Communist Line in Latin America

...Their leaders have been taken into consultation by the government, and they are k permitted* to carry on whatever public meetings and propaganda they please...

...Lombardo has made .the hegira to Moscow...

...aeveral other friends had bsen arrested and later machine-gunned is open city lots...

...Simultaneously he gave wide privileges to the Conservatives and a wing of the so-called Liberal Party, of which hWhado, puppet of American utility interests, had been the shining leader...

...The kink in this new plea was that Marinello was titular head of the Communist Party of Cuba...

...With the end ef Lend Lease, the great supplies of raw materials built ap and BOW depressing the future market, with the cart ailment of wartime buying, with the leee ef European and Oriental markets, which before the World War took seventy percent ef South America's •rodents, economic distress to the South Is likely soon to become more proaeenced...

...In Colombia, the pressure of Lombardo's groups and the Communists have caused the President to resign, and affairs have oeen largely taken over by a right-wing group ef the Liberals and the Catholic i.miser vatives, who were ardently pro-Nazi before and during the war...

...Before and during the war Lombardo toured Latin America, organising hi.s new federation...

...This is what I discovered: Juan Marinello had not been and was not in hiding...

...fought the admission of Trotsky to Mexico, and the CTM kept up a constant hammer and tonga attack on him until he was assassinated...

...This is tantamount, if not to an endorsement of Crucial Dutra, the official candidate for the Presidency, at least to the silencing of Communist opposition to his campaigning...

...Batista's head of secret army pelke had burned my friend Octavio Beigle alive...

...Kranx Boas, the great anthropologist, dropped me a tine, laying that the Cuban poet, Jean Marinello, had been forced to go into hiding, and that if Dictator Ful-geecio Batista laid his hands on him, he would be killed...

...His closest personal adviser is head of the revamped Communist (roup, and his first official act was to recognize the Soviet Union...

...Official Soviet propaganda efforts, by news services, local radio, movies, publications in Spanish, and through cultural contacts, continue, but more discreetly...

...Immediately I wrote back to Boaz to use my name in any sort of protest he desired...

...In fact, I would call Futuro the ablest, largest, most presentable Communist magazine inside or outside the Soviet Union...

...Conservative ttltmtata tending to waver in their allegiance to the dictatorship, " are brought back into line out Of fear of Communism...

...The outstanding Communist leader, Carlos Prestos, was held ia prison for many years...

...Moderate and more democratic elements are caught in a pincers...

...He still held a government post...

...Shortly after this I received a similar plea to do something about two Peruvian Communists whose lives were in danger...

...The direct Soviet diplomatic push in Latin America sppears to hsve loot some momentum since the mysterious death of Conatantin Oumanaki, Ambassador to Mexico, although according to reports the Soviet diplomatic staffs in Mexico and Cuba, where the Soviets have few nationals and almost no trade interests, are almost as large as those in Washington...

...Boat answered that since I knew more about Latin American affairs, he was hoping I would get s committee to set My reply was that in that case I would have to investigate the matter thoroughly and get all the facts...

...Bloody dictator Somoia of Nicaragua bought peace with Lombardo and the Communists by recognizing the Soviet Union, and his acts are no longer criticised in Communist quarters...

...This he baa vehemently denied...

...This was before the war, and I pondered the matter deeply...

...Already part of the chief opposition party, the Radicals—which more or less correspond to the old British Liberal Party—have gone over to the Peron camp...

...I'resles has been released and, apparently obeying the countersign from far shores, has hsd to eat crow by endorsing and supporting Dictator Vargas...

...By playing ball with the dictatorships rather than the democratic forces, the Communists win the advantage of being the only opposition element free to carry on propaganda...

...In Brazil, Communist denunciation of Dictator Getulio Vargas has been long and bitter, especially when he made his coup with the aid of the Green Shirt fascists...

...In Costa Rica, Lombardo's groups and the Communists, now bearing a democratic label, were the strongest elements behind the election of resident-Picado...

...It reports the details of Communist Party shadow-boxing, as for instance the recent Duclos-Browder-Foster pantomime...

...When the Soviet Union allied itself with Hitler's Germany, Lombardo viciously attacked Roosevelt and Churchill as greedy imperialists...

...It also publishes a daily newspaper...

...Within a week after the alliance was broken and Germany and Russia were at war, Roosevelt and Churchill had become great statesmen battling to save humanity...

...Peron is not enamored of the Communists, but they serve to alarm other Argentine elements and bring them into support of his government out of fear that the alternative might be worse...

...Lombardo has had great success in Cuba, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile, and the effort showed returns even before the war'a end...

...It was not that ^•tista loved the Communists, or vice »ersa...

...In Ecuador a hybrid alliance of his Confederation with the Communists and reactionary elements drove out the President and set up a new regime which began jailing Spanish bankers, manufacturers, and landowners...

...Iraxilian and Argentine Fascists Woo the Communists ALTHOUGH Lombardo has been one of the chief critics of the Argentine regime, has kept Argentine labor out of the international labor conference, and has fought the recognition of Peron's dictatorship, this line is likely to change soon...

...Nevertheless, to Batista's great surprise, the Autenticos finally won the national elections, but by then the Communists had become a powerful forte in the island and had won complete control of the Cuban Labor Federation, the most powerful Latin American labor group in any country outside Mexico...

...During the war, whea Vargaa was bought off with American money and guns and quit flirting with Hitler and the Japanese, Communist criticism was soft- pedal led...

...It follows the fluctuating CP line from A to Z. Some of its numbers have been tak-JS up almost entirely by articles about the Soviet Union...

...he still gave his nightly talks ever the radio...

...In Cuba, under pressure from •or State Department, Batista had abandoned his totalitarian set-up for "democracy" and immediately had given a eebinet post to the Communists, along with many other "bottles," as they call food government jobs down there...

...Investigation disclosed that both were ¦•Ming good jobs under the heavy-handed Benavides dictatorship, while members ef Apia, the democratic popular party Of Peru, were being jailed, exiled, and killed...

...The new Communist line there is to soft-pedal attacks on the government and to direct the fire toward a demand for recognition of the Soviet Union, and toward criticism of American imperialism and of the beef and cattle interests...

...Actually a more unstable situation is created, and this ia the situation —one of violence, revolution and disorder which makes possible greater gains by the militant Communist minority...

...The radical movement there is led by Vicente Lom-bardo Toledano, who some years ago split the former Regional Confederation of Labor, led by Luis N. Morones, to found the new Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), and then went on to found the Latin American Confederation of Labor (CTAL...

...Already the Chilean Communists, in their eagerness *er a Popular Front, the much-cheered ¦esgan of the moment, had" not found it difficult to collaborate in the government with the Nacistas (fascists) of that eountry...

...And Dutra is by all odds the most powerful and outstanding pro-Nazi leader in Brazil...

...he still wrote his column in one of the daily papers...

...On the dictator's aide, he gains temporary security...

...Damned the night before as an iniquitous dictator, Batista now became lily-white for Communists, both in Cuba •nd the United States...

...But more countries have recognized Russia, this being urged from powerful outside quarters as a preliminary to the San Francisco conference...

...More often ke ia called a "fellow traveler...

...the war was an imperialist war pure and , simple...

...This did not seem too unlikely...

...I knew him as a sensitive and kindly person, who had been badly maltreated and long imprisoned under the Machado dictatorship even before he became a Communist...

...Similarly in Peru, Benavidea acted, not out of love for the Communists, but to offset the Apristaa, led by Haya de la Torre, which had won every election lor years but which had never been permitted to take office...

...B,|tista merely used the two political extremes to shut out the Autenticos, led by Grau San Martin, who represented the mass democratic movement on the island...

...His regime takes on a pseudo-democratic tinge, which is demanded by Washington...

...North American efforts to seize the Galapagos Islands and hold on to...

...The Mexican Confederation runs the Workers University of Mexico which puts out a labor bulletin In English and publishes the monthly magazine Future...

...Now the mesalliance with Vargaa is complete...

...Peron, taking a leaf out of Batista's book in Cuba, has released all Communists from jsil and called them back from exile...

...On the suface it appeared that Boaz and I were to have been made easy suckers for a cheap little publicity stunt...

...Lonthordo Toledono's Record IN Mexico' the Communist Party is not numerically large, though it probably has more members than the Communist Party of the United States...

...Conditions are already bed daa to the almost catastrophic rise in the cost of living...

...Futuro, a fine illustrated magazine, its latest issue running to 128 pages, is just about 100 percent Communist, in everything except name...

...The only continental labor organizations previously in existence had been the Pan American Labor Confederation, organized under the wing of the American Federation of Labor, and a short-lived Communist Confederation that revolved around the Soviet legation in Uruguay before relations were broken off...

...Like most of the CTM leaders, some of whom have been trained in Soviet propaganda schools...

...Much ink has lowed regarding the Ideological slant of Lombardo...

...Lombardo repeatedly announced that negotiations were under way to permit his Latin American Confederation to organize in Brazil, something that has never occurred...

...and whatever its bias, it contains a lsrge amount of fine factual material...

...Frequently be has been called a Communist...