Opportunism and the 'peaceful road' in Latin America

Violence and 'anarchy' is part of capitalist society and is reflected in the constant struggle by the working class for a normal life. The violence and anarchy of landlordism and racialism are products of capitalism, private ownership and profit system.

Rachmanism and the inability of millions of young people to get a house, helplessness before the rise in meat prices-is this not violence and anarchy against humanity?

The Tories must distract Gangster tactics by pro-Chinese CPers in Peru claims that proPeking communists are using 'gangster' methods against the pro-Soviet section of the party.

Author of the article, Sr. Raul Acosta Salas, who is general secretary of the CP in Peru, hints broadly that the proPeking section had a hand in the death of a leading member of the party's Central Committee, who died after a road accident, and further claims that the same section is collaborating with the police.

ACCIDENT

The victim in the road accident was Sr. Emiliano Vamantica who was killed on his way from Cuzco to Lima after drawing up a document condemning the 'splitters' (pro-Peking section).

Sr. Salas says in his article: "The police are doing nothing to investigate the road accident.' He adds that the pro-Peking section also raided the office of 'Unidad', the Peruvian Communist Party paper. People were chased away. The last of the articles America millions of workers and peasants are seeking a way out of their poverty and hopelessness. The possibilities for political action have never been greater.

In some areas peasant; have seized land, organised mass demonstrations and fought pitched battles with police and troops. Strikes are fought out with great bitterness and violence.

Imprisonment, torture and murder of those who oppose the corrupt ruling oligarchies and their US backers are everyday events in many parts of Latin America. Seldom have the privileged resorted to such odious practices to protect their wealth.

Guerrilla wars

In a number of countries small guerrilla wars have been going on for some years.

Little of all this gets into the British papers. For Fleet Street, organised oppression, injustice and violence a long way off do not make new, To find out what is going on it is necessary to consult specialist publications; even then the news is disjointed and late.

It is evident that there are great opportunities for the building of a revolutionary movement. Not surprisingly there is a great profusion of parties and groups which claim to be revolutionary. Besides the straightforward Khrushchevite Communist parties there are a number of pro-Chinese breakaways and movements more or less directly of Castroite inspiration.

It is, however, too much to speak of a Castroite movement in Latin America.

Declarations

Despite grandiloquent declarations and gestures, Castro has done nothing to build a revolutionary movement on the Latin American continent, to endow it with tactics, a programme and a course of action against the ruling class and American imperialism.

He has been imitated and emulated. His movement commands much popular sympathy. No doubt that is all he wanted. His movement has always been a petty-bourgeois nationalist one.

It has been first and fore most a Cuban movement driven to extreme measures against American imperialism and seeking to win outside aid and sympathy to hold out in Cuba itself, notwithstanding Castro's self-baptism as a 'Marxist'.

By sending many devoted and idealistic young people from the students and intellectual middle class into the jungles and backlands to begin an armed struggle, Castroism has had a negative effect.

Such guerillas have been taken away from the centres of population into remote areas with no political significance-and this at a time when millions have been moving into the towns from the countryside.

In the conditions of Latin America it is not difficult to form a guerrilla movement; the question is whether it is worthwhile from a tactical standpoint. In almost every case the answer seems to be Effect The effect of Castroism has thus been less than might have been expected. Castro's Cuba is now isolated diplomatically because governments which, for opportunist reasons, displayed any sympathy for it have been overthrown with American support.

The chronic apologists for Castro carefully 'forget' that he has really don nothing to advance the revolution in Latin America -and that this now jeopardises the revolution in Cuba itself.

There is a Communist urty, legal or illegal, in every atin American country. In

World News Round-up May 30, 1964 May Th