Carr, Barry - Marxism and Anarchism in The Formation of The Mexican Communist Party, 1910-19

Hispaniic Amiier icani Historical Reviewv
63(2), 1983, 277-305

Copyright C 1983 by Duke University Press
Marxism and Anarchism in the Formation

of the Mexican Communist Party, 1910-19
BARRY CARR
H TISTORIANS of twentieth-century Mexico genera

that Marxism contributed little and late to the Mexican
workers' movement.' Certain historians explain the
limited impact, for example, of the early Mexican Communist party (PCM)
by reference to the strength of nationalist ideologies within the Mexican
Revolution and the "exotic" and "antinational" character of Marxism.2
Historians of the left comment on the absence of a vigorous Social Dem-
ocratic tradition and bemoan the deleterious impact of anarchist and lib-
ertarian ideology on the Mexican working class, whose capture by bour-
geois revolutionary coalitions they attribute to the obfuscatory impact of
antistate and antipolitical thought that affected many workers outside for-
mally anarchist circles.3 And although the early history of Mexican com-
munism has been almost totally unexplored, many historians of the Mexi-
can labor movement have commented negatively on the anarchist presence
within the PCM during its first ten years. It is this factor that supposedly
explains the seriousness and frequency of the theoretical and tactical errors
that the party committed in its attempt to confront the emerging national
state in the 1920s.4 In fact, this conflation of Social Democratic and an-
archist and syndicalist sectors was by no means peculiar to Mexico or to
Latin America, as is so often claimed.5
* The author is Senior Lecturer in History at La Trobe University, Bundloora, Australia.

1. There are exceptions here. See, for example, Soviet historian A. Ermolaev, "Naissance
du Mouvement Ouvrier," Recherches Internationales, 32 (July-Aug. 1962), 82.
2. Karl Schmitt, Communisnm in Mexico: A Study in Frustration (Austin, 1965); Donaldl
Herman, Consintern in Mexico (Washington, D.C., 1974).
3. Valentin Campa, Mi testinsonio: Memnorias de un conounista mnexicano (Mexico City,
1978), p. 61.
4. See, for example, the anonymous article in El Machete Ilegal, Sept. 10, 1933, andl
Miguel Velasco, "Veintitres ahos de lucha por los intereses nacionales y populares," La Voz
de Mexico, Sept. 15, 1942.
5. The development of communism in western and central Europe, particularly in France,
Holland, Hungary, and Germany, involved the fusion of Marxist Social Democracy with
powerful antistatist and antiauthoritarian forces. Combined with the bankruptcy of the "par-
liamentarist" socialism of the Second International, this merging of traditions explains the
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278 HAHR | MAY | BARRY CARR
This article attempts to trace the evolution of socialist and Marxist

thought and activity during the decade preceding the formation of the
Mexican Communist party in 1919. It will argue that the echoes of Social
Democracy were not as faint as has often been thought and that efforts to
clear the confusion surrounding the origins of the PCM must involve an
examination of the peculiarities of the implantation in Mexico of the an-
tiutopian and antiethical "scientific socialism" of the Second International.
It is not always easy to distinguish clearly among Marxism, the utopian
and libertarian variants of socialism, and the many strands of anarchism.
For the purpose of this article, however, I will somewhat schematically
locate anarchists and libertarians in that camp which sees the state, rather
than the economy, as the fundamental social structure and the basis of
proletarian oppression. The state was to be overthrown through a workers'
insurrection and not through organization of a workers' party. Marxist
Social Democracy, on the other hand, called on the workers' movement to
organize politically for the conquest of state power. This was to be achieved
through independent workers' parties.6
Among the general arguments put forward to explain the weakness of
the Social Democratic tradition in Mexico, two require some comment.
The absence from Mexico of the mass immigration of European workers
that the Southern Cone countries experienced, it is alleged, denied it the
rich and constantly replenished fund of ideas, strategies, and experiences
that supposedly abounded in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. The mem-
bership of the Partido Socialista Internacional (PSI), forerunner of the Ar-
gentine Communist party, for example, was drawn mainly from Italian,
Spanish, and East European workers. Unfortunately, this argument fails to
take into account that not all countries with large-scale immigration de-
veloped strong socialist movements at the turn of the century; Brazil is one
counterexample.7 It might also be argued that the Mexican labor move-
ment secured some benefit from the absence of a transplanted European
working class bearing the seeds of the discredited Second International. In
practice, the small number of radical European immigrants who settled in
Mexico, nearly all of whom played an important role in the country's labor
movement, came mostly from Spain and reinforced the already existing
vigor of the debate over parliamentary and trade-union participation that raged during the
first three years of the Comintern. Outsise of Mediterranean Europe, the best known example
of this conflict between Marxism and left communism and syndicalism comes from Germany
where the German Communist Party (KPD) split in October 1919 over the issue of partici-
pation in elections and in the Social Democratic trade unions. James Hulse, The Forming of
the Communist International (Stanford, 1964), pp. 151-152.
6. David Fernbach, ed., Karl Marx: The First International and After (London, 1974),
pp. 44-53.
7. For a discussion of the origins of Marxism and communism in Brazil, see Ronald
Chilcote, The Brazilian Communist Party 1922-1972 (New York, 1974), pp. 18-26.
MEXICAN COMMUNIST PARTY, 1910-19 279
libertarian tradition among Mexican workers and artisans. The second gen-
eral argument is somewhat more relevant. The lengthy and increasingly
more repressive Diaz dictatorship undoubtedly erected severe, but not in-
surmountable, obstacles to the fluent transmission of socialist, Marxist, and
anarchist ideology in Mexico.
The dominant ideological strands informing Mexican worker activities
in the forty years before the 1910 Revolution were various versions of
anarchism, libertarianism, and radical liberalism. During the first major
wave of organization of worker societies, from 1862 to 1882, utopian so-
cialism was the order of the day. Figures like Plotino Rhodakanaty, Fran-
cisco Zalacosta, and Santiago Villanueva aligned themselves with the an-
tiauthoritarian Bakuninist members of the International Workingmen's
Association. Not all the socialists involved with early groups like Gran
Circulo de Obreros and La Social, however, espoused similar ideas. Rho-
dakanaty, for example, was a disciple of Charles Fourier and Pierre Joseph
Proudhon and saw his goal as "undoing the relationship betwveen the state
and the economic system, the reorganization of property, the abolition of
politics and political parties, the complete destruction of the feudal system
... this is socialism and this is what we want. "8 He saw the tasks of socialists
as the encouragement of workers' collectives, artisan workshops, and agrar-
ian communes; the future socialist society would be organized on the basis
of a federation of self-governing voluntary organizations.
Meanwhile, the radical wing of the libertarian socialist groups ad-
dressed itself to the task of developing newer strategies for eroding capi-
talism. Workers were urged to go beyond mutualism and to extend their
control over the social environment by forming production cooperatives.
Whatever their individual differences, socialism for these figures meant, as
it did for Julio Lopez Chavez, the leader of the important peasant uprising
of 1868-69, being "an enemy of all governments."9
If Mexican socialists of the late nineteenth century drew upon French
utopian socialism and the antiauthoritarian tradition of Bakunin, is it pos-
sible also to detect Mexican contact with the majority stream of the First
and Second Internationals? Students of anarchism and socialism in nine-
teenth-century Mexico have generally argued the case for there being rel-
atively little contact or even outright oppositioIn. A recent author concludes
that "amongst Mexican anarchists there was a general ignorance of the
writings of Marx. "10 Another student comments: "Unlike nmost nineteenth
8. John Hart, Anarchisnm and the Mexican Working Class (Austin, 1978), p. 25; Gast6n
Garcia Cantu, El socialismo en Mexico (Mexico City, 1969), pp. 171-179.
9. Cited in Hart, Anarchisns, p. 33.
10. Jose Gonzalez Sierra, "Anarquismo y el movimiento sinclical eni M6xico: 1843-1910"
in Primer anuario de estudios historicos de la Universidad Veracruzana (Jalapa, 1977), p.
157.
280 HAHR M MAY I BARRY CARII
century Mexican socialists, Rhodakanaty revealed in his writing some
knowledge of Marxism, indicating both his opposition to it and the fear
that it might succeed.""
The most exhaustive discussion of nineteenth-century socialism in Mex-
ico argues that the Marx-Bakunin conflict was reproduced, if rather faintly,
within the artisan-based Gran Circulo de Obreros, with Francisco Zalacosta
taking the side of the Jura Federation and Juan de Mata Rivero supporting
Marx.'2 The worker press of the 1870s and early 1880s, however, carried
very little news of this great European debate or of the issues that were at
its heart.'3 On the other hand, the growing strength of German Social
Democracy was greeted with approval and on occasion the antistate doc-
trines of men like Zalacosta seem to have been relaxed somewhat. Referring
to the strength of the socialist program in Saxony, the journal La Inter-
nacional commented favorably on the program of confiscation of all capital
by the state in order to form a great "Banco de Avio,"a goal that was
viewed as "an excellent system of regeneration. "'1 The Mexico City daily
press seems to have been as important a source for the socialist press as
private correspondence and news taken from publications received from
Europe.'5 The first discussion of Marx's writings in Mexico occurred in a
series of newspaper articles on his economic writings in 1877. Seven years
later, El Socialista published a translation of the Commiunist Manifesto
in an edition of ten thousand.'6
The second phase of worker/radical activity and organization occurred
between 1900 and 1910, with the development of a more militant and
revolutionary form of anarchism, drawn from Kropotkin and syndicalist
sources. This ideological strand, whose best known focus lay in the Mago-
nista movement, involved the development for the first time of a concerted
and vehemently expressed campaign to secure the dissolution of the Diaz
regime.
It is in this second period that the echoes of Marxist Social Democracy
become less faint. To be sure, it would be wrong to argue that "the ground
was prepared for a deeper penetration of Marxism among Mexican workers
in this period," as one Soviet historian has claimed.'7 There are signls,
11. Hart, Anarchism, p. 35 (emphasis added).

12. Garcia Cantu, Socialismo, pp. 185-186.
13. Ibid.
14. La Internacional, Sept. 15, 1878, p. 4.
15. Reproduction of a letter from the French Socialist party to German socialists oIn the
opening of their eighth congress, La Internacional, Sept. 8, 1878, p. 3.
16. Ermolaev, Naissance, p. 82; Garcia Cant6, Socialismo, p. 197.
17. Ermolaev, Naissance, p. 82. The historian describes the Gran Circulo as haviing been
founded by Mexican Marxists and argues that during the heat of the Diaz repression of the
late 1880s and 1890s, "revolutionaries brought their Marxist idleas to workers, defying repres-
sion and ruthlessly combating anarchists and opportunists."
however, of the emergence of socialist politics among groups of workers

in different areas of Mexico. The capital city of Jalisco, Guadalajara, seems
to have been one of the socialist foci that developed after 1900. In 1904,
a socialist party, the Partido Socialista Obrero (PSO), was founded in the
city by Miguel Mendoza Lopez Schwertfeger, Roque Estrada, Roman Mo-
rales, and J. M. Kerr. Lopez Schwertfeger, a lawyer, had two years earlier
founded a worker organization with the name Sociedad de las Clases Prod-
uctoras.'8 Subsequently, Lopez Schwertfeger established a reputation as an
agrarian specialist with his pamphlet Tierra libre. Roque Estrada at this
time was a student at the law school of the University of Guadalajara and
editor of a short-lived journal, Aurora Social, published by the Socialist
party.'9 About J. M. Kerr little is known; Jacinto Huitron refers to him as
an Esperantist. The fourth founding member of the PSO, Roman Morales,
was a textile worker who had helped establish the Weavers' Union (Union
de Tejedores) in Guadalajara.20
The development of Mexican socialism in this period also owed some-
thing to the activities of the United States Socialist party. The party gave
its strong support to the struggles of anti-Diaz forces on a number of
occasions during the years following the strike at the Cananea copper mines
in northern Sonora. The 1908 National Convention of the party condemned
the role of Mexican and United States government officials in the suppres-
sion of this strike and pledged its support for the defense of imprisoned
Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) militants like Antonio Villarreal, Li-
18. In Tierra Libre, L6pez Schwertfeger outlined a revolutionlary program for the so-
cialist transformation of Mexican society, including a call for the abolition of private property
and for the abandonment of purely legal strikes. Between 1914 and 1916 he was one of
Zapata's collaborators and minister of justice in the Convention government. During the
Obreg6n presidency, he directed the Comisi6n Nacional Agraria andl in 1958 he stood as the
presidential candidate of the Mexican Communist party.
19. International Socialist Review (New York), 10 (Apr. 1905), p. 634; Jacinto Huitr6n,
Orfgenes e historia del movimiento obrero en Mexico (Mexico City, 1974), pp. 103-104.
According to the anonymous correspondent of the International Socialist Revieu), "Aurora
Social's socialism is the real thing." The paper appeared only once, in February 1905, after
which the state authorities immediately arrested and banished Estrada from the state, in spite
of protests from his fellow students. Several years later, Estrada joined the Maderista antire-
electionist movement and became Francisco Madero's secretary.
20. Early in January 1906, the League met to celebrate the first anniversary of "Red
Sunday" in Russia, a reference to the massacre of workers on January 22, which was one of
the detonators of the 1905 Revolution. Its public act was a significant pointer to the socialist
internationalism of the Morales group. The Mexican correspondent of the International So-
cialist Review described the meeting as "the first public socialist gathering ever held in the
Republic." The suppression of Aurora Social by the authorities does not seem to have deterred
Morales. Later in 1905, he and a group of comrades began publishing a new paper, El Obrero
Socialista, linked to the Socialist League of Guadalajara (Liga Socialista de Guadalajara), a
small group that held regular weekly meetings. International Socialist Reviewv, 8 (Feb. 1906),
p. 498.
brado Rivera, and Juan Sarabia, who had been a member of the Socialist
party local in Los Angeles since 1906. The party claimed members in
Mexico, but gave no details about whether they were North American
citizens resident in Mexico or Mexicans.2'
The most significant development in this period was not to bear fruit
until shortly after the overthrow of Diaz. The Bismarckian antisocialist
laws stimulated the immigration of many German Social Democrats to
Latin America. Most went to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, but a few made
their homes in Mexico, the most prominent being Paul Zierold. A piano
tuner by profession, Zierold was born in Leipzig and left Germany in 1889
at the age of twenty-five.22 His militancy in the German Social Democratic
party and familiarity with Marxism earned him the title of "Maestro"
among the Mexican workers and intellectuals who in August 1911 formed
the Partido Obrero Socialista de la Rep'iblica Mexicana (POS). Almost
nothing is known of Zierold's life and activities before the Revolution,
although it is not unreasonable to assume that he cultivated good relations
with a group of Social Democratic brewery workers of German origin
living in Toluca, the capital of the state of Mexico, who gave their support
to the Socialist party in 1911 and 1912. An article by Zierold in the German
Social Democratic party magazine Die Neue Zeit in mid-1911 attests to
Zierold's continuing links with the European socialist movement, although
it contains only the briefest and most general of references to the Mexican
working class and its organizations.23
Eleven men founded the POS in August 1911. Apart from Zierold, the
founding members included a Mexico City lawyer, Adolfo Santibanez,
secretary of the party and an activist in socialist politics right up until the
end of 1919; Fredesvindo E. Alonso, a Cuban printing worker; and Juan
Humboldt, a German colleague of Zierold.24 The other founding members
included a government official and a mechanic. Apart from the brewery
workers at Toluca, the party had only a precarious link with the Mexican
working class, and its membership at no point exceeded fifty individuals.25
The party edited twenty issues of its organ El Socialista, which began
publication in March 1912 and sold two thousand copies per issue.26 For
21. Proceedings of the National Convention of the Socialist Party, Chicago, May 10-17,
1908, Socialist Party Papers (hereinafter cited as SPP-microfilm edition), reel 76, pp. 69,
103, 105.
22. El Machete, July 9, 1938.
23. Die Neue Zeit, June 16, 1911.
24. Other German residents in Mexico appear in the pages of the POS press from time
to time. See, for example, the articles by Gerardo Kroncke on the German Social Democratic
party in El Socialista, June 16, 1911.
25. Mario Gill, "Primera demonstraci6n del 1 de mayo en Mexico," El Machete, May 1,
1938.
several months before that, POS articles and news had appeared regularly
in the pages of a small Mexico City daily, El Paladfn.
In spite of the party's title and Zierold's orthodox socialist past, it is no
easy task to decode the political and theoretical position of the POS and
its members. A substantial number of them were much closer to anarchist
and libertarian positions than to Social Democracy and "scientific social-
ism." At least seven members, including Luis Mendez, Jacinto Huitr6n,
and Eloy Armenta, left the party in June 1912 to form the Grupo "Luz,"
a rationalist and libertarian education center that was the nucleus around
which the Casa del Obrero Mundial was formed later that year.27 Colom-
bian anarchist Juan Francisco Moncaleano played a part in splitting the
POS with his criticisms of the socialist demand for direct working-class
possession of the state's political power.
The theoretical orientation of the POS reflected the entire range of
radical thought current in Mexico at the time. The party's program was
copied with very few modifications from that of the Spanish Socialist party,
the most revisionist of the European socialist parties. It called for the direct
exercise of political power by the working class and the socialization of all
means of production-land, mines, transport, and industry. To achieve this
goal, the Mexican working class was urged to intervene "in all questions
arising from the exercise of government." The preamble to the POS pro-
gram disassociated the party from the "so-called socialist movement" of
Ricardo Flores Magon and his supporters.28 In spite of the early support it
received from libertarian figures, the POS strongly opposed the bitterly
hostile attitude of the Magonistas toward the Madero government and the
PLM's rejection in principle of the value for socialists of parliamentary
activity.
The POS included among its members renegade Magonistas like L'azaro
Gutierrez de Lara, who was expelled from the PLM because of his sym-
pathies for Madero and for the reformist American Federation of Labor.
Gutierrez de Lara in fact represented the POS at the Indianapolis congress
of the United States Socialist party in May 1912,29 Other members, how-
ever, were clearly still working within the cultural and ideological frame-
26. El Socialista, June 15, 1912. Among the paper's correspondents were Ciro EsqUivel,
Francisco Sarabia, Lazaro Gutierrez de Lara, Adolfo Santibaniez, and Z. CArdeinas.
27. Huitr6n, Orfgenes, p. 194; Francisco C6rdova Perez, "El movimiento ainarquista en
Mexico (1911-1921)" (Tesis de Licenciatura, Facultad de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales, UNAM,
1971), p. 36.
28. "Programa y bases constitutivas del Partido Socialista Obrero de la Republica," El
Paladfn, Jan. 11, 1912; El Machete, May 1, 1938.
29. Proceedings of the National Convention of the Socialist Party, May 12-18, 1912,
SPP-microfilm edition, reel 76, pp. 37-39.
284 HAHR I MAY I BARRY CARR
work of anarchist thought. When the party purchased books and pamphlets
to help in the education of its members, the material acquired included a
collection of the writings of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and other anarchist au-
thors.30 The POS, weak though it may have been, saw itself as part of the
international socialist movement. The electoral successes of the German
Social Democratic party were greeted enthusiastically in the POS columns
of El Paladin. In a congratulatory message sent to the German party in
January 1912, the POS proclaimed: "Our masters in philosophy have been
Germans and German philosophy produced scientific socialism.""3 United
States leftist journals and sources provided socialist material that the POS
translated for its Mexican readers and Zierold corresponded with the In-
ternational Socialist Review, an organ of the United States Socialist party.32
The pages of El Socialista and El Paladin carried articles on socialist
topics and discussed international politics from a socialist perspective with
columns written by Adolfo Santibanez and Zenaido C'ardenas, while the
most prolific contributor was Paul Zierold himself. His contributions in-
cluded a large number of translations from English and German-pam-
phlets like The ABC of Socialism by H. P. Moyer, The Great Chinese
Revolution by the Russian orientalist, Menshevik Mikhail Pavlovitch, and
articles by Otto Bauer, the most important theorist of Austrian Social De-
mocracy.33 In May 1913 El Paladfn carried two articles summarizing En-
gels's description of the arguments of Das Kapital.34
In spite of the undoubted influence of anarchist figures, the POS com-
bated a fundamentalist opposition to parliamentarism, although it Nwarned
its readers about reformist illusions concerning what could be achieved
through parliamentary action. Writers for El Socialista cautioned against
belief in the efficacy of parliamentarism as a long-term solution for Nwork-
ers' problems, but urged readers to "elect people of your own class" and
to support deputies as long as they articulated the interests of the masses. :35
The party repeatedly sought to emphasize the chasm that separated its
views from those of the Magonista liberals. Government and people alike
must not confuse Magonism with true socialism. "Socialists form political
parties and are respected and feared by bourgeois political groups. "36 These
sentiments echoed very accurately the reformist and parliamentarist posi-
tions both of the Spanish Socialist party and of the majority core of the
30. El Machete, May 1, 1938.

31. "Los socialistas mexicanos se dirigen a los alemanes," El Paladfn, Jan. 18, 1912.
32. International Socialist Reviewv, 11 (May 1913), pp. 795-796.
33. El Paladin, June 30, 1912, Feb. 6, 1913; El Socialista, Sept. 30, 1912.
34. El Paladfn, May 4, 8, 1913.
35. El Socialista, July 20, 1912. See also the editorial by Z. Cardenas in El Socialista,
Apr. 27, 1912.
36. El Socialista, Sept. 30, 1912.
MEXICAN COMMUNIST PARTY, 1910-19 2 85
German Social Democratic party of the immediate pre-First World War

period.
After the murder of Francisco Madero in 1913, the POS faded from
view. According to Rafael Perez Taylor, the party decided to merge with
the Casa del Obrero Mundial after realizing hoNw limited its achievements
had been in its first year and a half of existence. :37 The Mexican Socialist
party seems to have been organizing activities and lectures in Mexico City
under its own name, however, right through 1915.38 During the repeated
occupations and evacuations of Mexico City by Constitutionalist and Con-
vention forces in late 1914 and the first half of 1915, the sympathies of the
POS leaders leaned heavily toward the Convention forces of Villa and
Zapata, in whose ranks could be found such pioneer Mexican socialists as
Miguel Mendoza Lopez Schwertfeger. Paul Zierold, for example, in an
article for the International Socialist Review in early 1915, toldc United
States readers that the Convention will "clear the way for Socialism since
Villa and Zapata are more than half Socialists."39 This position of the POS
was in sharp contrast to the strong pro-Constitutionalist sympathies of a
large part of the Casa del Obrero Mundial.
While the POS represented probably the most orthodox focus of "sci-
entific socialism" and Second International Marxism in Mexico during the
early years of the Mexican Revolution, the image of socialism projected in
the writings of the many nonparty thinkers and teachers who styled them-
selves socialists still encompassed a broad spectrum of often contradictory
radical social theories and positions. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than
in the writings of Rafael Perez Taylor. Born in Tacuba in 1887, Perez
Taylor was an ardent supporter of Madero's antireelectionist campaign arci
a frequent speaker at meetings of the Casa del Obrero Munclial during
1912 and 1913, although his attempt to organize railway workers to fight
against the United States occupation of Veracruz during the Huerta pres-
idency secured his expulsion from the Casa.40
His El socialismo en Mexico, published in 1913, is a survey of European
socialist thinkers with critical commentaries and an evaluation of their
relevance to the Mexican situation. The socialist writers reviewed are al-
most entirely outside the Marxist tradition (like economist Charles Gide
and social theorist Gustave le Bon). Socialists in Mexico are characterizecl
mostly as freethinkers and Masons struggling to dispel religious supersti-
37. Rafael Perez Taylor, El socialismo en Mexico (Mexico City, 1913), p. 73.
38. El Monitor, May 10, 1915, provides news of a public lecture given in Mexico City
by Adolfo Santibainez and Z. Cardenas.
39. International Socialist Review, 8 (Feb. 1915), p. 508.
40. Rosendo Salazar, Historia de las luchas proletarias de Mexico 1930-36 (Mexico City,
1956), p. 257.
286 HAHR I MAY | BARRY CARR
tions. The form of socialism that Perez Taylor saw as most appropriate to
Mexican conditions was cooperatism since it emphasized the mutual inter-
dependence of worker and capitalist within the same organization. "The
problem in Mexico is the question of mutual concessions-let the employer
concern himself for the worker and the worker for the employer; this is
the psychological basis of our socialism. "41 Just as did the "cultured artis-
ans" (artesanos cultos) of the Casa del Obrero Mundial, Perez Taylor saw
illiteracy and fanaticism as the dominant characteristics of the Mexican
working poor. "Radical socialism," he argued, would not be possible until
full literacy was achieved.42 Radical socialists, Perez Taylor conceded, would
accuse him of trying to encourage workers to believe in bourgeois insti-
tutions that try to capture the working class through material concessions
and by encouraging a taste for savings and prosperity.43
On the Marxian strand of socialism there is very little comment. Marx
is mentioned twice briefly in a passage criticizing the philosophical basis
of collectivism, defined as the progressive socialization of the instruments
of production, and he is taken to task for his view that labor is the sole
measure of value and for dismissing the relevance of such concepts as
scarcity and utility.44
The vagueness and heterogeneity of Perez Taylor's reading of socialist
ideas is by no means exceptional in this period. In Yucatan, which in the
early 1920s became a center of radical social and political experimentation
associated with Felipe Carrillo Puerto, socialism was interpreted in many
varied and contradictory ways. In June 1916, the second year of General
Salvador Alvarado's governorship, a group of radical workers in the Yu-
catan capital, Merida, established the Partido Socialista Obrero. Although
it is unclear how much the party's creation owed to Alvarado's own polit-
ical interests in his struggle against the state's commercial and agricultural
oligarchy, the party quickly became an enthusiastic supporter of the Al-
varado government.45 During the party's early years (1916-18) socialism
was an umbrella concept, encompassing a wide range of ideological posi-
tions.
Frequently it was identified with Saint-Simon's notion of industri-

alism and progress. Socialism is identified with hard work. This is
41. Perez Taylor, Socialismo, p. 42.

42. Ibid., p. 54.
43. Ibid., p. 26.
44. Ibid., pp. 12-13.
45. Francisco J. Paoli and Enrique Montalvo, El socialismo olvidado de Yucatdn (Mexico
City, 1977), pp. 50-52. The PSO changed its name in February to Partido Socialista de
Yucatan.
a moralizing ideology, which facilitates alliances between the

bourgeoisie and the wage-earning masses.46
Elsewhere in Mexico, hundreds of soldiers and politicians proclaimed

their socialist faith, disseminating often grotesque versions of socialist ideas
concealing what were essentially populist and statist positions. David G.
Berlanga, a Constitutionalist educationalist and journalist who had spent
some time in Europe and who was killed on Villa's orders while serving as
a delegate to the Convention of Aguascalientes, told an audience in August
1914:
socialism aims at the socialization of products. This means govern-

ment inspection of workshops, factories, mines, haciendas, and all
commercial establishments that contribute to the acquisition of
wealth. In other words, the government looks after the interests of
the wage worker and establishes fair relations between capital and
labor.47
Berlanga's use of the term socialism reflected the widely held view that
the revolutionary state's supreme goal was the establishment of social peace
and collective well-being through a rigorously enforced class equilibrium.
Alvarado expressed this populist conception of socialism very well.
Capital, which is simply accumulated labor, Nwill be in perfect bal-

ance with labor because each needs the other as the indispensable
basis for the prosperity of everyone. The state has the solution in
its hands-state socialism. Its basis is universal cooperation.48
Among students and intellectuals socialism was an important topic of

debate. Indeed, the widespread use of socialist terms and labels during this
period suggests the growing prestige of radical thought in a world where
the certainties of pre-1914 capitalist civilization were rapidly being un-
dermined by revolutionary agitation and world war. At the same time the
increasingly common use of "socialist" and "socialism" served to differ-
entiate varying degrees of commitment to the radical and liberal content
of the Mexican Revolution. As Rafael Nieto put it in his Polemica laborista:
In France liberals with conservative allegiances are known as so-

cialist radicals and socialist republicans. It is hardly strange then
that in Mexico conservatives have labeled themselves cooperatistas
and that all those who reject the reactionary label believe them-
selves to be socialists,49
46. Ibid., p. 62.

47. Jesus Silva Herzog, El mexicano y su morada (Mexico City, 1960), p. 48.
48. Salvador Alvarado, La reconstruccion de Mexico. Un nmensaje a los pueblos de
Ame'rica, 3 vols. (Mexico City, 1919), III, 91, 94. Cited by Arnaldo C6rdova in La ideologia
de la revoluci6n mexicana (Mexico City, 1973), p. 211.
49. Rafael Nieto, Pole'mica laborista. Mds alld de la patria (Mexico City, 1975), p. 41.
288 HAHR M POAY I BARRY CARR
When the Sociedad de Conferencias y Conciertos was founded in Sep-

tember 1916 to continue the work of the humanist Ateneo de la Juventud,
the first series of lectures included two presentations centered on socialist
issues.50 In spite of the stated goals of organizations such as the Sociedad-
to bring art, culture, and ideas to "the people"-this kind of discussion of
socialism seems to have taken place with minimal contact with the popular
masses of the large cities. In fact, most of the young intellectuals, mystics,
and poets who helped form the Sociedaci, the "seven wise men" (siete
sabios), were insistent on proclaiming their apolitical status. Only Vicente
Lombardo Toledano directed his attention toward educational work among
trade unions in 1917 and 1918.5' Moreover, the attempts of the youthful
revolutionary intelligentsia to deal with the social problems of the times
were handicapped by a contemporary environment that lacked any ob-
vious legitimate source of theoretical inspiration and guidance. The posi-
tivists of the Porfirian oligarchy were already discredited, yet no system of
ideas had replaced either classic liberalism or positivism. There were few,
if any, scholars familiar with socialist thought, which made contact with
socialist ideas for many university students irregular and arbitrary. The
young Manuel G6Omez Morin, later a distinguished conservative thinker,
recalled how the titular professor of economics at the National University
lectured on socialism by reading from Anatole France.52
At the beginning of 1917, therefore, it could not be said that Marxism
was widely disseminated among Mexican workers and intellectuals or that
"scientific socialism" was a major current within the ideological trajectory
of the labor movement. Anarchist and libertarian precepts still dominated
the most radical sector of a working class that was still only partially or-
ganized and in which liberalism and mutualism were still significant influ-
ences. In 1916 the best organized section of the workers' movement had
been thrown into disarray. The defeat of the general strike in Mexico City
that year and the dissolution of the Casa del Obrero Mundial by the Ca-
rranza government stimulated a rethinking of workers' strategy that would
bear fruit in the next three years in the formation of two clear currents
within the working class of the central core of the country-the reformist
trade unionism of the Confederacion Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM),
founded in March 1918, and the temporary merging of anarchist-syndi-
calist and Marxist currents in the Gran Cuerpo Central de Trabajadores
and the Mexican Communist party during 1919.
50. Enrique Krauze, Caudillos culturales de la revoluci6n mexicana (Mexico City, 1976),
p. 72. The two lectures were by Antonio Castro Leal on "%Qoe es el socialismo?" and by
Vicente Lombardo Toledano on "Posibilidades clel socialismo en Mexico."
51. Ibid., p. 79.
52. Ibicl., p. 91.
The Formation of the Mexica

The three years preceding the founding of the Partido Comunista Mex-
icano (PCM) in November 1919 were years of great activity on the Mexican
left in which the repercussions of the Casa del Obrero-Constitutionalist
confrontation were still being felt. The CROM very rapidly adopted an
openly reformist position, despite the lingering presence of anarchist over-
tones in the organization's title and constitution. The CROM hoped to win
the support of powerful patrons for its activities, but the growing hostility
of the Carranza government toward labor obliged the labor federation's
leader, Luis Morones, and his followers to seek newer, friendlier patrons
during 1919 with the help of its political wing, the Partido Laborista. The
Partido Laborista attracted the attention and support of Generals Alvaro
Obregon and Plutarco Elias Calles, leading members of what was to be-
come known as the Sonoran Dynasty, and it rallied behind the Agua Prieta
revolt of 1920, which destroyed the Carranza administration and inaugu-
rated the rule of "the northerners" for the next eight years.
Another pointer to the CROM's future orientation, and a source of
conflict with more radical unions, were the close links that the organization
established with the American Federation of Labor. During World War I,
the AFL had become totally identified with the military aims of the United
States government; it was also the prime mover in attempts to establish a
"moderate" antisocialist Latin American labor federation, with the Mexi-
can CROM as its key affiliate.
The bulk of the organized working class at this period, however, still
operated within the ideological framework of mutualist or libertarian ideas.
Large numbers of workers were alienated by the CROM's orientation and,
in particular, its embracing of the strategy of "accion nntiitiple," a com-
bination of "direct" industrial action with intervention in the political
arena. At the end of 1918 some of these discontents established a new labor
organization, which has gone almost unnoticed by historians of the Mexican
labor movement, the Gran Cuerpo Central de Trabajadores. Heavily ori-
ented toward Mexico City workers, the Gran Cuerpo embraced the most
staunchly independent and militant workers of the capital city and its
southern suburbs, many of whom would, in February 1921, find their way
to the Confederacion General de Trabajadores (CGT). The Gran Cuerpo
drew support from bakers, tramway workers and telephone company em-
ployees (both unions very active in late 1914 and 1915), chauffeurs, and
certain sections of the textile workers' movements of the Federal District.
It also established close links with the old Mexican Socialist party, which
had taken a new lease on life in January 1918.53
53. El Socialista, Oct. 10, 1918. Nearly all the tinions affiliated with the Gran Ctierpo
operated in foreign-controlled enterprises.
290 HAHR I MAY I BARIRY CARS
Clearly, no discussion of the formation of Latin American communism
can take place without consideration of the international conjuncture in-
augurated by the Russian Revolution, yet the few treatments of this theme
that exist are strangely schematic and brief. News of the 1917 revolutions
arrived in Mexico through the Spanish radical press (Tierra y Libertad of
Barcelona, for example) and through the often distorted accounts appear-
ing in the daily press.54 The anarchist orientation of most of the radical
workers did not at all dim enthusiasm for the momentous developments
in the young Soviet state.55 The revolutionary events were simply given an
interpretation that accorded with anarchist and syndicalist beliefs. The
Mexican radical press placed particular emphasis upon the soviet, or work-
ers' council, as the most characteristic and significant institution created
by the revolutionary upsurge. For Mexican anarchists, the Russian Revo-
lution was a magnificent example of "direct action" (accion directa) car-
ried out by an active minority with the familiar anarchist and libertarian
slogans of antimilitarism, individual freedom, and the smashing of the
state. The world was witnessing a spontaneous uprising by the masses made
desperate by the miseries of war. Russia had indeed become the "prole-
tariat in arms" and to a certain extent the distortions of the bourgeois press
actually encouraged these attempts to see the Bolshevik revolution as the
incarnation of the anarchist goal of revolucion social. The Mexican radi-
cals' response to revolutionary developments in Russia almost exactly echoed
the response of many syndicalists and anarchists in Spain and throughout
Europe during the immediate postwar years.56
The entry of the United States into the war in April 1917 was another
of the influences that reshaped the course of Mexican radicalism and so-
cialism. Attempts by the Wilson administration to alter the neutral stance
of the Carranza government aroused increasing Mexican resentment of
bullying interference by a powerful neighbor. The aggressive policies of
the United States sharpened the hostility, in particular, of radical and
nationalist opinion in Mexico. Its response took the form either of strident
neutralism or of antiimperialism, sometimes accompanied by sentiments
favorable to German power, which was viewed as a potential counter-
weight to the hegemonic pretensions of the United States.57
54. Luz frequently reprinted editorials ancl news items from Tierra y Libertad. See, for
example, Feb. 20, 27, 1917.
55. A. P. de Araujo, "Hacia la emancipaci6n," Luz, Dec. 25, 1918.
56. Gerald Meaker, The Revolutionary Left in Spain, 1914-1923 (Stanford, 1974). For
a similar response among the Hungarian left, see Rtidolf Tokes, Bela Kuin and the Hungarian
Soviet Republic (New York, 1967), p. 37. For Brazilian responses to the Russian Revolution
showing much the same tone, see Astrojilclo Pereira, Formaqdo do PCB 1922-1928 (Lisbonl,
1976), pp. 61-63.
57. Friedrich Katz, Deutschland, Dfaz und die mexikanische Revolution (Berlini, 1964),
pp. 467-469.
The United States declaration of war had other effects on Mexico. Many
hundreds who opposed United States entry into the armed conflict crossed
the Rio Grande. Perhaps only a few dozen of the hundreds of "slackers"
who made their way to Mexico had been involved in socialist and left-
wing activities in the United States. Some of them, like Irving Granich
(later Mike Gold), Carleton Beals, Charles Philips (later Manuel Gomez, a
leading member of the Communist party of the United States), and the
brilliant cartoonist of The Masses, Henryd Glintenkampf, found their way
by accident as much as by design into the world of the Mexican worker
and socialist movement from which the Mexican Communist party emerged
at the end of 1919.
Mexico also provided a temporary home for protestors of a different
kind-representatives of the Indian anticolonial movement, which had
gathered considerable strength in North America in the decade before
1917.58 The close vigilance by British and United States intelligence of the
activities of the Indian antiimperialists, fueled by knowledge of the Ger-
man connections of a section of the movement, brought several "Hindu"
nationalists to Mexico in 1917 and 1918.59 One of the Indians, the Bengali
M. N. Roy, was to play an important role not only in the birth of Mexican
communism, but in the evolution of Comintern policy on colonial questions
in the 1920s.60
Roy arrived in Mexico in June 1917 with his North American wife,
Evelyn Trent, who made contact with Mexican feminist groups and helped
found the Consejo Feminista Mexicano in the second half of 1919.61 Roy's
anticolonial nationalism had gradually taken on a socialist character in the
last months of his stay in New York; and on his arrival in Mexico City, he
58. On the Indian nationalist movement in the United States, see Kalyan Kumar Baner-
jee, Indian Freedom, Movement Revolutionaries in America (Calcutta, 1969); L. P. Mathur,
Indian Revolutionary Movements in the United States (New Delhi, 1960); Thomas G. Fraser,
"Germany and Indian Revolution, 1914-1918," Journal of Contemporary History, 12 (Apr.
1977), 255-272.
59. When the United States entered the war, the Indian nationalists fled to Mexico, as
did the leading German intelligence agents in the United States, although there is Ino reason
to believe that these movements were coordinatecl. The links between certain of the nation-
alists and German intelligence were maintained in Mexico for a little while, although it is
clear that they were of little use to the Germain war effort and constituted a rich source of
funds for anticolonial agitation. Roy used some of the money to finance the socialist press in
Mexico. See M. N. Roy, Memoirs (Bombay, 1964), pp. 65-72.
60. There were at least five important Indian revolutionaries in Mexico-Dhirendra Nath
Sen, Sailendranath Ghosh, J. N. Sanyal, Herambalal Gupta, and Manabendra Nath Roy. For
Roy's activities in Mexico, see Arnold Robertson to R. M. Campbell, London, Oct. 31, 1917;
J. P. to Major Wallinger, Jan. 14, 1918, British Foreign Office 371, Public Record Office,
London (hereinafter cited as FO 371), 3069/21776; 2423/43175.
61. For details of the foundation and activities of the Consejo Feminista Mexicano, see
El Monitor Republicano, Nov. 10, 16, 18, 24; Dec. 26, 1919.
292 HAHR | MAY B3ARRY CARR
slowly established contact with the recently revived Mexican Socialist par-
ty, whose journal he helped refinance by early 1919.62
Finally, the strategic location of Mexico on the borders of the United
States and the worldwide impact of the social and agrarian radicalism of
the Mexican Revolution attracted the admiration and attention of sections
of the European left and in particular of the newly formed Third Inter-
national. Mikhail Borodin, a Comintern agent who visited Mexico in late
1919, was only the first of a number of Comintern and communist figures
who left their mark on the development of Mexican communism.63
The National Socialist Congress and the Foundation of the PCM
The most important step toward the creation of a Mexican Communist

party was taken by the National Socialist Congress of August-September
1919. The meeting was called by the Mexican Socialist party, one of the
few organizations related to the Marxist and Social Democratic tradition,
although, as we have already seen, its relationship to that tradition was
highly ambiguous. After several years of inactivity, the party reemerged
at the end of 1917 under the leadership of Licenciaclo Adolfo SantibaTlez
and Francisco Cervantes Lopez. SantibanIez was a middle-aged lawyer who
had long specialized in cases involving workers. He had served the Zapa-
tista-Villista Convention government during 1915 and had spoken in the
defense of the Casa del Obrero Mundial workers put on trial during the
1916 general strike in Mexico City.64 The party published a journal, El
Socialista, which began circulating some time in 1917 oIn a weekly, then
a monthly, basis, but financial problems forced it to suspend publication
at the end of 1918.65 According to M. N. Roy, his financial assistance
enabled the journal to resume publication in an expanded form in January
1919.
Some idea of the party's ideology and style can be glimpsed from El
Socialista's contents. At the level of international politics, the paper aligned
itself with European Social Democratic movements, drawing news and
articles from papers like L'Humanite (French Socialist party) and Vor-
wdrts (the Berlin daily of the German Social Democratic party). An im-
62. Roy, Memoirs, pp. 74-90. Roy was also a prolific lecturer and writer on ainticoloinial
questioins, and in 1918 he founded an association to promote the cause of Indian iindepeindence,
the Liga Interinacional "Amigos de la Iindia." C. Cummins to Foreign Office, London, Feb.
14, 1919, FO 371, 4243/38521; M. N. Roy, AIgunas opiniones sobre la adminlistraci6no bri-
tdnica de la India (Mexico City, n.d.).
63. Other figures associated with the Cominiterin or wvith other communiist parties who
visited Mexico between 1919 and 1924 were Sen Katayama, Eclgar Woog, Louis Fraina, aind
Bertram Wolfe.
64. Archivo General de la Naci6n (Mexico City) (hereinafter cited as AGN), Secretaria
de Justicia, leg. 3-1, exp. 410.
65. The first issue the author has founid is no. 29, dated Aug. 15, 1918.
portant theme was the Russian Revolution, which received the full sym-
pathy of the journal's writers. The sense of the party's intellectual isolation,
however, can be judged from comments made by Francisco Cervantes
Lopez in April 1919. In an article for El Socialista, he argued that socialist
doctrine was almost unknown in Mexico where illiteracy was a severe
problem and where anarchism had its grip on workers. Ignorance of so-
cialist theory and strategy was made worse by a lack of appropriate reading
materials. "The books that come from Spain are translations of works pub-
lished more than a century ago in France, Germany, and Russia," he
concluded, which made confusion of anarchist and socialist ideas easier.66
In fact, Cervantes Lopez was exaggerating his case somewhat. During 1919
a number of pamphlets celebrating the Soviet experience circulated among
Mexican workers, including a translation of the Soviet constitution made
by the Mexican syndicalist Vicente Ferrer Aldana and published under the
title Carta magna bolsheviki.67 Like a great deal of the information about
European socialist and communist events, this particular pamphlet was
translated from material published in the United States.
Roy, recalling meetings during 1918 in which he spoke to Santibaniez
and members of the executive committee of the party, noted that, with
the exception of "the very bourgeois Santib'aniez and one school teacher,"
all the executive members were "full-blooded proletarians. "68 It is doubt-
ful, though, that the party had more than a couple of dozen active mem-
bers, although it probably received the support of several hundred sym-
pathizers and readers of its journal. For a start, the Socialist party was not
formally linked with worker sindicatos, although through the activities of
a new recruit at the end of 1918, Jose Allen, it established close contact
with the Gran Cuerpo Central de Trabajadores.
Jose Allen would subsequently become the first secretary-general of the
Mexican Communist party, yet in early 1919 his links both with the Mex-
ican labor movement and with the Socialist party were of very recent
origin. An electrical engineer by training, Allen, as his name would suggest,
was descended from an Anglo-American family; his grandfather had been
an engineer in the United States Army who settled in Mexico in the 1840s.
Although Allen was later to claim that he had long been active in student
66. Francisco Cervantes L6pez, "Socialismo," Gale's Magazine, Apr. 19, 1919, p. 6.
67. Vicente Ferrer Aldana, Carta magna bolsheviki: Edici6n de propaganda (Mexico
City, n.d.).
68. Roy, Memoirs, pp. 78-79. By December 1918, Roy claimed that the party was able
to gather together several hundred delegates from around the republic for its first national
conference. Like so much else in Roy's Memoirs, the details of this 1918 conference are
impossible to verify from other sources. As Boris Goldeinberg has pointed out, at no poiInt does
Roy ever explicitly refer to the most important confereince the party held-the National
Socialist Conference of August-September 1919. Boris Goldenberg, Kommunismtus in La-
teinamerika (Berlin, 1971), p. 571 n.59.
and worker politics, there is no evidence of his having participated in labor

or socialist activities before the end of 1918.69 In fact Allen was, by his
own admission, an agent of United States Military Intelligence, having been
recruited while working in one of the Mexican government's military man-
ufacturing plants by Major R. M. Campbell, the military attache of the
United States Embassy in Mexico City in late 1918. After supplying infor-
mation on the country's military facilities, Allen was persuaded to join the
Gran Cuerpo Central de Trabajadores and to insert himself into the world
of radical worker politics.70 Within a very short period he had won the
confidence of leading members of the Gran Cuerpo leadership and of the
Mexican Socialist party and his regular weekly reports to the United States
Embassy provide a valuable picture of life among the anti-CROM workers
of Mexico City in the years immediately following the end of the First
World War.7'
In spite of the explicitly antianarchist tone of the Socialist party's pub-
lications, its working-class membership was still deeply imbued with an-
archist and syndicalist ideas, to the point of refusing to endorse concrete
action in protest of United States threats to Mexico over the implications
of the 1917 Constitution. Whatever doubts some party members had about
the appropriate way of responding to these serious conflicts, by the middle
of 1919 the Mexican Socialist party had taken up a firm position against
British and United States imperialism, using a militant language that showed
the influence of M. N. Roy. On July 11, 1919, the party adopted a resolution
protesting Washington's intention to deport Indian nationalists and rec-
ognizing the right of the Indian people to rebel against British colonial-
ism.72 Early in August, the Socialist party furiously denounced rumored
United States intervention in Mexican affairs and called on the United
States proletariat to "organize for concerted economic action to prevent
intervention." Mexican workers were urged to give full support to the
69. Jose Allen published an account of the origins of the PCM in 1944 under the pseuci-
onym of Alejo Lens. Allen describes himself as "a mature man, steeped in the precursor
struggles of the Revolution since his days as a student." La Voz de Mexico, Sept. 15, 1944.
70. For details of Allen's activities for the United States Embassy in Mexico City, see
National Archives, Washington, D.C., Military Intelligence Division, Record Group 165 (here-
inafter cited as NA: RG 165), 10640-1402. For Allen's confession in 1921, see copy of his
interrogation in National Archives, Washington, D.C., Bureau of Investigation of the De-
partment of Justice (hereinafter cited as NA: BIDJ), B.S. 130, 202600-1913.
71. Allen was arrested and deported from Mexico to the United States in May 1921
during a famous redada of "foreign" radicals carried out by the Obreg6n government.
72. Roy, Memoirs, pp. 79-80. According to Roy, the secretary of the Socialist party
remarked, "What has the proletariat to do in the quarrel between the bourgeois govern-
ments-we are indifferent." The most radical sectors of the Mexico City working class con-
centrated within the Gran Cuerpo Central were also divided over the issue of armed resistance
to United States military threats to Mexico. Jose Allen, Mar. 11, 1919, NA: RG 165, 10640-
1402/48. New York Call, July 26, 1919.
Carranza government's defense of Mexican interests, although it was made

clear that this did not involve a categorical endorsement of the Mexican
government.73 The language of the Socialist party resolution displayed a
militant internationalism and an identification of Mexico's interests with
those of other colonial and semicolonial countries burdened by imperial-
ism.74
Meanwhile in Europe, amid the ruins of the collapsed Second Inter-
national, the first steps in the formation of a new "International of Action"
were taken in March 1919 at the inaugural congress in Moscow of the
Comintern. The invitations to the founding congress had been issued at
the end of January to all parties opposed to the Second International.
Interestingly, few of the parties or groups named in the invitation as eli-
gible to attend the congress were located outside of Europe and these were
small United States and Japanese socialist groups.75 In the end only a few
delegates attended the inaugural congress of the Third International and
a majority of these were from Russia or from the small Eastern European
states bordering Soviet Russia.
The Manifesto of the Communist International to the Proletariat of
the Entire World was imbued with the prevailing revolutionary optimism
of the time and called on workers of all countries to unite under the
communist banner. Although it made specific reference to conditions in
the colonial countries of Asia and Africa, urging struggle for proletarian
revolution rather than mere liberation from colonial rule, there was no
reference to Central or South America and, with the exception of a delegate
from the United States, the Americas were unrepresented at the congress.
Neither were there Latin American representatives at the Baku conference
on colonial questions, held shortly after the close of the Comintern's first
congress, although the United States delegate, John Reed, included a num-
ber of references to Mexico in his speech to the meeting.76
Following the Comintern's call and under pressure from an increasingly
radicalized workers' movement, new communist parties were formed in
several European countries and the struggle among left, centrist, and right
factions of socialist parties intensified. Certain key figures within the Mex-
73. New York Call, Aug. 12, 20, 1919.

74. Proceedings of the National Congress of the Socialist Party of America, 1919,
Session of Aug. 3, pp. 18-20 (Glen Rock, N.J., n.d.).
75. E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, 3 vols. (London, 1966), III, 126:
"Bolshevik thoughts of revolution were still confined mainly to Europe; and the principal
appeal was to groups to revolt against the Secoind International."
76. Jane Degras, ed., The Communist International 1919-1943, 2 vols. (Londoil, 1956),
I, 38-47. The American communist Louis Fraiina did make a number of references to United
States-Mexican relations during his intervention at the Comintern congress. National Archives,
Washington, D.C., United States State Department Records on the Internal Affairs of Mexico
1910-1929, microfilm roll 90, 812.00B/195, Second Congress of the Comintern: English Edi-
tion, Moscow, 1920, p. 123 (document is contained in the microfilm record).
ican Socialist party, especially Roy and Santibanez, were anxious for the
party to define its position in the international arena. The party's program,
however, as late as August 1919 still reflected the heterogeneity of its
membership base and ideological orientation.77
The first invitations to a National Socialist Congress came from the
Socialist party in the middle of July,78 one of the major goals being the
designation of a delegate to represent the party in "the Berne Interna-
tional." This was presumably a reference to the rump of the Second In-
ternational whose first postwar meeting took place in Berne in February
1919. The Berne group was made up of right and centrist parties (like the
German Socialist and Independent German Socialist parties) and was an
attempt to revive the Second International in an openly anti-Bolshevik way.
Quite how the Berne reference came to be mentioned in the context of a
conference that would nominate a delegate to the recently established
Third International remains a mystery. Possibly the attendance of the Par-
tido Socialista Obrero Espanol at the Berne meeting may have been a factor
confusing the issue for the Mexican socialists, who had a close knowledge
of Spanish socialist affairs. More probably it was sheer ignorance of the
fast-moving developments in Europe that produced the reference. In any
case, subsequent announcements of the forthcoming congress dropped the
reference.79
The National Socialist Congress assembled in Mexico City on August
22, and sixty delegates accredited by various organizations attended.80 A
Mexican Socialist party worker informed the New York socialist daily, The
Call, that "delegates from every state have been invited, representing the
workers' syndicates, leagues of resistance and all liberal publications as well
as the purely Socialist and radical groups. "81 From the list of the twenty-
one signatures attached to the Declaration of Principles that appeared at
the end of the congress it is possible to gain a limited idea of the kinds of
77. "Party Platform of the Socialist Party of Mexico," Newv York Call, Aug. 29, 1919.
The most significant clauses called for the nationalization of mines, land, and means of trans-
portation and for the abolition of the standing army and its replacement by a people's militia.
Alongside these clauses were calls for the establishmeint of a minimum wage, equal wages for
men and women, abolition of all indirect taxes, the suppression of bullfights and cockfights,
and the prohibition of alcohol.
78. The initiative for the congress came from the Socialist party and had nothing to do
with the CROM's Aguascalientes Conference held earlier that year, as Luis Araiza incorrectly
suggests. Some of the unions opposed to the CROM had held a meeting, albeit a very uIlsuc-
cessful one, at Zacatecas at the end of May.
79. Gale's Magazine, 12 (July 1919) carries the first call with the Berine reference. See
also Gale's Magazine, 1 (Aug. 1918).
80. Thirty delegates were finally seated. El Heraldo de Mexico, Sept. 3, 1919.
81. New York Call, Sept. 3, 1919.
delegates who attended the meeting.82 Nine delegates represented individ-

ual unions or worker organizations like the cdmaras obreras; among these
were a number of men who had already been linked with socialist circles,
including Jose Medina, representing the Camara Obrera de Zacatecas, and
Leonardo Hern'andez, a delegate of the Sindicato de Molineros de Mexico
and a leading member of the Gran Cuerpo. Major figures of the Mexican
Socialist party who attended were Francisco Cervantes Lopez, Jose Allen,
Eduardo Camacho (representing the Cien Jovenes Socialistas Rojos de Mex-
ico), and M. N. Roy (in representation of the party's El Socialista).83 The
agenda consisted of five items, of which four were general calls for the
establishment of a clear definition of the goals of the socialist movement
in Mexico and for finding ways to strengthen the movement. The fifth item
proposed the "election" of a socialist delegate from Mexico to the Third
International. 84
Few references to the congress have survived; and most of the contem-
porary accounts were highly partial, reflecting the position of only one of
the tendencies represented in the congress.85 All agree that a major dispute
emerged over the seating of Luis Morones and the accounts have further
tried to identify three opposing currents of opinion within the congress-
the reformist position of Morones and the CROM, the opportunist line of
the United States draft evader, spiritualist, and self-appointed "Lenin of
the Americas," Linn Gale, and the revolutionary socialist position of the
Mexican Socialist party leaders, especially Roy and Allen.86 It is doubtful,
however, that such clarity of position and line was evident in the proceed-
ings of the congress. Linn Gale and his Philippine colleague, Fulgencio
Luna, represented only themselves, although they expressed sympathy for
the revolutionary unionism of the International Workers of the World
(IWW). Morones and another leading cromiano, Samuel YCudico, whose
credentials were also challenged, appear in the end to have won no political
82. For a reproduction of the Declaration, see Rosendo Salazar and Jos6 Escobedo, Las
pugnas de la gleba (Mexico City, 1922), p. 271. There was heated discussion over the seating
of certain delegates, but it is not clear whether any delegates were finally refused admittance.
83. There were at least four non-Mexican delegates-M. N. Roy, his wife Evelyn, Linn
Gale, and Fulgencio Luna. There were also two representatives from the Michoacan Socialist
party, which had thrown its weight behind the presidential candidacy of Alvaro Obreg6n in
August 1919. Luis Morones and Samuel Yudico had also signed an electoral pact with Obreg6n
on August 6.
84. "Agenda of the First National Socialist Congress," New York Call, Sept. 3, 1919.
85. Acta del Primer Congreso Nacional Socialista; two typewritten pages, AGN, Secci6n
de Gobernaci6n, paquete 1: secci6n administrativa.
86. Octavio Rodriguez Araujo and M. Marquez Fuentes, El Partido Comunista Mexi-
cano (Mexico City, 1973), p. 61; Schmitt, Communism, p. 6. Mario Gill goes so far as to say
that "se reproducia en Mexico la batalla entre mencheviques y bolcheviques y como en Rusia,
vencieron los bolcheviques." Mario Gill, Mexico y la revoluci6n de octubre (Mexico City,
1975), p. 21.
support from any of the delegates present. The final Declaration of Prin-
ciples was carried unanimously on the last day, just after Morones withdrew
from the congress. Linn Gale's accounts of the congress, which circulated
widely in the United States labor press, were undoubtedly colored by his
personal animosity toward Morones. At one point during the deliberations,
Morones interrupted Gale by brandishing a copy of Gale's Spanish-lan-
guage magazine Nueva Civilizacion, which contained a portrait of the
Carrancista minister of the interior, Manuel Aguirre Berlanga, with whom
Gale had had friendly relations throughout 1918 and 1919.
According to Jose Allen's account of the congress, written in mid-Oc-
tober 1919, his decision to seat Morones at the start of the meeting was
due to the fact that the CROM leader was carrying credentials from two
radical organizations that had been invited to send delegates.87 "To have
refused him a seat would have meant antagonizing half the delegates and
would have split the congress from the first day-but by admitting him
and fighting him in a fair and open field his adherents were won com-
pletely away from him. "88
The Declaration of Principles drew some of its points from the conclu-
sions of the inaugural congress of the Comintern, but it gave most emphasis
to those points that were most closely linked to, or conflicted least with,
libertarian thinking. Thus, in one paragraph, the congress fixed the label
of "traitor to working-class interests" on anyone who "tried to divert work-
ers toward the belief that the working class can be freed by means of
political action-that is, by means of participation in bourgeois parlia-
ments. "89 The contemporary mood of the newly formed Third Interna-
tional, particularly its temporary enthusiasm for "spontaneity" and its vir-
ulent denunciations of the parliamentarism of the old Second International,
made it much easier for Mexican socialists to derive familiar and com-
forting conclusions of a libertarian and antipolitical nature from early
Comintern pronouncements. Finally, in an act that sealed the congress's
decision to affiliate with the new international communist movement, the
delegates approved the sending of a telegram of greetings to the United
States Communist party, which was meeting at that moment in Chicago.90
In its greeting, the Mexican Socialist party announced: "We are naming
delegates to the Third International."
87. NA: BIDJ, OG 224875.

88. Ibid. Allen also refuted another claim by Gale that one of the founders of the Socialist
party, Adolfo Santibafiez, withdrew from the congress in protest over the seating of Morones.
In fact, Santibaniez did withdraw for a time, "but later rejoined the congress and stayed with
it to the last."
89. New York Call, Sept. 17, 1919; NA: RG 165, 10541-912/2.
90. El Heraldo de Mexico, Sept. 3, 1919.
The National Socialist Congress did not lead immediately to the crea-
tion of a Mexican Communist party, however. The Mexican Socialist party
did not change its name to Mexican Communist party (Partido Comunista
Mexicano) until November, several months after the close of the congress.
Much confusion, therefore, has arisen over the appearance in mid-Septem-
ber of a "communist party," led by Linn Gale. In spite of the attacks he
suffered during the congress, Gale stayed until the bitter end and signed
the final Declaration of Principles. Shortly afterward, though, he was ex-
pelled from the Mexico City local of the Socialist party because of his
political links with Aguirre Berlanga. He promptly formed his Communist
party of Mexico (Partido Comunista de Mexico), which was never more
than a paper organization.
For the remainder of 1919, Gale and his coterie of followers launched
an elaborate attempt to discredit the activities of the Socialist party under
the direction of Roy and Allen. Gale's Communist party of Mexico was
hardly more than a shadowy organizational extension of Gale's Magazine,
a socialist journal that Gale had published in Mexico since his arrival in
July 1918.91 Gale's party projected itself almost exclusively outside of Mex-
ico in an attempt to convince the United States labor and socialist move-
ments that Gale was the only exponent of "true Bolshevism" in Mexico.
Conveniently forgetting the history of his own association with the Ca-
rranza cabinet and with the German Embassy in Mexico, Linn Gale labeled
Roy a spy of the German government and chief accomplice in the capit-
ulation of the Socialist party to the stratagems of Luis Morones and the
CROM.92
Gale's party showed a particular interest in reaching the IWW press in
the United States, and its program and public statements emphasized that
the party "was unequivocally committed to IWWism and ready to do
anything possible to further the One Big Union idea. "9 Unlike the Socialist
party (later PCM), which still enjoyed close links with an admittedly small
section of the Mexico City workers' movement, the Partido Comunista de
Mexico existed completely on the margins of the Mexican working class.
Two of its national committee members, the North Americans J. C. Parker
and M. Tabler, claimed association with the IWW in Tampico, but there
91. National Archives, Washington, Record Group 153, Judge Advocate General of Army,
Proceedings of a General Court Martial that Convened at Governors Island, New York, New
York, Oct. 17, 1921, pp. 216-219. After his expulsion from Mexico in mid-1921, Gale was
court-martialed and sentenced to seven years' hard labor on charges of draft evasion and
treason.
92. Linn A. E. Gale, "The War against Gomperism in Mexico," One Big Union Monthly,
Nov. 1919, pp. 22-25.
93. Ibid., p. 23.
is no real evidence of any significant connection between the party and

the work force of the oil zone.94
Between the close of the National Socialist Congress and November
1919, the decision was taken to create a Communist party that would
formally seek affiliation with the Third International. The formation of
such a party had of course already been foreshadowed by the congress's
decision to send delegates to the next meeting of the Comintern. At the
beginning of October, a group of Socialist party members, headed by Jose
Allen and Eduardo Camacho, began publication of a weekly journal, El
Soviet, whose title left no doubt as to the direction the party was taking.95
El Soviet described itself as a "semanario de propaganda socialista" and
was published by the Grupo "Hermanos Rojos" from the headquarters of
the Bakers' Union in Mexico City.
The editors saw the world revolution spearheaded by the Russian Bol-
sheviks, German Spartacists, and North American Wobblies engulfing not
only Europe, but also the United States and Mexico. The language of the
articles and the slogans printed on the title page ("Por la Salud y Eman-
cipacion Universal"), however, indicate that the imminent revolutionary
breakthrough was still conceptualized in a semilibertarian fashion as the
culmination of a general struggle of direct action by the masses.96 The
choice of title for the paper was especially significant. The left wing of the
Mexican workers' movement, influenced by syndicalist and libertarian ideas,
was particularly taken by the concepts of the soviet and workers' council,
to which it gave a meaning that was in some respects quite different from
that understood by the Bolsheviks. The soviet became the very epitome of
direct action by the working class engaged in the destruction of the au-
thoritarian state.
The decision to establish formally a Mexican communist party was
taken by Roy and Allen with the advice of the Soviet Comintern delegate,
Mikhail Borodin, whose presence in Mexico at the end of 1919 is one of
the most fascinating and most ill-understood aspects of the early history of
Mexican communism. Borodin, born Mikhail Grusenberg, had been an
94. For details of Parker and Tabler, see One Big Union Monthly, Mar. 1920, p. 48.
The party remained in existence until the beginning of 1921, having failed to secure a
reunification with the PCM. The party's paper, El Obrero Industrial, published for a short
while in the summer of 1920, described itself as the "organ of the IWW of Mexico." NA: RG
165, 10058-3/101.
95. The first issue of El Soviet that this author has seen is no. 3, dated Nov. 3, 1919.
According to an editorial note, the paper had been temporarily suspended pending receipt
of its post-office registration, which would suggest that the first issue appeared around the
end of September or beginning of October. Issue no. .3 had a circulation of two thousand.
96. The words "socialist" and "socialism" do not appear once in the pages of issue no.
3 of El Soviet (with the exception of the paper's subtitle).
active member of Lenin's faction of the Russian Social Democratic party

before emigrating to the United States in 1906. His knowledge of English
and the contacts with the North American left, acquired while a member
of the Socialist party of America, were sorely desired by the economically
and politically hard-pressed Soviet state, which desperately needed to re-
vive commerical links with the capitalist world. Borodin's prime task on
his return to the New World in the summer and fall of 1919 was to provide
financial assistance to the Soviet Government Bureau in New York, oper-
ated by Ludwig Martens, and to develop trade in raw materials with Mex-
ico.97 After a complicated series of journeys involving travel through the
Caribbean and the United States, Borodin reached Mexico at the end of
September or beginning of October.98 It is clear, therefore, that Borodin
could not have been present during the deliberations of the National So-
cialist Congress, as has commonly been believed.99
The more difficult questions relate to the larger political and diplomatic
tasks of Borodin in his visit to Mexico. In addition to providing funds for
the Soviet Government Bureau in New York, was Borodin's visit also con-
nected with the revolutionary strategy of the Comintern in the Americas?
British and United States intelligence believed that before leaving Moscow,
Borodin had been given the same title for Central and South America as
Martens had received for North America, together with instructions to
influence the Mexican government in favor of supplying Russia with food-
stuffs and raw materials.100 The Soviet Government Bureau in New York
was primarily a commercial venture, however and, in spite of Martens's
obvious Bolshevik affiliations, it doggedly refused to enter the political
arena, much to the chagrin of United States socialists. It was not until July
1920, in fact, that the Comintern established a section with special respon-
sibility for North America.101 Yet El Soviet announced the formation of a
Latin American Bureau of the Third International at the beginning of
97. Borodin was not without experience in the area of international trade and finance
since he had worked for a while as the second secretary to the Railway Interest of the Russian
government in the United States during the Kerensky provisional government. Borodin re-
turned to Russia in mid-1918. Report, Sept. 28, 1919, NA: BIDJ, OG 247149.
98. Hector Cardenas, Las relaciones mexicano-sovieticas: Antecedentes y primeros con-
tactos diplomdticos 1789-1927 (Mexico City, 1974), pp. 42-46; M. Churchill to Department
of Justice, Mar. 4, 1920, NA: BIDJ, OG 247149; report by Agent Spolansky, Jan. 28, 1920,
NA: BIDJ, OG 247149.
99. Manuel G6mez (alias Charles Phillips) recalls Borodin arriving in Mexico City in the
early summer of 1919. See "From Mexico to Moscow," Survey, 53 (Oct. 1964), p. 37.
100. George Lamb to J. E. Hoover, Mar. 5, 1920, enclosing report by British Military
Intelligence dated Mar. 1, 1920, NA: BIDJ, OG 247149.
101. Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism (New York, 1957), p. 269.
December 1919.102 Given the Comintern's evident lack of interest in Latin

America at this time and its tendency to view the conflict between the
imperialist and colonial worlds as being essentially an East-West issue in-
volving the peoples of Asia and the Middle East, Borodin's visit becomes
even more problematical.
How does one then explain Borodin's nearly two-and-a-half-month stay
in Mexico? Trade negotiations with the Mexican government may have
been a major concern. Certainly, Borodin had regular meetings with a
number of government officials, including Carranza himself.103 Clearly,
Borodin was also interested in recovering valuable jewelry (which he had
abandoned in Santo Domingo en route to New York and which was in-
tended to fund Russian commercial and possibly also Comintern activities
in North America).104 According to M. N. Roy, Borodin was also interested
in securing Mexican support and possibly even diplomatic recognition for
the new Soviet government. Carranza was suitably impressed by the Rus-
sian's declaration of his government's support for the struggle of the Latin
American peoples against colonialism and imperialism and, if we are to
believe Roy's account, authorized Borodin's use of Mexican diplomatic
channels to communicate with the Comintern in Europe.105
What exactly was Borodin's role in the formation of the Mexican Com-
munist party in these months? On his arrival in Mexico, Borodin made no
attempt to get in touch with the Socialist party directly. His first meetings
with Roy and the other party leaders were arranged only after he had
approached a number of North Americans who were sympathizers of the
party and who had attracted his attention with the radical tone of the
English-language page of the Mexico City daily El Heraldo de Mexico,
which they edited.106 Subsequently, Borodin went to live with Roy in the
latter's palatial residence in Colonia Roma and was only rarely seen by
other members of the Socialist party.107
102. "Manifiesto del Bureau Latinoamericano de la Tercera Internacional a los Traba-

jadores de Am6rica Latina," El Soviet, Dec. 16, 1919. Evidently news of the Pan American
Bureau reached Comintern organizations in Europe because the Western (Amsterdam) Bu-
reau of the Comintern instructed the United States Communist party in February 1920 "to
establish a sub-bureau for the Americas based on work already done in Mexico" (emphasis
added). Branko Lazitch and Milorad Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern (Stanford,
1972), p. 191.
103. Roy, Memoirs.
104. The affair of the "tzarist jewels" has attracted a good deal of attention. The most
useful sources from which an accurate account can be reconstructed are Roy, Memoirs, pp.
178-203; Jose C. Valades, "Confesiones politicas," Revista de la Universidad de Me6xico
(Mexico City), 10 (June 1969).
105. Roy, Memoirs, p. 204. The West European Bureau of the Comintern was estab-
lished in November 1919.
106. G6mez, From Mexico, p. 204.
107. Valades, "Confesiones."
Did Borodin, as is sometimes asserted, convert Roy to Marxisrn and

communism? Apart from the fact that a ten-week period seems hardly
adequate for such a major task, it is quite clear that Roy's anticolonial
nationalism had been steadily taking on a socialist character ever since his
leaving the United States in the middle of 1917 108 Moreover, in spite of
the real isolation that the Mexican Socialist party experienced and about
which Francisco Cervantes Lopez complained, the party had begun dis-
cussions about its response to the Third International long before Borodin
arrived in Mexico. It is quite likely, though, that Borodin provided Roy
and the party with detailed and up-to-date information on the growth of
the communist movement in Europe, on the crucial differences that divid-
ed Social Democracy from communism, as well as with the requirements
for entry into the Comintern, which became formalized the following year
in the famous twenty-one conditions.
On November 28, 1919, an extraordinary session of the Mexican So-
cialist party changed the party's name to the Mexican Communist party,
and appointed a commission to decide on the makeup of the party's del-
egation to the next congress of the Third International. A few days later,
Borodin wrote to Jose Allen, the first secretary-general of the PCM, saying
that the party would be admitted to the Comintern with all the rights
given to affiliated parties as soon as the Mexican delegates reached Mos-
cow.109 Two weeks later, on December 8, the PCM established a Latin
American Bureau of the Third International with the alleged support of
the Third International and with the goal of establishing ties between
organizations on the American continent whose programs and principles
were close to those of the Comintern.110
Conclusion
In spite of the ambitious language of the party's first declarations, the

PCM led a precarious existence during its first four years. Its activities were
hampered by lack of funds, by limited contact with the world of Mexican
labor outside of Veracruz, Mexico City and one or two other centers, and
108. Roy's version is that Borodin "initiated me into the intricacies of Hegelian dialectics
as the key to Marxism."
109. Jose Allen, report 21, NA: RG 165, 10541-912/24; Borodin to Jos6 Allen, Nov. 29,
1919, NA: BIDJ, OG 374726. M. N. Roy and Charles Phillips both attended the Second
Congress of the Comintern in July 1920 as delegates from the PCM. Roy had a full vote and
Phillips (traveling under the pseudonym Frank Seaman) was a "representative" with a con-
sultative vote. Lazitch and Drachkovitch, Lenin, pp. 389-390. It seems likely, therefore, that
the PCM had been accepted at least on a provisional basis as a member party of the Third
International by the time of the Second Congress. For a contrary view, see Goldenberg,
Kommunismus, p. 570 n.4.
110. El Soviet, Dec. 16, 1919. Bureau members were Elena Torres, Leopoldo Urmachea,
Martin Brewster, Antonio Ruiz, and Jose Allen.
by a small, rapidly changing, and inadequately prepared leadership. The

party's activities were disrupted by the turmoil surrounding the presiden-
tial succession in 1920; and until the end of 1921 the most stable and
coherent group within the party was its youth section, the Juventud Co-
munista, founded in mid-1920 by Jose C. Valades and the Swiss socialist
Edgar Woog.111
Communication difficulties and language differences maintained the
PCM on the margin of international communism, creating problems in the
reception and interpretation of Comintern policies. By the middle of 1924,
after the Adolfo de la Huerta rebellion had destroyed much of the party's
structure and after the loss of its influence within the tenants' movement
of Mexico City, the PCM was in complete disarray.112 It was, ironically,
the ligas de comunidades agrarias, the most conscious sections of the peas-
antry, a class almost completely ignored by the National Socialist Congress
of 1919, that gave the party its first major links with the Mexican masses.
The continuing importance of libertarian and anarcho-syndicalist ideology
within the party also contributed to the difficulties the Communist party
had in integrating important political and industrial issues in the 1920s.
The PCM did initially manage to attract the support of important nuclei
of workers in the Mexico City area and in Veracruz and Puebla as the
more radical elements, or rojos, became alienated by the class collabora-
tionist and pro-American Federation of Labor position of the CROM. Since
the radical bakers, telephone operators, textile workers, automobile drivers,
and other rojos were libertarian in orientation, their temporary fusion with
early communists created a Communist party with an extremely hetero-
geneous basis and the potential for severe disagreements over strategy and
policy. Tensions arose with particular ferocity during the first nine months'
existence of the Confederacion General de Trabajadores (CGT), which for
a brief moment in 1921 became the organizational focus of "red" workers
both inside and outside the PCM.
The tension generated by the coexistence of Marxist and libertarian
forces within the party surfaced most clearly in the Communist party's
early opposition to parliamentarism and participation in elections (1921-
22) and in the reluctance of some sections of the party to embrace the
strategy of trade union work within and alongside the "reformist" CROM
111. Interview with Rafael Carrillo, Mexico City, Apr. 28, 1976. The Juventud had 150
members in the Federal District (mostly workers) and branches in Veracruz, C6rdoba, Ori-
zaba, Tampico, Monterrey, and Toluca.
112. El Machete, Jan. 8-15, 1925. By the middle of 1924 the party's National Executive
announced that links between the local branches and the central body of the party were
nonexistent and that a large number of branches (Veracruz, Yucatan, Michoacan, and so
forth) had been destroyed by the rebels. Dues collection and fund raising had been suspended
so that the total funds available in the party treasury amounted to only $2.50.
as part of the United Front tactics preached by the Comintern after 1922.
It was only in the mid-1920s that the party seriously took up organizing
support within sympathetic unions belonging to the officially anticommu-
nist CROM in such states as Puebla and Veracruz.
The intriguing question with which the historian of Mexican commu-
nism is left is that of the periodization of this symbiotic relationship be-
tween Marxist and libertarian currents. At what point can we distinguish
clearly between the two phenomena, and how many communists of the
1920s were in fact sympathizers with anarchist or syndicalist ideas? It
seems clear that the break between the two traditions cannot be reduced
to the formal rupture between the Mexican Communist party and the CGT
in October 1921. Certain features of the libertarian heritage are visible in
the practice of the party right through the 1920s and 1930s, and there are
echoes of this past as late as the 1960s and early 1970s in the PCM's policy
of electoral abstentionism and in the appeal to a substantial body of workers
of the virulently anti-political party positions of the Unidad Obrera In-
dependiente, led by a former PCM militant Juan Ortega Arenas.
Perhaps the most urgent, and, for some observers, most painful task is
to make a more objective evaluation of the contribution made by anar-
chism and libertarian positions to the history of the Mexican left. We would
do well to heed the comments of a one-time PCM militant and theoretician
Jose Revueltas:
The Communist party, reflecting the schematic mold in which it

was formed, condemned anarcho-syndicalism in the name of Marx
as being tainted by the abstract theory of the classical ideologues of
anarchy. But it did not acknowledge the positive contribution the
great anarcho-syndicalist mass movement made to the theme of
working-class independence within bourgeois democratic strug-
gle. 113
113. Jose Revueltas, El proletariado sin cabeza (Mexico City, 1962), p. 224. For a dis-
cussion of the twenty-one conditions, see Helmut Gruber, ed., International Communism in
the Era of Lenin: A Documentary History (Garden City, N.Y., 1972), pp. 241-246.
Marxism and Anarchism in the Formation of the Mexican Communist Party, 1910-19
Author(s): Barry Carr
Source: The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 63, No. 2 (May, 1983), pp. 277-305
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2514710
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Hispaniic Amiier icani Historical Reviewv

63(2), 1983, 277-305

Marxism and Anarchism in the Formation

H TISTORIANS of twentieth-century Mexico genera

* The author is Senior Lecturer in History at La Trobe University, Bundloora, Australia.

This article attempts to trace the evolution of socialist and Marxist

11. Hart, Anarchism, p. 35 (emphasis added).

however, of the emergence of socialist politics among groups of workers

30. El Machete, May 1, 1938.

German Social Democratic party of the immediate pre-First World War

Frequently it was identified with Saint-Simon's notion of industri-

41. Perez Taylor, Socialismo, p. 42.

a moralizing ideology, which facilitates alliances between the

Elsewhere in Mexico, hundreds of soldiers and politicians proclaimed

socialism aims at the socialization of products. This means govern-

Capital, which is simply accumulated labor, Nwill be in perfect bal-

Among students and intellectuals socialism was an important topic of

In France liberals with conservative allegiances are known as so-

46. Ibid., p. 62.

When the Sociedad de Conferencias y Conciertos was founded in Sep-

The Formation of the Mexica

The National Socialist Congress and the Foundation of the PCM

The most important step toward the creation of a Mexican Communist

and worker politics, there is no evidence of his having participated in labor

Carranza government's defense of Mexican interests, although it was made

73. New York Call, Aug. 12, 20, 1919.

delegates who attended the meeting.82 Nine delegates represented individ-

87. NA: BIDJ, OG 224875.

is no real evidence of any significant connection between the party and

active member of Lenin's faction of the Russian Social Democratic party

December 1919.102 Given the Comintern's evident lack of interest in Latin

102. "Manifiesto del Bureau Latinoamericano de la Tercera Internacional a los Traba-

Did Borodin, as is sometimes asserted, convert Roy to Marxisrn and

In spite of the ambitious language of the party's first declarations, the

by a small, rapidly changing, and inadequately prepared leadership. The

The Communist party, reflecting the schematic mold in which it

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