Michael Löwy, an expert on the Latin American Left, has produced a cohesive collection of superb analytical articles mixed with a few polemics. In his 52-page introduction to this volume, he divides the history of Latin American Marxism into three general periods. The first extends from the 1920s to 1935, when the area’s Marxists tended to emphasize socialism and anti-imperialism. The second period, dominated by Stalinism, starts in the mid-1930s and ends in 1959. During most of these years, the Soviet leadership defined revolution by stages and placed Latin America in the national-democratic phase. Löwy notes that despite Stalinist rigidity, some flexible scientific Marxist thought emanated from the region during this era. The third period begins after the Cuban Revolution and includes radical currents inspired by Ernesto “Che” Guevara, aimed at attaining socialism through armed struggle.
The introduction and the documents contain numerous significant subthemes in the history of Marxist thought. The introduction illuminates how Trotskyist, Castroist, and Maoist thinking challenged the dogma of the area’s traditional Soviet-oriented Communist parties. It ties various Marxist tendencies to the recent upheavals in El Salvador and Nicaragua and to liberation theology and the Christians for Socialism movement, and it shows how Christians have become an integral part of Latin America’s revolutionary movement.
Löwy’s collection accentuates the themes of anti-imperialism and class struggle. It contains an excellent section on Marxist economic history that illustrates the capitalist, not feudal, nature of Latin America’s colonial era, when production was geared to external markets. It notes how Pan-Americanism, despite its rhetoric of democratic unity, assured U. S. hegemony in the Americas. It demonstrates how the Left distinguished between political and class dictatorship. It offers new insights into many topics, such as the role of Marmaduke Grove in Chilean politics and the alliance between Cuba’s Communists and its dictator Fulgencio Batista.
The reader derives the idea that revolutionary ferment in Mexico did not end in 1968 at Tlateloco, that the Sandinistas proved the compatibility of believers and revolutionaries, and that neoliberal economics failed to provide for Latin America’s majority. The reader also realizes that the Cold War continues south of the Rio Grande. The collection ends, appropriately, with the 1990 “São Paulo Manifesto of the Latin American Left,” which demonstrates that the movement lives, and indicates that the region’s diverse Marxist elements must put aside their differences and work together if they are to survive and succeed.
