The Maoist Utopia in Mexico

The Soviet-Chinese contradictions and the subsequent split in the International Communist Movement in the early 1960s led to the emergence of new original leftist movements in Latin America, and in Mexico in particular. Maoism found fertile ground on the left flank of the Mexican political scene, primarily among the non-conformist, anti-bureaucratic part of the Communist Party, revolutionary-minded students and intellectuals, who were looking for effective methods of struggle against the authoritarian, one-party system in the country, and who saw in Maoism an instrument of revolutionary change in society, based on the peasantry. If in most countries of the continent Maoism attracted with its revolutionary and anti-imperialist program of national liberation, giving preference to violent methods of struggle, the peculiarity of Mexican Maoism was its strict attention to the idea of serving the people, going to the people, living in the people and helping them, always with the aim of preparing the foundations for the beginning of a “protracted people’s war” with reliance on the already created “liberated” areas. The result was the success of just such organizations, while the Maoist guerilla and the transition to open armed struggle proved weak and unable to seriously affect the strengthening of the revolutionary movement in the country. The Mexican version of Maoism became an ideological project attractive to young people and students, capable of attempting to realize in practice a “revolutionary utopia” by creating peasant settlements based on Maoist theory and practice. This peculiarity of Mexican Maoism led to the evolution of the movement itself over time, which lost its specific Maoist features and became part of the New Left.