SUSPENDS PUBLICATION
By Manolo Sarmiento
Mexico City
With a large banner saying "ULTI- MO NUMERO!" [last number], the latest issue of the well-known magazine Politica, which started in this city in May, 1960, announced that it was suspending publication.
Dated December 1-30, the December issue of the double number (181-182) was a typical example of what the magazine has been in the field of the press in Mexico -- a genuine oasis in a desert of corruption. It included articles and a speech by Che (part of the projected program of publishing his works).
The general editor, Manuel Marcué Pardifias, said in an editorial that financial difficulties had compelled the magazine to suspend its activities for a brief period. "Politica has been obliged to become silent. A brief silence which will be put to use in continuing to study the economic, political, social and cultural realities of the country and also to seek an adequate financial solution that will permit its reappearance, in a different form and with different characteristics, but always in the service of the best causes of the Mexican people, of humanity, of all the peoples who are fighting to obtain access to better levels of living and of living together."
"Politica," continued the editor, "is not stressing the sadness of its retreat. The fact that in Mexico, the parties and groups of the left cannot in reality maintain an independent publication, cannot succeed in combining their forces to maintain a newspaper or magazine of national circulation and significance, giving it not only a political and popular success, but the necessary economic firmess, is far from being a favorable index of the civic life of the Mexican people. On the contrary, it demonstrates that Mexico has not achieved the necessary political maturity, and what is worse: that the progressive forces assembled in parties or groups still live separated, frustrated by internal contradictions, reduced to impotence by lack of understanding and of effective, genuine revolutionary unity."
The same issue announces that a publishing house, "Editorial Politica," has been founded and that it will publish the works of Che Guevara and then a book, Marxist Survey of the History of Mexico, and other books on the social and political problems of the country.
Politica overcame many obstacles during its seven years. Many times it was threatened by a government boycott (the government controls the supply of paper). Politica was the only publication of national circulation to always defend the popular interests against imperialism and the national bourgeoisie. It was likewise the only source available to a big sector of the Mexican population for keeping up with the development of the Cuban revolution. It published most of the important speeches of Fidel Castro, and to a lesser degree, those of Che Guevara. As a source of information for the entire left, it will be difficult to replace it.
In she field of domestic politics, Politica's line was more tortuous. It came into existence as part of the general renewal of political life in the continent thanks to the Cuban revolution; nevertheless it inherited many of the flaws of the traditional Latin-American left.
For example, its first issue expressed the hope that it would prove to be a magazine in which the entire left could collaborate. The desire to have Vicente Lombardo Toledano as one of its collaborators explains better than anything else its concept of “unity of the left" -- a kind of popular front, national democratic movement. It need only be added that Marcué Pardifias and Jorge Carrion, the first chief and associate editors, were important figures in Lombardo's Partido Popular [People's party] before breaking with Lombardo in 1998 over the latter's support to Adolfo Liépez Mateos, at that time the presidential candidate of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional [Institutional Revolutionary par~ty], the official government party.
They broke with Lombardo over his electoral policy, but they did not break with him in the same way over his concept of the revolution, of tactics and strategy of the workers and peasants movement. They continued to harbor illusions about an alliance with the "national bourgeoisie," although the disaster of the 1959 railway strike began to alert them to the dangers of this line. The traditional schemas of the left to which they had belonged began to disintegrate under the impact of the Cuban revolution. It was to their merit that they remained faithful to the Cuban revolution and sought to draw from it conclusions applicable to Mexico, although they did not succeed in this.
Their alliance with Lombardo Toledano did not last beyond the first issue of the magazine, since this rank opportunist was highly vexed over an article by
Demetrio Vallejo, already in prison, accusing Lombardo of being a strikebreaker and of having joined with the government in a united front against the railway workers and their leaders (including Vallejo himself, the main leader of the strike).
Politica listed Lombardo in its masthead from then on as a "collaborator" but in reality he never wrote for it. Little by little, the differences deepened and Politica attacked the old Stalinist vigorously.
Politica collaborated most closely with the Mexican Communist party, but without being dominated by it. While the leaders of the Cuban revolution ingenuously placed confidence in the Communist parties of Latin America, Politica became more and more radical until, like the Castroist leadership on a continental scale, it began to run into conflicts with the Mexican Communist party.
Unlike the Castroist leadership, however, Politica, that is, its editor Marcué Pardifias, was not able to open up an independent road. Abandoned by many of his initial collaborators, who became frightened off by the radicalization of the magazine, but incapable of genuinely escaping the influence of the Mexican Communist party, Marcué Pardifias floundered in deep water.
In 1967 the magazine underwent such zigzags that it was clear that it was in trouble. It lacked a clear, defined policy. When the conflict between the Castroist leadership and the most conservative machines of the Communist parties broke into the open, Politica, that is, its editorial department, displayed a complete absence of orientation; or rather it showed that when a line is not developed consistently, at a decisive moment the old line, instead of being overcome, reasserts itself.
Manuel Marcué Pardifias published the documents of the leaders of the Venezuelan Communist party against Douglas Bravo in such a way that it was obvious he agreed with them. When Fidel replied vehemently, it was feared in some circles that for the first time Politica was not going to publish a speech by Fidel as inportant as this one. Politica published
-59-
it. Marcué Pardifias knows one thing and
knows it well -- the Cuban revolution
comes first. Despite everything, includ-
ing his alliance with the Mexican Commu-
nist party, Politica published the Cuban
documents. Thus came the latest stage --
the pages of the magazine were opened to
the different political tendencies in the
country. But it was too late.
It now appears that Politica's
editor will try to bring out a twice-
monthly along the lines of the fine Uru-
guayan weekly, Marcha. It is to be hoped
that he will succeed.
Whatever happens, the final number
of Politica closed an important chapter
in the history of the movement to renew
Marxism in Mexico. Tendencies of an in-
creasingly contradictory character led
to a radicalization in the field of ideas
among the vanguard without its being comple -
mented on the organizational level. The
disappearance of Politica faithfully re-
flects this situation: lack of funds,
lack of organization among the indepen-
dent left.
For the new generation, Politica
represents a bridge. Its columns made
available the positions of Castroisn,
representing a positive achievement of
the old left linked to Stalinism. This
in itself was contradictory. The modern-
ized old Stalinists were instrumental in
diffusing ideas in complete contradiction
to those they had advanced in their youth
which they had not completely given up de-
spite everything. If they transmitted new
ideas, they were not the ones to put them
into practice.
In essence the young generation
understood this general lesson. Hence the
great popularity of the magazine combined
with a sharply critical attitude toward
its line. This also explains why Marcué
Pardifias remained alone, abandoned not
only by the most cowardly intellectuals
but also by genuinely revolutionary jour-
nalists like Rico Galan, who were able to
understand the meaning of the Cuban expe-
rience in time.
A whole epoch closed with the fold-
ing of Politica, a whole way of conceiv-
ing and practicing politics. The new
times require new men, new ideas...and
new magazines.