Haya de la Torre Speaks

...it was not until a dozen years later that Trotsky, then an exile in Mexico, admitted that he appreciated the accuracy of Hay's interpretation of Latin American events...

...We must put an end to our complaining...

...The son of a rich family who gave up everything to devote himself to the political struggle, he is concerned with more than day-to-day battles...

...Because they realized that a Latin American does not make history...

...indirect at best??in the great world-wide problems, has its own special problems requiring special solutions...

...Lunacharsky alone understood his position...

...And this affects not only scholarly works but current political activity as well...

...That is why I always speak of "info-America...

...The Indians know how to wait...

...Balkanization means comic-opera nationalism, the advent of Madame Lupescus (such as Eva Peron), senseless militarism, cultural borrowing...

...So that the reader may obtain a clearer picture of Hay's views, however, I have omitted my own remarks and allowed Hay to speak for himself...

...without it, there would be no mechanized agriculture, no industry, no cultural development, no working class...

...Without replying, the Indian motioned him to enter and opened a wooden chest, from which he drew forth another portrait, carefully hidden under clothing and newspapers...

...Hay's isolation in the Embassy, deprived of visitors and of almost all correspondence, suited both Adrian's military regime and the Communists...

...But they still kept his portrait hidden among their belongings, waiting for the day when they could put it on the doors of their huts...

...While the plane carrying him there was still in Panama, the Latin American Communist leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano??who is currently in disfavor with Moscow??announced that Haya had won his freedom not as a result of international pressure or the judgment handed down by the World Court, but on orders from Washington...

...There is also the curious fact that, on our continent, the men who built the pyramids, walls and palaces of the Incas, Mayas and Aztecs are still living...

...A policy which does not set out to be ??or does not succeed in being...

...I had a long interview with Hay a few days ago, which I had transcribed in full...

...Haya de la Torre Speaks Recently liberated Peruvian leader expounds his views to our correspondent INTRODUCTION By Victor Alba Mexico City Recently, an American archeologist told me of visiting a little Indian village in Peru...

...They buy off the little Peron or else instigate a military coup...

...it was not born in Latin America and it will not die in Latin America...

...As Latin America's role in world affairs mounts steadily, the ideas of Hay DC la Torre??long the most influential politico-ideological figure below the Rio Grande??assume importance for the entire world...

...Representation would also be granted to foreign capital in order, as I have already said, to bring it out from "under the table" and enable it to express itself publicly and legally...

...Whereas North America was colonized, Central and South America were conquered...

...Hay has always translated his thoughts into brimming activity??books, articles, conferences...

...We might have succeeded in doing this in Peru if the alliance of weak liberals, Communists and the military had not driven the APRA from power...

...What, in other words, is the problem of Latin America...

...The Egyptian of Naguib and Nasser is not the Egyptian of the Pharaohs...

...In addition to Montesquieu's three traditional powers??judiciary, legislative and executive??our era faces another power which exists in fact: economic power...

...the Greek of Papagos is not the Greek of Pericles...

...The Spanish had no need to build any, for they had the Indians to do the work instead...

...Haya is now in Mexico as a political refugee...

...Anglo-Saxon America and info-America must complement each other...

...It's the first time I have ever seen them smile...

...Intelligent anti-imperialism must bring the foreign capitalists out from under the table and seat them around the table, alongside the workers, peasants and national capitalists ??in other words, let them participate in running the national economy, as a real interest group which must be taken into consideration...

...Foreign capitalists, who contribute a large part of the revenue of every Latin American country, who represent an essential element in their economies, are in an unusual position legally: They are treated as nationals, but they are actually not nationals...

...FULL TEXT OF HAYA'S STATEMENT In Indo-America, imperialism is not the last stage of capitalism, hut, on the contrary, the first...

...This one I will put there myself one day...

...A unified Latin America is imperative both for Latin America and for the United States...

...When I discussed all this with Trotsky and Lunacharsky, they were shocked...

...Moreover, that working class??which works in an industry producing no production goods, but only consumer's items, without an iron industry as a base??is a special kind of proletariat, different from those of the United States and Europe...

...And no policy, theory or program which cannot make the Indians smile will be of any real use to Indo-America...

...The first step, the decisive step toward such unification is to convince the Americans of the North that it is in their interest to have a unified Latin America by their side...

...What is the right policy, then...

...Doubtless, he was an American agent in 1925, when he visited the Soviet Union and discussed Latin America with Leon Trotsky and Commissar for Education Anatole Lunacharsky...

...That is a revealing fact in itself...

...Toynbee speaks of civilizations which appear by a process of displacement...

...and to break it of (lie habit of making war on the people for want of opportunity to make war on other armies...

...And Latin American unity will benefit Europe as well...

...We urgently need a division of labor between the machine-producing North and the raw-material-producing Center and South...

...It has already ceased to be "the West," but it is not yet anything concrete in its own right...

...the age of continents is beginning...

...We invite imperialism by our disunity, by our absurd ambition to industrialize even though we really gain nothing from it...

...I do not believe anyone has ever commented on the fact that there is not a single windmill in Indo-America...

...It was the police chief who put the other one on the door," explained the Indian...

...Surprised, the visitor asked the hut's occupant whether he liked Odria...

...The reason was that the Indians felt that we were correctly interpreting their thoughts and aspirations...

...But America will be a continent only when she consists not of 22 nations, but of two branches of the same trunk: Indo-America and Anglo-Saxon America...

...Indeed, we had proposed creating an Economic Chamber or Congress, in which the country's inhabitants would be represented not as citizens, but as elements in economic life...

...Foreign capital has done everything...

...The only effective way to fight them, on this continent, is to put an end to Balkanization...

...he merely lives it...

...One can readily understand why after hearing him speak...

...Capitalism exists...

...It was also the Communist leader Luna who, several months ago, announced his support of Odria in persecuting the apristas and refusing Haya safe conduct to leave the country...

...This difference was possible because North America had no antiquity, while in Central and South America the Spanish found civilizations, an antiquity which opposed their own...

...Some puny Peron in some republic or other may start to nationalize, to lake measures against foreign capital??not out of ill-considered nationalism and in good faith, but as a means of pressure??and then the foreign capitalists feel compelled by their special position to intervene in the internal politics of the country where they have investments...

...For everyone knows," said Toledano, "that Haya de la Torre has long been an agent of American imperialism...

...Hence, it is logical that a process of Balkanization is apparent in Indo-America, for that knack of conquering space by shrinking time which is the dominant trait of Anglo-Saxon America is not there to prevent it...

...The Army, too, would be represented in order to give it an economic role, since, fortunately, it has no military role [i.e., it has engaged in no foreign wars in recent years??V.A...

...This biological link with the past is to be found nowhere else...

...Our working-class movement has not taken into account this vital difference and its economic and psychological consequences...

...But they ultimately admitted that I was right...

...I remember the time a big landowner in Cuzco said to me, after an APRA meeting in a village near the one-time capital of the Incas: "When they listened to you, the Indians smiled...

...The archaeologists, just like the historians, have failed to see this living history which lies before their very eyes...

...But the Indian of today is still the Indian of the Aztec and Inca emperors...

...The age of nations is at an end, despite outbursts of nationalism...

...one which the Indians can understand is doomed to failure...

...Hence, all interpretations are basically distorted...

...It was in the light of all this that I proposed the theory of the fourth power...

...It is also the only way to fight imperialism and solve the problems of Indo-America...

...And, of course, he had been an imperialist agent in 1924, when, living in Mexico as an exile, he founded the APRA party (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana...

...On the door of a hut he noted a picture of Peruvian dictator Odria, who took over the country's coca-growing industry in 1949 to help support the Army...

...It should be legalized, given the importance de jure which it already possesses de facto...

...Hence, for the Latin American there is only one intelligent, effective course: to protect himself as well as he can against the evil effects of capitalism, to profit from its beneficial effects wherever they show themselves, and to be prepared for the time when the decline of capitalism outside of Latin America will cause it to disappear there as well...

...It was a strong, expressive face, with small eyes, thin lips and a great nose: Victor Raul Haya de la Torre...

...He was also in Washington's employ, no doubt, in 1927, when he joined the Anti-Imperialist League organized by Willi Muenzenberg, chief architect of the Communist "United Front...

...All this, in my opinion, remains valid for the peoples of Indo-America...

...For five years, the Indians in the high valleys of the Peruvian Andes knew from day to day how Haya was faring...

...The Communists, of course, do all they can to encourage this process...

...In later years, after he broke with Moscow, Communist attacks were a constant feature of Haya's life??the life of an exile (8 years), a prisoner (6 years) and a political fighter...

...and the Roman of Scelba is not the Roman of the Gracchi...

...For this continent, apart from its participation...

...This arrangement can serve the interests of both only if Latin America forms a single entity...

...In order to grasp and accept the necessity of abandoning demagogic phrases and pat, sterile positions, however, one has to understand a great many other aspects of Indo-American reality...

...Then, on the 6th of this month, they learned that he had been taken from the Embassy to the airport and had left Peru...

...This weakened his regime so greatly that, a few months later, Odria was able to seize power without opposition from either the Government or the Communists...

...Indo-America, with its two antiquities which have not fused into a single reality, would at last achieve this fusion, and, at the same time, would give the United States what it most lacks: an antiquity??and one which would not be North American, but continental...

...It seems to me that America??the Americas??is in the process of becoming a civilization through displacement of Western culture...

...There are, for example, the differences in the mentality of the proletariat which stem from the fact that there is no iron industry, or practically none, in Indo-America...

...By those mysterious means whereby news is transmitted among primitive peoples, they knew that Victor Raul was still shut up in the Colombian Embassy in Lima...

...When the APRA was represented in the cabinet of Peruvian President Bustamente from 1945 to 1948 after a smashing victory at the polls, it was the Communists who led the Parliamentary strike by the reactionary opposition which paralyzed the Government and gave Bustamente a pretext to oust the aprista ministers...

...We must therefore abandon the tactic of lamentation and adopt the realistic tactic of unity...

...He has sought to elaborate a theory which, while drawing upon Marx, Hegel and others, will fit contemporary Latin American reality...