commies

[Eltitoguay]

CRISIS IN VENEZUELA​

By Marx21.net | 02/08/2024

ES CA
Marx21

The day after the presidential elections in Venezuela on Sunday, July 28, the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared the current president, Nicolás Maduro, the winner with 51.2%.

That compared with 44 percent for his main rival, the right-wing Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) candidate Edmundo González Urrutia.

Maduro presented himself with promises of aid to the poor and rejection of Western imperialism.

The PUD is a coalition of opposition parties. Its main objective is to end the Maduro government and get closer to the US.

Following the announcement of the result, the right wing called the election result fraudulent. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said her candidate had received 74% of the vote and declared: “Venezuela has a new president-elect and it is Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.” Machado called on the armed forces to “enforce popular sovereignty.”

In effect, he was demanding a military coup.

Hypocrisy​

Mauricio Macri — the former neoliberal Argentine president who now supports the ultra-right Milei — joined the chorus. He tweeted that “the Venezuelan Armed Forces have the opportunity to stand on the right side of history and ensure that the will of the people is respected.” He called on “the international community… to not allow this dictatorship to perpetuate itself over time.”

Many other leaders, from Latin America, Europe and the United States, questioned the election results.
The Socialist International – which includes the Spanish PSOE, the PT of Brazil, the British Labour Party, etc. – issued a statement expressing its “deep concern” regarding the situation in Venezuela.
Even Gabriel Boric, the leftist Chilean president who has continued the repression of the Mapuche people, demanded “pressure from the international community” for “democratic transparency” in Venezuela… Boric spoke during an official visit to the United Arab Emirates, without expressing any concern about the almost total absence of democracy in that country, where almost 90% of the population does not even have the right to citizenship.

In other words, what has happened once again exposes the profound hypocrisy of what calls itself “the international community.”

Anti-imperialist?​

Maduro has been in power since 2013, following the death of Hugo Chavez, who had enacted social reform programs that benefited poor people, taking advantage of significant oil export revenues during his tenure.

But while Chavez used the language of liberation and solidarity, he left the structures of capitalism intact. Power was increasingly concentrated within a state bureaucracy; power was never exercised by democratic grassroots bodies.

However, at key moments it was the activity of the working and poor people that saved Chavez from the attacks of the rich. The most emblematic case was the attempted coup d'état of April 2002, which was defeated by mass mobilization from the working-class neighborhoods.

Maduro inherited the power of the Chavista state, but without Chavez's influence or popularity. Nor has he enjoyed the same level of oil revenues. In any case, Maduro has offered no solution to the worsening crisis afflicting Venezuela. Over the past decade, nearly eight million people have fled the country, seeking refuge outside - this from a country that in 2014 had a population of 30 million.

Recent events contradict Maduro's discourse, which is "anti-imperialist" and against multinationals.

In early July 2024, Venezuela and the United States announced an agreement to improve their bilateral relations; it turns out that it was the result of secret negotiations that began at the end of 2023. More specifically, at the end of June 2024, Venezuela announced the extension of its agreement with the American oil company Chevron to allow the extraction of hydrocarbons until 2040.

Oil Minister Pedro Tellechea said that this is how “we show the world that Venezuela is prepared for any alliance with transnationals.” Maduro said: “Whoever wants stability in America, look for us, we are a guarantee of stability and security.”

On the other hand, this explains why the US government has responded in a restrained manner to the current crisis. If the US were really plotting to push for a coup in Venezuela, it would not have signed these agreements a few weeks ago. It belies, once again, the simplistic view of a world dominated by a “big puppeteer” in Washington; after all, they are not even capable of managing what is happening in their own country.

Right-wing coup​

But if Maduro is a disaster for working people, the right, which represents the rich, has nothing good to offer him either. They want to take advantage of the crisis created by the failure of Chavismo to take Venezuela back to the pre-Chávez period, when his power and wealth were undisputed.

Venezuela’s economy is in the midst of a terrible crisis, with widespread shortages and hyperinflation that in 2018 topped 1.7 million percent. Ordinary people are struggling, with basic food and medicines staggeringly expensive or unavailable and wages stagnant or falling. Part of this is due to the Maduro government’s handling of the crisis, and part to US-led sanctions. But another key reason is falling oil prices.

The right's coming to power would entail an attempt to make poor people pay the cost of the current crisis. This is already happening under Maduro, it is true, but if the right comes to power through a coup, working people will be in an even worse position to face the attacks.

It is not in vain that opposition leader Machado met shortly before the elections with Milei, the far-right Argentine president who came to power with promises of improving the economy, but who has only further impoverished the majority of the population.

A right-wing coup would drive the poor and working Venezuelan people from Guatemala to Guatepeor.

Class alternative​

The revolutionary left-wing organizations in Venezuela responded to the elections with the slogan #LaClaseTrabajadoraNoTieneCandidato . The repression to which the Maduro regime subjects them had prevented them from presenting a candidate.

This is just one indication of the fact that, whether or not there was fraud in the vote count, the electoral process did suffer from democratic shortcomings. (Whether they are worse than those experienced in many other countries is another question.)

The radical left pointed out in a joint statement that all the candidates represented bourgeois sectors; it was a dispute “between a widely repudiated government… and its employers’ opponents, also anti-worker and pro-imperialist, who only seek to regain state control and manage Venezuelan capitalism.”

They denounced that the payment of the debt “takes money away from health, education, salaries and other basic needs. That is what Maduro has done, and the employers’ opponents want to do the same, but with the protection of the IMF and the United States.” “The government, the employers’ parties and the businessmen agree on the destruction of labor rights and the imposition of conditions of overexploitation on workers.”

“The government is deepening its commitment to anti-rights religious sectors that oppose the demands of women and the sexually diverse community, and no opposition candidate is questioning this regressive alliance.”

In conclusion: “If the capitalist parties that are currently in opposition were to return to power, they would continue to apply anti-worker and anti-popular measures, with the argument that the Maduro government left the country in ruins and that we would have to continue to tighten our belts.”

In this, they are absolutely right.

The right-wing opposition's anti-Maduro protests are therefore not a bid for democratic progress. They are used to gain benefits for the right, perhaps even to create the conditions for a military coup or some other type of external intervention.

But if nothing can be conceded to the pro-US right, we cannot join the chorus of certain sectors of the left cheering a Maduro victory. As the Venezuelan left denounces, Maduro offers nothing to working people. They insist, again quite rightly, that: “It was not socialism that failed.”

What has happened in Venezuela confirms, for the umpteenth time, that the “national paths to socialism”, typically based on extractivism and sacrifice by working people, only lead to a dead end.

Transformation in favour of the working and poor majority requires a systemic assault on the structures of imperialism and capitalism. And this cannot be led by a leader from a government office, much less from a military barracks. It requires democratic self-organisation from below.

Crisis en Venezuela - marx21.net

ES CA Marx21 Al día siguiente de las elecciones presidenciales […]

marx21.net

 

[right]

Greetings Comrades
We want breadlines

 

[RobFromTX]

View attachment 19058054

Greetings Comrades
We want breadlines
View attachment 19058743

 

[Eltitoguay]

Hunger is very bad... Whether in Spain, Cuba, North Korea, or the USA...


But food poverty is not the only bad thing. Or being homeless... It is also living with the threat that lack of health will condemn you to the above...

 

[Eltitoguay]

Biden mobilizes $8 billion to end hunger in the US by 2030​

Washington, Sep 28, 2022 (EFE) :

In the United States, some 34 million people, including five million children, suffer from food insecurity.

President Joe Biden promised to end this situation by 2030, and he has mobilized $8 billion in public and private funds to do so.
The promise was made at the first White House conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health since 1969, when Republican President Richard Nixon took up the cause by promoting legislation such as the School Breakfast Program at a similar meeting.
“Since then, advances in research and medicine have taught us much more about nutrition and health. I am convening this conference again today because I believe we can use those advances to make America a stronger, healthier nation,” Biden said.

In 2021, according to data from the Department of Agriculture, 10.2% of households in the country experienced food insecurity at some point during the year, a percentage similar to that of 2020. And in households with children under 18 years of age, that figure rose to 12.5%, although in some cases only adults were affected.

The presidential strategy to reduce these figures is based on three pillars: facilitating citizens' access to food that keeps their families healthy, offering the necessary information to be able to choose healthy diets and promoting physical exercise.
“The good news is that we have already created a good foundation for this,” Biden said at a meeting that included Spanish chef José Andrés as a final guest and included senators, representatives of NGOs and state agencies dedicated to this work.
In any country and in any state in the United States, the president added, if a parent cannot feed his or her children, “nothing else matters.”

In the US, the worst-affected state is Mississippi: One in six people, including one in five children, is going hungry, according to data from the organization Feeding America, which distributes food in that area.
Lack of jobs and healthy food is to blame, Charles Beady, executive director of the Mississippi Food Network, a food bank that operates in 56 counties and which in 2021 delivered 42.6 tons of food, 12.6 more than the previous year, as a result of the pandemic, told Efe.
Organizations like hers are part of the solution, but ending hunger and malnutrition requires a collective effort, she warned. “It is possible, but national will is needed. We are the richest nation on Earth. We have all kinds of resources. It is a matter of rolling up our sleeves and getting down to it.”
Wednesday's conference saw pledges of $8 billion in public and private funding, of which at least $2.5 billion will be invested in startups offering innovative solutions to hunger and food insecurity and some $4 billion to philanthropy that improves access to nutritious food and promotes healthy choices.
Organizations such as the Food Industry Association have pledged to mobilize their partners to donate 2 billion meals to food banks by 2023, and others such as Google have pledged to launch new tools that will help Americans access health services and public food programs.
Warner Bros. Discovery will provide 600 million meals to food-insecure children by September 2023, and The Wave Foundation will improve coordination between producers and distributors to foster a more sustainable food system.
“Everyone has a role to play at the local, state, territorial and tribal levels. And I firmly believe that the work ahead should be bipartisan. (…) We are the United States. Nothing beats us when we work together,” Biden concluded. EFE

Biden moviliza 8.000 millones para acabar con el hambre en EEUU para 2030

Washington, 28 sep (EFE).- En Estados Unidos unos 34 millones de personas, incluidos cinco millones de niños, padecen inseguridad alimentaria. Una situación que su presidente, Joe Biden, prometió hoy finalizar para 2030 y para lo que cuenta con la movilización de 8.000 millones de dólares...

www.swissinfo.ch

 

[Eltitoguay]

Hunger in the United States​

STAFF
TOPIC: HUNGER
HUNGER IN THE UNITED STATES FACT SHEETU.S. HUNGER FACT SHEET
Ver Página en Español

Here in the United States, few children are severely malnourished, but many families worry about their next meal or regularly run out of grocery money. Collectively, the world already grows enough food to feed everyone, and the U.S. government has the power and resources to make a historic impact on hunger. That is why Bread and our partners work tirelessly to urge our nation’s decision-makers to prioritize policies and programs that will end hunger.

In 2022, 12.8 percent of all U.S. households were food insecure. This includes 7.7 percent with “low food security” and 5.1 percent with “very low food security.” These increases were largely due to the end of pandemic assistance programs including the expanded Child Tax Credit and increased access and benefits in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Inflation and rising food prices are also contributing factors.

Food insecurity is more common in rural areas. In 2022, it affected 14.7 percent of rural households, or 2.7 million families. Although urban areas have a lower rate of food insecurity, at 12.5 percent, this adds up to a much larger number of families—14.3 million—since urban areas are more populous.
Black and Latino households experienced food insecurity at more than twice the rate of white households in 2022, at 22.4 percent and 20.8 percent, respectively.

Updated February 2024
SOURCE: USDA (2023). Household Food Security in the United States in 2022 (Report No. ERR-325):

https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=107702.

In households with very low food security—more than one in 20 U.S. households—there were times during the year that people’s food intake was reduced and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because the household lacked money for food. Of households with very low food security:

• 98 percent worried that their food would run out before they had money to buy more.
• 97 percent found that the food they bought just did not last, and they did not have money to get more.
• 96 percent could not afford to eat balanced meals.
• 96 percent skipped meals or ate less because there was not enough money for food.
• 65 percent had been hungry but did not eat because they could not afford enough food.
• 29 percent did not eat for a whole day because there was not enough money for food.

Data fact sheet:

https://www.bread.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Bread-USHunger-FactSheet.pdf

U.S. Hunger - Bread for the World

Here in the United States, few children are severely malnourished, but many families worry about their next meal or regularly run out of grocery money.

www.bread.org

 

[Eltitoguay]

Here, we also know how bad hunger is...

"Onion Lullabies"; Miguel Hernandez :​

Miguel Hernández - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

«This week, like the previous ones, Tuesday arrives and your letter has not arrived. I am also starting to write this one so that I will have time to post it later, when the post office brings me yours, which I do not think will be missing today. These days I have been thinking about your situation, which is becoming more difficult every day. The smell of the onion you eat reaches me here, and my child will feel indignant at sucking and getting onion juice instead of milk. To console him, I am sending you these little verses that I have written for him, since there is nothing for me to do here but write to you and despair.»
Letter from Miguel Hernández from Torrijos prison to his wife Josefina Manresa, who has recently had a baby, with her husband in prison. (Madrid, September 12, 1939)

Onion lullabies.​

The onion is a
closed and poor frost:
frost of your days
and my nights.
Hunger and onion:
black ice and
large, round frost.

My child was in the cradle of hunger . He was breastfed
with onion blood . But your blood was frosted with sugar, onion and hunger.
A dark-skinned woman,
resolved into the moon,
spills thread by thread
over the cradle.
Laugh, child,
for you swallow the moon
when necessary.

Lark of my house,
laugh a lot.
Your laughter in my eyes is
the light of the world.
Laugh so much
that in my soul, hearing you,
space is shaken.

Your laughter sets me free,
gives me wings.
It takes away my loneliness,
it tears me from prison.
A mouth that flies,
a heart that flashes on your lips.
Your laughter is the most victorious sword .
Conqueror of flowers
and larks.
Rival of the sun,
future of my bones
and my love.

The fluttering flesh,
suddenly the eyelid,
and the child
colored like never before.
How many goldfinches
soar, flutter,
from your body!

I woke up from being a child.
Never wake up.
My mouth is sad .
Always laugh.
Always in the cradle,
defending laughter
feather by feather.

Being of such high flight,
so extended,
that your flesh seems like
the sifted sky.
If only I could
go back to the origin
of your career!

In the eighth month you laugh
with five orange blossoms.
With five tiny
ferocity.
With five teeth like five adolescent
jasmines .

Tomorrow will be the border of kisses
, when you feel a weapon
in your teeth . You feel a fire running down your teeth looking for the center.
Fly, child, in the double
moon of your chest.
It, sad as an onion;
You, satisfied.
Don't break down.
Don't know what's happening
or what's happening.

 

[Eltitoguay]

A brief look at Western Sahara, from the perspective of the

Partido Comunista de España (marxista-leninista) - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Communist Party of Spain (Marxist–Leninist) (historical) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

​

Western Sahara: 48 years of neglect​

November 5, 2023

Forty-eight years have passed since those infamous tripartite agreements in Madrid, with Franco still alive.

Acuerdo Tripartito de Madrid - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Madrid Accords - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Juan Carlos de Borbón assumed the leadership of the State and made a secret pact with Kissinger and Hassan II. In these agreements, the sovereignty of the Sahara was ceded to the satrap of Morocco, Hassan II, and to Mauritania, betraying all the promises made to the Sahrawis, to the Spanish troops stationed there, and against all international legality that demanded the decolonization of Western Sahara. Franco's heir sold out the Sahrawi people to secure the crown with the support of the United States.

The invasion was carried out with the Green March and a bloody repression against the Sahrawis was unleashed.

Invasión marroquí del Sahara español - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Green March - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Women, children and the elderly fled into the desert and the Polisario Front, which was recognised and assumed the leadership of this people who were not willing to submit, regrouped them in camps in the desert.

Frente Polisario - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Polisario Front - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

These camps were machine-gunned and bombed by Moroccan planes. War against the invasion was declared.
A great part of the civilian population was transported by truck to the territory of Tindouf, generously ceded by Algeria for their settlement, which was intended to be temporary, and that was forty-eight years ago.
In February 1976, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was proclaimed.

República Árabe Saharaui Democrática - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Faced with the armed response of the Sahrawi army, Mauritania withdrew in 1979 and ceded the territory to the Moroccan invader.

The Polisario Front is waging war on all fronts: open military warfare and intense diplomatic work, obtaining resolutions in the United Nations urging the Spanish government to complete the decolonization process of its former colony, for which it is still responsible.
In 1991, with a truce negotiated by the UN, a Ceasefire was declared and, … among the agreements reached, the holding of a referendum on the self-determination of Western Sahara.
The referendum has not yet been held. Instead, Morocco has erected walls along 2,700 km, surrounding 80% of the territory of Western Sahara, laying a minefield, the largest in the world.

Muro marroquí - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Moroccan Western Sahara Wall - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Sahrawis have had a lot of patience! Patience and many years of protests in the occupied territories of the Sahara, brutally repressed by Moroccan forces.
In 2010, Morocco brutally dismantled the Gdaim Izik camp, on the outskirts of El Aaiún, where 20,000 Sahrawis had set up their tents to demand their rights. Sahrawi activists were imprisoned, women were raped… Sultana Khaya and her family were repeatedly harassed in their home.

Sultana Khaya - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Sultana Khaya - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The camps in Tindouf are home to nearly 200,000 refugees, most of them children, women and the elderly, who are reorganising a “provisional life” of more than forty years, in the hard hamada.

Campos de refugiados de la provincia de Tinduf - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Sahrawi refugee camps - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Women play an important role in the organisation of these spaces of local power, the distribution of food from international refugee agencies, which is increasingly complicated and scarce, initiatives for the production of means of subsistence, crafts, land cultivation… They keep a village alive, create schools, workshops, organise health care, deploy spaces for culture, cinema, music, hosting solidarity trips to learn about the reality of a village.
joyful, in that desperation to long for and fight for the return to their land; a land that the majority of the population has never seen, because they were born in the Algerian hamada.

On November 13, 2020, in Guerguerat (border crossing between Western Sahara and Mauritania), a demilitarized zone under agreements reached by the UN, in a flagrant violation of the ceasefire, the Moroccan occupation forces attacked Sahrawi protesters who were peacefully protesting. In response, the forces of the Sahrawi People's Liberation Army responded to this attack. The Polisario Front considers the Ceasefire agreement broken and resumes the war.

Continued plundering of wealth: Ignoring the 2016 CJEU ruling that Western Sahara was not Moroccan territory and therefore could not have access to its resources, the EU manoeuvred and secured illegal agreements to massively plunder Sahrawi natural resources in agriculture and fishing worth several hundred million euros a year, allowing the occupier to finance its war against the Sahrawi people and the colonisation of the territory, marked by brutal repression and serious violations of the fundamental rights of civilians in the occupied zone.
The SADR Government has warned on numerous occasions of the risks to which companies and individuals are exposed when setting up their businesses in occupied Sahara and transporting natural resources from Western Sahara by sea. For more than forty years there has been large-scale plundering of phosphates, fishing in the vast fishing grounds of its territorial waters, sand and aggregates...
The illegal commercialisation and exploitation of its resources.

On December 10, 2020, the NORMALIZATION AGREEMENT BETWEEN ISRAEL AND MOROCCO was signed, by which they agreed to normalize their diplomatic relations.

Acuerdo de normalización de las relaciones entre Israel y Marruecos - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Israel–Morocco normalization agreement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

On the same day, the United States approved the sale of sophisticated drones to Morocco and the recognition of Morocco's claim to the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
In March 2022, Pedro Sánchez sent a letter to Mohamed VI in which he accepted his autonomy plan for Western Sahara, contradicting the previous position held by Spain, which, albeit formally, accepted the UN mandate on the self-determination referendum. This servility towards the Moroccan satrap, behind the back of parliament and the feelings of the Spanish people who support the Sahrawis, compromised Spain's interests with Algeria, the main supplier of gas, at a time of serious energy crisis. Pedro Sánchez's servility goes hand in hand with submission to the interests and designs of the US, its role in NATO, increase in arms budgets and unconditional position of support for Ukraine in the war.

The inclusion of Morocco in the celebration of the football World Cup in 2030 has raised eyebrows among the Sahrawis and Spanish associations supporting the Sahara, and they warn that they will not tolerate the inclusion of the occupied territory in the map of celebrations.
The XVI Congress of the Polisario Front was held in January 2023, following the return to armed struggle against the Moroccan occupation, due to the violation of the Ceasefire agreement in November 2020.
The Congress welcomed the response of all sectors of the Sahrawi people to the call to armed struggle., its adherence to the option of intensifying resistance until achieving liberation and sovereignty throughout the national territory.

Our unconditional support for their struggle, our recognition of their right to oppose the occupation by all means. Our unreserved condemnation of the successive governments of Spain that have not fulfilled their duty to decolonize Western Sahara and our total condemnation of the servility of Pedro Sánchez's government.
SAHARA FREEDOM! POLISARIO WILL WIN!

Sáhara occidental: 48 años de abandono

Sáhara occidental: 48 años de abandono

pceml.info

"Cheer! Cheer O revolutionaries! Cheer! All revolutionaries! Get ready for fighting! Beat the colonialists! O, Sahrawi revolutionary people! We are the revolutionaries! And the Sahrawi free land is for Sahrawis! The Sahrawi people today have scored, A great victory! And in the war of independence, they crushed the imperialists"
.

 

[Eltitoguay]

A different perspective-opinion, from

Internacional Comunista Revolucionaria - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Revolutionary Communist International - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The struggle of the Sahrawis, history and perspective :​

Jordi Martorell; 23 November 2010.

• Spanish
• Africa

This article was written in 2002 as part of a discussion on the struggle of the Sahrawi people. We are publishing it now not only because of the interest and relevance of its analysis, but also because of the current events taking place in Western Sahara.
The Western Sahara conflict is an important issue for Maghreb revolutionaries, not only from a theoretical point of view (taking into account the importance that Marxism gives to the right of self-determination), but also from a political and practical point of view (it is impossible to carry out the tasks of the socialist revolution in the region without having an internationalist and Marxist understanding of the national question).
To address this issue, we think it is useful to have a more detailed view of the history of the conflict and the relationship between the struggle in Western Sahara and the struggle in the rest of the Maghreb. This will further underline the idea that the fate of the Sahrawi people is also determined by the interests of imperialism and that even if they were to achieve independence (something extremely unlikely), in reality it would only mean being chained to one or another imperialist power.

Spanish colonialism​

The first European contacts with Western Sahara came in the 15th century through Castile and Portugal. Neither of these countries made a real effort to establish a permanent colonial presence and limited themselves to establishing commercial ports on the coast, mainly based on the slave trade.
Real interest in Western Sahara was not renewed until the 19th century, at the time of the great “scramble for Africa” of the various European imperialist powers. In 1894 the Congress of Berlin began to lay down the rules for the division of Africa. In December of the same year the Spanish government proclaimed a protectorate over the territories of Rio de Oro, Angra de Cintra and the Bahia de Occidente, and in 1885 a settlement was founded at Dakhla called Villa Cisneros. The borders of Spanish Sahara were drawn in a series of Franco-Spanish treaties in the period up to 1912. Spain claimed possession of Rio de Oro, Saguia el-Hamra and the Spanish protectorate of southern Morocco, with a total area of approximately 112,000 square kilometres. However, Spain was too weak to occupy the area of desert that had been assigned to it and until 1916 Villa Cisneros was the only Spanish outpost in the region. In 1916 Spain took control of Tarfaya and later, in 1920, formed a third settlement at the southernmost tip of the territory called La Guera.
At that time the population of the region was made up of a number of tribes who were considered by themselves and neighbouring tribes to be the ahel es-sahel (the coastal population). Their main economic activity was pastoral nomadism, although they also practised trade with neighbouring tribes. This was a very primitive society and its limited economic base did not allow for much social differentiation. They were organised into tribes (qabila) which regulated their affairs through an assembly (djemaa) of the heads of the most distinguished families, who in turn elected the sheik of the group. In the tribe the assembly or djemaa was known as the Ait Arbit or council of forty, which met in times of war or serious crisis.
The harsh conditions of the desert did not permit the establishment of any supra-tribal government or law. The most developed forms of organisation only emerged in the south, in what is known as Mauritania, where a few weak supra-tribal states were established from the 17th century onwards.
As we have seen, until 1934, the Spanish limited themselves to establishing their presence in three outposts on the coast, but did not attempt to go inland. As a result, the entire region under Spanish rule became a sanctuary for nomadic forces fighting against the French advance in Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria. At that time, it was a unified struggle of all the nomadic tribes. For example, the Sahrawi sheikh Ma el-Ainin, in 1910 tried to overthrow the weak Alawite sultan, Moulay Hfid of Morocco, who was collaborating with the French colonialists. At this time, there was still no clear separate national consciousness among the tribes in the Sahara and their struggle had the goal of achieving the liberation of Morocco from colonialism and its puppets. El-Ainin's forces were defeated by the French troops.
Finally, in 1934, French forces from French Morocco, Algeria and French West Africa and Spanish forces carried out a joint operation to suppress the resistance. France forced Spain to occupy some strategic points in the interior to prevent the territory being used as a base for raids against French-occupied areas of the Maghreb.
Yet Spanish Sahara remained an almost forgotten colony with little economic value to the mother country. The main reason for maintaining a presence was to counter French domination of the region and to protect the Canary Islands and the rich fishing waters between these islands and the Saharan coast. By 1952 there were only 216 civil servants, 24 telephones and only 366 children attending school in the whole of Spanish Sahara. The Ahel es-Sahel continued their nomadic life. The Spanish colonists ruled them using their own traditional qabila structures of sheiks. As in many other places, the Spanish imperialists used tribal structures that were largely democratic to enforce their rule.

The fight against colonialism​

The period leading up to Moroccan independence in 1956 was again characterised by joint struggle in the region against French and Spanish colonialism. The Jaich at-Tahir (Liberation Army) fought in what is now Morocco and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara and Mauritania. Sahrawi tribes fought for the liberation of Morocco.
On gaining independence, the French imperialists relied on, and supported, the newly established monarchy of Mohammed V to maintain control over the country's natural resources. But first they had to put down revolts in the northern Rif region in 1957 and also crush the remnants of the Liberation Army that refused to join the newly formed Royal Armed Forces (FAR), which were based mainly in the Spanish territories of southern Morocco and the Sahara. Such was the strength of these guerrillas that during 1957 the Spanish had to withdraw from a handful of coastal strongholds and even had to abandon Smara.
This move was actually a threat to the “controlled” decolonization process that the French imperialists had planned for Morocco, and it also added to their problems in Algeria, a region that they wanted to hold on to at all costs. Thus, in February 1958, with a joint Franco-Spanish operation – called Ecouvillon – involving 14,000 soldiers and 130 aircraft, they finally crushed the resistance movement in collaboration with Mohamed V’s FAR. In fact, it was after crushing this last focal point of resistance – April 1958 – that the Spanish agreed to hand over southern Spanish Morocco to the Rabat regime.
The early 1960s marked the beginning of a profound socio-economic transformation in Spanish Sahara, which served to change the nature of the Sahrawi movement. Phosphate deposits in the region had been discovered in 1942, but serious recognition and the beginning of their exploitation did not begin until 1962. Phosphate deposits in the territory at that time were estimated at 10 billion tonnes, with particularly rich deposits at Bou-Craa. In 1975, after significant investments by the Spanish colonialists, production reached 2.6 million tonnes per year.
These economic changes in turn led to rapid urbanisation of Sahrawi society, with the majority of the population abandoning the harsh nomadic life and settling in the main towns. Many of them took up wage employment while others became traders. Some exchanged nomadic herding for sedentary agriculture. In 1974, 55 per cent of the Sahrawis registered in the census of that year lived in the three main towns (Villa Cisneros, El Aiun and Smara), out of a total of 73,497 Sahrawis registered. However, the Spanish census of 1974, which later formed the basis for the promised referendum on self-determination, actually “omitted” a large number of Sahrawis who had settled outside the artificial – colonially imposed – borders of Spanish Sahara. At that time there must have been at least 75,000 Ahel es-Sahel in southern Spanish Morocco, northern Mauritania and southwestern Algeria.

The birth of POLISARIO​

In any case, the shift from nomadic life to urban areas led to the rise of a new nationalist movement based on the new layers of the middle class, particularly many Sahrawi students who had gone to university abroad and who were influenced by the dominant anti-imperialist ideas and also by Stalinism.
A small underground organisation was formed in the late 1960s called the Organisation for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Oued ed-Dahab. The main leader of the organisation was Mohamed Sidi Ibrahim Bassiri, a member of the Reguibi tribe who had studied in Morocco, Egypt and Syria. The movement was crushed by the Spanish Foreign Legion which opened fire on nationalist demonstrators in El Aaiun in June 1970. Hundreds of people were arrested and the main leader, Bassiri, was most likely killed by Spanish forces.
The next attempt to reorganise the anti-colonial movement came again from the students, mainly in Morocco, but also in Mauritania. A nucleus of Sahrawi student militants was formed in Rabat in 1971-72. They were clearly influenced by the radical ideas of the time and dominant among university students in Morocco. A decade after the start of the decolonisation process in Africa, it was clear to many petty-bourgeois students that the path chosen by the new African rulers was not going to solve the real problems of the masses. Despite all the rhetoric about “African socialism” and “Arab socialism”, these countries had become bourgeois Bonapartist regimes, extremely repressive against any opposition from the working class. The new generation was increasingly attracted to Stalinism, and particularly its Maoist variant, which was seen as a more radical alternative. The situation was actually worse in Morocco where the regime was under the iron grip of the monarchy.
In Morocco, several Maoist organizations emerged among students and practically took control of the student movement, which played a crucial role in the general strike against the Alawite monarch. Some of the founders of POLISARIO were militants of these organizations. Thus, when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saha el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (POLISARIO) was finally founded in 1973, it was a classic Stalinist guerrilla organization that combined the goal of liberating the Sahara from the Spanish colonialists with the creation of an “Arab Democratic Republic.” In fact, for them at first, the goal of liberating the Sahara was seen as part of the “Arab revolution” that was supposed to be anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist and also against the feudal and reactionary rulers of the Arab countries, and that this would lead to the unification of the Arab nation. For this reason, the founders of POLISARIO had close contacts and received support from Libya. They also tried to enlist the support of different nationalist organisations in Morocco itself, with little success. This was the first time that the nationalist movement in the Sahara adopted the goal of creating an independent Sahara, rather than the joint struggle against imperialism in Morocco and, to a lesser extent, in Algeria and Mauritania. At that particular time, the struggle for integration into the Moroccan monarchical regime was clearly not very attractive. Despite that, the founders of POLISARIO originally conceived of an independent Sahara as a step forward towards a united Maghreb, as part of the struggle for revolution in the region. However, if instead of adopting a nationalist vision of their struggle, they had linked it with the general struggle against the reactionary Moroccan monarchy, led by Moroccan workers, peasants and students, they would have made an important contribution to the revolutionary movement in Morocco, which is, after all, the only guarantee of respect for their national rights.

The Great Morocco​

Meanwhile, both Morocco and Mauritania had claims on Spanish Sahara. Immediately after Morocco gained independence from France in 1956, the nationalist Istiqlal party declared that the task of liberating the country was not finished and would not be finished until the entire historical territory of the Alaouite Empire was free. This meant a region that included most of the Algerian Sahara, northwestern Mali, Mauritania and even a part of Senegal. The current borders separating Western Sahara, Mauritania, Algeria and Mali are artificial and were imposed by French and Spanish imperialism. In reality, on a map we can see that they are straight lines that do not follow any national or geographical criteria, only the division of areas of influence between the different colonial powers. This is actually the case on most African borders.
However, the nascent Moroccan bourgeoisie represented by Istiqlal was less interested in the integrity of the national territory than in finding a useful way to unify the entire country (despite class interests) in a common national enterprise in order to divert the attention of the masses from their social problems. King Mohammed V, still in the process of consolidating his power, was unable to harness the nationalist fervour and therefore adopted the cause of Greater Morocco. Thus, Morocco refused to recognise Mauritania when it gained independence in 1960. At that time, the idea of territorial integrity was not accepted by all sectors of the nationalist movement. The more radical and left-leaning wing, represented by Ben Barka, who in 1959 broke away from Istiqlal to found the Popular Forces of National Unity (UNFP), explicitly rejected the idea of a Greater Morocco, defended the independence of Mauritania and opposed the war against Algeria in 1963. The main workers' organisations of the time, the Moroccan Workers' Union (UMT) and the Communist Party, adopted the same position, followed the criminal Stalinist policy of the two stages, exactly the same policy as Istiqlal (and by extension the monarchy) and even criticised the king for recognising Mauritania in 1970. At that time, the question of Western Sahara was simply posed as one of the struggles against Spanish colonialism and for the incorporation of its territory into Morocco.
Another powerful reason for the Moroccan ruling class to continue to pursue the claims of Greater Morocco was the fear that the spirit of the Algerian liberation movement, which had a more left-wing and even “socialist” language, would spread to Morocco and lead directly to the overthrow of the monarchy. Thus, in 1963, barely a year after Algeria gained its independence, Morocco went to war with its neighbor in the brief War of the Sands of the Sea.
On the other hand, Mauritania wanted to prevent Western Sahara from falling into Moroccan hands, as that would give the belligerent Moroccan regime 980 miles of desert border that was difficult to protect. In addition, most of the border between Mauritania and Spanish Sahara followed the strategic iron ore railway line on which 85 percent of Mauritania's exports depended.
Despite Moroccan claims to Spanish Sahara, the Alawite monarchy made no serious move for over a decade and used the conflict mainly as a bargaining chip. A clear example of this was the disbandment of the Moroccan-sponsored Sahara Liberation Front (FLS) after Morocco managed to seize the small enclave of Ifni from Spain. King Hassan II would later have excellent relations with the Franco dictatorship in Spain.
In 1974, the Spanish regime was in serious difficulties at home. A pre-revolutionary situation was opening up with mass action by the working class and the threat of overthrow of the weak dictatorship opening the way for socialist transformation. The Spanish ruling class was terrified. It feared the effects that a guerrilla war in the Sahara would have on the Spanish situation. The example of the Portuguese revolution of that year, triggered in part by the disastrous colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique, was still fresh in its mind when it decided to announce a referendum on self-determination for 1975.
Since the early 1960s, Spain had pursued two different strategies in Western Sahara. On the one hand, a sector of Franco's government, represented by Carrero Blanco, wanted to maintain an indefinite colonial presence and was convinced of the loyalty of the local population to Spain, thanks to the modernisation they had introduced. They thus formed a moderate Sahrawi political party, the Party of Sahrawi National Unity (PUNS). Another sector of the regime, stronger among the military, wanted a decolonisation process controlled by a pro-Spanish force that could control the region's natural resources, mainly the phosphate mines and the rich fishing waters. Both strategies coincided in the need to create a separate Sahrawi identity to pre-empt the pro-Moroccan movement.

The Moroccan revolutionary crisis​

But this was not acceptable to the Moroccan regime. The monarchy had gone through a series of major crises, with mass movements and strikes and had suffered two coup attempts in 1971/72. The wave of popular struggles in Morocco began in 1965. The repression of the student demonstrations on 22 March, sparked an insurrection in Casablanca the following day, quickly spreading to the country's major cities. The movement was only put down after hundreds of people were killed by the army, more than 3,000 were arrested, parliament was dissolved and a state of emergency was declared. The repression did not end the mass movement, in which students played a key role, but which also involved a growing militant strike movement. In 1968, 7,000 miners from Khouribga went on strike, a bitter and heroic struggle. In the winter of 1970/71 there were peasant uprisings in Gharb, Sous, Haouz and other regions. In 1971 the trade union leadership recognised that they had lost control of the situation and could not channel the wave of strikes, in which the miners of Khourigba, textile workers from all over the country, etc. participated. In March 1973 armed rebellions began in Khenifra (Middle Atlas) and Goulmina (Upper Atlas). At the same time, the monarchy faced two military coup attempts in 1971 and 1972.
The combination of a whole series of factors led to a highly explosive situation. A decade after independence, the country was governed in an authoritarian manner by the monarchy and the urgent social demands of the masses were not met. The severe economic crisis and the economic policy of the regime - which meant a huge transfer of wealth from workers and peasants to the king - made matters even worse. Among the youth, other factors also had an influence: the defeat of the Palestinians in the 1967 war led to harsh criticism of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois Arab regimes; the splits in the Palestinian national movement with the formation of the PFLP and the DFLP, under the influence of the ideas of Maoism and the Cultural Revolution; the worldwide wave of student radicalisation after the French general strike in 1968. All these factors had their impact on political thinking in Morocco. In 1970, both the UNFP and the PLS (the new name of the Communist Party) suffered major left-wing splits among their youth who turned towards Maoism with the formation of Ila al Amam and the 23 March Movement. The UNFP itself was also influenced by the radical ideas of Maoism.
Hassan II urgently needed to play the nationalist card to divert the attention of the masses, and at the same time, to ensure Morocco’s control over the wealth of Western Sahara. In reality, all Moroccan parties and organizations, right and left, adopted the official idea of the regime regarding the issue of “Morocco’s national integrity”. This included the Popular Forces of National Unity (UNFP), and the Communist Party, which, following the two-stage theory, opted for the most lowly position, following the king’s policy on every issue to the point of changing its name twice under pressure from the palace.
The only organisation that refused to join the chorus of national chauvinism was the Maoist Ila al Amam (Forward), which defended the right of self-determination of the Sahrawis. This is important because the organisation had a majority in the most powerful university students' organisation (UNEM) and certain points of support in the trade union movement. The other wing of the Maoist movement, the 23 March Movement, took the opposite position and justified the Moroccan movement in the Sahara in terms of national revolution. Abraham Serfarty, a mining engineer dismissed for supporting the miners' movement, was one of the main leaders of the Ila al Amam movement. He was arrested in 1974 and tried in 1977 on charges of high treason. In 1991 he was expelled from the country and his Moroccan citizenship was taken away. Finally, a few years ago, he returned to the country and the king put him in an official position to supervise oil exploration activities in the country. The 23 March organisation eventually became a legal party called the Organisation for Popular and Democratic Action (OADP), which now participates in the legal farce that is the Moroccan parliamentary system. The success of the king's strategy in rallying the entire nation behind the monarchy led to the crushing of the revolutionary organisations of the time.

The Western Sahara crisis and the Green March​

To maximize pressure on Spain, Hassan II regained claims to the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, began harassing Spanish fishing boats, and even created a pro-Moroccan Sahrawi guerrilla group, the Front de Liberation et Unity (FLU), which began cross-border attacks in early 1975. In addition, Morocco signed a secret treaty with Mauritania, which entailed the partition of Western Sahara between the two countries.
The Spanish regime, extremely weakened by a revolutionary wave in the Spanish state, could not resist the pressure from Morocco and had no clear policy. It became clear that the promised UN referendum would never take place, as the Moroccan regime was ready to invade the country while Spain was not prepared to defend the holding of the referendum with arms. Under these conditions, the PUNS collapsed, and with it, the Spanish strategy of a controlled solution.
At this time, the Spanish regime was toying with the idea of bringing POLISARIO to power, the main objective being to maintain some kind of influence over the natural resources of Western Sahara after independence. Spain and POLISARIO exchanged prisoners and began discussions on the transfer of power.
The issue finally came to the attention of the UN International Court of Justice in July 1975, which declared that Moroccan claims to Western Sahara were invalid. In response, Hassan II announced a Green March of 350,000 Muslims willing to demand the “territorial integrity” of Morocco.
As always, UN decisions have no real power, as they are not prepared to defend them by force. The Moroccan challenge came at the worst possible time for Franco's regime. The mass movement in Spain was growing stronger and then, on 17 October, General Franco became terminally ill, and he finally died on 20 November.
The Spanish regime had no other options, the last thing it needed was a war with Morocco, and under pressure from France and the US, it signed a secret agreement with Hassan II. In exchange for Western Sahara, Morocco would keep quiet about Ceuta and Melilla, Spain would secure its fishing interests on the Moroccan and Sahrawi coasts, it would keep 35 percent of the phosphate exploitation and would get compensation for the remaining 65 percent. The Green March was in fact a limited exercise to which the Spanish regime had reached an agreement to avoid a new conflict.

The Spanish withdrawal​

Spain withdrew its troops and both Morocco and Mauritania sent theirs. Morocco's occupation of its part of the Sahara was as brutal as its crushing of the Rif rebellion in 1957. Morocco ended up with the lion's share, including the rich phosphate deposits of Bou-Craa and the two main towns: Smara and El Aiun. Mauritania received an arid strip of desert including the third town: Villa Cisneros. In the transition period before the arrival of Moroccan and Mauritanian troops, POLISARIO occupied many of the smaller settlements and was able to hold them for months. But eventually, they had to go into exile in Algeria, to the refugee camp of Tindouf.
Algeria saw Moroccan expansion as a threat to its own territory and enthusiastically supported POLISARIO forces from the beginning. This was also part of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made this clear when he said: “The US will not allow another Angola on the eastern flank of the Atlantic Ocean.” The then US ambassador to Morocco said in his memoirs that this was the US position and that the UN did nothing to prevent Morocco’s triumph in Western Sahara – a task, he noted, “that I turned the page on with no small success.”
The Moroccan regime was the most faithful and valuable ally of Western imperialism in the region, while the left-wing regime in Algeria received support from the Soviet Union. However, it is worth noting that the foreign policy of the Soviet Union was always determined by the defence of the immediate interests of the Stalinist bureaucracy and not by the interests of the world revolution. They did not want any direct conflict with the interests of American imperialism and whenever a Stalinist regime came to power in some country, they were quite reluctant to give support unless they were faced with a fait accompli. In fact, neither the Soviet Union nor any of the Eastern countries recognised the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, declared by the POLISARIO in 1976 after the departure of the Spanish troops.
The exile of the Polisario forces, and with them 50,000 Sahrawis, marked the beginning of a long war. The first phase of the war was directed mainly against Mauritania. The country's small army was fully stretched and had to defend a vast territory of 400,000 square kilometres. Polisario raids reached Mauritania itself, on a couple of occasions reaching the capital, Noukchott, and disrupting the iron ore mining on which Mauritania depends.
French imperialism came to the aid of the Mauritanian regime, and Morocco even sent 9,000 soldiers to defend the country. The war led to a deep economic crisis in the country which was worsened by the fall in iron prices on world markets and the rise in oil prices. In addition, the war was very unpopular among the Mauritanian Moors who were the majority of the population and considered the war fratricidal. Finally, in July 1978, a military coup, combined with a mass movement in the streets, overthrew the Mauritanian regime. The new Military Committee for National Reconstruction signed a peace agreement with POLISARIO giving it the Mauritanian part of Western Sahara. Here we have a clear example of how the only significant victory achieved by POLISARIO in this war was achieved not by military methods, but by a revolutionary process in Mauritania. However, when Mauritania evacuated its part of Western Sahara, Moroccan troops quickly moved in.
The war continued for a number of years without any of the sides having a decisive superiority. In 1980 the Moroccan army began to build a defensive wall in the desert to prevent POLISARIO from making incursions into Western Sahara, particularly in the north, where the Bou-Craa phosphate deposits are located. This wall reached 2,700 kilometres and protected most of the border of Western Sahara.

The great powers​

For the duration of the war, the US supported Morocco, but at the same time always tried to maintain open relations with Algeria. After the first years of revolutionary fervour when it was unclear whether the Algerian regime would completely eliminate capitalism and become a regime of proletarian Bonapartism, the country had become safe for capitalism and it made important lucrative deals there. This is why most of the Western countries involved tried, on the one hand, to support and arm Morocco in the conflict (after all, Morocco was its main ally) and, on the other hand, to pursue an open-door policy towards Algeria (they were trying to do business). But ultimately, at all crucial moments, it positioned itself on the side of Morocco. Thus, while the French Socialist Party recognised POLISARIO, while in government in the early 1980s, it continued to supply arms to the Moroccan regime. A similar situation occurred in Spain where the ruling right-wing party, the UCD, recognised POLISARIO in 1979, as did the Socialist Party, but the fact that governments of both parties still had good relations with the murderous regime of Hassan II was much more important.
The Moroccan monarchy has always been one of the main allies of US imperialism in the Arab world and Morocco occupies a very important strategic position at the gateway to the Mediterranean. The US had military bases in the country until 1963, and afterwards maintained communication facilities for the US Navy. In 1982 Morocco signed an agreement facilitating transit for the US Rapid Deployment Force at Moroccan air bases, which were fully utilized during the 1991 Gulf War. The Alawite monarchy also rendered valuable services to US and French imperialism in Africa in successive interventions in Zaire, pushing the imperialist line of agreement between Arab countries and Israel in the Arab world, etc. The Soviet Union, despite having close ties with the Algerian regime, also signed agreements with Morocco, which among other things ensured access to Moroccan phosphates. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and US imperialism played a role in the conflict, especially during the first years of the war, but this was always superimposed on the Algerian-Moroccan conflict for hegemony in the Maghreb.

Libya​

The Libyan regime of Muhammar Gaddafi supported POLISARIO early in the war, as part of its efforts to spread the “Arab revolution.” But in 1984, Libya decided that revolution was not necessarily the most effective way to achieve its particular brand of Arab unity, and it stopped supporting POLISARIO and entered into a “unity agreement” with Morocco. This was primarily an anti-Algeria axis. Libya resented the Algerian veto of its entry into the Maghreb treaty of “peace and concord,” which was signed in 1983 between Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania. Libya also had territorial claims to a strip of land on the Sahara border with Algeria. With his agreement with Morocco, Gaddafi also wanted to prevent King Hassan from sending troops to aid the Chadian regime in its battle against Libyan-backed rebels. From the whole episode of the abandonment of Libya by the POLISARIO and the reasons for its alliance with Morocco, two main conclusions can be drawn. First, that the legality of the artificial borders left behind by colonialism (especially French colonialism) cannot be overcome by any Arab regime in the region, not even the most nationalist, even though they all claim loyalty to the principle of Maghreb unity. This is a democratic task that can only be fulfilled as part of the struggle for socialism. Second, that for the different Maghreb regimes, the struggle of the Sahrawis is only a small bargaining chip used in their relations with each other, and that includes the Algerian regime.
Algeria-Morocco relations
In Morocco and Algeria there has always been a strong feeling that their peoples were arbitrarily divided by French and Spanish imperialism. One of the first nationalist organisations in Algeria was called the Star of North Africa (Etoile nord-africaine). When France finally had to give independence to its Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates in the mid-1950s, the Algerian Liberation Front (FLA) set up bases in both countries, and many Moroccans and Tunisians gave their lives fighting shoulder to shoulder with their Algerian brothers and sisters. Most of this first generation of nationalist leaders clearly adhered to the idea of a united and independent Maghreb.
After Algeria gained independence, the feeling was that the revolutionary process should not end until the semi-feudal Moroccan monarchy, which was collaborating with imperialism, was overthrown. Algerian President Houari Boumediene put it this way: “Our Moroccan brothers essentially think that they have helped us free ourselves from France, now we have to help them free themselves from the feudal monarchy that has sold them to the West.” Thus, the Moroccan monarchy immediately felt threatened by the revolutionary ideas emanating from Algeria (land reform, anti-imperialist language, extension of nationalization in the economy, Arab socialism, etc.). In 1963 the king launched a brief war against Algeria. It is important to note that the right-wing parties in Morocco, most prominently the Istiqlal, supported the palace and revived its ideas of a Greater Morocco, while the left wing of the UNFP opposed the war. The UNFP leader, Ben Barka, in Algerian exile, denounced “the aggression against the Algerian revolution by a feudal monarchy.” The UNFP leadership was arrested and Ben Barka was kidnapped and killed two years later in Paris by Moroccan agents with the collaboration of the French secret services. The Moroccan monarchy also had the possibility of the emergence of a left-wing nationalist movement within the army, modelled on the Algerian revolution by allying itself with the UNFP. This fear was not unfounded, as the 1971 coup attempt had the objective of establishing the “People’s Republic of Morocco.”
Over the years, the conflict between Morocco and Algeria ceased to be a conflict between two different ideological models. The revolutionary fervour of the Algerian regime gradually faded, first in 1965 with the coup against Ben Bella and, particularly, after the death of Boumediene, along with the recession of its economy. The Algerian revolution no longer represented a serious threat to the Moroccan monarchy. Morocco's war with the POLISARIO had become costly and practically invincible as Algeria supported the Sahrawis. King Hassan II had to maintain a huge army of more than 140,000 men in the Sahara desert to contain the 10,000 armed men of the POLISARIO. Financing the war was becoming an unbearable burden for the Moroccan economy. According to some estimates, the cost was one million dollars a day.
In the 1980s both regimes were confronted with mass riots by the poor against rising prices of basic foodstuffs, lack of jobs, etc. These were particularly violent in Morocco in 1981 and again in 1984. All these factors led to a rapprochement between the two countries. The first diplomatic summit between the two countries since the beginning of the war took place in 1983 and again in 1987. In 1988 normal diplomatic relations were resumed and in 1989 Algeria and Morocco, together with Libya, Mauritania and Tunisia, founded the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA). Later, the beginning of the civil war in Algeria in 1992, after the FIS fundamentalists had won a majority in municipal elections, further weakened the resolve of the Algerian generals to support POLISARIO.
This was obviously a lot of pressure for the POLISARIO. After twenty years of war in the desert they realised that even if they could put the Moroccan army under severe strain, there was no way they could win the war. And if Algeria withdrew its support, then their fate was sealed. The POLISARIO strategy of relying on the support of different regimes in the region (Libya and Algeria) and guerrilla warfare, has not achieved any of its objectives. On top of this, in the period leading up to the collapse of Stalinism, the POLISARIO gradually abandoned any mention of socialism or revolution, and was increasingly involved in diplomatic efforts to secure a positive outcome to its struggle.
In 1986, talks began under UN auspices and in 1998 both sides agreed on a peace plan. There seemed to be no obstacles to a negotiated settlement. There have been two main factors that have prevented this from taking place. On the one hand, all the countries and powers involved in the conflict want to secure control over the rich phosphate reserves in Western Sahara and the fishing areas off its coast. On the other hand, the Moroccan monarchy has relied so heavily on exploiting the nationalist sentiments of the population that making concessions now on the Sahara issue would shake the foundations of the entire regime and probably lead to its overthrow.

Referendum?​

In 1991, an agreement was signed which included the partial withdrawal of Moroccan troops and the confinement of the remaining troops in their barracks, a gradual return of Sahrawi refugees from the Tindouf camps, the dispatch of a UN observer force (MINURSO) and, finally, a referendum on self-determination to be held in 1992. Ten years later, the referendum has not been held, and even the UN now says that it will not be held. What has happened in the meantime?
The strategy of the POLISARIO during this referendum process was once again based on diplomacy. It wanted to separate the US from France and achieve some kind of independence in exchange for granting US imperialism access to its natural resources. In fact, the bankruptcy of the POLISARIO leadership reached such a level that they tried to convince the US that the best way for the Moroccan monarchy to remain in power was precisely to give them Western Sahara! They would be willing to accept the dictatorial rule of the reactionary Moroccan regime over millions of their brothers and sisters in order to achieve formal independence in which they would be local agents of US imperialism. This is a similar position to the one that the PKK has recently adopted in relation to Turkey. But this position is actually the result of the petty-bourgeois nationalist view that the POLISARIO has had since its creation in 1973.
In addition to their offer to US imperialism, the POLISARIO leaders also presented a more moderate and compromising face to the Spanish ruling class, hinting at preferential treatment over mineral resources and fishing waters. Unfortunately for them, in the grand scheme of things, Morocco is far more important to imperialism than any concessions over the Sahara.
The main obstacle on the issue of the referendum was the census of the population entitled to vote. According to the peace agreement, those entitled to vote would be those who could prove that they were included in the Spanish census of 1974 or that they were descendants of those who were. Morocco realized that if that was the only criterion used, the referendum would have a massive vote in favor of independence and so began a series of maneuvers to block the process. First of all, it argued that the 1974 census was not a valid basis because 45 percent of the Sahrawis were not registered in the 1974 census because they had remained outside the boundaries of Spanish Sahara. Most of them had been integrated into Morocco and would most likely vote against independence. Obviously, Morocco raised this objection not out of an interest in democracy, but as a maneuver to ensure that the referendum had a favorable outcome.
Throughout the process of voter identification, the attitude of the UN and the US was very clearly in favour of Morocco. In 1995, the US envoy of MINURSO, Jack Rudy, resigned in protest at the blatantly pro-Moroccan attitude of the entire MINURSO operation. Just before his departure as UN Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar suddenly broadened the criteria for inclusion in the electoral roll. Now, all members of the 88 sub-fractions of the 10 tribes registered in the Spanish census of 1974 must be included, even if they were not directly registered at the centre. The next problem was how to identify those who were entitled to vote. POLISARIO insisted that only the unique original documents issued by the Spanish colonial authorities and, only in exceptional cases, the oral testimony of the sheiks leading the 88 sub-fractions were valid. Morocco insisted that written documents published by Morocco would also be valid.
The attitude of both sides was not motivated by democratic principles of any kind, but by an attempt to secure a favourable electoral roll for themselves. The question of the rights of the 100,000 Moroccans who have colonised Western Sahara for the past 25 years cannot be resolved by simply saying that they have been political tools for Morocco. True, but would it be democratic to deny them all democratic rights as has happened in the newly independent Baltic republics where the population of Russian origin has been denied its political rights?

Farce and delay​

The voter identification process has become a farce, with both sides presenting and challenging sheiks. Finally, in 1997 both sides signed the Houston agreement which meant speeding up the identification process and smoothing out the points of contention. James Baker, the former US Secretary of State, was appointed UN Special Envoy for Western Sahara. The appointment of such a heavyweight of US diplomacy was a signal that Washington wanted a deal. The US had an interest in Algeria, wanted access in one way or another to the natural resources of the Sahara and was generally interested in stability in the region. But this could only be achieved as long as it did not fundamentally alter its main and most valuable ally, Morocco. The leaders of POLISARIO actually believed in the “good will” of the US representatives. The head of the organisation, Mohamed Abdel Asis, said in 1997 that “Baker is a capable and courageous man” and “he has clearly said during his meeting with Bush that the US will respect international law and defend it.” From guerrilla warfare to “new world” diplomacy in just 23 years!
By 2000, MINURSO had managed to identify 86,381 voters out of a total of 147,249 applicants. Of these, 40,000 were from POLISARIO refugee camps in Algeria and Mauritania, the rest being Sahrawis living in Western Sahara who are likely to vote for independence. The Moroccan regime clearly saw that it would lose if the referendum was held on the basis of this census. So, they filed appeals for the 79,000 rejected voters, plus 65,000 members of the tribes living in Morocco (only 2,000 of whom have been accepted as voters). This makes a total of 130,000 applications which would be, at best, a process lasting three years. Clearly the referendum plan is in tatters.
By February 2001, POLISARIO had had enough of the whole process and announced that if the Paris-Dakar rally crossed Western Sahara territory without its permission, it would restart hostilities. Its announcement reflected the enormous frustration among the Sahrawis in the refugee camps after ten years of waiting for the promised referendum. But at the last minute, when the fighters were already in position ready to restart the war, pressure from Algeria forced the POLISARIO leaders to withdraw and call off the offensive. This incident reflects very well the situation in which the POLISARIO leaders find themselves after more than 20 years of guerrilla warfare. They are hostages of their host, the Algerian regime, a regime that already has enough internal problems of its own and has no intention of adding to this new phase of the war with its eastern neighbour. To underline the growing isolation of POLISARIO, its representative in Nouakchoot was expelled in February 2000 by the Mauritanian government after he was accused of losing his neutrality.
It is also important to note that the Algerian regime, on which the POLISARIO leaders base themselves, is now quite different from the one that emerged immediately after the Algerian revolution. The Boumedienne regime was a bourgeois nationalist regime, which had a certain revolutionary prestige, which used revolutionary phraseology and which introduced a whole series of reforms in the economy. In the end, the Algerian Bonapartist regime came up against the limits of capitalism. With the economic crisis of the 1980s, the regime lost popularity and revolts broke out. The failure of the left based on bourgeois nationalism led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1990s. Now, the appeal of fundamentalism in Algeria has been exhausted and it is no longer a vehicle for expressing the anger of the population. The uprising in Kabylia in the spring and summer of 2001 marked the beginning of a new wave of mobilisations by workers and youth fighting against the regime of the Algerian generals, firmly committed to the IMF policy of privatisation and cuts in social spending. The movement was severely repressed. With all these changes and social struggles in Algeria, the leaders of the POLISARIO have remained silent, making no criticism of the policies of the Algerian regime. What else could they do? They depend on Algeria's support for their very existence. In reality, they have become loyal allies of the murderous capitalist regime, which is hated by its own people and has to resort to naked repression to stay in power.
The United Nations finally acknowledged that it should have made things clear from the start: the referendum would not be held unless Morocco wanted it. In a report in June 2001, Kofi Annan recommended that the Security Council freeze the entire process in order to consider a new proposal: a five-year period of limited autonomy and power-sharing, at the end of which a referendum would be held on the final status of the territory. Elections for an executive would take place immediately on the basis of the 86,000 voters identified and after five years all citizens living in the territory would be allowed to vote.
The Polisario immediately rejected this plan, known as the Third Way, considering it a farce and demanding a referendum based on the first agreement. Within Morocco there are different options. Some sectors of the regime, including former Maoist leader Abraham Serfaty, were in favour of the proposal, thinking that it would ultimately serve Morocco's interests. Others were opposed, fearing that any concessions on the Sahara issue would have a destabilising effect.
The main problem for the POLISARIO leadership is that they see no alternative: either they accept what is given to them, or they go back to war, and this time they would not have the support of Algeria. This would be a complete disaster. Not only this, but at the same time that the Third Way was proposed, the United Nations announced that its refugee agency had run out of money and funding for the Sahrawi camps in Tindouf. This was a clear message from the UN that if they did not accept the proposal they risked losing all funding for the camps. The POLISARIO press in June 2001 rejected the Third Way plan, a clear sign of the ineffectiveness of its leadership. Their press is full of bitter complaints and appeals to “international legality” and “all those who care about respect for justice and the law”, to “denounce the shameful game of Morocco and its ally France” and to “help save international legality and peace”:

Partition?​

The refusal of Algeria and the POLISARIO to consider the Third Way proposal led directly to the last UN report in February 2002. This is a very interesting document, written in a direct and frank manner, which is unusual in diplomatic papers of this kind. The document describes in detail the current state of the process and concludes: “It is unlikely that the proposed plan, in its present form, can be implemented in a rapid manner, nor is it likely that a lasting, long-term and consensual solution to the Western Sahara dispute will be found.” That is, the referendum will not take place. The UN Secretary General goes on to say that there are four possible options. The first option would be to continue with the agreed plan and go ahead with the referendum. But “Morocco has already expressed its unwillingness to continue with the agreed plan; the UN would not be able to hold a fair and free referendum with results that could be accepted by both parties and in any case there would be no mechanism to implement the results of such a referendum.” The last point made is very important and highlights the difference between Western Sahara and East Timor. What the UN admits is that Morocco has the military force to prevent the referendum from taking place and to prevent the results from being implemented, therefore the UN cannot do anything about this issue. All the talk of “international legality” has been clearly exposed. In other words, as the UN representatives told the POLISARIO leaders, “you cannot compare this situation with East Timor, because Australia is not willing to intervene here.”
The second would involve a review of the Third Way. The UN is not very optimistic about this prospect, but it has the advantage that it “would make it possible to reduce the size of MINURSO”. In reality, the report is written under pressure from the US, which believes that too much money has been spent on the UN mission without achieving any results and that the time has come to end the farce and prevent UN bureaucrats from wasting more time and resources.
The third option is a new proposal involving a partition of Western Sahara that would follow more or less the same lines as the 1976 partition between Morocco and Mauritania, only now POLISARIO would have control of the Mauritanian part. This is not a bad offer for Morocco, which would keep most of the phosphates and two of the three main cities of the territory. The offer would also please Algeria, which would gain a friendly neighbour with access to the Atlantic. POLISARIO might be forced to accept these crumbs from the table of the great powers for fear of getting nothing at all. In fact, the same UN report mentions that in James Baker’s (the UN envoy) option, “Algeria and POLISARIO would be willing to discuss or negotiate a division of the territory as a political solution.” Both Algeria and POLISARIO leaders have said publicly that they reject this option, but these are probably statements for show or to get a bigger piece of the pie. This solution would also benefit Spanish interests because it would leave the richest part of the fishing grounds of Western Sahara in the hands of POLISARIO. Spain has always been in conflict with Morocco on this issue and POLISARIO has already stated that they would agree to reach an agreement with Spain.
The fourth option is to acknowledge the total failure of the UN and “accept in this way that, after more than eleven years and after spending... almost 500 million dollars, the UN has not solved any problem in Western Sahara.”
What we can clearly see is the complete failure of the POLISARIO strategy and its policy of the last 25 years. Its policy during the ceasefire period is actually a logical continuation of its policy during the war, i.e. a purely nationalist view that necessarily relies on the support of one country or another. Now, no country is ready to support them in a serious way, despite the attempts of the POLISARIO leadership to sell itself to the interests of the US or Spain.
The only policy that makes sense is to return to the unity of struggle that existed in the 1950s, and even before, between the forces that fought against imperialism and its local agents in the form of the Alawite monarchy of Morocco. Only by uniting the interests of the Sahrawis with those of their brothers and sisters in Morocco and Algeria, can they achieve respect for their national rights. The situation in both countries is explosive. What has been described as the popular uprising in Algeria in 2001, and the situation in Morocco, contain the same elements that started the movement in Algeria. The monarchy is no longer as strong as it was before the death of Hassan II, and has been forced to put the “socialist” USFP in government. Its economy is suffering a severe crisis that forces hundreds of thousands of Moroccans to emigrate to Europe.
The only realistic solution would be a revolutionary struggle based in Western Sahara itself, and in the Moroccan universities where the Sahrawi students are. This struggle should be based on the struggle for jobs, bread and democracy, since national rights alone are not enough to reach the masses of workers, peasants and youth in Morocco, who are the only ones who can really overthrow the reactionary Alawite monarchy that oppresses them as well as the Sahrawis.
Another point that seems clear is that before the war there was no separate national identity of the Sahrawi people and no aspiration for independence. Now there is one after more than 20 years of brutal war and repression of the Sahrawi population in Western Sahara. This is something to bear in mind. But it must also be absolutely clear when explaining to the Sahrawis that the only way out and the way to win respect for their national rights is through the revolutionary struggle of the masses in Morocco under the leadership of the working class.

A referendum​

Some have asked what position Marxists should take in the event that the UN calls for a referendum on self-determination for the Sahrawis. Firstly, we have already established the reasons why a referendum is practically out of the question. Secondly, if the referendum were to take place, the position of Marxists should not be limited to choosing between independence or integration into Morocco. In such a situation, the duty of Marxists would be to explain clearly the reality of the situation. We should say, look at what has happened in East Timor, do not trust the United Nations. If the results of the referendum are in favour of independence, Morocco would surely not allow its implementation and would impose itself by force of arms. Who would defend the Sahrawis? The United Nations? That is a joke. We should insist on the idea, once again, that the only way for the Sahrawis to achieve their objectives is by forming an alliance with the Moroccan working class. Even in the unlikely event that an independent Sahara were to be created, it would ultimately remain in the hands of one or another imperialist power. That is what we Marxists must tell the Sahrawis if they were to face a referendum.

La lucha de los saharauis, historia y perspectivas | África | Spanish | Other Languages

El presente artículo fue escrito en el 2002 como parte de una discusión sobre la lucha del pueblo saharaui. Lo publicamos actualmente no sólo por el interés y vigencia de su análisis, sino también por los actuales acontecimientos que se están desarrollando en el Sahara Occidenta.

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[Eltitoguay]

THE MOROCCAN WALL IN WESTERN SAHARA, A SILENT CRIME​

Protest by young Sahrawis, near the Moroccan wall (in the under Sahrawi control side) in 2007. (Credit: Abdalahi Hmayen.)

By Mahfud Mohamed Lamin Bechri
Basque :

Marokoren harresia Mendebaldeko Saharan, krimen isila – Resistencia, no Muros

antologia.stopthewall.org

Spanish :

El Muro Marroquí en el Sahara Occidental, un crimen silencioso – Resistencia, no Muros

antologia.stopthewall.org

Mahfud Mohamed Lamin Bechri

The Moroccan Wall in Western Sahara, a silent crime

The Moroccan wall in Western Sahara is the largest wall in the world after the Chinese wall, but unfortunately the least visible. This wall divides the Sahrawi people into two parts and contains more than 7 million antipersonnel mines that put the lives of the Sahrawis at risk on a daily basis.

Historical context:

Western Sahara is a territory located in northwestern Africa. The Sahrawis lived as tribes that governed themselves through the election of a council with proportional representation of all the tribes that inhabit the territory. In 1884, at the Berlin Conference where Africa was divided between the European powers and due to its proximity to the Canary Islands, Western Sahara became a Spanish colony, later becoming the 53rd Spanish province. Spain's rule over the territory rich in natural resources, mainly phosphate deposits, lasted almost a century. Under international pressure and offensives by the Polisario Front, which had been founded in 1973 with the aim of liberating Western Sahara from colonial control, Spain was forced to withdraw from the territory. However, Spain's withdrawal, which the Sahrawis describe as betrayal and abandonment, was carried out at the culmination of a pact with the two neighboring countries of Western Sahara, Morocco and Mauritania. The pact known as the "tripartite Madrid agreements" gave way to the annexation and occupation of the territory by the two neighboring countries, Morocco in the north and Mauritania in the south. The Sahrawi people under the leadership of the Polisario Front had no choice but to defend their land and that is when a military confrontation began that lasted 16 years. Mauritania withdrew from the war in 1979 and signed an agreement with the Polisario Front in which it renounced its ambitions in the territory and recognized the democratic Sahrawi Arab Republic, a state proclaimed by the Polisario Front in 1976. Since the beginning of the occupation, thousands of Sahrawis were forced to leave the territory in search of a safer place, their destination was the Algerian city of Tindouf where more than 173,000 refugees live to this day in 5 camps. The UN mediated the conflict and eventually reached an agreement between the parties, which included a ceasefire and a UN-sponsored referendum in which the people of Western Sahara could have the final say on the future of their territory. In 1991, the UN deployed a mission of blue helmets to the territory to supervise the ceasefire and organize the referendum. Unfortunately, this promised referendum has not yet taken place.

The wall of Moroccan occupation in Western Sahara, or wall of shame.

During the war years, and starting in 1980, Morocco, advised by Israel and the United States, launched a plan to build walls along the territory it occupied. The purpose of building the wall was, on the one hand, to protect itself from the offensives of the Sahrawi Liberation Army (the official name of the military branch of the Polisario Front) and, on the other, to guarantee the security of the exploitation of Sahrawi natural resources that Morocco carried out in order to finance its occupation and profit from the wealth of the Sahrawi people. The latter is the main reason behind Morocco's occupation of the territory.

The construction of the wall took more than six years and was very expensive. However, Morocco's allies in the Gulf were responsible for covering the costs. Morocco spends approximately 2 million dollars a day to maintain its separation wall in Western Sahara, which is 2,720 meters long.

The composition of the Moroccan occupation wall in Western Sahara leaves no doubt that it is a real crime that seeks the extinction of the Sahrawis. The 6 Moroccan walls extend over 2,720 kilometers and separate the territory and its inhabitants into 2 parts. To the east, the Sahrawis under occupation and control of Morocco and to the west, the Sahrawis living in the areas controlled by the Polisario Front as well as the population in the refugee camps. The walls are made of sand and stones as well as anti-tank trenches and are surrounded by more than 7 million anti-personnel mines, an average of 20 mines per person. The wall is controlled and defended by more than 130,000 Moroccan soldiers. In addition to the mines, the area of the wall is full of explosive remnants of war. MINURSO (the UN mission in Western Sahara) estimates on its website that 100,000 square kilometres out of a total of 266,000, or almost 40% of Western Sahara, are affected by anti-personnel mines and unexploded ordnance. In short, the lives of the Sahrawis, who are traditionally nomadic, are at stake because of the mines surrounding the Moroccan wall. In fact, according to the Sahrawi Mine Affairs Coordination Office (SMACO), the number of mine victims in Western Sahara since the beginning of the conflict exceeds 8,000 people.

The Moroccan wall in Western Sahara has had and continues to have a negative impact on the lives of the Sahrawis. In addition to its social and psychological impact by separating Sahrawi families between occupied and liberated areas and camps, the wall also affects the economy of the Sahrawis who have traditionally lived off of livestock. The wall limits the freedom of movement and circulation of the Sahrawi population who live in a large prison under Moroccan occupation that continues to systematically violate human rights with the indifference of the international community. In addition, the more than 7 million mines have an impact on the security of people. Likewise, the structure of the wall has had a negative impact on the environment since over the years it has led to alterations in the surface of the land that has become more vulnerable and has served as a barrier that prevents the flow of water between the two sides.

The Moroccan wall in Western Sahara constitutes an obstacle to the process of resolving the conflict in Western Sahara and an impediment to the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination.

It is very sad that despite the pain and suffering caused by the Moroccan wall in Western Sahara, little is said about it. The media does not talk about this crime and almost no one acts to denounce it. The world must be more aware of this wall that continues to claim the lives of innocent people and react by denouncing this crime that makes the defenseless people of Western Sahara live in a large prison.

To conclude, I share some words from Eduardo Galeano

Eduardo Galeano - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

about the “silent” walls, including the wall that divides Western Sahara and its people:
“ The Berlin Wall was the news of every day. From morning to night we read, we saw, we heard: the Wall of Shame, the Wall of Infamy, the Iron Curtain…

At last, that wall, which deserved to fall, fell. But other walls have sprung up, and continue to spring up, in the world, and although they are much larger than the one in Berlin, little or nothing is said about them.

Little is said about the wall that the United States is building on the Mexican border, and little is said about the barbed wire fences btween Spain & Morocco in Ceuta and Melilla.

Almost nothing is said about the West Bank Wall, which perpetuates the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and will soon be 15 times longer than the Berlin Wall.

And nothing, nothing at all, is said about the Moroccan Wall, which has perpetuated the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara for 20 years. This wall, mined from end to end and guarded from end to end by thousands of soldiers, is 60 times longer than the Berlin Wall.

Why are there such loud walls and such silent walls? Is it because of the walls of lack of communication that the big media outlets build every day ?"

(Saharawi rap, mixing Spanish, Arabic and English, with the words of E. Galeano about the Maroccan Wall, by Yslem "Hijo del desierto")
.

("The Walls", mixing Arabic and Spanish, by Aziza Brahim: "(...) They continue to grow walls, between our land and our sea (...)"

 

[Eltitoguay]

Feminism and freedom: the struggle of Sahrawi women​

August 7, 2020, by DAUDEN Laura , SEINI BRAHIM CHABA

For more than forty years, women have been organizing and leading the resistance in the last hotbed of colonialism in Africa: Western Sahara. If during the years of war and struggle for survival, women were responsible for laying the foundations of the republic that was proclaimed in exile in one of the most inhospitable regions on the planet, today they have managed to establish one of the most progressive Arab societies from the point of view of gender equality. Their fight for rights from a postcolonial feminist perspective is not dissociated from the tireless search for freedom and self-determination for their people.

A homeland in exile​

Nothing is obvious about the situation in Western Sahara. For outside observers, accustomed to Eurocentric logic and theories, nothing in this context seems to respond to what is expected from their imaginations: an African colonizer, a republic founded in exile, a people that has survived for 41 years in the most inhospitable region of the desert, a UN mission with its hands tied in the face of the most serious violations of human rights, an international community complicit in the theft of a nation.

Sahrawi women raise the Sahrawi flag during a speech by President Mohamed Abdelaziz. Tindouf, Algeria, 2009.

It is no different when one analyses, in particular, the role of Sahrawi women in the struggle for self-determination and the consolidation of their rights. Contrary to what Western and Islamophobic references may suggest, fuelled by a unique – and generally victimising – narrative about Arab women, they are the protagonists of what is seen as one of the most unique experiences of resistance in the world today.
In their construction, challenging previous experiences that point to an alleged incompatibility of the feminist agenda with the ideals of national liberation, the Sahrawi women show that independence and feminism, in their context, are inseparable and interdependent objectives. They also challenge the discourses that assign them an instrumentalized place in the political structure of the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi liberation movement.

The aim of this article is to review in a general way the main stages and areas of the struggle of Sahrawi women since the birth of the independence movement and the challenges that stand in the way of consolidating the rights that they have so hard won over the last forty years, always from a postcolonial or peripheral perspective.

Brief historical review of the conflict​

Intersectionality is key to understanding the Sahrawi women's movement: among the many lenses through which they can be seen, they are Arab, African, Muslim, refugees. Another marked characteristic, as Rocío Medina Martín (2014) points out, is the transgenerational and collective nature of their struggle, which is configured within the national liberation movement. Therefore, it is essential to briefly compile the key moments of this process that culminated in exile, on the one hand, and occupation, on the other.

The territory of Western Sahara was occupied by Spain at the end of the 19th century and incorporated into the metropolis with the status of province (number 53) in 1961. In that same decade of the 1960s, it entered the list of territories pending decolonization of the UN, at the same time it aroused the greed of the dictator Francisco Franco due to the discovery of important reserves of phosphate under its sands.

The mineral was withdrawn in 1972, as annexation claims by Morocco and Mauritania grew. In 1974, they appealed to the Hague Court for an advisory opinion to support their alleged right to the land. The favourable opinion was never forthcoming, as the Court believed that there was no sovereignty link between the fate of Western Sahara and those two countries.

The lack of legal support did not prevent the start of an occupation movement in the Sahara, backed by major powers such as France and the United States, immediately after the verdict and Franco's death. In an episode known as the Green March, more than 300,000 Moroccans marched in the capital of El Aaiun, marking the beginning of a conflict that would last more than 15 years.

The Sahrawis, organised in two large national liberation movements since the 1960s, first against Spanish power and then against Morocco and Mauritania, were expelled from their cities and fled across the desert towards neighbouring Algeria. On the way, they were bombed with napalm and white phosphorus and, once in the refuge, on 27 February 1976, they proclaimed their Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

However, despite all the financial and military support behind the Moroccan offensive, the Polisario Front managed to secure positions and keep a large part of the territory under its control. This division of the country was crystallized in the 1980s with the construction by Morocco of a 2.2 thousand kilometer sand wall – a structure that to this day divides families and prevents the Sahrawis living in Algeria or in the territories controlled by the Polisario Front (the so-called liberated zones) from returning to their places of origin and longing.

In 1988, under the mediation of the UN, a ceasefire was signed and a referendum was proposed through which the Sahrawis could freely express their right to self-determination, choosing between the incorporation of the territory into Morocco or independence. Three years later, the UN established MINURSO, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. Its mandate has been renewed annually since then, without ever having managed to achieve the initial agreement.

While uncertainty and waiting persist in the diplomatic arena, the Sahrawis continue to work to increase international recognition of their struggle, either through the establishment of bilateral relations or by denouncing human rights violations in the occupied territories and the persistent plundering of their natural resources by Morocco. From exile, they are trying to lay the foundations for the society that will take shape when they finally achieve independence.

Sahrawi women on the front line of resistance​

The prominence of Sahrawi women, despite having been strengthened by the anti-colonial struggle, has roots in the Sahrawi tribal tradition itself. Although they are scarce, studies in this area reveal that Sahrawi society, compared with other contemporary Arab societies, has always reserved relatively wide spaces of freedom and action for women (Juliano, 1998) – a characteristic that can be explained, in part, by the nomadic and cattle-raising culture that imposed the prolonged absence of men.

According to Dolores Juliano (ibid.), “within this general horizon, we must also differentiate between the characteristics of traditional society, those acquired during the years under Spanish colonization and those developed in the 22 years of life in refugee camps.” According to the author, “at each moment the sexual division of labor has changed, as well as the possibilities, obligations and rights of each of the genders within the social structure.”

In this regard, it is necessary to highlight the important influence of the left-wing nationalist movements of that time in the formation of the Sahrawi resistance, historically linked, for example, to the pan-Arab ideals of Gamal Abder Nasser in Egypt and the Baath party in Syria.


As Arantza Chacón and María López Belloso (2011) explain, most nationalist parties had women’s sections, but in many cases, after independence, the women’s rights agenda was relegated to the background: “In general, they followed two paths: some states appropriated women’s associations that did nothing but reproduce the State’s discourses; in other cases, parties with a leftist ideology (communist and socialist) maintained women’s sections, since they understood that the demand for an improvement in the situation of women had to be one of the main plans of leftist parties (Belarbi, 2005)”. In these cases, the authors explain, there was an understanding that the patriarchal structure permeated not only societies, but those parties themselves.

One sign of how the Polisario Front structurally incorporated this issue in its early years is the fight against all types of tribalism, which it considered “a crime against the nation.” As Bengochea and Martínez Monfort (2012) recall, “in a tribal society based on inequality and organized by blood ties, the nationalist assumption of equality between all members of the community will be decisive in opening up a whole series of opportunities for excluded groups such as young people, women and slaves.”

The Front, in opposition to Spanish colonialism and its subaltern vision of Sahrawi women, "claims the status of 'free woman' as consubstantial to the Sahrawi national identity, so what should be done is to reestablish it" (idem).

In this context of ideological differentiation of the Polisario Front, the National Union of Sahrawi Women was born in 1974, a mass organization with national and international action.

Unión Nacional de Mujeres Saharauis - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

National Union of Sahrawi Women - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Later, we will see how this Sahrawi women's movement, now organized and institutionalized, positions itself on the front line of resistance.

Construction of camps and fighting in the occupied zones​

Sahrawi women were key in the consolidation of the two nationalist movements that preceded the occupation of the territory by Morocco. In general, they were responsible for the subsequent affiliation of their husbands, sons and brothers, as well as being the coordinators of the recruitment of members and the organizers of the rallies.

Following the Moroccan invasion and the displacement of almost all men to fight (although there are also records of female combatants), the period began that researcher Embarka Hamoudi Hamdi (in Bogochea Tirado, 2013) organized into three stages: settlement in refugee camps (1976-1979), the effective empowerment of women (1979-1990), and the return of men (from 1991 onwards).

It should be noted that this classification ignores the role of women activists and human rights defenders who fight against the Moroccan government from the occupied cities. Internationally recognised figures such as Aminetu Haidar or Djimi El Ghalia, who paid for their resistance with imprisonment, forced disappearance and torture, have helped to build structures for the defence of human rights and denunciation of violations that continue to inspire new generations of Sahrawi women in the cities under Moroccan control.

Aminatou Haidar - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

Aminatou Haidar - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

According to information provided by Medina Martín (2012), nearly 30% of the missing persons in the occupied territories of Western Sahara are women. They also represent 24.8% of the political prisoners released with the ceasefire in 1991.

In the four camps located in southwestern Algeria, women organized the reception, especially of other women, children and the elderly, and were trained to operate radios, drive and provide medical assistance, as well as to fight with light weapons (Bachir, 2008). In general, they were responsible for the reconstruction, in an extremely unfavourable context, of the Sahrawi social structures devastated by the war.

Schools, hospitals, cultural centres, local political institutions – since then, these areas have been occupied in a majority and prominent way by women. This successful effort was even recognised by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as a model for other similar situations (UNHCR, 2001).

According to Chacón and López Belloso (2011), the urgent and comprehensive dedication of Sahrawi women to the conditions of the camps in the early years was a source of learning and recognition of their own capabilities, "however, day-to-day life and the need to respond to the immediate needs of the population meant that equally important issues, more related to their identity as women, their immediate and strategic interests as a group, as well as the political recognition of their activities, were relegated to the background."

The feminist movement's own agenda once again stands out with the creation of structures such as the 27 de Febrero school, conceived especially for the integral development of Sahrawi women, and with the celebration in 1985 of the first congress of the National Union of Sahrawi Women.

female participation in power structures​

The visible success of Sahrawi women in organizing the camps led to an increasing weight of the National Union of Sahrawi Women in the structure of the Polisario Front.

Created in 1974, one year before the Moroccan invasion, the UNMS set itself the challenge of “raising awareness among all women about their position in society and their role in national independence” and of “guiding women on the role to play in the independent Sahrawi nation and preserving the achievements made in the national liberation process” [ 1 ] , in a clear affirmation of its postcolonial purpose.

These objectives were facilitated by the permeable political structure that organizes the camps. As Sonia Rossetti (2008) points out, the intricate division between wilayas (provinces or camps) and dayras (each of the “municipalities” in a wilaya) creates multiple opportunities for women’s participation in the democratic process and allows even the most isolated camps to maintain a common political identity, based on the direct links of the dayras and wilayas with the Polisario Front.

Today, in addition to the congress held every five years, the UNMS has a national secretariat with 66 democratically elected women, which meets annually, and an executive bureau composed of a general secretary and 11 thematic departments, with monthly meetings.

“It is interesting to note in the case of Sahrawi women, not only the existence of invisible demands throughout their entire career, but also the presence of a well-organized women's movement, tending to represent gender demands in the legislature – and in general before the power structures of the SADR,” says Juliano (1998). “This step from the implicit to the explicit means a qualitative change in self-affirming strategies and increases the effectiveness of gender approaches, but their very existence and their possibility of development are only viable when the group of women have managed to develop, through their daily practices, areas of self-realization and self-esteem.” (ibid.)

A small proof of the efficiency of this structure is the creation, in 2003 and at the request of the UNMS, of a State Secretariat for Social Affairs and Women's Emancipation that became a ministry (Medina Martín, 2015). Another important change was the adoption, in 2007, of a quota system for the election of women in the wilayas, with immediate effect on their representation in the Legislature.

In the current parliamentary term, 10 of the 53 seats are occupied by women (19%). There are six women in the secretariat of the Polisario Front, in addition to two ministers and two governors.

The relationship between rights and self-determination: two inseparable struggles​

Sahrawi women, as a collective, are defined by their nationalist anti-colonial struggle, their armed resistance against the occupation of their physical and symbolic territories and their prolonged refuge. As Medina Martín reinforces, “it is not possible to think of the agency of Sahrawi women as overcoming their vulnerabilities, but rather as strategies of resistance that contain the latter and emerge from them” (2014).

From this situation of constant and ongoing violation of rights, Sahrawi women have shaped themselves politically and are working to ensure that the achievements of the last forty years are consolidated and reinforced in the independent nation.

In the words of Juliano (1998), what seems to be intended is that, in the Sahrawi case, and contrary to other Islamic nationalist movements, revolution and the struggle for women's rights are inseparable. In this possible future, gender claims would form one of the axes of the society to be built as a "differentiating feature with respect to the enemy against which one fights."

The same opinion is shared by Bengochea Tirado (2013), for whom “the status of women became a defining element of the Sahrawi nation, not only as a symbolic element but as active participation in the process of creating the nation.”

Within the Sahrawi women's movement there is no optimism or possible rest until this double struggle – for specific rights and for independence – is realized. As Senia Bachir (2008) says, women around the world worked for centuries to achieve equal opportunities with men, while Sahrawi women undertook another type of struggle, for the independence and liberation of their country.

“The occupation of Western Sahara may have been the most important driving factor for women to rise in society, compared to other women in the Arab world,” says Bachir. “So one of the biggest questions is: would Sahrawi women occupy the position they occupy today if the country was not occupied?”

Maima Mahamud Nayem2 points in the same direction: “As a Sahrawi woman, I am wary of our future because this long-awaited peace may also be the reason why we see so many of the achievements made during the revolution crumble. History has shown that in times of struggle, women have always occupied a place alongside men, but when the end comes, men occupy the most important positions in all areas.” And she concludes with a definitive call to her comrades: “Do not let your guard down. The real struggle has only just begun.”

Feminismo y libertad: la lucha de las mujeres saharauis – ritimo

Desde hace más de cuarenta años, las mujeres organizan y protagonizan la resistencia en el último foco de colonialismo en África: el Sáhara Occidental. Si en los años de guerra y lucha por…

www.ritimo.org

The song "Julud," dedicated to Aziza's mother, combining intimate and stark desert poetry with an unyielding faith in the Saharawi political struggle:
"You are like the night and the stars/ Your voice goes beyond the top of the clouds/ You are the smiling breeze of today/ You are an example of humanity and of fight. Resist, immortal, resist."

 

[Eltitoguay]

Draper on Marx and democratic forms of government​

Rolando Astarita​

05/11/2022

On several occasions I have encountered Marxists who belittle the struggle for democratic freedoms. For example, there are several left-wing organizations that disqualify the struggles for democratic freedoms in Venezuela or Nicaragua with the argument that “they are functional to imperialism and the extreme right.” A discourse that is combined with the idea that socialists should support a “strong State,” or an Executive that concentrates a lot of power, to confront the right and transform society in a “progressive” direction.

In previous notes I argued that these positions constitute a denial of the revolutionary traditions of socialism (see, for example, here ). In order to provide further elements for analysis, in this entry I present the main ideas of Hal Draper’s classic work, “Marx on Democratic Forms of Government”, from 1974 ( here ).


The fight for socialism and its relation to the fight for democracy

Draper argues that Marx and Engels' socialism, as a political programme, can be quickly defined as the complete democratisation of society, not just of its political forms . Therefore, according to this approach, the struggle for democratic forms of government, for the democratisation of the State, is an integral part of the socialist effort. Draper adds that in the history of socialist and communist movements one of the main problems has been to establish the theoretical and practical relationship between the struggle for socialism and for democracy; or between socialist and democratic objectives. At one extreme are those who place the struggle for democratic freedoms in themselves in the foreground, and consider the defence of socialist ideas as a mere accessory. And at the other extreme are those who defend a radical ideology, according to which there would be a contradiction between socialist ideas - in the sense of an anti-capitalist approach - and democratic struggles, which they consider irrelevant or even harmful for the socialist movement. Between these two extremes we find an infinite number of mixtures. However, Draper points out, Marx's position is that theory must integrate the two approaches, so as to define consistent democracy in socialist terms, and consistent socialism in democratic terms .


At the origins of leftist radicalism

Draper recalls that while the rejection of everything connected with bourgeois democracy would later be associated with radical ultra-leftism, in its origins this position had a reactionary anti-bourgeois content. An example was KL Bernays, editor of Vorwärts , who wrote anti-bourgeois articles, but with a non-proletarian focus. As Engels pointed out, Bernays did not advocate a theory of a class movement, but simply expressed his preference for a certain social reorganization. In his view, popular control over the government constituted a danger, since the “stupid masses” could be hostile to his schemes.

Marx and Engels' approach to rights, freedoms and institutions was very different. Their central idea was that democracy required the establishment of full popular control over government . That is why they advocated unlimited popular control , and the elimination of all socio-economic, structural and legal restrictions in order to deploy it from below, without distortions . For this reason, in Marx and Engels' view, popular control pointed to socialism . Although in a country like Germany, which had not had its 1789, the extension of popular control still had to go through its bourgeois phase. Hence the problem posed to the communists was how to go through that phase so that power would pass to the workers. This is what will define the problem of the “permanent revolution”: the struggle for the full democratization of society would lead to a process of uninterrupted revolution, and towards socialism (a perspective that would be developed by Marx and Engels in the “Circular of the Central Committee to the Communist League”, March 1850).


The revolutions of 1848-9

The revolutions of 1848-9 established bourgeois-democratic governments in Germany and France. The policy developed by Marx and Engels in the face of these new regimes was based on the question of what could maximize the influence exerted “from below” by the masses in motion over the political forces “above .” The political forces “above” were the monarchical regime and its government, the Executive, and the representatives of the people in the assemblies that arose in the heat of the revolutionary upheaval. These assemblies represented the potential of “popular sovereignty,” that is, of democratic control by the people. However, when the National Assembly, elected in the German states, met in Frankfurt (May 18, 1848), it became clear that the bourgeois-democratic delegates avoided conflict with the monarchy.

In the first issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (NGR), Engels exposed this situation. The people had won their sovereignty in the streets and had exercised it in the elections to the National Assembly. Therefore, Engels said, the first act of the Assembly should have been to proclaim this sovereignty of the people. Its second act should have been to draw up a constitution on the basis of the sovereignty of the people; and to do away with everything that contradicted it. Above all, measures had to be taken against reaction. But the National Assembly did none of this.

In later notes Engels also criticised the empty discourse of the liberal left in the Assembly. For the difference between the rhetoric about “freedom” and the real revolutionary struggle could only be expressed in concrete terms. Firstly, in the defence of freedom of the press . Marx and Engels considered that the press was a barometer of the arbitrariness of the government , and that it could hardly be separated from freedom of expression in all its forms. For the government, Marx denounced in the NGR, tried to apply articles of the Penal Code against slander to prevent criticism. Moreover, the existence of the NGR itself was a battle against government repression. And when the counter-revolution gained strength, the NGR was suppressed by decree. In parallel with the defence of freedom of the press, Marx and Engels argued for freedom of organisation, against government attacks on political clubs. They also criticised a draft law on the militia that reduced the rights of citizens to nothing. And they denounced the liberal representatives in the Assembly for being too vague on the issue of direct suffrage, as opposed to indirect suffrage.

On the other hand, Marx and Engels considered that the right of the Assembly included the right of the people to exert pressure on their representatives. But the Right complained about the presence of thousands of people at the deliberations of the Berlin Assembly. Marx replied: “The right of the democratic mass of the people to exert a moral influence on the attitude of the Constituent Assembly is an old democratic right of the people, which, since the English and French revolutions, cannot be set aside in any period of stormy action. It is to this right that history owes almost all the energetic steps taken by such assemblies.” The liberals demanded “freedom of deliberation,” but this was infringed, Marx said, by pressure from the State, the Army, the Cortes and other institutions. But in addition, “freedom of deliberation” was infringed by freedom of the press, by freedom of assembly and speech, by the right of the people to bear arms. Marx concluded that between these two forms of "intimidation" the representatives had only one choice: Intimidation by the unarmed people or intimidation by the armed soldiery. The Assembly had to choose.


Maximizing democratic control

A recurring complaint of the Right in the revolutionary years was that the exercise of the rights of the people endangered the government. Marx's response was that if that was the case, so much the worse for the government. The people should not sacrifice their rights to alleviate the difficulties of the government. On the other hand, and in response to the attempts of many deputies to suppress political agitation, Engels explained that agitation was nothing other than the application of the immunity of representatives, the freedom of the press, the right to organize, that is, the freedoms that were legally in force at that time in Prussia. Whether these led to civil war "is not our concern; it is enough that they exist, and we shall see where it leads if the attack on them continues." Shortly afterwards, when the government suppressed Local Democratic Associations, Engels wrote: "The basic condition of the right of organization is that no association or society can be dissolved or prohibited by the police; that this can only be the result of a judicial verdict establishing the illegality of the association or its acts and purposes and punishing the authors for those acts." Against those who maintained that the State could not be weakened by the power of the Associations, he replied that "if the power of the associations is greater than the power of the State, then so much the worse for the State."


All power to the Assembly

Another of the key issues raised by Marx and Engels between 1848 and 1849 was the power of the Assembly. The revolution had given rise to two lines of power: on the one hand, the arming of the people, the right to organize, the de facto achievement of popular sovereignty. On the other hand, the maintenance of the monarchy and the government of the representatives of the big bourgeoisie. The people had won democratic liberties, but the governing power had passed to the big bourgeoisie. For this reason, Marx and Engels proposed that power should pass into the hands of the National Assembly. A demand that went against the objective of the majority of the Assembly, which was to reach an agreement with the monarchy. In addition, the NGR campaigned against the pressure of the government, including the defense of the program of the Frankfurt left for the immediate establishment, proclamation and guarantee of the fundamental rights of the people, against any possible attack by the governments of the German states.

In this context, Marx argued that the executive power should be elected from among the members of the Assembly, as the left-wing radicals demanded. Since the Assembly was a constituent body, there could be no other government than the Assembly itself; it had to assume an activist and revolutionary role. However, the Assembly let the government act, and renounced taking all the powers of the State, which was equivalent to renouncing the sovereignty of the people. The immunity of the deputies was a concrete aspect of this sovereignty. The NGR campaigned for full and unwavering immunity. But the Assembly did not defend immunity, and allowed the governmental power to be strengthened. Also with regard to the militia: Marx gave the example of how the idea of a popular militia had become a plan to establish a bureaucratic force. More generally, the leitmotiv of Marx and Engels was to minimize the power of the executive and the state bureaucracy; and to maximize the weight of the representative system in the governmental structure .


Analysis of Constitutions

In the decade following the defeat of the revolutions of 1848–9 Marx wrote on specific problems of constitutional-democratic forms. In these works he argued that one of the main features of a democratic constitution is the degree to which the independent scope of executive power is limited and restricted . It is only insofar as democracy means control from below that it is genuine . With this approach Marx criticised particular constitutions.

Thus, in a writing of 1851, dedicated to the Constitution of the French Republic of November 1848, he maintained that the main fraud contained in that text was that the democratic guarantees proclaimed were annulled by subsequent laws, established by the governmental power . For example, the Constitution guaranteed freedom of association, opinion, press, but added that the enjoyment of these rights “has no other limit than the equal rights of others and public security .” Another example: it was stated that the vote was “direct and universal,” but exceptions were made in cases “to be determined by law.” The repeated formula, Marx pointed out, is that this or that freedom will be determined by “an organic law” to be adopted, and these “organic laws” destroyed the promised freedom. These considerations were later incorporated by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ; He writes: “Every paragraph of the Constitution contains its own antithesis, its own upper and lower chamber, liberty in the general sentence, abrogation of liberty in the marginal note. Therefore, as long as the name of liberty was respected and only its effective realization prevented, of course legally, the constitutional existence of liberty remained intact, inviolate, whatever mortal blows were dealt to its existence in real life.”

In another article Marx denounced another mechanism by which the government bureaucracy exercised de facto control over individual liberties: internal passports and the “work book,” which established government control of the population.


Minimize the Executive Power

In 1853 Marx analysed the draft constitutions for Schleswig and Holstein and criticised their undemocratic character. He pointed out that the courts of justice were deprived of the old right to cancel administrative decrees, which was a pernicious provision because “it is the power of the bureaucracy” that must be kept in check. He expressed the same idea when he analysed the Prussian constitution of 1850 in 1858. Once again he considered that constitutional rights were annulled by the freedom of action granted to the executive power. And he pointed out that ministerial responsibility had in Prussia, as it had in France, “an exceptional importance since it means, in fact, the responsibility of the bureaucracy.” He denounced the ministers as the heads of a parasitic, omnipotent, meddling body , and “it is only to them… that the subordinate members of the administration should look, without taking the trouble to inquire into the legality of their ordinances, or to assume any responsibility for executing them.” In this way the power of the bureaucracy, and of the bureaucracy of the executive, had remained intact while the rights of the Prussians had been reduced to a dead letter .

On liberties in Prussia Marx wrote: “You may not live or die, marry, write letters, think, publish, conduct business, teach or be taught, hold a meeting, build a factory, emigrate, or do anything else without… permission from the authorities. As for freedom of science or religion, or the abolition of patrimonial jurisdiction, or the suppression of caste privileges, or the abolition of entail or primogeniture [the laws of primogeniture and entail provided that land ownership should be bequeathed intact to the eldest son], it is sheer nonsense.” In the same sense as he had referred to the French Constitution, he explains that there was a deadly antagonism between the law of the Constitution and the constitution of the law, and that the latter in fact reduced the former to a chimera. All liberties were guaranteed only within the limits of the law . The organic laws, Marx denounces, have done away with the guarantees that existed even in the worst times of absolute monarchy; for example, with the independence of the Executive Branch from the courts.

As can be seen, Marx advocated the independence of the courts from the executive . Draper points out that this was only one aspect of his support for anything that minimized the autonomous power of the executive . Thus, in 1859, Marx praised the Hessian Constitution, which made the executive more dependent on the legislature and gave supreme control to the judicial benches . The courts, with the power to decide on all acts of the executive, had the final say “in all questions of bureaucratic discipline.” In addition, the House of Representatives selected from among its members a standing committee that controlled and monitored the government and impeached officials for violations of the Constitution.

Marx also mentions that the revolution of 1848-9 had democratised the forms of election and introduced two important improvements directed against the power of the Executive. On the one hand, it placed the nomination of members of the Supreme Court in the hands of the Legislature; on the other hand, it transferred supreme control of the Army to the Minister of War, who was responsible to the representatives of the people. Another democratic feature of that Constitution, pointed out by Marx, was the communal councillors, nominated by popular election, who were to administer the local and general police. A decade later Marx singled out as a democratic achievement the system of communal control of the police during the Paris Commune. Draper points out that Marx's focus on the minimisation, or subordination, of the Executive power reached its fullest expression in these writings on the Commune.


Other issues related to democratic rights

Various considerations of democratic rights are also found in the later writings of Marx and Engels. These include criticism of the restrictions on the right to vote established by the French law of 1850. For example, the exclusion of those who could not read and write; or those who could not vote because of domiciliary restrictions. In his article on the constitutions of Schleswig and Holstein, Marx also criticised the fact that the right to vote depended on land ownership. He also criticised the complicated Prussian system of grouping voters according to the amount of taxes paid, which gave rise to bureaucratic manoeuvres, such as associating a liberal city with a reactionary rural county in the same district, so as to nullify the former.

Other aspects that Draper records: a) Marx was in favour of a single representative assembly. He rejected the bicameral system, designed to curb popular sovereignty; b) he supported the right to demonstrate and rejected the regulations established by the English Parliament for the organisation of demonstrations; c) he denounced the systems of spies, informers and police informers, involved in radical movements and trade unions; d) he demanded freedom in times of war. When war broke out between France and Prussia, Bebel and Liebknecht were arrested by Bismarck's government on charges of high treason. Both had protested against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, and expressed their sympathies for the French Republic. Marx strongly supported the freedom of socialists.


The “democratic scam”

Draper argues that Marx and Engels also denounced “the democratic scam.” By “democratic scam” they meant the use by the bourgeoisie of democratic forms in order to stabilize its socio-economic government and prevent any democratic control “from below.” As an example of this scam, Marx pointed to the United States, which had the most democratic constitutional form of its time. Given this democratic form, the bourgeoisie had developed the art of keeping popular opinion within channels that conformed to its class interests. This art involved convincing as many people as possible that they were participating in state power, by making minimal concessions to democratic forms. The use of these democratic forms was a cheap (compared to the expense of a monarchy) and versatile way of preventing the masses from shaking up the system. It gave them the illusion of participating in the state, while the economic predominance of the ruling class assured it the real centers of power. In this respect, one way of doing it, proposed by Lamartine for France, was to put government in the hands of the lower bourgeoisie, or middle class, but with the appearance of giving power to the whole people. Criticizing Lamartine, Engels argued that this was the meaning of universal suffrage. Draper points out that throughout the 19th century there were a plethora of electoral systems designed to insert a manipulative factor into the forms of more or less universal suffrage, beginning with the US Constitution.


Towards the socialization of democracy

In his critique of Lamartine, cited by Draper, Engels argued that universal suffrage, direct election and paid representation were the essential conditions for political sovereignty. However, what the socialists sought was not the convenience of the English middle class but “ a new system of social economy to realise the rights and satisfy the needs of all ”. This note by Engels was published in a Chartist newspaper. It should be borne in mind that the most radical elements of the Chartist movement did not limit themselves to demanding the Charter (the right to universal suffrage) but extended the democratic idea to a social programme . This was what Engels called for: going beyond mere political democracy to a more basic social transformation .

In another article, written for a German newspaper in Paris, Engels analysed the constitutional forms of British democracy in this spirit. He admitted that England was the freest country in the world, and he described the methods and forms of the political system to show that the structure was so designed as to grant concessions only in order to preserve that structure as long as possible, maintaining the rule of the middle class in association with the progressive-thinking aristocracy. English democracy, Engels explained, was not the democracy of the French Revolution, the antithesis of which was monarchy and feudalism, but the democracy the antithesis of which was the middle class and property, which were in power. The poor were deprived of rights, oppressed and exploited. The Constitution ignored them, the law mistreated them. The struggle against the aristocracy in England was the struggle of the poor against the rich. England was moving towards a democracy which was social democracy. But mere democracy could not remedy social evils. Democratic equality was a chimera, the struggle of the poor against the rich could not be waged on the terrain of democracy or of politics in general. Mere democracy was only political democracy, a democracy that did not extend “to the social question”, to the democratization of socio-economic life.

To conclude : Marx and Engels always saw two sides to the complex of democratic institutions and rights that were generated under bourgeois democracy. On the one hand, the “democratic swindle.” On the other hand, the struggle to give democratic forms a new social, class content, pushing them to the democratic extreme of control from below. Which in turn implied extending democratic forms beyond the merely political sphere, into the organization of the whole of society. The key was control from below. Draper points out that this idea is also presented by Marx in his commentary on the slogan of a “free state,” in the Critique of the Gotha Program :

“What is a free state? It is by no means the aim of the workers, who have freed themselves from the narrow mentality of the humble subject, to make the state free. In the German Empire the “state” is almost as “free” as in Russia. Freedom consists in turning the state from an organ above society into one completely subordinate to it, and the forms of state remain today more or less free to the extent that they limit the “freedom of the state.”

The bottom line: we do not want a state that is free, but a state that is completely subordinate to society . Draper comments that this criterion proposes a basic test, and a measure of freedom in the sense of popular control from below; and it applies equally to the period before and after the social revolution.

Rolando Astarita
Professor of Economics at the University of Buenos Aires.
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Marxismo & Economía

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Draper, sobre Marx y las formas democráticas de gobierno

En varias ocasiones me encontré con marxistas que menosprecian la lucha por las libertades democráticas. Por ejemplo, son varias las organizaciones de izquierda que descalifican las luchas por libertades democráticas en Venezuela o Nicaragua con el argumento de “son funcionales al imperialismo y...

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[Eltitoguay]

• JAMAICA
• CULTURE / HISTORY / POLITICS / SOCIETY
  

THE ICONIC PHOTOGRAPH OF BOB MARLEY JOINING HANDS WITH MICHAEL MANLEY AND EDWARD SEAGA AT THE ONE LOVE PEACE CONCERT IN KINGSTON, JAMAICA, IN 1978.

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Bob Marley calls for radical change in Jamaica​

AN INTERVIEW WITH
BRIAN MEEKS by Meagan Day ; 06.07.21

An iconic photo from 1978 shows Bob Marley on stage uniting leaders of left and right-wing parties calling for a truce.
Misinterpreted as apolitical, his gesture was actually intended to rescue a socialist political movement that was in danger.

From 1974 to 1980, Jamaica was plagued by political violence.
The country’s two parties, the democratic socialist People’s National Party (PNP)

People's National Party - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Partido Nacional del Pueblo - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

and the conservative Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), engaged in an urban paramilitary conflict that killed, injured and displaced thousands of people.

In 1978, influenced by the Rastafarian message of unity, leaders of both sides agreed to enter into peace talks. Out of this process emerged the One Love Peace Concert in Kingston, which brought together members of rival gangs, party officials and the biggest names in reggae, including Bob Marley, who had been shot two years earlier, probably by a JPL gunman.

During his performance, Marley called the party leaders, Prime Minister Michael Manley of the PNP

Michael Manley - Wikipedia

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Michael Manley - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

es.wikipedia.org

and his opponent, Edward Seaga of the JLP, to the stage and they joined hands in a sign of unity. Images of that moment are now iconic, in part because they seem to show Bob Marley as the dominant global culture imagines him: a peacemaker who transcends all conflict, including political conflict.

But that interpretation is too simple.
With his gesture, Bob Marley was not trying to sidestep the political differences between the left-wing PNP and the right-wing JLP. Rather, he was trying to rescue the hopes of the social movement that had brought the PNP to power six years earlier, a vision of a new Jamaica that street violence—which many suspect was the result of a covert CIA destabilization program—threatened to destroy.

Africana studies scholar Brian Meeks attended the One Love Peace Concert in April 1978. Jacobin staff writer Meagan Day asked Meeks to describe this iconic photograph of Marley embracing Manley and Seaga. To fully understand what’s happening in this photo, Meeks says, we need to examine the evolution of Jamaican parties and social movements, the impact of foreign intervention on Jamaica’s prospects for change, and the role of reggae and the Rastafarian movement in Jamaican cultural and political life.
Brian Meeks is a professor of Africana studies at Brown University. He has published twelve books and edited collections on Caribbean politics. He is the author of Paint the Town Red , a novel set during the political violence of Kingston in the 1970s.

MD​

We have before us a classic photo of Bob Marley joining hands with Michael Manley and Edward Seaga. To understand what is really going on in this photograph, we first need to cover a fair amount of historical and political ground. Let's start with the two parties that each of these politicians represents, the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Where do these parties come from and what do they represent?

BM​

In 1938, a labour rebellion broke out in Jamaica against restrictive trade union laws that prevented proper organisation. It was part of a labour rebellion that spread throughout the Caribbean and brought the working class into the existing anti-colonial movement, as workers began to see independence as a possible way to end exploitation.
By joining the anti-colonial movement, the working class joined the middle class, which felt excluded from the British colonial system and expected to inherit power from the British after independence. Thus, the actors in this anti-colonial coalition did not want or expect the same from independence, but they all saw the need to end British colonialism.
Norman Manley, Michael Manley’s father,

Norman Manley - Wikipedia

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was the leader of the People’s National Party, one of two parties that emerged after the 1938 workers’ rebellion. In the late colonial period, “national” had a much more progressive connotation than in interwar Europe. The PNP was founded in the tradition of Fabian socialism,

Fabian Society - Wikipedia

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Sociedad Fabiana - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

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and was always the more left-wing of the two parties. But it was never a traditional workers’ party: it was an alliance of the middle class, the working class and the urban poor.

The other party, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), was much more conservative even though it bore the name “Labour”. And although it was conservative, the JLP enjoyed considerable prestige among a section of the agricultural and urban working class. It had workers as its popular base while enjoying significant support from business and the commercial sector. Although both parties enjoyed working-class support, Jamaica did not develop a traditional labour party in the years leading up to independence in 1962.

MD​

So, at the end of the colonial period, two Jamaican parties emerged, one more progressive and one more conservative, but both focused primarily on independence (and both supported by constituencies of different classes). How did Michael Manley come to lead the PNP, and how did the party change under his leadership?

BM​

In 1968, another rebellion broke out in Jamaica, this time inspired by the Jamaican government's refusal to allow university professor Walter Rodney to return to the country after he left for a conference in Montreal. His exclusion sparked a popular revolt on the streets of Kingston.

Walter Rodney - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The year 1968 has global significance. In the Caribbean it is seen as the starting point for the black power movement, and the Rodney riots were the Jamaican expression of this.
At the same time, the balance in Jamaica shifted away from the first post-colonial government, headed by the JLP, and towards the PNP, which in 1969 elected Michael Manley as its leader.
In 1972, the PNP captured that sentiment with the slogan “Better Must Come,” which is the name of a song by reggae artist Delroy Wilson. The party also used that song in its campaign. So when Manley won the 1972 election in something of a landslide for Jamaican politics, there was a great expectation that he would carry out measures that would bring about “better times.”

MD​

You mentioned reggae , a theme that brings us closer to understanding the meaning of photography. What was the relationship between reggae and the political movement that Manley led?

BM​

They are closely intertwined. Reggae is very important at this political moment. Reggae as a musical form was part of a rapid evolution that took place in Jamaican music during the 1960s. It began with ska , which had a 2/4 rhythm like reggae but was played at a much faster pace, linked to a jazz tradition and influenced by the rumba of neighboring Cuba and also by the music of New Orleans, which was the only music we could easily access from the United States via shortwave radio.
Ska evolved very rapidly in the 60s into rocksteady . And then, in the same year that these urban riots around Walter Rodney occurred, in 1968, reggae emerged as a new form of music. The first performers were people like Delroy Wilson, who I just mentioned, as well as Prince Buster and The Wailers, the band from which Bob Marley emerged as the leader.
Reggae was a militant form of music that was closely linked to the Rastafarian movement and the Black Power movement. Of course, reggae covers the entire spectrum, from the romantic and emotional music called “lovers rock” to the hard-core protest music, to the quasi-religious music associated with the Rastafarian movement.
Reggae was the soundtrack of the new political movement, and more specifically the soundtrack to Michael Manley's election victory in 1972. Many of reggae 's leading figures were very close to the election campaign, and reggae artists had followed the candidate around the country playing at his rallies.
However, there was also tension when it came to the Rastafarian movement, which as a whole jealously guarded its independence from politics. Moving forward a little, this helps explain Marley's autonomy in 1978 in the image we are discussing.
Rastafari was a political, religious and aesthetic movement all at the same time. As a religious movement it had a broad reach, which meant that there were also some Rastafarians who supported the JPL and Edward Seaga, who became the leader of that party over the course of 1973 and 1974.

MD​

Who is Edward Seaga and what social forces does he represent?

BM​

Seaga was a Jamaican of Lebanese descent who developed his influence in the JPL through his dominance in one of the poorest areas of Kingston. There he built a well-run and efficient enclave called Tivoli Gardens, with social services, new high-rise housing and cultural facilities.
Seaga used this base to build a solid bloc of support within the JLP and assumed leadership just as the NPP was moving from its generalist slogan of "Better Must Come" to the new slogan of democratic socialism in 1974.
The NPP saw itself as a socialist party at first, but for several decades it had subsumed that socialism under the mandate of the struggle for independence. Even for a decade after independence, the NPP still did not talk about socialism. But in 1974, in an attempt to consolidate its support and develop a programme to move the country forward, Manley's NPP publicly turned to democratic socialism.
In response, Seaga's PLJ became an anti-socialist party. It went from a loose opposition to a coalition of workers and capitalists that was clearly opposed to the direction the NPP wanted to give the country, which was explicitly democratic socialist. It implemented reforms such as a massive urban housing program, a literacy program, and maternity leave.
So in 1974 there was a split between Manley's PNP, which espoused a still moderate notion of democratic socialism, and Seaga's anti-socialist JLP. It was a critical moment, because at this time there were also other world events, and the United States began to enter the scene.

MD​

How did the United States receive Michael Manley's democratic socialist government?

BM​

Jamaica came to the attention of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger when, in 1972, four Caribbean governments recognized Cuba, bringing it out of the isolation it had been in for the previous decade. Those four countries were Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados.
That event foreshadowed what would happen in 1974, when Angola became independent from Portugal, followed almost immediately by the incursion into southern Angola from Namibia, which was under the effective control of South Africa.
Kissinger visited Manley and asked him not to help the Cubans, and Manley refused. This was the point at which the United States began planning the overthrow of Manley's government.
Cuba promised to support Angola, whose independence was threatened, but it could not do so alone. Such support could only reach Angola if the planes carrying heavy equipment could be refueled. Both Barbados and Guyana, with the support of Jamaica, agreed to offer refueling stations in the Atlantic. And this put Jamaica in Kissinger's crosshairs.
So when Kissinger visited Manley and asked him not to help the Cubans, Manley refused, explaining that helping Cuba defend independent Angola against apartheid South Africa was a matter of principle. He would not back down.
Between 1974 and 1976, violence began to increase in the city centre, especially in Kingston, but also in other parts of Jamaica. This violence occurred mainly in and targeted poor communities, and was perpetrated by a whole system of gangs surrounding the political parties.

MD​

What was the cause of this sudden paroxysm of political violence?

BM​

It is still not entirely clear who did what, but what is clear is that violence began to occur and intensify not long after the NPP explicitly declared a democratic socialist program.

No one has a smoking gun, but it stands to reason that a government in power has no interest in creating a destabilised situation that would lead people to question its ability to govern. The sequence of events therefore suggests that the violence was initiated not by forces supporting the government but by forces opposing it.

MD​

There has been much speculation that the CIA was responsible for initiating — or at least stoking — political violence. It would not have been difficult to accomplish. There was already a fierce divide between rival gangs affiliated with the parties. Some additional firearms and cash incentives would have made all the difference. And such practices would have been consistent with confirmed CIA activities around the world in the 1970s and 1980s.

BM​

Absolutely. And, as you say, there was already an infrastructure of gangs linked to political parties, but semi-autonomous and operating in their own interests, seeking their own profit margins.

That said, it takes two hands to clap. There is no doubt that there was a response from the pro-NPP gangs, leading to tragic incidents perpetrated by both sides. By 1976, which was an election year, this violence had escalated to a paramilitary level on the streets of Kingston.

The 1976 elections were held under a state of emergency, which Manley considered the only way to control the violence. The PLJ complained that they were not the perpetrators of the violence and that the state of emergency had been declared to harm them in the elections.

The truth is that Michael Manley won re-election and consolidated and increased his support compared to his previous election. The violence calmed down after 1976, but started again in the years leading up to the next election in 1980.

Between 1969 and 1972, Michael Manley built up a following. Two hybrid movements emerged in Jamaica at that time: Black Power , with its American overtones, and Rastafarianism, which was an indigenous black nationalist movement that followed its own trajectory. Michael Manley knew how to harness these energies and win over the insurgent youth (or a significant part of them) to the NPP.

Interestingly, Michael Manley started out as a moderate in the PNP, some would say to the right of his father. But in the process of becoming the party leader he began to move to the left. He was responding to tremendous pressure from below, from a whole contingent of young people who saw how in Jamaica, which had been independent for a decade, blacks were still out of work and out of money and wealth remained concentrated in the hands of foreign investors or local white and light-skinned elites.

MD​

This violence was on a scale that is hard to imagine. More than eight hundred people were killed in one year alone.

BM​

In many cases the violence was indiscriminate. Paramilitaries would drive through communities, see a member of an opposing gang in a bar or on a street corner and open fire.

Both sides were engaged in a program similar to ethnic cleansing, but in this case the goal was partisan cleansing. Kingston's neighborhoods have clear partisan affiliations, and the gangs initiated displacement programs in an attempt to drive people out of the neighborhoods.

In some cases, entire blocks were burned. The idea was that if these people fled and became refugees, forced to move and occupy land sometimes many kilometres away, they would take their votes with them. In this way, the electorate could be shifted from one party to another.

It was a vicious act. And again, when we consider the sequence of events the direction of the arrow points towards the enemies of the Manley government, because it is irrational for a government in power to create a level of disruption that undermines its ability to govern.

MD​

That seems especially true when one considers that the Manley government faced another problem after the 1976 election: an economic crisis followed by coercion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

BM​

Yes. Manley's NPP had come to power in 1972. In 1973, the OPEC crisis occurred. Since Jamaica was an essentially energy-dependent country, prices rose dramatically. Meanwhile, due to the depression that followed the crisis, key export products were falling. And on top of that, tourism was declining because of political violence.

By the time Manley won re-election, there were major fiscal problems on the horizon. His administration tried to find a solution that did not involve going to the International Monetary Fund, but ultimately could see no other way forward. The first agreement with the IMF was signed in 1977.

That agreement required structural adjustments and relatively mild tax cuts in exchange for loans. However, if the fine print was breached, the IMF could impose another agreement. In the fall of 1977, the Jamaican government breached that fine print, and the new requirement imposed increasingly draconian measures.

The IMF's demands made it difficult to implement the democratic socialist programs that had generated so much goodwill in the PNP before the 1976 elections. Ultimately, the support that these programs had won for the PNP was squandered. Thus, by 1978, the Manley government was facing an economic crisis, a political crisis, and rampant violence.

MD​

We have come to 1978, which is the year our photograph was taken. Let's go back to reggae and the Rastafarian movement. How did these two phenomena intersect with politics and violence in Jamaica during this tense period?

BM​

The Rastafarian movement represents a kind of force for general improvement that spread throughout the inner-city communities and provided a wise voice of unity. There were people who could cross the lines because they were Rastafarians. They could travel from Lower Trench Town, which was PLJ territory, to Upper Trench Town, which was NPP territory, without being bothered.

The Rastafarians began to call for a kind of Garveyite unity of the blacks. There were two parties fighting for dominance: one that represented democratic socialism and one that fought against it. And then there was the Rastafari, a kind of counter-movement that had no headquarters or center of its own but provided a moral perspective on a higher basis. This is not to say that there were not individuals within the movement who were in the NPP or the JPL. There were, but there was a kind of autonomy that the Rastafari movement expressed.

The Rastafarians had gravitated towards the PNP in 1972 but never quite won over the movement. They were not turning their backs on the PNP now, but they were saying: “Political parties are not the heart and soul of our movement. The heart and soul of our movement is black people, and we cannot be killing each other.”

MD​

How does Bob Marley fit into all this?

BM​

There is a song called “Rat Race” on Marley’s 1976 album Rastaman Vibration , which is about political violence. In it he sings the line “Rasta don’t work for no CIA.” This is a classic statement for the time, expressing a cautious alliance between critical elements of the Rastafarian movement and the PNP, but also a weariness of inter-party rivalry.

In late 1976, Marley was shot in a famous robbery at his home. This was of critical importance because it was directly related to the political situation.

On the eve of the 1976 elections, Marley was invited to present a concert by the Minister of Culture at the time, which was therefore considered a "PNP concert." Marley was shot shortly before the event, and it is now known with a fair degree of certainty that the perpetrator was a PLJ gunman who wanted to prevent Marley from bringing his important presence to an event that would benefit the PNP just before the elections.

Anyway, the Smile Jamaica Concert, which ended up being a very famous concert, was held. And of course, the PNP won the elections. But after that Marley left the country and went into exile in the Bahamas and then in the UK. He only returned for the Peace Concert in 1978.

MD​

The Concert for Peace is the event where the photograph was taken. What was the purpose of this event?

BM​

In 1978, under the influence of Rastafarian leader Mortimer Planno, two of the party-affiliated gang leaders—Claudius Claudie Massop of the JLP and Aston Bucky Marshall of the NPP—met and decided they would start a peace movement.

This peace movement was contradictory: it was led by gang members who had participated in atrocities, so it was always fraught, and there were questions about whether it was genuine or whether these gang leaders, in a kind of mafia tradition, were looking to take advantage and get something out of it.

In any case, it is undeniable that at the popular level – especially in the areas that experienced the most violence in this period – there was a tremendous groundswell of support for a peace movement that would put an end to the violence. People had lived through four years of murder and burning and were genuinely willing to see it end. This is what led to the Concert for Peace.

MD​

You were at the Concert for Peace. How was it?

BM​

It was an extraordinary event. It was held in the largest venue of its kind, the National Stadium in Kingston. There were almost thirty-five thousand people. All the major reggae singers were there. And all the band members and leaders were there, and that night there was peace between them.

There was that kind of atmosphere that you get at moments of potential change, when the impossible seems possible. It was almost like a revolutionary moment.

The two most prominent figures in the Jamaican pantheon of reggae singers were Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. The latter had also been one of the Wailers, whose three original members were Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer.

Interestingly, Peter Tosh's hour-long presentation was basically non-supportive of the peace initiative. His attitude was captured in his famous 1977 song "Equal Rights," in which he sang: "I don't want peace, I want equal rights and justice." Tosh's slogan went against the grain of the event, which was rather festive.

There were many great artists performing throughout the night, but Marley's performance was the highlight of the event. He performed close to midnight. And, as you can see in the photograph, he called Manley and Seaga up on stage and clasped their hands together, a far cry from Peter Tosh's attitude that night.

On the one hand, yes: Marley calls for an end to violence. But if you listen to the music Marley played that night, it was music directed against Jamaica remaining within the confines of its neocolonial past. It is almost as if with this gesture Marley was saying that Manley and Seaga must find a way to end the hostility in order to truly change the country. That was the spirit in which Manley was elected.

Of course, Marley sings about a love, but it is not a love in the abstract. It is a love that comes together to make a change, and it is not divorced from the idea of a fundamental structural transformation in Jamaica. Marley's position is that an end to violence will pave the way for social and political change.

Then there was an interesting debate in the newspapers, sparked by an article in the radical newspaper of a small Marxist-Leninist party called the Jamaica Workers' Party, a paper called Struggle .

Workers Party of Jamaica - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That article essentially said that Peter had won the night. Bob didn't like it at all, and the next day he turned up at the newspaper offices, cursing, saying basically, "You're presenting Peter as a revolutionary, and what am I?"

So there was a side debate about whether Bob had sold out in doing this, whereas my reading of Bob at the time is that he was thinking, "If working people can have peace, then we can begin to change this country."

MD​

Now that we've provided enough context, let's look back at our photograph. What happened after that night?

BM​

Within a couple of years, the two leaders of the gang, Claudius Massop and Bucky Marshall, were dead. The peace agreement did not hold. Violence escalated dramatically in the run-up to the next election. And in 1980, against this backdrop of violence and an IMF deal that was strangling the country and hurting workers, the PNP was defeated, and Seaga became prime minister.

Manley's attempt at democratic socialism failed. Ronald Reagan was elected almost simultaneously with Edward Seaga, who visited Reagan in 1981. Bob Marley died of cancer in 1981. That is the outcome, if you will, of this whole process.

Manley went into opposition and was re-elected in 1989, but returned as a much more domesticated leader, operating within the confines of the Washington Consensus.

MD​

It is as if Manley were a leader who responded to his moment. The early 1970s were a revolutionary time, but the 1990s were not.

BM​

Precisely. When he returned, the moment had passed; the world had moved on. The international conjuncture that allowed for the existence of radical states had been eclipsed. Manley returned a completely different person. On his deathbed, he said he regretted some of the decisions he made in the 1990s, but that is for the history books.

MD​

Given the way Manley's rule ended, do you think history has proven Bob Marley right that without peace on the streets all hope of a revolutionary revolution would be extinguished for Jamaica?

BM​

History has proved Bob Marley right in that the failure of a peace treaty led to increased violence, and that the outcome of the 1980 election was due to the feeling that the country was ungovernable. Many people would say after the election that they liked Manley and his politics, but that the country was at war and that the only way to stop the war was to let Seaga govern.

But violence was not the only thing that precipitated Manley's defeat. There was also the unsustainable economic situation, aggravated by the country's agreement with the IMF. Real wages had plummeted, there were shortages... Nixon said it in relation to Chile: "Make the economy scream." The Jamaican economy screamed in 1979 and 1980.

Perhaps a peace deal was not a viable thing, because it was ultimately happening at the level of the warlords and not the politicians like Manley and Seaga. But we will never know what would have happened if peace had been a reality.

Bob Marley por un cambio radical en Jamaica - Jacobin Revista

Una foto icónica de 1978 muestra a Bob Marley en el escenario uniendo a los líderes de los partidos de izquierda y derecha pidiendo una tregua.

jacobinlat.com

 

[Eltitoguay]

Another article about Jamaica, this time from the perspective of Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) aka International Marxist Tendency (IMT):

​

Reform or revolution: Jamaica 1972-1980​

By Stan Laight and Frankie Toynton
11 December 2023

Image: Jamaica Information Service

The 1970s were one of the most tumultuous periods in Jamaican history. The island was plunged into a period of intense class struggle not seen since the Great Depression and the general strike of 1938. Ultimately, a bloody campaign of violence driven by US imperialism defeated the struggle for socialism in Jamaica.

This momentous episode in the history of the Jamaican working class offers all workers and youth harsh lessons for the class struggle of today.

In 1972, amid rising class tensions, the People's National Party swept into power on a popular left-wing, anti-imperialist programme.
The PNP aka NPP, led by left-wing reformist Michael Manley, had a chance to break with capitalism, but the leadership faltered.

Post-independence crisis​

After independence in 1962, the right-wing Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) ruled for 10 years.
The weak national bourgeoisie was unable to develop industry on its own. As a solution, they fully embraced foreign capital.

The mining of bauxite (a source of aluminium) proved very profitable for US imperialism, and this industry grew rapidly. In fact, a quarter of the bauxite mined worldwide in 1957 came from Jamaica. The World Bank provided huge loans for the expansion of communications, transport and educational services in order to facilitate this business. Over time, more and more parts of the economy came under the control of the imperialists.

Continued imperialist exploitation was a bitter pill for Jamaican workers and youth. They had pinned their hopes on a better life as a “free” and independent nation. Instead, they found themselves working for foreign capitalists as in pre-independence times.
To paraphrase Irish revolutionary James Connolly, independent Jamaica was still ruled by imperialists, through its markets and capitalists.

While increasing profits filled the pockets of the imperialists (the Canadian corporation Alcan pocketed $6.5 million in 1968 alone), the living conditions of Jamaican workers and peasants rapidly deteriorated.

This phenomenon can be understood as an expression of the law of uneven and combined development. In other words, the emergence of a developed, foreign-owned, export-oriented industry, together with relatively backward social conditions and underdeveloped parts of the economy related to the living conditions of the Jamaican people (in particular, agriculture and national infrastructure). This gave the national economy as a whole a seemingly contradictory character, as well as driving greater disparities between rich and poor.

For example, secondary education was poor. In 1970, more than 40% of 15-year-old pupils left school unable to read or write. Poverty, hunger and crime were rampant. Organised crime became a serious problem and the illegal importation of arms from the US intensified violence on the streets.

Throughout the 1960s the JLP became synonymous with imperialist banditry, and the working class and rural poor rightly blamed them for the dire conditions they endured. Despite the restless mood of the masses, the PNP stagnated under Norman Manley. In a 1967 repeat of the 1962 general election results, the JLP won with 50% of the vote to the PNP's 49%.

The reasons for the defeat were, on the one hand, that Manley had fought all his life for national independence and sowed illusions that this would bring prosperity to ordinary people, when in fact it seemed to bring the opposite. And, on the other hand, he failed to present a socialist alternative to the PLJ's commitment to capitalism.

Michael Manley​

Norman Manley's resignation from the party leadership following the 1967 electoral defeat provided the opportunity to transform the party into a revolutionary leadership. Manley was replaced by his son, Michael Manley, popular for his anti-imperialist rhetoric.

Michael Manley studied at the London School of Economics , where, like his father, he was involved in the Fabian Society, before returning to Jamaica in 1949.
Back home, he held a number of trade union positions, rising to become First Vice-President of the National Workers' Union (NWU), before being elected to the Senate and later to the House of Representatives.

In 1970, he presented his manifesto to change Jamaican society. He spoke of agrarian reforms and economic self-sufficiency for Jamaica, of industrial development and increased productive capacity, of unemployment and opportunities for young people, calling for "radically different policies", and of the fight against organised crime and illegal arms trafficking.

But above all he wrote about the end of foreign ownership of industry:

"[What is needed is] a thorough examination of the type of foreign capital that should be invited to participate, and of the relationship between foreign capital and the national interest in terms of ownership and control."

Manley's anti-imperialist politics resonated deeply with the working class and poor peasants. When the world crisis of capitalism began to deepen in the early 1970s, the working class saw in the NPP a socialist solution to its problems.

"Something better has to come"​

In the 1972 general election, the PNP won 37 seats out of a total of 53, and the PLJ 16 seats. However, percentage-wise, the PLJ won 43% of the votes against the PNP's 56%. This was only a 7% increase for the PNP compared to 1967.

The result revealed, first, a timid turn towards Manley on the part of the middle class, frustrated by the inability of the PLJ to resolve the economic crisis. And second, the working class remained mainly attached to the rivalry between the NPP and the PLJ, which was becoming increasingly bitter and violent.

Manley, armed with a left-wing reformist programme rather than a revolutionary socialist programme capable of fully addressing the burning needs of the moment, failed to win over the majority of working-class voters on a class basis. Manley inherited from the corrupt PLJ a crumbling state and an underdeveloped economy. But instead of explaining the capitalist system and therefore the need for socialism, Manley faltered, declaring:

"I am totally suspicious of such cliché words as socialism, capitalism, and this, that, and the other. I don't know of any socialist country in the world that doesn't actually employ some kind of capitalism as part of its total fabric. I don't know of any capitalist country that doesn't employ socialism. I think that labels have become totally irrelevant to the contemporary situation."

This meaningless statement shows how he tried to avoid basic and decisive issues, but as history teaches us, it is impossible to do so for long.

However, the poor state of the economy forced Manley to pass radical reforms that included the repeal of retrogressive colonial laws. The reforms included:

• Mandatory recognition of trade unions, laws against victimisation and blacklisting, and the introduction of severance pay;
• Minimum wage and standard working hours;
• Equal pay between men and women;
• Free uniforms for almost half a million schoolchildren and free education for disabled children, later extended to universal free secondary education;
• The Child Status Act abolished the concept of illegitimacy.

On improving education, which was a key part of his programme, he said: "Education is the key to what must be an act of self-transformation, the process of transforming the stratified society into a classless society must begin with the process of education."

These reforms actually improved the living conditions of the workers. In turn, the position of the NPP rose in the eyes of the masses. Manley inspired a significant section of the working class and poor peasants, who had found a political expression for their class anger. Due to the increasing pressure from the masses, encouraged by these reforms, Manley soon began to adopt a more radical language.

However, Manley's political confusion did not abate. His policy was limited by what he considered the "special nature" of Jamaica. As he himself stated:
"The People's National Party has no intention of blindly copying any foreign formula for achieving a socialist society in Jamaica.
We are building our own model of socialism which must emerge from the application of basic principles to the special nature of Jamaican society."

With this conception, Manley was clearly trying to distance himself from the deformed workers' states of the USSR, China and their Caribbean neighbours Cuba.
But rather than drawing the right conclusions - that the problems of these societies reflected a lack of genuine workers' democracy - Manley seemed to think that they had gone "too far, too fast" in their break with capitalism.

The truth was the opposite. The Stalinist bureaucracies were an obstacle to completing the tasks of the socialist revolution, adapting themselves to narrow nationalism and reformism, instead of trying to export their revolutions abroad and lay the foundations for the world revolution. This would have been the only way to achieve genuine socialism in the USSR, China, Cuba, Jamaica or anywhere else.

By stressing a vague "Jamaican road to socialism," Manley was ironically reproducing the nationalist distortions of the Stalinist regimes that they avoided imitating. The poverty and backwardness that plagued much of Jamaican society made it all the more imperative to export the revolution beyond its borders (starting with the rest of the Caribbean), to avoid isolation. But this call never came.

As we will explain later, this was partly because Manley wanted to avoid alienating either of the two poles of the Cold War, from whom he appealed at various times for help, and neither of whom were enthusiastic about the idea of an uncontrolled revolutionary wave. But ultimately it revealed the limits of his reformist politics and his unwillingness to break decisively with capitalism.

The "special nature" of Jamaican society certainly did not inoculate it from the world capitalist crisis. The pressing question of how to achieve a socialist society was evaded again and again. Instead of "blindly copying foreign formulas," Manley resigned himself to groping blindly in the darkness of the Jamaican desert for solutions. What occurred to him was nothing more novel than reformism. Where he would have found real solutions was in the history and widespread experience of the international workers' movement: Marxism.

As part of a broader socialist programme that included nationalising most of the economy and placing it under workers' control, Manley's reforms would have been highly effective. But Manley never explicitly called for the expropriation of the banks, the plantations or the bauxite and alumina industries.

Had they been placed in the hands of the working class, on a democratic basis, the profits from these industries could have been used to fund further reforms and alleviate widespread poverty very quickly.

Although electricity and bus services were nationalised, this was done on the basis of avoiding the collapse of these sectors. Apart from the reforms granted to the working class and the rural poor, the bulk of the reforms carried out in 1974 were concessions to the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie.

For example, $2 million was invested in "business complexes" and the powers of the courts were strengthened. Politicians' pensions increased far more than those of the average worker, by as much as 50% in some cases. These reforms suggest that Manley had illusions about strengthening the bourgeois state as a means of achieving socialism, rather than dismantling it to make way for a workers' state.

As the global economic crisis took its toll, the meanderings of the Manley regime frustrated the revolutionary wing of the PNP, and tensions boiled over.
Trevor Munroe, a Marxist, was expelled from the PNP, leading to a split that formed the Workers' Liberation League in 1974.

Trevor Munroe

Trevor Munroe: A Jamaican who served as the leader of the Workers’ Party of Jamaica (WPJ), a communist organization.

grenadarevo.com

Trevor Munroe - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

At a crucial moment, the PNP was left without its communists.

The importance of theory​

In Manley's book Jamaica (1982), he describes the process by which the NPP decided what "type" of socialism to adopt. In 1973, the Youth Organisation and the Women's Movement played a major role in drawing up a manifesto which was presented to the party's National Executive Committee before it reached the "leadership".

He says that in the end the leadership, including himself, opted for democratic socialism. The utopian and religious slogans they decided to use - "Socialism is love" and "Socialism is Christianity in action" - give an idea of how confused the party leadership was.

The educational material that emerged from this effort to clarify the party's ideology only sowed confusion in the ranks of the NPP. Immediately, members of the Youth Organization raised fundamental class questions that could not be answered by the leadership.

In his book, Manley cynically calls these young members "ultra-leftists." But in reality, the youth were merely the most militant and revolutionary layer of the party. Manley was a conciliator and a compromiser who was easily cowed by the onslaught from the right who demanded that he condemn the "communists" in the NPP.

Marxism reveals the underlying class antagonisms in class society and calls on the working class to fight independently for its interests against its class enemies. The petty-bourgeois moralist wants to appease these class antagonisms by conciliation with the oppressor and consolation of the oppressed. This is a reactionary fantasy.

Manley's reformist illusions were to be literally fatal to the working class. In effect, he played the role of a comforting priest while his parishioners went to war.

The PLJ and US Imperialism​

The PLJ was willing to do the bidding of US imperialism at any opportunity. Edward Seaga (aka "CIA-ga") took over the leadership of the party in 1974. He was one of Alexander Bustamante's most ruthless right-hand men during the 1960s. In a speech to a hostile NPP crowd in 1965, he threatened them:

"I can bring the crowds from West Kingston. We can meet you in any way and at any time. It will be fire for fire, and blood for blood" (The Evolution of Political Violence in Jamaica 1940-1980 (2011), KF Williams, pg.41)

The reactionary PLJ was whipping up a hysteria over Manley's reforms, as well as his courting of Cuba and the USSR for help. Seaga was prepared to resort to disinformation and gang violence to overthrow the NPP and reassert the interests of capital.

The global capitalist crisis of 1974 led to a wave of strikes in the bauxite industry and other key sectors. Manley increasingly sought support from Cuba and the USSR, recognising Jamaica's economic isolation. Manley also reached a trade agreement on bauxite with Mexico to reduce Jamaica's dependence on exports to the United States.

During a visit to Cuba in 1975, Manley had proclaimed: "Long live Cuba, long live the revolution and, above all, long live the incomparable Fidel Castro." These were positive steps towards breaking with capitalism and American imperialism.

Manley's orientation toward Cuba and the Soviet Union outraged the United States, which put immense pressure on the JLP to do whatever was necessary to prevent the reforms from going ahead. A fierce press campaign against relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union was fueled by "communist fear."

The economic crisis was used by the bourgeois press as a stick to beat the Manley regime with. They cited economic mismanagement, incompetence and corruption as reasons for the economic problems. Inflation jumped from 8.2% in 1972 to 26.9% in 1973.

The IMF, since it granted Jamaica its first loan in 1963, had been a tool of US imperialism to impose its economic interests in the country. With its interests at stake, the IMF now took on a new meaning.

The permanent revolution​

As already explained, Jamaica's economy developed in a combined and uneven manner. Jamaica's late bourgeois development explains why many of the unfinished tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution fell to Manley when the NPP came to power.

Manley carried out these tasks and strengthened the bourgeois state, but although such a development was advantageous for the bourgeoisie, a "democratic-socialist" government threatened to make inroads into bourgeois property relations, something they could not allow, so they sabotaged Manley.

In these circumstances, the national bourgeoisie revealed itself to be counter-revolutionary. The only revolutionary and capable class was, therefore, the working class.

Instead of merely developing the bourgeois state on behalf of the bourgeoisie, the working class must go further and carry out the tasks of the socialist revolution in its own interest.
In other words, by carrying out the bourgeois-democratic tasks they could grow into the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, becoming a "permanent revolution," to use Trotsky's phrase.

This is what the national bourgeoisie and the imperialists feared.

Manley found himself in a dead end on the road to left reformism. The only way out was to lead the working class in a revolution in the struggle for a socialist workers' republic. But he was slow to make up his mind, as the forces of reaction conspired to scuttle him and the working class out of the way.

1976: Manley's second coming in collaboration with the CIA, PLJ supporters launched violent attacks against NPP members, especially the radical youth wing. Within months, a cabinet minister had been assassinated and some 200 activists had been killed. The PLJ was heavily involved in the illegal importation of arms, which were then used in political attacks.

The 1976 elections were held under a state of emergency and the PLJ accused the PNP of preparing to manipulate the results. Against all odds, the PNP won 47 of the 60 seats, compared to 13 for the PLJ. However, the percentage split between the PNP and the PLJ did not change from 1972 (43% and 56%). The working class remained relatively divided.

However, given the level of attack by US imperialism, the victory was a considerable vote of confidence for Manley's left reforms and an example of the sacrifices that workers were prepared to make to defend them. Manley was now in a favourable position to go on the offensive against the capitalists.

In fact, Seaga said the PLJ was "not prepared to go to another election without significant reform of the system that oversees elections." Manley should have used Seaga's words against him and dissolved Parliament, expropriated the commanding heights of the economy and asked workers and peasants to elect democratic councils to democratically plan production.

However, while the working class had demonstrated its strength against imperialist attacks, the government showed its weaknesses after the elections.

To appease the right wing of the PNP, Manley appointed a right-wing finance minister. He banned marches and demonstrations, to appease the ruling class. And each time Manley tried to gain ground on the foreign capital that continued to dominate Jamaican industry, he did so with timid partial nationalizations, rather than through a socialist program of expropriations of industry, services and finance.

The turbulent period of the global capitalist crisis threatened to undermine the NPP's reforms. Manley turned to capitalist institutions in an attempt to relieve some of the economic pressure. Manley turned to Washington for help as the economy sank further into crisis. Turning to US imperialism for help was a monumental mistake for Manley and had disastrous consequences.

By mid-1978, the IMF had the Manley government by the throat and was tightening its grip with an agreement that included:

• An immediate 15% devaluation of the currency and, thereafter, a monthly devaluation of 1.5%;
• A wage moderation with a cap of 15%;
• Guaranteed benefits for the private sector, with a minimum of 20%. In 1979, Manley devalued the currency and the minimum wage, introduced in 1974, was replaced by wage restraint. Most of Manley's reforms were reversed almost overnight.

Manley's turn towards the very imperialists he had claimed to want to rid the country of completely undermined his authority in the eyes of his supporters. It was an unforgivable betrayal and a devastating blow, as the economic situation worsened.

Unemployment was 45% and inflation was 47% in 1979. Manley flew to Moscow to ask for help, and even gave a rousing speech at a conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (a bloc of countries not formally aligned with any major power) to... align the movement with the Soviet Union! Manley thought he could play a clever game of East-West balance, but he lost badly.

In a desperate attempt to correct the course that the NPP leadership had taken, the rank and file voted for a resolution at a special party conference in 1980 to cut ties with the IMF. But to no avail. By then, the economy was mired in crisis.

The Central Bank had been looted by the imperialists. A serious flight of capital and labour began. The workers were not to blame: the shortage of food and other basic goods left them desperate.

As the British Marxist newspaper Militant reported at the time:
"Many unemployed peasants and rural workers now live in abject poverty. Tens of thousands of young people in the capital, Kingston, have been driven into the blind alley of petty crime by crushing unemployment. Prostitution has become widespread again. Even the pampered middle classes have not escaped the crisis." (Militant No. 525, 24 October 1980, 'Vital election for Jamaica')

Factories closed, along with some 10,000 small businesses, leading to ever-increasing unemployment. The economic crisis provoked a fierce reaction from the petite bourgeoisie, which created the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica for the sole purpose of attacking the PNP.

In June 1980, the Jamaican United Front, a right-wing group operating with the help of the CIA, attempted a coup.
On the walls of Trenchtown and on the front pages of newspapers were written: 'IMF: Manley is to blame' and 'Bitterness has set in'. Ironic that the first critical slogan came from a right-wing group backed by the CIA.

And in October, the PNP's deputy prime minister, Roy McGann, was assassinated. The economic, social and political crisis led to massive instability and strong polarisation in society. Jamaica was effectively in a state of civil war.

Drowned in blood​

The vast supply of arms provided by US imperialism to the PLJ supporters had triggered the ruthless rivalry between them and the NPP supporters into pitched battles on the streets. Gangs of armed PLJ thugs would enter the NPP voting areas and attack the activists, who defended themselves with guns in hand.

Manley had completely lost control of the situation. Astonishingly, in Struggle in the Periphery, he claims that the support of the 'Marxist-Leninist' Jamaican Workers' Party for a PNP victory "did us real harm because it seemed to confirm years of propaganda claiming that the PNP had 'gone communist'." (Struggle in the Periphery (1982), M. Manley, p.210)
( WPJ was founded on 17 December 1978 by Trevor Munroe, along with Elean Thomas and others.[1] ).

But Manley's damage had already been done. The PNP was routed in the 1980 general election, with the JPL winning 51 of the 60 seats to the PNP's pitiful nine.

With such a dominant position, the PLJ wasted no time in expelling the Cuban ambassador, demolishing what remained of the PNP's reforms, and fully reestablishing foreign capital control over industry. Jamaican troops were even sent to Grenada to join the US military occupation against the People's Revolutionary Army to defeat the Grenadine Revolution.

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Within a few years, nothing remained of Manley's radical reforms. As one American journalist noted on his visit in 1983:
"The real seat of power in Jamaica these days, in fact, is not Jamaica House, the prime minister's office, nor Parliament, nor the Central Bank..."
Rather, it is the Pegasus, a modern, luxurious structure rising eighteen stories in downtown Kingston. Here meet economists from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; officials from the United States government; investors from Kansas, Israel and Hong Kong; bankers, diplomats, journalists and consultants with expertise in everything from exchange rates to water pumps. While the capitalists carved up Jamaica, the workers were left in abject poverty. Unemployment remained above 25% and living conditions for the majority of the population were abject. The corruption of the JPL and the failure to update the electoral roll were considered sufficient reason for the NPP to boycott the 1983 general election. This decision gave all sixty seats to the JPL, with a staggeringly low national turnout of just 2.7% (55% of the six seats contested, still a disastrous figure). This crushing defeat and the rapid reprivatisation of nationalised industries and services under Manley were irrefutable proof of the limits of left reformism. Left reforms will never be guaranteed until the working class has wrested power from the capitalists.

Reform and revolution​

Manley's programme included many genuine left reforms, but reforms alone are not enough.

Revolutionary leadership is vital. Its incredible vacillations - absolutely wild oscillations - an organic reflection of its reformist policy, made it bend at every critical moment.

Armed with a revolutionary socialist programme and a Bolshevik party prepared to carry it out, the Jamaican working class could have triumphed. But the NPP was no such party, and Manley was certainly no Lenin. Manley should have called on the support of the international working class to defend itself against US imperialism, while putting the economy, services and banks in the hands of the working class. Moreover, no isolated, underdeveloped socialist state could have resisted the pressure of US imperialist force alone. The victory of the working class in Jamaica would only have been more assured if it had been fought on an international basis as part of an international socialist federation.

But, as Manley demonstrated, revolutionary leadership is vital. If the workers had been given clear and bold leadership they would have responded. Something Manley was neither willing nor able to provide

Where is Jamaica going?​

Flying over the verdant island, it is not immediately obvious that Jamaica was formed by violent volcanic activity hundreds of millions of years ago.

It is now peaceful and its dormant volcanoes give the island its beautiful mountains.

The exacerbated class struggle of the 1970s has left its own mark. Bourgeois economists are quick to sing the praises of the Jamaican economy, but beneath the surface there is a build-up of pressures that threaten to lead to social explosions.

Jamaica's economic "success" has been based on a policy of brutal austerity and exploitation.

Wages are extremely low, household bills unaffordable, living conditions miserable, homelessness on the rise and youth unemployment at 16.7%. Widespread gang violence plagues communities, with one of the highest murder rates in the world. Jamaican society is collapsing.

The discontent that is building up finds no expression in either the PNP or the PLJ, which only represent the interests of the corrupt capitalist class. However, a revolutionary party armed with a Marxist programme would give expression to this class anger and lead a militant struggle against capitalism.

The task facing the Jamaican working class, both in the 1970s and today, remains the same: socialist revolution.
The lessons of the Manley-led NPP regime demonstrate that a left government must go beyond reforms to guarantee the working class those reforms.

Only a revolutionary party with a Marxist programme can provide the necessary leadership in the struggle for communism.
This is what the International Marxist Tendency aims to build in every nation.

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Reforma o revolución: Jamaica 1972-1980

la historia de Jamaica. La isla se vio inmersa en un periodo de intensa lucha de clases que no había visto desde la Gran Depresión y la huelga general de 1938. Finalmente, una sangrienta campaña de violencia impulsada por el imperialismo estadounidense derrotó la lucha por el socialismo en...

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[Eltitoguay]

MAURICE BISHOP, PRIME MINISTER OF GRENADA (SECOND FROM LEFT), WALKS WITH (FROM LEFT) MICHAEL MANLEY, PRIME MINISTER OF JAMAICA; KURT WALDHEIM, SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS; AND CUBAN PRESIDENT FIDEL CASTRO, DURING ARRIVAL CEREMONIES IN CUBA ON SEPTEMBER 2, 1979, FOR THE SUMMIT OF NON-ALIGNED COUNTRIES. (BETTMAN VIA GETTY)

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The Granada revolution shook the world​

RONAN BURTENSHAW

On March 13, 1979, the Popular Revolutionary Government was proclaimed in Grenada. A socialist revolution on the small Caribbean island threatened to upend the world economic order.

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When Grenadian revolutionary leader Maurice Bishop appeared at Hunter College in Brooklyn in August 1983, Ronald Reagan's administration was worried.

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Maurice Bishop

Maurice Bishop: A Grenadian socialist politician who seized power in a coup in 1979 and served as Prime Minister of Grenada until he was executed in 1983

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Four years earlier, in 1979, a socialist revolution had brought Bishop's New Jewel Movement (NJM) to power in the tiny Caribbean state of less than 100,000 people.

New Jewel Movement - Wikipedia

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Grenada Revolution

Grenada Revolution: The policies and programs of the NJM and its government, the PRG, in Grenada from March 13, 1979 to October 25, 1983.

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A State Department report summed up American concerns: the Grenada revolution, it said, was in some ways even worse than the Cuban Revolution, which had shaken the region a quarter-century earlier. The vast majority of Grenadians were black, and so their struggle could resonate with the thirty million black Americans. Moreover, the Grenadian revolutionary leaders spoke English, so they could easily communicate their message to the American public.

It turned out that they were right to be worried. Bishop's speech at Hunter College was one of the great revolutionary orations of the century.
He defended the Granada revolution with broad historical references: the context of the American Revolution of 1776, Lincoln's emancipation, the continuing economic subjugation of the developing world, the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government in Chile and the brutal interventions of the Contras against the Sandinistas, the context of the hypocrisy of Western nations in supporting apartheid in South Africa, dispossession in Palestine and dictatorship in South Korea.

But Bishop's intervention was perhaps most poignant when he spoke of his Caribbean roots.
In the decades before 1979, Caribbean socialism had become a major force.
Its forms were varied, as witnessed by the simultaneous victories in the 1950s of Fidel Castro's revolutionaries in Cuba and Cheddi Jagan's People's Progressive Party in the Guyana elections (which provoked British military intervention).

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In the years before the rise of the NJM in Grenada, Trinidad had witnessed a Black Power uprising in 1970 and Jamaica had twice elected – in 1972 and 1976 – the socialist prime minister Michael Manley and his People's National Party (events which, once again, provoked Western governments to back violent and reactionary measures).

Bishop, like Manley, had been educated in Britain and trained in its anti-colonial, anti-war and socialist movements: he was clear that Grenada was part of a Caribbean context. “We are one people of one Caribbean,” he said at Hunter College, “with one struggle and one destiny.” Referring to the US Monroe Doctrine and its claim to the right to intervene in the region, he was unequivocal: “They like to talk a lot about the backyard and the frontier and the lake; well, Grenada is nobody’s backyard, and it’s not part of anybody’s lake.” The excited response of a predominantly black American audience leaves little doubt as to how this message was received.

And yet, just two months after that speech, Maurice Bishop was dead, executed by members of his own party following a catastrophic split in the revolution.
Reagan’s United States, which had throughout maintained a hostile stance towards the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG), seized the opportunity to invade. The Grenadian revolution was over. Scholar Brian Meeks, who was involved in the socialist experiments in Jamaica and Grenada, would later write that these events marked the end of radical politics in the Caribbean “for a generation or more.”

The rise of the NJM​

One of the most impressive texts examining the revolution, its context, achievements and legacy, is the 2015 book The Grenada Revolution: Reflections and Lessons , edited by Wendy C. Grenade. Speaking to Tribune , Dr. Grenade described the background to the NJM’s rise to power:
Like other post-colonial societies, Grenada’s political development evolved through waves of emancipation. In 1951, Eric Gairy led a social revolution against the plantocracy. Generally known as “Sky Red,” the 1951 uprising aimed to open spaces for working people to break the shackles they had endured since Emancipation.

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Gairy resisted the authoritarian and racist colonial state and provided hope for the largely poor, black and marginalized masses of Grenada.

However, once he gained state power, Gairy eventually became repressive. This repression intensified in the period 1973-74, when the newly formed NJM began to resist Gairy's government. The cycle of authoritarianism, resistance and state-sanctioned violence was similar to the period from 1951 to earlier times such as the Fédon Rebellion of 1795-96.

In the midst of this whirlwind of political chaos, Grenada gained independence from Britain on 7 February 1974. The country was divided on the Gairy vs. anti-Gairy dispute. While the majority of working-class Grenadians remained loyal to Gairy, especially the elderly, the emerging intellectual elite and the children of those who benefited from Gairy’s 1951 social revolution challenged a meaningless “independence” that did not aim to achieve a just society.
The children of plantation workers, influenced by Black Power, the US Civil Rights movement and other liberation struggles, marched across Grenada echoing a chant that recalled Gairy’s earlier defiance against the colonial establishment.
This time it was “Go, go, Gairy must go.”

Five years of struggle followed, during which the NJM – previously an alliance of the Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education, and Liberation (JEWEL), the Organisation for Revolutionary Education and Liberation (OREL) and the Movement for Assemblies of the People (MAP) – consolidated itself as a party.
Its leading figures were Maurice Bishop and Bermard Coard, the latter having been trained as a Marxist under the tutelage of Trevor Munroe of the Workers' Party of Jamaica (WPJ).

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Bernard Coard

Bernard Coard: A key member of Grenada's NJM & former deputy prime minister of Grenada.

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Although nominally Marxist-Leninist, the NJM was actually more "ideologically fluid". According to Grenade, it “existed at the intersection of Marxism-Leninism, the international anti-colonial struggle, the Black Power movement and the Caribbean left tradition…formed by a confluence of overlapping national, regional and international forces.”

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Exército Revolucionário Popular (Granada) – Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre

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Faced with an increasingly authoritarian Gairy regime, the NJM set out to carry out a revolutionary insurrection and created the National Liberation Army (NLA).
Trained in Guyana and Trinidad, it took power in March 1979, after which Maurice Bishop was declared Prime Minister. The most radical experiment in Caribbean socialism was underway.

The revolution in progress​

At the time of the revolution, Grenada had an official unemployment rate of 20% (the PRG would later say the real figure was 49%), one of the lowest GDP per capita rates in the region, and widespread poverty. The island’s economy, though improving somewhat under Gairy, remained almost entirely dependent on agricultural exports, first in the form of sugar and then, as the 1970s progressed, cocoa, nutmeg, plantains and mace. The promised diversification had not materialised, and Grenada’s small and inefficient airport (by 1979 it lacked even lights for night landings) meant that most tourists had to arrive via neighbouring islands.​

Following the revolution, the political structure established by the PRG was in many ways classically Marxist-Leninist. Although there was considerable participation by grassroots groups, such as the National Women's Organization, rival political parties were banned, the constitution was suspended, the party's Politburo ruled by decree, and, contrary to repeated promises, elections were never held.

Nevertheless, socialist Grenada's economic program differed substantially from that of neighboring Cuba, its closest ally in the region. In his 1982 "Line of March" speech, Bishop made clear that Grenada had rejected the state monopoly model of property ownership, pursuing instead a "mixed economy" with the state sector "dominant" and in charge of planning. This was, he argued, an attempt to develop Grenada's "productive forces" so that the conditions for socialism would be met: industrialization, a large working class, and popular education.

According to Finance Minister Bernard Coard, “For years there has been no serious planning in our country, and our people have suffered from corrupt and ineffective leaders who made decisions at random, leaving our country and its people underdeveloped and poor.” In response, the PRG launched ambitious plans to combat poverty, educate and develop the population, improve the nation’s infrastructure, diversify the economy, build a manufacturing base and, above all, boost tourism.

Economist Kari Grenade recounts his achievements in The Grenada Revolution :

"Income tax was abolished for the lowest paid 30% of workers. Granadan citizens also benefited from a “social wage” […] benefits for which they did not have to pay, for example, medical services (dental, optical and general) and educational services. University scholarships were offered in areas in line with the country’s economic development, school uniforms and books were free, and a literacy programme and a teacher training programme were introduced.​

​

The Housing Repair and Construction Program improved the quality and accessibility of housing. In addition, no interest was paid on loans for home repairs […] Prices of various items were controlled by the State. The social system, like the economic system, was orderly and oriented to the benefit of all Grenadians. According to Payne, Sutton and Thorndike (1984), GDP per capita (the most common indicator of economic well-being) almost doubled, from $450 in 1978 to $870 in 1983."​

Wendy C. Grenade elaborates on this aspect, highlighting the National Transport Service, the National Marketing and Importation Board, a national insurance scheme and a fishery processing plant. Public spending increased dramatically, from 38.7% of GDP to 52.7% in just four years.

Beyond these reforms, and reflecting the influence of post-1960s liberation politics on the NJM, Grenadian women made considerable gains.
Sexual exploitation of women in exchange for labour was banned, equal pay for equal work was introduced – modelled on the British Equal Pay Act of 1970 – and mothers were guaranteed three months’ maternity leave, two of which were paid, as well as the guarantee of being able to return to the same job they had left. Unsurprisingly, as the revolution progressed, women formed a considerable part of the NJM’s rank and file.

However, despite these important achievements, the revolutionaries in Granada were aware that they needed to achieve self-sufficiency that would to some extent insulate the socialist project from the turbulence of the world economy and the depredations of international markets. In this respect, they fell short. The manufacturing sector, one of the main objectives of Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard, failed to take off.

Agriculture was not sufficiently diversified, leading to increased exposure to both natural disasters and market fluctuations. The tourism sector, which had previously been dependent on Americans, declined when the US government spread word to travel agents that Grenada's beaches were covered with barbed wire. State industries remained heavily dependent on subsidies, and exports declined.

Kari Grenade, summing up the experience, argues that the PRG's ambitions were right from a development perspective, but flawed in their execution. "Policies were well defined, but institutional and human capacities were inadequate to implement them effectively."
One area where this was not the case was the construction of Grenada's first international airport. By 1983 it was underway, assisted (as with most infrastructure projects) by Cuban construction workers. It was a project that Maurice Bishop described as a "dream" for Grenadians. Today it bears his name, and is the foundation of the country's tourism industry. Sadly, Bishop never saw it completed.

The fall​

The decision to build an international airport in Grenada was met with enormous hostility by the new Reagan administration in Washington, which had taken power in 1981 and immediately rejected Bishop and his administration's attempts to normalize relations. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim would later write, "It mattered little that the airport was used primarily as a tourist facility … it was the potential the airport offered to the Soviets that worried American analysts."​

Contrary to the Reagan administration's high-sounding arguments, the Granada revolution was an indigenous phenomenon and not a Soviet implantation. In fact, despite the theft of a large quantity of documents by the invading American forces in 1983, no evidence has ever emerged that the Soviet Union had any plans to use Granada's airport as a base for launching a military attack against the United States.

But Maurice Bishop and the PRG did seek to build closer relations with the communist world, with all the good and bad that entailed. It is unlikely that the revolution could have achieved so much in terms of economic transformation without the help of Cuba. And the United States would probably have invaded sooner if it were not for Castro's military aid. Trade with the Soviet Union also propped up the weaker sectors of Grenada's economy. But support for Grenada's invasion of Afghanistan at the UN damaged relations with non-aligned states and opened the door to accusations in Washington that it was becoming a "puppet state."

Domestic factors also weighed on the revolution in its later years. The international recession of the early 1980s affected Grenada, as did the faltering economies of its allies in the communist world. By 1983, the party accepted internally that its revolution was no longer as popular as it had been four years earlier. But this was not entirely due to the economy.

Brian Meeks, who arrived in Grenada after the defeat of the Manley government in Jamaica and worked for the PRG, has written extensively about the end of the revolution. In his analysis, the “underground vanguard structure” that was essential to the NJM’s military success in 1979 subsequently hampered its ability to govern. The result was “a somewhat schizophrenic organisation”, with a small group of cadres “reading Marx and trying to build a ‘genuine’ Marxist-Leninist party”, while “the grassroots remained largely ignorant of all this, supporting the party mainly because of its history of championing popular causes”.

In this dynamic, the NJM became increasingly divorced from the population, responding to each difficulty by redoubling its determination to build a minority organisation. The exception was Maurice Bishop, the hugely popular prime minister. According to Meeks, “It was Bishop, and not the NJM, who people saw as the embodiment of the revolution. He was the person in touch with ordinary people; he had the ability to translate PRG policies into words that everyone could understand.”

A keen connoisseur of Caribbean socialist thinkers such as CLR James and African liberation leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Bishop was an extraordinary orator. But these skills contributed to his estrangement from the party: while Bishop electrified crowds at home and abroad from the podium, he was regarded in the NJM as an inferior organiser to Bernard Coard, who built his position in the party at Bishop's expense.

This split became apparent with Coard's resignation from the Central Committee in 1982. By 1983, the split had completely undermined the NJM. Coard and his supporters saw, with some justification, that the party was the backbone of the government but that its development was being neglected. They therefore pushed for a joint leadership strategy, with the aim of bringing Coard's organisational skills to the fore alongside Bishop's communications talents.

Bishop initially agreed to the deal. The process by which he came to question the pact is shrouded in mystery. When he left for a diplomatic trip to Hungary, the party believed he was willing to share power with Coard. But he was accompanied on that trip by leading NJM figures opposed to the deal and then, on his way to Grenada, made an unscheduled stop in Cuba.
Here conspiracy theories abound : Coard and his supporters allege that Fidel Castro warned Bishop against joint leadership and even suggested Cuban support for military action (Cuba had 800 military-trained construction workers on the island). Castro and his government alleged that Coard was involved in an “ultra-left” conspiracy, pooling party votes and organizing to depose or even kill Bishop.

Brian Meeks’ analysis challenges these conspiracy theories, arguing instead that the die was cast from the moment Bishop – backed by the people – and the party – backed by the military – fell out. Whatever the circumstances, the result was disastrous. Bishop, having refused joint leadership, was placed under house arrest. Days later, on October 19, the crowd freed him. On their way to a mass rally in Market Square, Bishop and the crowd marched to confront the soldiers at Fort Rupert.

Meeks writes in The Grenada Revolution : “With a united party and army facing a largely unarmed and now hostile population, the door was opened to dangerous and deadly solutions.” The crowds intimidated the soldiers, threatening their lives. The soldiers, in turn, called for and received reinforcements. They dispersed the crowds and, in retaliation, executed Bishop and his allies.

Within days, the American army invaded the country.

Grenada’s revolutionary experiment was over. Meeks concludes that “the story of what happened … has not yet been fully told.”

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The Granada legacy​

Meeks draws several lessons from the experience. First, he cites the failure of the revolutionaries to overcome the authoritarian state apparatus inherited from British colonialism and the Gairy government. The decision not to hold early elections, which the NJM would have won “without a doubt,” is also presented as a cause of the defeat, not least because it “would have reduced the effectiveness of the American and regional conservative opposition.” However, as Maurice Bishop himself noted, neither the Chilean nor the Nicaraguan elections provided much protection for their governments; indeed, of all the socialist experiments in the Caribbean, only Cuba, which remains a one-party state, has managed to resist American hostility.​

However, it is difficult to refute Meeks's argument that the combination of the NJM's narrow base – which attempted to govern almost as a revolutionary conspiracy – and the failure to hold elections led to the erosion of popular rule. It is a common mistake among some Marxists to fail to understand the role of the individual in history; in this case, it was the failure to understand Bishop's capacities to act as a conductor of the energies of the revolution that resulted in the deadly outcome.

But the legacy of the Granada revolution lives on. Its four and a half years constitute a heroic achievement in the region, not only in terms of social progress but also in the struggle for self-determination. Images of ostentatious corporate advertising torn off billboards and replaced with revolutionary slogans will remain, a testament to the small island’s spirit of resistance: “Forward always! Never back down.”

In 2009, Bernard Coard and his allies were released after being imprisoned after the US invasion for their alleged involvement in Bishop's murder. Forty-two years after the revolution, Grenada is only just beginning to come to terms with what happened. According to the World Bank, a third of its population remains in poverty, but Wendy C. Grenade argues that these figures do not tell the whole story:

How do you define the question of “development”? World Bank indices often fail to measure the spirit of a people and the collective resilience that sustains them… For many of us, development goes beyond high-rise buildings and subways. What many of us value is time with family, time on the beach [and] just being with nature. What many of us value is our heritage, that connection to our land and our cultural heritage. For many of us, development transcends the material to a spiritual connection. Development for us is tied to our imagination and creativity…​

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This does not negate the fact that, as small island states, we face serious challenges. Indeed, unequal trade, unequal exchanges and the systemic forces of the global capitalist economy continue to plague small states. Natural and man-made disasters continue to undermine human growth and well-being. Any debate about development and “underdevelopment” must begin with a discussion of what it means to be human. It must begin with a conversation about our common humanity. It must focus on questions of justice. The NJM, in its 1973 manifesto, proclaimed the need not just for one society, but for a just society. Perhaps today the need is for a just global society.​

​

Much of Maurice Bishop's speech at Hunter College in 1983 could be repeated today. The capitalist world economy continues to disadvantage postcolonial states, placing them in a position of dependency. This is no accident, but the result of the same cycles of debt and international trade agreements that Bishop railed against. When leaders have emerged who defy these conditions, they tend to end up on the same list as Bishop himself: overthrown, like Nkrumah, or dead, like Lumumba, Sankara and Cabral.​

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The internal divisions of the Grenada revolution make it clear that not all failures in the struggle to overcome international injustice can be blamed on imperialism. But the achievements of that tiny island in just four years should show socialists around the world our immense responsibility: to ensure that our governments (and, all too often, the parties to which we belong) are not the ones to put the boot on the neck of the revolution.​

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La revolución granadina sacudió al mundo - Jacobin Revista

El 13 de marzo de 1979 fue proclamado el Gobierno Popular Revolucionario en Granada. Una revolución socialista en la pequeña isla caribeña amenazó con patear el tablero del orden económico mundial.

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[Eltitoguay]

Grenada Revolution​

The Grenada Revolution:​

Led by Maurice Bishop and described as the first armed “socialist revolution” to occur in a predominantly black state in the western hemisphere, the Grenada Revolution refers to the 4 ½-year rule of the New Jewel Movement in Grenada.

Following the success of Operation Apple, the revolution officially began with the overthrow of Grenada Prime Minister, Eric Gairy and his regime on March 13, 1979 by the New Jewel Movement.

People of Grenada, this revolution is for work, for food, for decent housing and health services, and for a bright future for our children and great grandchildren. The benefits of the revolution will be given to everyone regardless of political opinion or which political party they support. Let us unite as one…

– Maurice Bishop, radio broadcast, March 13, 1979​

Depending on whom you ask, the Grenada Revolution ended either on Bloody Wednesday, October 19, 1983 when Bishop and several of his supporters were murdered or on October 25, 1983 the day of the US Intervention.
The revolution enjoyed popular support from Grenadians and was affectionately known as the ‘Revo’.

THE RISE AND FALL OF MAURICE BISHOP​

The death of Maurice Bishop, Grenada’s revolutionary leader, in a bloody coup in 1983 rocked the country and the world. The island nation had only been a free nation for 4½ years before Bishop was killed by his own military.

Listen to the Episodes​

Dive into the story behind one of the most tragic events to take place in the Caribbean. The Story of the Grenada Revolution weaves a narrative journey about the key people and moments in Grenada when the impossible almost seemed possible.

The Grenada Revo Story, Part 1​

00:28:40
Learn more about the backstory and the key players of the Grenada Revolution.
Summary:

Story Notes​

On the Caribbean island of Grenada, on March 13, 1979 the New Jewel Movement, a left-wing political party, overthrew the existing government of Grenada Prime Minister Eric Gairy by forcibly removing Gairy’s Grenada United Labor Party (GULP) while Gairy was away from the island visiting the United States.

Life Under Gairy​

Prior to the uprising, Sir Eric Gairy had dominated Grenada’s politics for almost 30 years. A former trade union organizer and hero of Grenada’s estate workers in the fifties, Gairy had misused his authority and the basic infrastructure of Grenada had deteriorated. To those who dared to oppose his dominance and questionable tactics – primarily a younger generation of Grenadians – Gairy was vengeful. Police brutality was widespread and his opponents were often attacked. Grenada’s justice system filled with Gairy supporters was a lost cause for any hope of fairness.

The NJM​

Formed in 1973 and led by the alluring, middle-class, British-educated attorney, Maurice Bishop, the NJM organized several demonstrations throughout the 1970s in protest of Gairy and his corruption. Over the course of six (6) years NJM members were beaten, threatened, searched, harassed and imprisoned under the orders of Gairy. Prime Minister Gairy’s unforgivable actions disgusted many both inside and outside of Grenada and garnered support from many Grenadians and by 1979, the NJM had amassed the support of many citizens especially Grenada’s youth who were fed-up with Gairy’s dictatorship. But as early as 1974, the NJM secretly began transitioning to Marxist-Leninist terms and principles. This decision, however, was not made public and it didn’t change the party’s tactics in the fight against Eric Gairy.

The Takeover​

During the early dark hours of the morning of March 13th 1979, while Eric Gairy was in US, the militant wing – the National Liberation Army (NLA) – of the NJM, a group of less than 50 people, stormed the True Blue army barracks and overpowered 200+ soldiers of Gairy’s Defense Force in the first ever unconstitutional transfer of power to happen in the English-speaking Caribbean. Once the shock of the overthrow had set in, most of the Grenadian people were ecstatic. Gairy was finally gone and the NJM was in.

Bishop vs. Coard​

As early as 1982, divisions appeared to exist among members of the NJM leadership. The divisions focused mainly on the two key leaders of the organization: Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Bernard Coard.

NJM top leaders devoted to Maurice Bishop included:

• George Louison
• Unison Whiteman
• Kendrick Radix
• Einstein Louison
• Jackie Creft
• Vincent Noel

NJM members who were supporters of Bernard Coard included:

• Phyllis Coard
• Hudson Austin
• Leon Cornwall
• Liam James
• Selwyn Strachan
• John Ventour
• Ewart Layne

Problems in the NJM​

The overall feeling of pride that swept through the nation and the upward progression witnessed during the early years of the Grenada Revolution eventually began to wane. As the growing economic difficulties and counter revolutionary activities that were taking place in Grenada continued, members of the Coard faction believed that the answer was to strengthen Leninist discipline by “weeding out the worst elements of the party”. Bishop was blamed for the country’s problems and by the summer of 1983, the growing split within NJM reached a critical point when the Coard faction attempted to get Maurice Bishop to accept a power-sharing role.

The Grenada Revo Story, Part 1

Learn more about the backstory and the key players of the Grenada Revolution

grenadarevo.com

 

[Eltitoguay]

The Grenada Revo Story, Part 2​

Summary:
The idea of joint leadership of the New Jewel Movement is proposed by members of the Coard faction.

By the summer of 1983 the growing split within NJM reached a critical point for the Grenada Revolution when the Coard faction blamed Maurice Bishop for the country’s problems. Their solution? An attempt to get Maurice Bishop to accept a power-sharing role with Deputy Prime Minister, Bernard Coard.

The idea of joint leadership was first proposed by Liam James – a protégé of Bernard Coard and Grenada’s chief of national security – at a Central Committee meeting in September 1983.Bishop is clearly taken aback by the joint leadership proposal and almost immediately, he smells a rat. Bishop would later go on to say that the idea of joint leadership was not an outright concern for him, but the ulterior motive behind the suggestion led him to believe that this was possibly a power play.Following his proposal, Liam James presents a motion for joint leadership and Central committee members take a vote. The end result is that nine (9) members – just about the entire Coard faction – vote in favor of joint leadership. George Louison, minister of Agriculture and Bishop supporter, is the only Central Committee member who votes against joint proposal.

Approximately ten (10) days at an Extraordinary NJM General Meeting chaired by Liam ‘Owusu’ James, Secretary for the Interior and a Coard supporter, is held and Maurice Bishop agrees to accept the Central Committee’s proposal of joint leadership and the meeting ends on a high note amidst the sounds of revolutionary music.

Bishop goes to Europe​

The following day, Monday, September 26, 1983, Maurice Bishop leaves for a scheduled two-week trip to the Eastern Bloc to negotiate electrical power generators that are desperately needed for Grenada. Bishop’s press secretary, Don Rojas; Shahiba Strong, his Chief of Protocol, and Bishop’s personal bodyguard and confidante, Cletus St. Paul are with him. The Bishop delegation flies out of the island’s small airport in Pearls, in the parish of St Andrews. Located on the North East side of the island. In 1983 Pearls Airport was the only airport in Grenada. Because of the short runway, international flights required a change of aircraft in a neighboring country. The Bishop delegation connects in Cuba. Publicly, nothing seems to be amiss within the party; the topic of joint leadership is an internal and confidential party matter…at least for now. Radio Free Grenada, the primary source of communication between the PRG and the people of Grenada, continues to make its broadcasts. For the everyday Grenadian, it’s ‘business as usual’.

Bishop Reneges​

Whether George Louison was the driving force or not, at some point while he is visiting the Eastern Bloc, Maurice Bishop changes his mind and realizes that a power-sharing role with Bernard Coard is not the right move and a huge mistake.

No verifiable info exists, but it’s believed that George Louison (who arrived in Eastern Europe approximately a week before Bishop in preparation of Bishop’s arrival) publicly denounces the party’s decision and he convinces Bishop that the Central Committee’s proposal of joint leadership is simply a cover for Bernard Coard to gain control of the party and the country rendering Bishop powerless.

Bishop in Cuba​

As Bishop’s trip to the Eastern Bloc wraps up and he heads home, the delegation makes a stop in Cuba. Bishop arrives in Havana on the evening of Thursday, October 6 and spends the next 36 hours meeting with Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro. While in Havana, Bishop’s personal security aide/bodyguard, places a phone call back to Grenada tells Ashely Folkes that Bishop has, in fact, changed his mind and will no longer accept joint-leadership of the party. He ends the call by warning that, ‘blood will flow!’ seemingly referring to Coard and any other anti-Bishop members. Viewing St. Pauls’ comments as a direct threat, Coard, Selwyn Strachan and several other NJM members are convinced that they are in great danger – with Bishop plotting against them and aided by Fidel Castro’s support – and subsequently several members of the Coard faction go into hiding.For the record, Bishop completely denies having any type of discussion with Fidel Castro about internal party issues during his final trip to Cuba. Later, in Bishop’s defense, Fidel Castro claims that Bishop never said a word to him about internal party problems because in his opinion, to do so was likely embarrassing for Bishop. Castro also believed that Bishop really had no idea just how volatile things were within the NJM party.

Bishop Returns to Grenada​

On the morning of Saturday October 8, 1983, the Bishop delegation arrives at Grenada’s Pearls Airport, however, members of the NJM leadership are noticeably absent. A casually-dressed Selwyn Strachan is the only member of the ‘welcoming committee.

During the 45-minute ride from Pearls to St. Georges, Bishop confirms to Strachan that he has reconsidered the joint-leadership proposal and would like to reopen the topic at the next scheduled NJM Political Bureau meeting scheduled for Wednesday, October 12.

By the time Bishop arrives at his home in Mt. Wheldale, his neighbors Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard and his wife Phyllis Coard – who live in a house next door to Bishop – have already left their home opting to spend the night at the home of friends.

Events went downhill from there:

A Timeline of Events:​

Joint Leadership?​

August 18, 1970
During a NJM Central Committee meeting, Liam James proposes that Maurice Bishop share leadership of the NJM with Bernard Coard.

Bishop Meets Fidel​

August 18, 1970
Bishop makes an unscheduled visit to Cuba. Bishop is the guest of honor at a dinner hosted by Castro in Havana

Bishop Back in Grenada​

August 18, 1970
Maurice Bishop returns to Grenada

Bishop leaves Grenada​

August 18, 1970
Maurice Bishop leaves Grenada for a scheduled trip to Eastern Europe.

Coard Resigns​

March 24, 2019
Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard quits the Central Committee and Political Bureau. He remains as Deputy Prime Minister.

Bishop Reneges​

March 24, 2019
While visiting Eastern Europe and conferring with George Louison, Maurice Bishop changes his mind about the joint leadership proposal.

Blood Will Flow!​

March 24, 2019
From Cuba, Bishop’s chief bodyguard, Cletus St. Paul, telephones NJM members in Grenada and shares that Bishop has changed his mind about joint leadership. He also warns that, “Blood will flow!” for anyone against Bishop.

The Grenada Revo Story, Part 2

The idea of joint leadership of the New Jewel Movement is proposed by members of the Coard faction.

grenadarevo.com

 

[Eltitoguay]

The Grenada Revo Story, Part 3​

Summary:
Maurice Bishop changes his mind about joint leadership of the NJM and fellow Central Committee members react.

Following a 2-week trip to Eastern Europe, Maurice Bishop returns to Grenada and gets the silent treatment from his colleagues. The word is that Central Committee members are livid that he has reneged on the plan for joint leadership and the battle lines have been drawn.

There are conflicting stories that despite Bishop’s isolation, that as early as Sunday October 9, the day after Bishop’s return from his trip, the Central Committee – a Committee that Maurice Bishop is the head of – is indeed holding meetings. Often changing the location of the meetings from Coard’s residence (the usual spot) to Fort Rupert [the ? HQ]; all without Bishop. After being ignored by Central Committee members for two (2) days, Maurice Bishop has visitors. General Hudson Austin and Major Einstein Louison visit him at his home in Mount Wheldale. They meet for almost five (5) hours.

Secret Meetings
Shortly after midnight Tuesday into the early hours of Wednesday October 12, Major Einstein Louison visits Maurice Bishop at his home in Mount Wheldale and tells him about a secret PRA meeting scheduled to begin at 1:00AM.

At this meeting, attendees at the 1:00am meeting at Fort Frederick were a group of hand-picked members of the Mount Wheldale security force. Neither Bishop nor Bishop’s personal bodyguard Cletus St. Paul are notified. Attendees are told that Bishop has betrayed the Revolution and their (the soldiers) allegiance is to the Central Committee.

Another PRA meeting was scheduled for a few hours later at 7AM, at Fort Rupert. According to Ewart Layne, the meeting was called to discuss Bishop’s behavior who “keeps changing his mind like some f**king little boy.” Those invited to the 7am meeting were soldiers who were NJM members from all parishes and Carriacou. Express orders were given not to contact General Hudson Austin. Maurice Bishop, Prime Minister and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, is neither invited nor welcome.

At this meeting a resolution is passed to ‘expel from the Party’s ranks all elements who do not submit to, uphold and implement in practice the decision of the Central Committee and party membership but are bent on holding up the party’s work and spreading anti-party propaganda.’

George Louison Expelled
At the regularly scheduled 9:00AM Political Bureau meeting at Fort Rupert, the storm finally broke.
George Louison, minister of Agriculture, is charged with engaging in anti-party activity for comments made during the Eastern European trip and for trying to get NJM members to oppose joint leadership and a proposal is made for his expulsion from the Central Committee and the Political Bureau.

The Assassination Plot
As the meeting continues, a rumor is making the rounds throughout the island.

The rumor is that Phyllis Coard and Bernard Coard are plotting to kill Maurice Bishop. Because of Bishop’s popularity, this news creates much anger and concern from many Grenadians.

And as the investigation of the rumor continues, another twist in the story emerges. The twist is that the person behind the rumor that is wreaking so much havoc has been initiated by Maurice Bishop himself.

Errol George, one of Bishop’s deputy personal security aide claims that he and Cletus St. Paul, Bishop’s chief security aide, were personally tasked to spread a false rumor that Phyllis Coard and Bernard Coard were hatching a plot to have Bishop killed.

Errol George went on to say that this carefully-crafted list of names was hand-picked by Bishop himself and Bishop’s loyal friend George Louison.

Opting not to engage in this scheme, instead, Errol George shares this rumor ‘plot’ with Ashely Folkes, head of personal security. Errol George goes on to make an official statement and the Central Committee is notified of the ‘rumor plot’.

Bishop Questioned
Bishop is immediately questioned by his fellow Central Committee members about being the source of the rumor by his colleagues. In contradiction to his deputy security aide’s statement, Maurice Bishop denies any involvement in the plan.

Cletus St. Paul is also questioned and although he denies Bishop’s involvement in the rumor, St. Paul is arrested.

Midway through the meeting, it’s discovered that a group led by an insurance agent known as ‘Bratt’ Bullen have stormed a militia camp in an attempt to seize weapons to protect and save Bishop.

In an attempt to quell the unrest, Central Committee members insist that Bishop make a public broadcast on Radio Free Grenada denouncing the Coard rumors.

Bishop (and others) Under House Arrest
Following his broadcast at the radio station, Bishop returns to his Mount Wheldale home to find his telephone lines disconnected and discovers that he has been placed under house arrest as ordered by members of the Central Committee.

Maurice Bishop’s home at Mount Wheldale is under surveillance and his security detail undergoes a few changes. A soldier by the name of Callistus Bernard, also known as “Abdullah’, has been specially brought in from Grenada’s sister island of Carriacou. Bernard is now in charge of the soldiers and monitoring all activity in and immediately surrounding the Mount Wheldale compound. Meanwhile, Major Einstein Louison, PRA Chief of Staff a supporter of Maurice Bishop is notified to attend a meeting at Fort Rupert where he is accused of ‘trying to divide the army’. Despite his request for proof of this accusation, he is stripped of his weapons, and advised that he will be placed under house arrest. Later that afternoon, Vincent Noel who stops by to visit Bishop at his home is also placed under house arrest and confined to his home in Mount Parnassus for ‘conspiring’ with Bishop.

Bishop Remains Silent
That evening, a large gathering of NJM members at Butler House with an estimated 200-300 people in attendance.Still under house arrest, Bishop arrives at the NJM General Meeting, under guard. Once again, Bishop is confronted about being the source of the Coard rumors. He addresses the meeting with a lengthy response – approximately 45 minutes. During his speech, Bishop acknowledges the current political crisis and accepts his share of the responsibility for its development. But he firmly denies knowing anything about the source of the rumor. Then, Errol George, the Deputy Chief of Maurice Bishop’s personal security joins the meeting. Errol George standing at the front of the room addresses the entire audience and recounts in detail how Maurice Bishop together with George Louison created a list of names of people whom he and Cletus St. Paul, the Chief of Bishop’s personal security, should notify about the Coard rumor; a rumor that Phyllis and Bernard Coard were plotting to have Bishop killed.

Following his testimony, Errol George leaves the hall and Bishop was given the the opportunity to speak in his own defense.

Strangely, Maurice Bishop declines. Much to the surprise and dismay of NJM members, he has nothing to say. Once the meeting is over, Bishop returns under guard to his home in Mount Wheldale.

Bishop creates more angst among Central Committee members.


Bishop returns to his Mount Wheldale home and discovers his phone line disconnected and his home under surveillance. He is under house arrest.

Events went downhill from there:

A Timeline of Events:​

George Louison Expelled!​

August 18, 1970
At the weekly Political Bureau meeting, George Louison is expelled from the NJM Central Committee and Political Bureau.

The Rumor​

August 18, 1970
A rumor that Bernard Coard and Phyllis Coard are trying to have Maurice Bishop killed is circulating among Grenada and wreaking havoc. Maurice Bishop is accused of initiating the rumor – he denies being the source.
At a secret meeting at Fort Frederick, hand-picked members of Maurice Bishop’s security force are told that Bishop has betrayed the Revolution and that their loyalty is to the Central Committee.

Slient Treatment​

March 24, 2019
Bishop is given the silent treatment by several of his fellow NJM leaders.

Secret Meeting #2​

March 24, 2019
Ewart Layne leads a meeting at Fort Rupert for army soldiers. A resolution is passed
Bishop is questioned by fellow Central Committee (CC) members about being the source of the assassination rumor plot. Bishop denies any involvement.

Militia Camp Mayhem​

March 24, 2019
Word of an attempt to seize weapons from a militia camp by a group sympathetic to Maurice Bishop creates more angst among Central Committee members.

Bishop’s Broadcast​

March 24, 2019
Bishop is forced (by Central Committee members) to deliver a radio broadcast via Radio Free Grenada denouncing the assassination rumor.
While Bishop is at the radio station, members of the NJM Central Committee agree to confine Maurice Bishop to his home indefinitely.

The Grenada Revo Story, Part 3

Maurice Bishop changes his mind about joint leadership of the NJM and fellow Central Committee members react.

grenadarevo.com

 

[Eltitoguay]

The Grenada Revo Story, Part 4​

Summary :
Tensions continue to rise in Grenada while Bishop remains under house arrest. A series of negotiations are attempted while hundreds turn out in mass protest.

By Friday October 14, 1983 reports of Maurice Bishop’s house arrest appear in the regional press and news begins to spread rapidly.In an effort to explain the party’s position and perhaps appease Grenadians, several of the core NJM members visit the various ministries and mass workplaces across Grenada. But the reaction of the masses isn’t quite what many in the NJM leadership had anticipated.

Although no official word is given by NJM saying that Bishop is under house arrest, the party explains to civilians that Deputy Prime Minister, Bernard Coard is to be the new NJM leader.

The Grenada Revo Story, Part 4

Tensions continue to rise in Grenada while Bishop remains under house arrest. A series of negotiations are attempted while hundreds turn out in mass protest.

grenadarevo.com

 

[Eltitoguay]

The Grenada Revo Story, Part 5​

Summary :
October 19, 1983, the final day of the Grenada Revolution, ends in tragedy.

By Wednesday, October 19, 1983, in response to Maurice Bishop’s house arrest, the citizens of Grenada declared a national strike and businesses everywhere are urged to close their doors.

Thousands of people pour into the country’s capital of St. Georges and a huge crowd forms in Market Square.

By 9:30AM, with a barebacked Unison Whiteman taking the lead, in the sweltering heat, the crowd makes its way up the steep hill of Upper Lucas Street and arrives at the gates of Mount Wheldale, the official residence of Maurice Bishop (and Deputy Prime Minister, Bernard Coard).

Schoolchildren pushed their way to the front chanting “We want Bishop” “No Bishop, no school.” “No Bishop, no revo.”

The security unit makes several attempts to hold back the crowd: they form a human chain against the gate leading to the access road to Bishop house; APCs arrive from nearby Fort Frederick; and soldiers even fire shots into the air. Although initially stunned by the gunfire, the crowd is unfazed and it isn’t long before the crowd continues to surge forward to Bishop’s house as the soldiers standby. They have been given strict orders not to fire on the crowd.

Positioned at the front of the crowd, a student from Grenada Boys Secondary School (GBSS) and a few of his friends devise a plan to rescue Bishop by going through the gate and passing the parked APCs on the left. They get to the back of Bishop’s house, and at some point, Maurice Bishop and Jacqueline Creft are carried out of Bishop’s home.

In a matter of minutes a released, though visibly exhausted, Bishop is presented to the crowd. “We have we Leader!” the crowd erupts. Thousands of Grenadians line the streets ecstatic to finally get a glimpse of their Prime Minister. Bishop travels inside of a pick-up truck and leaves the Mount Wheldale compound and the crowd reverses their route amidst a massive flow of people, cars and trucks and head for Market Square.

Stunned by Bishop’s release, by 10:30 AM members of the Central Committee begin to assemble at nearby Fort Frederick.

A Change of Plan​

As the huge heads into town, the procession route is changed when the vehicle that Bishop is riding in turns left at Church Street in the direction of Fort Rupert instead of continuing straight ahead to Market Square.

Lots of speculation surrounds the fateful decision to go to Fort Rupert instead of Market Square. Why would Bishop do that? The theories are numerous:

• Bishop was tired and needed medical attention; the hospital was located adjacent to the fort
• Bishop would have access to the PRA transmitter to speak with the crowd
• To arm his followers with weapons
• Bishop was still Commander-in-Chief and might be able to influence doubters in the military not to support his rivals
• To gain access to arms and military while depriving Coard of the same
• Security – Fort Rupert had a dominating position with one narrow approach. Bishop would be safe for a while with food, water, and ammunition and would have time to recover, time to think, time to organize and time to mobilize assistance.

Fort Rupert is located approximately 100 meters above sea level in Grenada’s capital. Built in the 1700s, the fort was originally named Fort Royal, then it became known as Fort George and then renamed Fort Rupert by the NJM in honor of Maurice Bishop’s slain father Rupert Bishop. The fort’s edifice is visible from all over St. Georges. Surrounded by the bay and the General Hospital, outside the fort walls is a steep hill area with bushes and boulders located 50 feet above the ground. The architectural principle of the buildings within the fort consists of four (4) ascending squares. Each square strategically looks over another square and is connected by stone steps and a series of narrow tunnels. In 1983 Fort Rupert contained offices, barracks, prison cells, a canteen and an armory. The only entrance to the fort was a steep incline leading to a parking lot in the lower level area.

The first level upon entering the fort via the narrow access road included a two-story building with rooms identified as the Ops Room and other sensitive areas including a communications room, an engineering room and a combat room. All of this looked over a large courtyard.

In 1983, Fort Rupert served primarily as the administration army post (Fort Frederick was the full-fledged army post) and approximately 60 military personnel would have been based there. Because of the Fort’s position, soldiers there would certainly have seen a freed Bishop and the massive crowd heading in their direction giving them at least 15 minutes before the crowd’s arrival.

It’s estimated that the main portion of the crowd arrived at Fort Rupert around 11:00AM.

Initially, soldiers at Fort Rupert stopped Bishop and the others from entering. Bishop, however, speaks to soldiers directly and eventually the crowd funnels through the small and narrow access road into the parking lot of the fort.

Maurice Bishop and several of his closer supporters occupied the Ops room located on the second floor of the first building. A balcony that ran the length of the building was packed and hundreds of people filled the parking lot below.

A flow of people spent the next two (2) hours going in and out of the Ops room. Meanwhile, Bishop and Unison Whiteman began the process of writing a speech for Bishop’s address to the masses.

Although several hundred people were at Fort Rupert, the majority of the demonstrators assembled in Market Square. They had gotten word that the plan had changed and that Bishop would talk to them from Fort Rupert. Their wait would be in vain.

APCs Dispatched​

By 12:25pm, in an effort to regain contro, Ewart Layne dispatches three (3) armored personnel carriers to Fort Rupert l (where Bishop and his supporters were). According to him, he was acting along in his capacity as Operational Commander of the Army. His goal was to capture the fort and restore order with minimal force. Layne would go on to say: “I remember sitting there, watching those units leave. Nowhere could I imagine that within the next hour the greatest tragedy in the history of Grenada would occur.”
The convoy of vehicles left Fort Frederick and headed down Lucas Street turning left on to Church Street just as Bishop and his supporters had done a few hours before.
APCs

• #1 Lead by Conrad “Connie” Mayers
• #2 Lead by Callistus “Abdullah” Bernard
• #3 Lead by 2nd Lt. Raeburn Nelson

Troops in full combat gear carrying machine guns rode visibly on the outside of each armored vehicle. A truck filled with additional PRA soldiers followed behind. Onlookers made way for the vehicles as they roared through the streets of St. Georges. Many people may have believed that the APCs were being sent to aid Bishop. It seems that the vehicles were not viewed as a threat.

As the armored vehicles approached Fort Rupert, soldiers dismounted and walked up the incline toward the parking lot and first level building.
Meanwhile, Don Rojas, Bishop’s press secretary was also on a mission. He was tasked with contacting external media. He was at the telephone exchange on the Carenage. On behalf of Maurice Bishop, he needed to make sure he communicated these four (4) important points to the outside worlds:
1. Grenadians had the capacity to solve their own problems
2. Dispel rumors of Cuban involvement
3. Calling on Grenadians living outside of Grenada – New York, London, Toronto – to support the revolution and express their solidarity
4. Call on the working class organizations and progressive trade unions throughout the Caribbean to make statements of solidarity.
Rojas spent the next 45 minutes or so making calls to several international news and media agencies. He successfully managed to communicate with the Caribbean News Agency (CANA), telexed Ambassador Caldwell Taylor at the UN Mission in New York.

The Grenada Revo Story, Part 5

Listen to the tragic events that occurred in Grenada on October 19, 1983 also known as Bloody Wednesday when Maurice Bishop and his followers were executed.

grenadarevo.com

Debbie​

About The Author​

Debbie is the founder and host of 'The Caribbeanist'