Building a Continental Policy: The South American Secretariat of the Communist International (1925–34)

Abstract

This paper analyses the history of the South American Secretariat of the Communist International. The objective is to carry out a critical study of the policies and strategy of the Secretariat, considering how its relationship with the Comintern and the South American Communist Parties changed over time. Our hypothesis is that during its first years of existence (1925–8) the Secretariat developed a policy based on the United Front. This changed during a transition period (July 1928–July 1929) in which it developed a stagist programme of bourgeois-democratic revolution, and the implementation of its front tactics was increasingly questioned. From 1929 to 1934, the organisation abandoned all concrete alliance tactics in the workers’ movement and electoral politics while nevertheless proclaiming its advocacy of the ‘United Front from below’. This paper is based on an analysis of primary sources, including the Secretariat’s publications, correspondence, and internal documents.