Louis wrote: > My eyes were opened primarily through long conversations with Peter > Gellert (who now goes as Pedro) who has lived in Mexico City since 1976. > I had a brief conversation with Peter about 3 years ago when he was in > NY for a visit but this time we had plenty of time to talk about our > ill-spent Trotskyist youth and what we have done with our lives since > departing from the church. Peter’s political life seems to have taken > off once he left the Houston branch in 1976 and “transferred” to the > Mexican section of the Fourth International, the Workers Revolutionary > Party (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores). > > full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/mexico-and-the-left/
Based on my experience and observations, the PRT has always been a tiny group of urban intellectuals with a strongly introverted culture, okay at propagandizing and spreading Marxist texts, and arguing to death about every international development. I don't view them necessarily as a negative force, but they are far from having been a serious political factor. My impression is that their peasant wing fell on their lap, and they didn't make any effort to inform it politically. The head was Margarito Montes, who exploited his connection with universities, but didn't leave much to show in the peasant movement in the 1980s, before the PRT faded away for good. It seems to me that the peasant wing -- whose practices before and after they connected with the PRT, were not exactly kosher -- imposed its conditions on the PRT hierarchy, which backed them up with their influence media outlets that catered to the left urban constituencies: Proceso, unomásuno, and later on La Jornada. How many regional hospitals, like this one, has the PRT made possible in rural Mexico? http://youtu.be/Tqyxdrln4T8 Blemishes and all, Antorcha is one of the very few left-wing organization with the design, ambition, and toughness to take power in Mexico in the next few years. The origins of this organization go back to the Liga Leninista Espartaco led by José Revueltas, who split with Mexico's Communist Party in the 1960s. López Obrador's MORENA is the other organization with popular roots and ambition. If these two pieces of Mexico's real left were to leave behind their rancorous past, they would be already one step away from remaking Mexico. I won't bet on that, for now. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
