Stumbling Its Way Through Mexico: The Early Years of the Communist International by Daniela Spenser (review)

Following the success of the Russian Revolution, Lenin and his inner circle believed that Communist emissaries could organize the workers of the world to overthrow governments controlled by the bourgeoisie and autocrats. This worldview extended to Mexico, where a revolution had recently overthrown General Porfirio Díaz and his inner circle. Nevertheless, Communist agents failed to organize another revolution or significantly influence the Mexican revolutionary process in the 1920s. As Daniela Spenser explains, the Bolsheviks’ failure reflected the resilience of Mexican social organizations and communities, the difficulty of organizing a viable Communist Party, the inability of Communist unions to control the labor movement, and the capacity of Mexico’s revolutionary presidents to suppress the opposition.

Mexico’s leaders tolerated the presence of foreign communists and radicals so long as they did not pose a serious political threat. Some communists, such as the American Lin Gale, publisher of Gale’s Magazine, supported the revolutionary nationalism of President Venustiano Carranza. The First Chief, in turn, helped to underwrite the magazine. Gale collaborated with the Indian Manabendra Roy, the Russian Mikhail Borodin, and the Mexican José Allen, among others, to form the Mexican Communist Party in 1919. Two years later, the Comintern gave American citizens Charles Phillips, Louis Fraina, and Sen Katayama, the job of spreading communism in Mexico. Phillips, the son of European Jewish refugees who had moved to New York City, wrote progressive articles in English for Excélsior and El Heraldo de México, and Fraina, the son of an Italian radical republican, promoted communism in the United States and Mexico. Katayama, originally from Japan, studied at Grinnell College in Iowa, joined the Communist Party, and led the organizing efforts in Mexico for the Comintern.

In the 1920s, Communist organizers failed to unite radical movements under their direction and sporadically fought among themselves. Although the Communists made inroads into the labor movement, the anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, and the progressive Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT) refused to subordinate their organizations to the Communist Party. At the same time, the reformist Confederación Regional de Obreros Mexicanos (CROM) gained control over many unions, forged alliances with presidents Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles, and undermined rival organizations. Communist influence in rural areas was limited to regions where local conditions favored radical agrarianism and powerful caudillos accepted Communist influence and resisted suppression by the federal government.

The weakness of the Communist movement led the Comintern to approve of collaboration with bourgeois political parties to influence policy from within and to buy time. In 1923, the Mexican Communist Party supported the presidential candidacy of Plutarco Elías Calles over Adolfo de la Huerta, and Calles rewarded the party with 14 posts in the Ministry of Agriculture, plus travel funds. Rather than providing Communists with a platform for influencing policy, however, the public jobs tied them to government patronage and the federal bureaucracy. At the same time, the Soviet ambassador to Mexico, Stanislav Pestkovsky, attempted to mobilize support for the party by bankrolling the Communist publications El Machete and El Libertador, and by supporting the strike called by the Communist railroad workers’ union in 1926. That action, however, proved to be the ambassador’s undoing. President Calles had the strike declared illegal and expelled Pestkovsky from Mexico for meddling in domestic affairs. By the end of the decade, most prominent Communists had been driven underground, imprisoned, or exiled.

Daniela Spenser’s book reflects impressive research in archives in Mexico, the United States, Russia, and Europe, and provides the best available account of Communism in Mexico during the 1920s. Communist agents stumbled their way through Mexico, but proved no match for revolutionary caudillos, notably Calles, who were determined to control national politics and to reap the rewards of victory.