, "Introduction," in Jos6 Carlos Maridtegui, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), pp.xxvii-xxviii...
...But as the 1919 uprisings in Germany and Hungary and the Red Army's 1920 march into Poland all failed, the issue of world revolution versus Soviet state interests became increasingly contentious.' To varying degrees, the question of whether these goals were reconcilable has marked outsiders' views of the Soviet Union and its foreign policy ever since...
...The State Department increasingly charged that the Arbenz government was a Soviet foothold on the American continent, controlled by Communists...
...It also tipped the CIA's hand, since the anti-Arbenz exile army did not want to wait for arms to be distributed to the government's supporters...
...military training group in the country...
...With its huge immigrant population, Argentina was reminiscent of more familiar Europe...
...Varas, "Am6rica Latina," pp 82-83...
...5 2 Costa Rica's CP-since 1942 a pillar of two social Christian reformist administrations-was outlawed in the aftermath of the 1948 Civil War, during which militias of Communist banana workers had provided the last line of defense for the government against the social democratic-led insurgents...
...In Chile, the CP supported a coalition led by Radical Gabriel Gonzilez Videla in the 1946 elections and received three cabinet posts...
...Argentina continued to recognize the Kerensky government and linked-as did Brazil and Chile-diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union to an end to Comintern propaganda against the social order elsewhere...
...and British presence in the region...
...Cdrdenas' opposition to the Hitler-Stalin pact and the 1939 Soviet intervention in Finland, as well as Trotsky's 1940 assassination in Mexico by agents of the Soviet secret police, did little to promote a thaw.4' In Chile, the new Comintern line led the CP to form a Popular Front with the Socialists, Radicals and other left groups that supported the successful presidential candidacy of Pedro Aguirre Cerda in 1938...
...Munck, p.15...
...Articles in Pravda and the French CP's L'HumanitW suggested that it was permissible to form alliances with Socialists...
...This blissful state of affairs lasted just six months...
...The poorly prepared rebellion was crushed within two weeks, its toll esti- mated at up to 30,000 dead...
...An additional factor which added significantly to the growing tensions between the USSR and governments of the Americas was the changing line of the Communist Parties...
...In fact, the Communist Guatemalan Labor Party (PGT) had an important presence in the unions and controlled four out of 56 congressional seats...
...The Profintern, which sought to REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12establish affiliated "Red" unions alongside existing labor organizations, had relatively little impact in Latin America, although Communists had played key roles in the 1926 Mexican railworkers' strike and the 1928 Colombian banana workers' strike...
...Chile, under Radical Antonio Rios, also forged bonds with the USSR in late 1944...
...Vacs, pp.6-7...
...Harry Vanden, National Marxism in Latin America: Jose Carlos Maridtegui's Thought and Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1986), pp...
...In 1942, Cuba's Batista appointed the first Communist ministers to serve in any Latin American government, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez and Juan Marinello...
...In 1924 it created a Latin American Secretariat, although this led to charges of "Eurocentrism" since it included only one Latin American member, the Italian-born Argentine, Victorio Codovilla...
...T HE INTENSIFICATION OF THE COLD War in the post-1945 period rapidly reversed Soviet diplomatic inroads in Latin America...
...Its foreign policy was carried out through state-to-state as well as party-to-party channels and it was not always clear where one left off and the other began...
...2 6 Anger at Communist activities in Mexico was certainly a motivating factor, but the events coincided with a rightward shift in Mexican politics and British and U.S...
...Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), p. 1 3 2 . 57...
...4. Sizonenko, "Sovetskaia Rossiia," pp.84-85...
...In the late 1940s and 1950s, virtually every other CP in Latin America was declared illegal...
...Karol, Guerrillas in Power (New York: Hill & Wang, 1970), p. 6 5 . 12...
...In 1928...
...The backbone of the uprising consisted of radicalized Army lieutenants who had participated in Luis Carlos Prestes's 1924-1 927 anti-oligarchical "long march...
...Nora Hamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 9 3 . 26...
...Arbenz's contacts with the USSR and Eastern bloc governments, which had no diplomatic presence in Guatemala, were extremely limited...
...In May 1942 a German submarine sank a Mexican ship, generating a national outcry and leading to a declaration of war against Germany...
...Sizonenko, Ocherki istorii sovetsko-latinoamerikanskikh otnoshenii (Moscow: Nauka, 1971), pp.66-67...
...Vianna Kelsh, the Brazilian ambassador, signed the call, even though Brazil was not among the half dozen countries that sent troops to Russia in hopes of reopening the eastern front against Germany and contributing to the Whites' efforts to crush the Soviets...
...Perhaps recognizing that an historic opportunity had been lost, the Communists softened their stand on parliamentary democracy and coalition politics in 1933, considerably before the Comintern abandoned its ultra-left policies in favor of the Popular Front...
...After a series of conversations in New York and Berlin, Soviet and Mexican representaREPORT ON THE AMERICAS tives agreed in 1924 to exchange diplomats and explore commercial and cultural links...
...Furci, pp.38-39...
...At first, these two goals were considered compatible and, indeed, inseparable...
...113-115...
...aid and the MNR was cautious about developing foreign ties that might arouse concern in Washington...
...The cases of Argentina and Brazil were emblematic, if somewhat dramatic...
...Meanwhile, during the 19181920 Russian Civil War, Brazil continued to recognize Kerensky's representative in Rio de Janeiro, reportedly aiding him financially...
...In some cases, these directives were relatively prosaic, as when the Comintern announced that "unions should form special committees to work with the unemployed and organize clubs for them to rest and listen to speeche...
...The Com- munists, however, opposed Grove's socialist experi- ment, even though in their less sectarian period they had helped draft the 1925 reformist constitution prom- ulgated by Arturo Allesandri...
...7 The CP was legalized in 1952, and the new MNR Administration established largely symbolic diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia and Hungary (in 1952) and Czechoslovakia (in 1956...
...The USSR was completely isolated diplomatically in Latin America for the rest of the 1930s, with the exception of Colombia, where the reformist Liberal government of Alfonso L6pez Pumarejo recognized the Soviets in 1935...
...But its existence was enough to evoke fear, offering a pretext for repressing Communists and again isolating the USSR...
...But after the Comintern's Seventh Congress in 1935, the word came down to cooperate with "progressive bourgeoisies" in the struggle against fascism...
...Ronaldo Munck, Revolutionary Trends in Latin America (Montreal: Centre for Developing-Area Studies, McGill University, 1984), p. 8 . Codovilla was later one of the principal Comintern representatives in Spain during the 1936-1939 Civil War...
...More im~ortant was the Communist Party conference, which laid down the line established at the Sixth Comintern Congress the year before...
...The Communist Party, however, viewing Grau as a Cuban Kerensky, refused to collabo- rate with his government and called instead for the for- mation of workers councils or "soviets" as a prelude to seizing state power...
...In 1944 Costa Rica, where the Communist Party was influential in government, followed...
...ORTH AMERICAN ENTRY INTO WORLD War II on the side of the USSR radically altered the situation for both the Soviets and Latin American CPs...
...Subsequent government investigations of Iuzhamtorg's archives-aided by Russian immigrants unsympathetic to the Bolsheviks-did not turn up any hard evidence that suggested direct links to the Comintern or substantiated subversion charges...
...Only democratic Uruguay maintained its diplomatic links with the USSR and allowed the local CP to operate legally...
...Munck, p.18...
...ally to the U.N...
...5. Argentina did, however, briefly recognize Menshevik Georgia in 1919, independent Armenia in 1920 and both Soviet-controlled Armenia and the Ukraine in 1921...
...But with this greater concern for Latin America and Stalin's defeat of the left opposition in Russia itself came increased pressure for intra-party conformity and growing control over individual parties...
...The growing importance of Uruguay's ties with the USSR was symbolized by the exchange of diplomats in 1934 and full recognition in June 1935...
...Dremin and Sizonenko, p.56...
...See Sizonenko, "Sovetskaia Rossiia," p.85...
...The Communists-riven by factionalism and reorganized in a new CP as recently as 1950---were the MNR's traditional rivals and did not participate in the uprising...
...But most everywhere adherence to the Popular Front line followed the 1935 Comintern Congress...
...Sektsii i APPO Profinterna (Moscow), Vol.2, nos.4-5 (April-May 1930), pp...
...See Luis Aguilar, Cuba 1933: Prologue to Revolution (New York: Norton, 1972), pp.92-93...
...By 1944, CP leaders Juan Marinello and Bias Roca could write to Batista that since 1940, our party has been the most loyal and unswerving supporter of your governmental measures, the most energetic promoter of your inspiring platform of democracy, social justice and defense of national prosperity...
...Without significant energy reserves, Uruguay needed inexpensive oil...
...Little by little, the Soviets' image in Latin America began to change...
...Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov was to remember that "During the time these missions existed, there never arose any arguments, conflicts or significant misunderstandings between the two governments...
...Jorge Arias G6mez, Farabundo Martf (San Jos6: EDUCA, 1972), pp.49-58...
...T HIS RIGHTIST TREND WAS NOT ALL-ENcompassing...
...0 In Cuba, the Communist Party was founded in 1925 with the help of Mexican activist Enrique Flores Mag6n, one of three renowned brothers whose rebellions against Porfirio Diaz during the first years of the century were considered precursors of the Mexican Revolution...
...Led for decades by Victorio Codovilla and Rodolfo Ghioldi, it was-in Soviet eyes-long among the most reliable and loyal of regional parties...
...The Communists lasted a mere five months in government before being forced to resign, reportedly because of pressure from the U.S...
...Angelo Trento, "El origen del Estado populista y el Partido Comunista brasilefio (19301944)," Cahiers No.5 (December 1985), p. 7 3 . 39...
...Richard Gott, Guerrilla Movements in Latin America (London: Nelson, 1970), pp...
...Belarmino Elgueta and Alejandro Chelen, "Breve historia de medio siglo en Chile," in Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, ed., America Latina: historia de medio siglo Vol.1 (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1977), p.238...
...Blasier, Giant's Rival, p. 17...
...8. Manuel Caballero, Latin America and the Comintern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 2 7 . 9. Ernest Duff, "Luis Carlos Prestes and the Revolution of 1924," Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol.6, no.1 (June 1967...
...Karol, pp.68-81...
...The Cuban leaders were Carlos Balifio, who had been close to independence hero Jos6 Marti, and student leader Julio Antonio Mella, renowned for braving Havana harbor's shark-infested waters when he swam out to meet the first Soviet ship to anchor there after the Bolshevik revolution...
...and "Stanovlenie russko-argentinskikh otnoshenii," in Rossiia, SSSR-Argentina, pp.9-11...
...When the first state-owned refinery started up in 1931, it used Soviet crude...
...But shortly after World War II, Browder came under sharp criticism from French Communist leader Jacques Duclos, who was widely believed to reflect Stalin's views...
...Quoted in Caballero, Comintern, p.128...
...6 The sympathies aroused among Latin American workers by the Bolshevik revolution, especially in the continent's more developed countries, led to the formation of the first Communist Parties (CPs...
...But in 1929, after some acrimonious ideological disputes, Sandino parted com- pany with Marti and the International, continuing the struggle against the Marines for another four years...
...IN NOVEMBER 1917, WHEN BOLSHEVIK SOL- diers and workers stormed Petrograd's Winter Palace and overthrew the Provisional Government of Socialist Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky, Latin America was distant and of little importance for Rus- sia.' The tsars and later Kerensky had diplomatic rela- tions with Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, Uruguay and Chile, as well as consular ties with Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama and Peru, but these links figured only marginally in Russia's foreign policy.* The Bol- sheviks' appearance on the world scene created a ten- sion that was to plague Soviet foreign policy for years to come...
...Sizonenko, "Razvitie cviazei," p.57...
...The Grau-Guiteras Administration quickly came under pressure from the United States and rightist forces in the military led by Fulgencio Batista...
...Julio Godio, Historia del movimiento obrero latinoamericano Vol.2 (Mexico: Nueva Imagen, 1983), pp...
...5 At first Colombian Communists refused to cooperate with L6pez's "revoluci6n en marcha," which called for tax reforms, mechanisms for settling labor disputes and increased state intervention in the economy...
...Dremin and Sizonenko, pp.68-74...
...Arguing that the wartime alliance heralded a more fundamental, long-term cooperation between capitalism and Communism, Browder advocated collaboration with progressive capitalists and converted the CPUSA into a "political association," a step mimicked by a number of Latin American parties which dropped "Communist" from their names...
...With the 1945 Chapdiltepec foreign ministers' meeting, the 1947 Rio Reciprocal Assistance Treaty and the 1948 PanAmerican Conference in BogotA, the United States exerted increasing efforts to obtain greater military, economic and political compliance from its southern neighbors...
...The 1935 uprising, directed by the Comintern and led by Prestes, "combined the frankly adventurist methods of the Third Period with a political program which prefii...
...2. A.I...
...The new regime decreed an eight-hour work day and a minimum wage for cane cutters, legalized trade unions, limited land purchases by foreigners, and promised agrarian reform, nationalization of electric utilities and repeal of the 1901 Plan Amendment per- mitting U.S...
...Blasier, pp.25-26...
...The 1952 revolution attracted massive amounts of U.S...
...6 6 -69, 125...
...The shift actually came in January 1943, before the dissolution of the Comintern...
...In the brief period before its abolition in 1956, the Cominform never quite functioned as the "general staff" of the world Communist movement, as had its Comintern predecessor...
...In 1946 they took part in a coup that overthrew an earlier reformist government after its leaders refused them cabinet posts...
...For the Soviets, the most disastrous consequences of this policy were, of course, in Germany, where Hitler came to power and the largest Communist Party out- side Russia was virtually destroyed...
...For a brief period, the Comintern made some limited efforts on Sandino's behalf, raising funds and caring for wounded guemllas in Mexico...
...An ironical twist to the Argentina issue were U.S...
...But in most cases these ties were short-lived, falling victim to domestic political in- stability, pressure from the great powers or the revolu- tionary activities of Latin American Communists...
...Soviet-Latin American relations had an unpropitious beginning...
...4 2 The PCM's influence in the trade unions expanded rapidly in the 1930s...
...Because of Argentina's neutral stance during the war, the USSR opposed U.S...
...Marchenko, "Deiatel'nost' 'luzhamtorga'," Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia (Moscow) 4 (1968), p.85...
...In the Viota region near Bogota peasants formed their own militias and judicial systems and seized lands from large plantations.I6 In much of Latin America, however, Communist ultra- leftism and rejection of alliances brought isolation and defeat in a period of growing social ferment...
...The Radicals had long sought to nationalize the petroleum industry and conflicts had arisen over concessions granted to Standard Oil in northern Salta province...
...Munck, p.11...
...Blasier, Hovering Giant, pp.154-158...
...In the name of anti-communism the United States had returned to a turn-of-the-century Big Stick policy, overthrowing a government which was one of Guatemala's last hopes for peaceful social change...
...In the record of your acts as president, the public works, the progressive measures, the democratic declarations shine with such luster that they obscure and reduce any stains that have tarnished your administation as a legacy of the past...
...N ITS EARLY YEARS, THE COMINTERN DID little in Latin America beyond issuing several fiery appeals to workers and peasants and attempting to woo existing socialist groups...
...I N 1933 CUBA WAS SHAKEN BY A BROAD- based movement against the dictator Gustavo Machado that brought to power a progressive coalition headed by Ram6n Grau San Martin and Antonio Guiteras...
...In 1920-1922 Japanese Comintern envoy Sen Katayama was instrumental in resolving factional splits in the Mexican Party and in setting up the Communist Party of Central America, with sections in several countries on the isthmus...
...and British embassies...
...arms had been repeatedly denied, even though there was still a U.S...
...In Argentina, the Communists sought an accord with the Radicals, whom they had labelled "social fascists...
...Kelsh closed the mission and left Russia in July 1918...
...Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), pp.58-61...
...See Caballero, Comintern, p.58...
...But in Latin America Comintern policy provided few clear guidelines to member parties...
...The arrival of the arms aboard the Swedish freighter "Alfhem" touched off a new U.S...
...Iuzhamtorg continued to operate and actually offered the new government oil below market prices...
...The Soviets clearly hoped this might provide a basis for renewed friendship...
...In Feb- ruary 1918, several embassies issued an appeal to the Russian people which noted their governments' plans RThe Other Super APower The Other Super Power to intervene against the Bolsheviks...
...Sizonenko, "Razvitie cviazei SSSR c Latinskoi Amerikoi v 30-e gody," Voprosy Istorii 6 (1977), pp.53-55...
...This step severed-at least in theory-the ties of national CPs to the center in Moscow, rendering the REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16prospect of relations with the Soviet Union less threatening for a broad range of Latin American governments...
...Reorganized in 1927 as Iuzhamtorg, the Soviet trading organization was recognized by the Argentine government and rapidly increased its activities...
...attempts-carried out through a special diplomatic mission to Buenos Aires-to have Argentina recognize the USSR in order to ensure Soviet backing for the entry of this potential U.S...
...1 7 -18...
...Velasco, however, was not pleased and termed the document barbaric, absurd, utopian, and impossible, a typical example of the idiotic criollo Communism that congratulates itself for filling theaters and lecture halls with illiterate Indians...
...In other cases, the Latin American Sec- retariat's prescriptions provoked major divisions in member parties that often mirrored those in the Soviet party itself...
...Latin America's reformist and anti-imperialist governments viewed diplomatic or trade relations with the Soviet Union as a means of balancing the overwhelming U.S...
...The Comintern, however, was initially less concerned with distant Latin America than with "the peoples of the East," the colonial and "semi-colonial" nations that bordered the Soviet Union, often sharing cultural traditions with Soviet Asian peoples...
...Detailed top-down instructions were usually the order of the day from then on, although until the mid-1930s par- ties at times retained a degree of autonomy and were able to selectively interpret Comintern guidelines...
...Robert Dix, Colombia: The Political Dimensions of Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), pp.274-275...
...Outside aid to the rebels was almost certainly scant and appears to have been limited to mailing literature and a $50 monthly subsidy from the New York office of the International Red Aid organization, which the Comintern had established to assist political prisoners.'' Remarking years later on the rebels' lack of adequate preparation, one leader of the JANUARYIFEBRUARY RqderI2wb-h The Other Super Power revolt, who survived an Army firing sc subsequent massacre, declared that quad during the PiIt still pains me to think that we Communists were such idiots that we didn't even guarantee that each cadre had in his hands at least a pistol from the moment we decided on the insurrection...
...The links that had been established between imperial Russia and Latin America were completely se- vered in a matter of months, as conservative govern- ments refused to recognize the new revolutionary re- gime...
...A few Latin American governments established relations with the USSR over the next four decades, seeking to lessen their dependence on Britain and the United States and find new trading partners...
...Manuel Plana, "La izquierda y la political de masas en M6xico," Cahiers No.5 (December 1985), p.15...
...The Argentine party, founded as the International Socialist Party in 1918 after a split in the Socialist Party, was the first to join the Comintern in 1921...
...After Leon Trotsky's arrival in Mexico in 1937 as Cardenas' "guest" and the beginning of a PCM campaign to expel him, attitudes toward the USSR became strained...
...F OLLOWING STALIN'S DEATH IN 1953, THE Soviet Union emerged as a superpower, consolidating its presence in Eastern Europe, experiencing rapid economic and military growth and playing a significant role-for the first time-in developing nations in Asia and Africa...
...Rapoport, p.242...
...occupation of Nicaragua...
...Ibid., p.196...
...Tarasov, Sovetskii Soiuz i stranny Latinskoi Ameriki (Moscow: Znanie, 1958), p.12...
...1 7 6 -181...
...5 6 Soviet analysts interpreted the Bolivian events as an antioligarchical, "bourgeois democratic" revolution which, although providing an opening for the local CP, could easily be reversed...
...Quoted in Hubert Herring, A History of Latin America 2nd edition (New York: Knopf, 1967) p.443...
...References In From the Cold 1. Research in the USSR was supported by the International Research and Exchanges Board of the American Council of Learned Societies...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 15The Other Super Power SPURRED BY THE RISE OF HITLER IN GERmany, the new Comintern policy was unveilled in May 1934...
...Bolshevik soldiers, immersed in the war against the Whites, spumed resident ambassadors, a number of whom they believed were supporting the counter- revolution...
...Jost Carlos Marihtegui's theses on the peasantry and the In- dian question in Peru were rejected as "Trotskyist" by conference delegates who, following the Comintern's emphasis on urban workers and Stalin's dictates on na- tionality issues, called for organizing Peru's minuscule industrial proletariat and setting up independent Quechua and Aymara "republics" in the Andes.13 The Peruvian party was criticized as reformist, and denied a place in the Comintern unless it changed its name from the Socialist to the Communist Party.I4 Other Latin American representatives balked at the application of models developed in European and Asian contexts...
...Early CP leaders were often charismatic, with established revolutionary credentials from the labor or student movements or even the military...
...That same year, the CP was legalized and began a sixyear period of backing Batista...
...In 1945, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala and Ecuador followed suit, although only in Venezuela and Brazil were Soviet embassies actually opened.48 Argentina-where a pro-axis junta seized power in 1943-had been a source of preoccupation for the Soviets even after it broke relations with the axis and belatedly declared war on Germany and Japan in March 1945...
...In Ecuador, the CP participated in the Democratic Alliance that brought Jos6 Maria Velasco Ibarra to power in 1944 and authored a progressive constitution the following year...
...Umanskii, that the USSR again had a diplomatic presence in Latin America.'7 Umanskii's arrival followed an important Soviet attempt at accommodation with its wartime allies and other foreign governments: the dissolution of the Comintern on June 8, 1943...
...Antonio Melis, "Cultura political y politica de masas en el Peri contemporineo (1930-1960)," Cahiers [Fondation Lelio Basso, Rome] No.5 (December 1985), p.41...
...Two weeks after the revolution the new People's Commissariat of For- eign Affairs cabled Kerensky's ambassador in Buenos Aires, Eugene F. Stein, requesting him to stay on as Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky under the banana trees of revolutionary Mexico, 1920 the Bolsheviks' representative...
...9 But by 1938 the tide had shifted even further...
...3. Subsequently, uprisings were defeated in Germany (1923), Estonia (1924), Bulgaria (1925) and China (1927...
...Although the Comintern held that Latin America was "feudal" or "semifeudal," and that "bourgeois democratic revolution" would necessarily precede socialism, it also maintained that Communists should lead this anti-imperialist, antifeudal revolution and establish "soviet republics...
...Mella was assassinated in 1929 in Mexico, probably by agents of Cuban dictator Machado...
...Manuel Caballero, "Tormentosa historia de una fidelidad: El comunismo latinoamericano y la URSS," Nueva Sociedad (Caracas) No.80 (November-December 1985), p.79...
...Yet legations were not exchanged until 1943, when the Comintern was abolished and Colombia's neighbors began to recognize the USSR...
...In these years, Comintern policy in the "semi-colonial" countries was modelled on its strategy in China, where supporters were urged to ally with the "anti-imperialist" Kuomintang nationalists...
...Guatemala's 1944-1954 democratic "revolution" was another exception to the conservative trend, one which tragically illustrated the lengths to which Washington was willing to go to guarantee hegemony in the hemisphere...
...4 9 The Soviets had condemned Argentine War Minister Juan Per6n and other participants in the 1943 coup as Nazi sympathizers, but abruptly shifted their attitude when Per6n, who had promised to recognize the USSR, won the 1946 presidential election...
...But despite PCM pressure, Cdrdenas refused to recognize the USSR...
...The United States refused Guatemala economic aid and declared an arms embargo...
...6. Augusto Varas, "America Latina y Ia Uni6n Sovi6tica: Relaciones interestatales y vinculos politicos," Cuadernos Semestrales (Mexico), No.12 (1982), p. 8 5 . 7. Recabarren was later disillusioned by what he saw in the Soviet Union and committed suicide in 1924...
...Sizonenko, "Otnosheniia SSSR so stranami Latinskoi Ameriki v gody Velikoi otechestvennoi voiny," Voprosy Istorii 5 (1980), p.53...
...Quoted in Munck, p.16...
...Caballero, Comintern, p.48...
...The move to Uruguay increased Uruguayan and Brazilian exports to the Soviet Union, but some 70% of Soviet imports from Latin America had come from Argentina and the loss of this trade inevitably meant Iuzhamtorg's decline...
...Battered from World War I, tom from 191 8-1920 by foreign intervention and civil war and isolated dip- lomatically, the early Bolsheviks were committed to defending the Soviet state and to spreading proletarian revolution...
...In September 1930, Yrigoyen was deposed by the profascist General Jos6 F61ix Uriburu in a coup that was welcomed, if not encouraged, by Western oil interests...
...Initially, relations seemed promising, but in 1929 the Mexican Communist Party was declared illegal after supporting an abortive military uprising...
...Meanwhile Argentina's ambassador left Russia in 1918, entrusting the dip lomatic archives to the honorary consul, J. Navellian, a Soviet citizen of Armenian nationality who was also handling the affairs of Greece and Rumania...
...T HE FOUNDING OF THE COMMUNIST INternational or Comintern did little to assuage fears about Bolshevik intentions...
...After finishing off the soviets, Batista overthrew the Grau government in January 1934, in- stalling a figurehead president and unleashing a reign of terror against the labor movement.zz In 1935 the Brazilian Communist Party led a revolt against the populist regime of Getulio Vargas...
...efforts to have Argentina join the fledgling United Nations, although it eventually accepted Argentina in return for the admission of the Ukraine and Byelorussia, both Soviet republics...
...Shortly afterward, Somoza's Nicaragua and the USSR exchanged diplomatic notes granting each other recognition...
...Fernando Claudin, The Communist Movement From Comintern to Cominform (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), p. 1 7 4 . 38, Carmelo Furci, The Chilean Communist Party and the Road to Socialism (London: Zed Books, 1984...
...27 As early as 1921, Soviet trade envoys had made overtures to Argentina and renewed at a low level the sale of grain and hides that dated to the time of the tsars...
...Caballero, Comintern, pp.35-36...
...Dremin and A.I...
...Latin American parties, reluctant to provide openings for German agents active in the Western Hemisphere, toned down their anti-imperialist rhetoric, took more conciliatory positions toward pro-U.S...
...While Khrushchev affirmed that capitalism and socialism were irreconcilable, he also argued that war was not inevitable and peaceful competition was possible between the two social systems...
...Reflecting its rapprochement with Tito's Yugoslavia, the Soviet party suggested that there could be different roads to socialism and that Communists could pursue power through peaceful, legal means...
...pressure...
...Colombian Communists, with their comrades around the continent, began to seek "Popular Front" alliances that included social democrats and anti-fascist liberals...
...Sizonenko,"SSSR-Argentina: ot stanovleniia k sovremennomu etapu otnoshenii," in A.I...
...Furci, pp.34-38...
...T HE REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES OF THE Communist parties in the 1920s and 1930s, both real and imagined, did not foster a propitious atmos- phere for state-to-state relations between Soviet Russia and Latin America...
...Malkov and V.M...
...Sandino and Marti in northern Nicaragua, about 1929 gured the coming Popular Front period...
...The creation in 1947 of the Communist Information Bureau further exacerbated tensions...
...This period also saw the rise of rightist military dictatorships in a number of JANUARY/FEBRUARY 17The Other Super Power countries...
...Communist Party (CPUSA...
...Retreating from the non-interventionist "good neighbor policy" launched by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, the United States now expressed a willingness to intervene against "extra-hemispheric threats" and to enlist Latin American governments in a worldwide crusade against its erstwhile Soviet ally...
...Vertically organized-with each constituent party subordinate to the center on questions of ideology, membership and strategy--the Comintern contributed to Soviet isolation, as apprehensive governments worked to deny any other opening that would mean a Bolshevik diplomatic presence on their territory...
...Aleida Plasencia Moro, "Historia del movimiento obrero en Cuba," in Pablo Gonz7lez Casanova, ed., Historia del movimiento obrero en America Latina Vol.1 (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1984), pp.115-118...
...Roque Dalton, Miguel Mdrmol (San Jos4: EDUCA, 1972), pp.327328...
...3 Throughout Latin America, CPs now called for alliances with forces once considered mortal enemies...
...Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp.357-358, 481-507...
...Similarly absurd was the proposal of Argentine Communist leader Rodolfo Ghioldi that separate Italian, Polish and Jewish nations be established with the immigrants in his country...
...9 5 -96...
...Malkov and Marchenko, p.88...
...2 In January 1930, the Mexican government broke relations with the Soviet Union, charging that the Comintern had been behind protest demonstrations in front of Mexican embassies in Washington, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires...
...3 2 Iuzhamtorg, bruised but not destroyed, simply relocated across the River Plate in Montevideo...
...The following year, during a miners' strike, President GonzAlez-claiming the Communists were trying to overthrow him-decreed the CP illegal and broke relations with the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia...
...3 7 Some Latin American parties, such as the Chilean and Brazilian, had already softened their positions, following defeats attributable to sectarian policies or hints of coming change at a 1934 Montevideo meeting of South American CPs...
...Velasco proclaimed himself dictator in 1946, decreed a new constitution and unleashed a wave of repression against the Left and the labor movement...
...In Peru, they again sought out APRA...
...Jod Carlos MarlWegui: an Independent theorist T HE 1929 PARTY CONFERENCE ALSO brought greater Comintern-and by extension Soviet-organizational and ideological control...
...The famous invasion led by Colonel Carlos Enrique Castillo Armas toppled the government within days...
...Vacs, pp.4-6...
...Seven Latin Americans were elected to the executive committee...
Vol. 21 • January 1987 • No. 1
