First Published: PL magazine, Vol. 5, No. 5, November 1966.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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In solving the national question Leninism starts from the following principles: (a) colonies and dependent countries oppressed and exploited by finance capital, constitute a tremendous reserve and the most important source of forces for imperialism; (b) the revolutionary struggle against imperialism by the oppressed peoples of colonial and dependent countries is the only path by which they can free themselves of oppression and exploitation; (c) the most important colonial and dependent countries have already started the national liberation movement which must forcibly lead to a crisis of world capitalism; the interests of the proletarian movement in the developed countries and those of the national liberation movements in the colonies demand that these two trends of the revolutionary movement unite into a common front against a common enemy; this revolutionary front is impossible unless the proletariat of the oppressing nations gives direct and decisive support to the national liberation movements of the oppressed peoples against imperialism in their own countries, since, as Marx has stated, “a people that oppresses other peoples cannot be free.”
This support means to uphold, defend and carry out a line concerning the right of peoples to separate themselves and exist as independent states. If this line is not put into practice it will be impossible to achieve the unity and collaboration of the nations in one single world economy which is the material base for the victory of socialism. This can only be a voluntary union, erected on the basis of mutual trust and fraternal ties between peoples.
Marxism-Leninism defines strategy and tactics as the science of directing the proletarian class struggle. Strategy deals with the fundamental forces of the revolution and their reserves. A new stage started with the victory of the October Revolution in 1917. The revolution transcended the framework of one particular country, the stage of world revolution began. The fundamental forces of the revolution were the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country and the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all countries. The principal reserves were the semiproletarian masses and the masses of small peasants in the advanced countries, along with the liberation movements in the colonies and dependent countries. The plan of distribution of these forces was an alliance of the proletarian revolution with the liberation movements in the colonies and dependent countries.
This era (before the Second World War) was a period of great revolutionary activity in Latin America. But the international proletariat (especially the Yankee) abandoned Sandino and Sandinoism; Sandino was murdered and the Nicaraguan national liberation movement was annihilated. It abandoned the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico; Albizu Campos was jailed and his party destroyed. Supported by imperialism the dictatorships took hold in Latin America.
The French and the British proletariat equally failed as effective allies of the colonial countries oppressed by the imperialisms of their own countries. But at the end of the Second World War, and in the midst of the reactionary upswing, great changes occurred: the victory of the socialist revolution in China, the creation of the socialist market, the breaking through by the Soviet Union of the Yankee’s atomic monopoly, and the victory of the socialist revolution in Cuba.
Our old contention, “without a peasant army there is no possibility of revolution in Latin America,” was made into history in the Sierra Maestra. This is now beginning to happen in the Andes mountain range, the “Sierra Maestra of America,” as Fidel Castro has wisely defined it. Bolivar lives in the revolutionary will of our men, and his continental strategy permeates the forces that are now attempting the encircling movement that will free our colossal America from the imperialist grip.
The reason is obvious: Latin America is a vast landholding.
The economic absorption of Puerto Rico, with which imperialism punishes our country, has brought about a new population structure. The peasant no longer predominates numerically. Yankee military needs entailed a vast electrification program which has reached the rural areas. The virtues of the American way of life have reached the peasant through radio and television and have urbanized his mind. The automobile has access to the remotest parts of the country. The most expensive air fare in the world is from San Juan to Caracas, but a constant, overcrowded, inexpensive traffic takes and returns Puerto Ricans to the U.S. A million of them live in the U.S. and thousands more migrate every season to follow the crops.
The feature of this imperialist imposition is that it forced this change (the transfer to urban areas of over half of the population and the transformation of Puerto Rico into a consumer society) without an agrarian reform. On the contrary, it did so by strangling agriculture and developing a commercial monopoly and an absentee industrial enclave. Eighty per cent of the economy is in U.S. hands.
Albizu Campos forecast: “Puerto Rico will test whether it is right or might which will prevail in America.” In our own terms we would say that Puerto Rico will play a unique role in the defeat of imperialism. Since legal relations are nothing but property relations, a change in the property relations (expropriation of the bourgeoisie) will completely change the legal relations. Puerto Rico will be free, independent and socialist.
If the other Latin American nations form, in their totality, an enormous landholding, and, therefore the main form of struggle is the guerrilla as the organizing force of a peasant army, how does Puerto Rico, with its population more urban than rural, fit into the general revolutionary strategy of Latin America?
Among the wisest adjustments made by the Armed Front of National Liberation (FALN) of Venezuela to achieve more efficiency is its decision to concentrate its activity on peasant guerrillas. In this way the FALN is giving free rein to the leftist small bourgeoisie (and even the strictly nationalist element) to carry on their public campaigns, parliamentary dealings, street protests, etc. That is, the FALN is allowing these elements to operate within the more or less narrow and rigid legality that the sell-out regime permits.
Revolutionaries must understand that honest politicians with ideas similar to our own and with patriotic feelings must be allowed enough room to move in until a revolutionary situation arises on a national scale and the revolutionary “nucleus” extends and becomes decisive. In order to achieve a minimum of friction it is indispensable to allow them their desired recognition; to offer no competition to their wish for fame or popularity. We must not forget that in the revolutionary situation itself history selects the best and the masses learn to distinguish their true leaders, the revolutionary socialists. We must not, therefore, feel envy. On the contrary we must place at their disposal new ideas, new paths, examples to follow. Only in this fashion will we be helping them to transcend archaic concepts in their ideological growth. Their own mental class structure convinces them quickly that everything comes from their own brains. At a certain period of revolutionary development in many countries there have been organizations that surged forward successfully because they felt the muzzle of a pistol fraternally pressed against their ribs.
It is also necessary to acknowledge that many good persons will never become fighters but they carry out well many important assignments.
The Venezuelan comrades acted very wisely in adopting this division of labor.
So far as Puerto Rico is concerned the general protest movement, class oriented as well as nationalistic, is our Sierra Maestra, The Yankee protest movement, whether it involves workers, Negroes or be it against military service, is our Second Front.
It is a difficult policy, one that leaves behind the entire past and practically the entire present of the Puerto Rican patriotic process. It transcends the policy of traumatic action, of commotion, of sublime impatience, of rapid transformation, of opportune scandal; it does away with the so-called “moral confrontation with imperialism” and the “opinion of free nations” and “divine judgment.” Pseudo-Marxist lip service and its international choreography are also banned. Having proven beyond any reasonable doubt the insensitivity of the North American ruling class, and having taken the correct revolutionary path of class struggle and proletarian internationalism tied to the proletariat of the oppressing nation, this new line involves a prolonged war of independence by the Puerto Rican working class.
We aspire for concerted action, coordinated and continuous; mass revolutionary action that will free not only Puerto Rico but will help liberate Latin America and also assist the victory of socialism in the United States.
“If underdevelopment is not a natural outcome but the result of an historical process then Latin America has attained its unity through its history.” So comments Regis Debray, who also states, “If to free itself from the Spanish yoke it had to exist as a totality, in a military sense, then at present it must attain that joint existence to free itself from the Yankees. If Bolivar refused to consider The Great Colombia a free country until the Upper and Lower Peru were also free it is with an equal or better appreciation that Fidel Castro understands that the liberation of Cuba will not be complete while Venezuela and Colombia are still under slavery. If one can rightfully speak of the Latin American revolution it is not because of Latin America, but dialectically, because of its common enemy, the United States. And this is why Bolivar’s ideas take on new vigor in the strategy of the vanguards after the Cuban revolution.”
To repeat the last two points: if there is a Latin American revolution, Puerto Rico is part of it because Puerto Rico is a Latin American nation and particularly because that revolution is due to our common enemy, the United States, usurper of our sovereignty. And if Bolivar’s ideas are once again in the thoughts of the vanguards, Puerto Rican revolutionaries have never forgotten them and now they are ever more present and clear.
In 1826 Bolivar “wants to liberate the Far East, the Philippines; and not only is he willing to fight on the side of Asia against Europe’s ambitions, but he is willing to engage the beast in its own cage. Under the Colombian banner valiant ships navigate the Mediterranean Sea, threatening the Spanish coast around the Andalusian province. French diplomacy sounds the alarm, alerting the Spanish regime. Their ambassador in Madrid expresses his fears that if Latin American republican troops appear the. Spanish revolutionaries will solicit their aid. This was, in fact, a real possibility.” (Blanco Fombona, “El Pensamiento Vivo de Bolivar,” quoted in “La Lucha por la Independencia de Puerto Rico,” by Juan Antonio Corretjer, page 144.)
Puerto Rico has, as we stated before, a unique and starring role in the development of the Latin American revolution: the struggle in Puerto Rico itself (part of the tremendous reserve and the most important source of forces for imperialism) and our struggle in the United States. Bolivar’s 1826 project of accelerating Hispano-American victory by promoting the insurrection of the Spanish people and the republicanization of the Spanish political institutions was the equivalent of Lenin’s later alliance between the proletariat of the oppressed nation (Puerto Rico) and that of the oppressor nation (U.S.A.). The million or so Puerto Ricans that imperialist exploitation has forced to migrate to the U.S. constitute a potential Latin American revolutionary army in support of the North American proletariat’s struggle for socialism. There is no shorter road to the victory of Latin American struggle than that which weakens or breaks the North American imperialist will in its own seat of power.
It is with pride that we acknowledge this starring role. If our case of colonialism is not a natural disease but a result of our history, our role as a liberating force (as the only Latin American country subject to total colonization) is also unique in satisfying the Latin American need to jointly exist in opposition to Yankee imperialism. This is how Puerto Rico fits into the general revolutionary strategy of Latin America.