I

To what extent can the situation of the Latin American republics be compared to that of other semi-colonial countries? The economic condition of these republics is undoubtedly semi-colonial, and, as their capitalism and, consequently, imperialist penetration, grows, this character of their economy is 1. Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana, or American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, is a social-democratic party. In contrast to the Socialist Party, which would later be renamed the Communist Party, APRA appealed primarily to the urban middle class. accentuated. But the national bourgeoisie, who see cooperation with imperialism as the best source of benefits, feel they are sufficiently in possession of political power to not worry seriously about national sovereignty. The South American bourgeoisie who still do not know, with the exception of Panama, Yankee military occupation, have no predisposition to accept the need to fight for a second independence, as the APRA¹ propaganda naively assumed. The State, or rather the ruling class, does not feel the need for a broader and more certain degree of national autonomy. The Revolution of Independence is relatively too close, its myths and symbols too alive in the consciousness of the bourgeoisie and the petite-bourgeoisie. The illusion of national sovereignty remains intact. It would be a serious error to assume that this social layer retains a sense of revolutionary nationalism that in other conditions would represent a factor of the anti-imperialist struggle in semi-colonial countries overwhelmed by imperialism as in Asia in recent decades.

Over a year ago in our discussion with the leaders of the APRA, we rejected their desire to create a Latin American Kuomintang, and as a way to avoid imitating Europe and to accommodate revolutionary action to a precise assessment of our own reality, we put forward the following thesis: 2. A working-class woman who tries to come off as belonging to the upper class or to actually become part of it.

Collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and even of many feudal elements, in the Chinese anti-imperialist struggle, is explained on the grounds of race and national civilization that do not exist for us. The Chinese nobility or bourgeoisie feels intimately Chinese. They respond to white contempt for their stratified and decrepit culture with the contempt and pride of their ancient traditions. Anti-imperialism in China may, therefore, rest on sentiments and the nationalist factor. In Indo-America, the circumstances are not the same. The Creole aristocracy and bourgeoisie do not feel a sense of solidarity with the people through the bond of a common history and culture. In Peru, the white aristocrats and bourgeoisie despise the popular and national elements. They are, above all, whites. The petit-bourgeois mestizo imitates this example. Lima’s bourgeoisie fraternizes with the Yankee capitalists, and even with their mere employees, in the country clubs, in the tennis courts, and in the streets: the Yankee marries the elite creole girl without any inconvenience of race or religion, and she in turn does not feel a scruple of nationality or culture in preferring to marry an individual of the invading race. Nor does the middle class girl have this scruple. The "huachafita" ² that can catch a Yankee employee of Grace Company or the Rockefeller Foundation does so with the satisfaction of those who feel their social status rise. The nationalist factor, for these objective reasons that none of you can escape, is not decisive or fundamental in the anti-imperialist struggle in our context. Only in countries like Argentina, where there is a large and rich bourgeoisie proud of their country's wealth and power, and where the national character has for these reasons clear and more precise characteristics than in more backward countries, could anti-imperialism (perhaps) penetrate easily into the bourgeoisie. But this is for reasons of capitalist expansion and growth and not for reasons of social justice and socialist doctrine as is our case.

The betrayal of the Chinese bourgeoisie and the failure of the Kuomintang was not yet known in all its magnitude. Their capitalist style of nationalism (one not related to social justice or theory) demonstrates how little one can trust the revolutionary nationalist sentiments of the bourgeoisie, even in countries like China.

As long as the imperialist policy manages the feelings and formalities of the national sovereignty of these states, as long as it is not forced to resort to armed intervention and military occupation, it will absolutely count on the collaboration of the bourgeoisie. Although dominated by the imperialist economy, these countries, or rather their bourgeoisie, will consider themselves masters of their own destinies, as do Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, and other "dependent" countries of Europe.

This factor of political psychology should not be neglected in estimating the possibilities of anti-imperialist action in Latin America. Its relegation, its forgetfulness, has been one of the characteristics of APRA’s theory.

II

The fundamental difference between the elements in Peru that accepted the APRA in principle—as a united front plan, but never as a party and not even as an effective ongoing organization—and those outside Peru that later defined it as a Latin American Kuomintang, is that the former remain faithful to the revolutionary socioeconomic conception of anti-imperialism, while the latter explain their position by saying: "We are leftists (or socialists) because we are anti-imperialists." Anti-imperialism is thus elevated to the category of a program, of a political attitude, of a movement that is self-sufficient and that leads, spontaneously, though we do not know by virtue of what process, to socialism, to the social revolution. This concept leads to an exorbitant overestimation of the anti-imperialist movement, to the exaggeration of the myth of the struggle for the "second independence," and romanticizes that we are already living in the days of a new emancipation. The result is the tendency to replace anti-imperialist leagues with the political party. Initially conceived as a united front, as a popular alliance, as a block of the oppressed classes, APRA has come to be defined as the Latin American Kuomintang.

For us, anti-imperialism does not and cannot constitute, by itself, a political program, a mass movement capable of fully seizing power. Anti-imperialism, even if it could mobilize the bourgeoisie and petite-bourgeoisie alongside the working-class and peasant masses (we have already discounted this possibility), does not nullify antagonisms between classes, nor does it suppress different class interests.

Neither the bourgeoisie nor the petite-bourgeoisie in power can pursue anti-imperialist policies. We have the experience of Mexico, where the petite bourgeoisie has come to an agreement with Yankee imperialism. A "nationalist" government may use, in its relations with the United States, a different language than the Leguía government in Peru. This government is, frankly, uninhibitedly pan-Americanist and Monroist, but any other bourgeois government would do practically the same thing in terms of loans and concessions. Investments of foreign capital in Peru grow in a close and direct relationship with the county’s economic development, with the exploitation of its natural wealth, with the population of its territory, with the increase in routes of communication. How can the most demagogic petite bourgeoisie oppose capitalist penetration? With nothing but words. Nothing but a temporary nationalist drunkenness. The taking of power by anti-imperialism as a populist demagogic movement, if possible, would not represent the conquest of power by the proletarian masses or by socialism. The socialist revolution would find its most fierce and dangerous enemy—dangerous for its confusion and demagogy—in the petite-bourgeoisie put in power by voices of order.

Without eliminating the use of any type of anti-imperialist agitation, nor any means of mobilization of the social sectors that may eventually contribute to this struggle, our mission is to explain and demonstrate to the masses that only the socialist revolution will oppose the advance of imperialism—a definitive and true fence.

III

These facts differentiate the situation of the South American countries from the situation of the Central American countries, where Yankee imperialism, resorting to armed intervention without any qualms, provokes a patriotic reaction that can easily win over a part of the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie to anti-imperialism. The APRA propaganda, personally conducted by Haya de la Torre, does not seem to have obtained anywhere else in America greater results. His confusing and messianic sermons, which although they intend to place themselves at the level of the economic struggle, actually appeal in particular to racial and sentimental factors, thereby meeting the conditions necessary to impress the petit-bourgeois intellectuals. The formation of class parties and powerful trade union organizations, with a clear class consciousness, does not appear destined in those countries for the same immediate development as in South America. In our countries, the class factor is more decisive, it is more developed. There is no reason to resort to vague populist formulas after which reactionary tendencies can only thrive. At the moment the aprismo, like propaganda, is circumscribed to Central America; in South America, as a result of the populist, caudillista, petite-bourgeois deviation, which defined it as the Latin American Kuomintang, it is in a stage of total liquidation. Whatever the next Anti-Imperialist Congress in Paris resolves, its decisions must decide on the unification of anti-imperialist organizations and to distinguish between anti-imperialist platforms and agitation and the tasks that fall within the competence of working-class parties and trade union organizations. It will have the final say on the issue.

IV

Do the interests of imperialist capitalism necessarily and inevitably coincide with the feudal and semi-feudal interests of our countries' landowning classes? Is the struggle against feudalism unavoidably and completely identical with the anti-imperialist struggle? Certainly, imperialist capitalism uses the power ofthe feudal class to the degree that it considers it the politically dominant class. But their economic interests are not the same. The petite-bourgeoisie, even the most demagogic, can end up in the same intimate alliance with imperialist capitalism if it, in practice, dilutes its most conspicuous nationalist impulses. Finance capital would feel more secure if power were in the hands of a larger social class that is in a better position than the old, hated feudal class to defend the interests of capitalism and serve as its guard and water boy by satisfying certain overdue demands and distorting the masses' class orientation. The creation of a class of small holders,the expropriation of the latifundia, and the liquidation of feudal privileges are not in opposition to the interests of imperialism in an immediate sense. On the contrary, to the degree that feudal vestiges still remain despite the growth of the capitalist economy, the movement for the liquidation of feudal privileges coincides with the interests of capitalist development as promoted by imperialist experts and investments. The disappearance of the large latifundia, the creation of anagrarian economy through what bourgeois demagoguery calls the "democratization" of the land, the displacement of the old aristocracies by a more powerful bourgeoisie and petite-bourgeoisie better able to guarantee social peace—none of this is contrary to imperialist interests. The Leguia regime in Peru, as timid as it has been in regard to the interests of the latifundistas and gamonales (who support it to a great degree), has no problem resorting to demagogy, declaiming against feudalism and feudal privilege, thundering against the old oligarchies, and promoting a program of land distribution to make every field worker a small landowner. The Leguía regime draws its greatest strength from precisely this type of demagogy. The Leguía regime does not dare lay a hand on the large landowners. But the natural direction of capitalist development—irrigation works, the exploitation of new mines, etc.—is in contradiction to the interests and privileges offeudalism. To the degree that the amount of cultivated land increases and new centers of employment appear, the latifundistas lose their principal power: the absolute and unconditional control of labor. In Lambayeque, where a water diversion project has been started by theAmerican engineer Sutton, the technical commission has already run up against the interests of the large feudal landowners. These landowners grow mainly sugar. The threat that they will lose their monopoly of land and water, and thereby their means of controlling the work force, infuriates these people and pushes them toward attitudes that the government considers subversive, no matter how closely it is connected to these elements. Sutton has all the characteristics of the North American capitalist businessman. His outlook and his work clash with the feudal spirit of the latifundistas. For example, Sutton has established a system of water distribution that is based on the principle that these resources belong to the state; the latifundistas believe that water rights are part of their right to the land. By this theory, the water was theirs: it was and is the absolute property of their estates.

V

And is the petite-bourgeoisie, whose role in the struggle against imperialism is so often overestimated, necessarily opposed to imperialist penetration because of its economic exploitation? The petite-bourgeoisie is undoubtedly the social class most sensitive to the fascination of nationalist mythology. But the economic factor which predominates is the following: in countries afflicted with Spanish-style poverty, where the petite-bourgeoisie, locked in decades-old prejudice, resists proletarianization; where, because of their miserable wages, they do not have the economic power to partially transform themselves into a working class; where the desperate search for office employment, a petty government job, and the hunt for a "decent" salary and a "decent" job dominate, the creation of large enterprises that represent better paid jobs, even if they enormously exploit their local employees, is favorably received by the middle classes. A Yankee business represents a better salary, possibilities for advancement, and liberation from dependence on the state, which can only offer a future to speculators. This reality acts with a decisive force on the consciousness of the petit-bourgeois searching for or having found a job. In these countries with Spanish-style poverty, we repeat, the situation of the middle classes is not the same as in those countries where these classes have gone through a period of free competition and of capitalist growth favorable to individual initiative and success and to the oppression of large monopolies.

In conclusion, we are anti-imperialists because we areMarxists, because we are revolutionaries, because we oppose capitalism with socialism as an adversarial system called to succeed it. In the fight against foreign imperialism, we fulfill our duties of solidarity with the revolutionary masses of Europe.