The Official James Petras website

The exemplary internationalism described in this book (”Dos Pueblos a los que amar,un Mundo por el que luchar”) by the participants in the Salvadorian civil war follows the grand tradition of socialist revolutionaries. For over two centuries liberation fighters have joined in national and social revolutions in Latin and North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The ideas, commitments and biographical accounts described by the internationalists in El Salvador, mirror the experiences of the founders of modern revolutionary socialist thought and practice. Marx and Engels conception and practice of internationalism was based on the recognition that workers, exploited by international capital and repressed by the united ruling classes of Europe, only allegiance was to their class, thus the famous slogan, “Workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win”. Marx’s understanding of the international nature of the workers’ struggle led to engagement in the class struggle in Germany, France, England and to the founding of the First International. Marx saw the dangers of the virus of 19th century bourgeois nationalism and how it was used by the ruling classes as a weapon to divide workers and to launch imperial wars. In the 20th century Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg carried forth the tradition of proletarian internationalism, engaging in class struggles in a multiplicity of national settings. Rosa Luxemburg, a Pole by birth, was a leader in the German Social Democratic Party and along with Lenin and Trotsky broke with the Second International when its French, German and English leaders embraced the imperialist aims of World War I. The success of the Russian revolution of October 1917 was, in part, a result of international worker solidarity: the German fleet revolted,and the November 1918 revolution undermined the German invasion of Socialist Russia. Millions of workers and peasants, in China, India and Indo-China ,“the toilers of the East”, were inspired by the Russian revolution and its support of anti-colonial , national liberation struggles. The Third International was launched in Russia to create the organizational bases for material and ideological support for struggle throughout the world.

Thousands of young revolutionaries traveled across national boundaries to join mass struggles in China, Germany, the U.S. and Latin America. Unfortunately, with the defeat of the revolution in the West, and the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia by the end of the 1920’s, the Third International was turned into a transmission belt of the Russian State. The degeneration of the Russian revolution and the decline of the Third International did not end internationalism. New powerful revolutionary internationalists emerged in Asia and Latin America: Ho Chih Minh in Indo-China and Mao Tse Tung in China in the 1930’s and 40’s and Fidel Castro in the 1950’s led powerful liberation movements to victory over European, Japanese and later US imperialism.

In Europe, the 1930’s was marked by the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy. Preparations for World War Two and the conquest of Europe polarized the world. The advance or defeat of fascism depended on the outcome of the civil war in Spain.

The Spanish Civil War pitted the workers, peasants, republicans, anarchists, socialists and communists against landlords, clerical and military officials, bankers and industrialists. Nazi Germany sent soldiers, weapons, airplanes and bombs to aid Franco’s fascists; the Western “democracies” refused to support the Republicans. In response International Brigades of volunteers were formed throughout Europe, North and South America to fight on the side of the Spanish Republic. Thousands of workers and intellectuals from France, England, Ireland, the United States joined German and Italian communist and socialist exiles from Nazism in the international brigades to fight in Spain. The ideal of “internationalism” was given a new life and meaning by the voluntary international brigades who fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). They were early precursors of the internationalists who fought in the civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Internationalism: Latin America 1970 – 1990

Internationalism within the Left outgrew the distortions and manipulation imposed by the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracy. First and foremost Che Guevara led a guerrilla movement composed of diverse international fighters in the Congo and later in Bolivia . In struggle and martyrdom he became a symbol, to a new generation,of a new, independent and consequential internationalism. Che embodied the spirit of international solidarity: first engaging in revolutionary struggles in Guatemala, defending the democratic Arbenz regime from an imperial led military coup;subsequently joining and leading, with Fidel Castro, the victorious Cuban revolution and finally fighting and dying in Bolivia.Che’s internationalist ideals and practice inspired a new wave of revolutionary internationalism.Exiled Brazilians, Argentines and Uruguayans joined volunteers from Europe and North America in support of Allende’s socialist Chile(1970-73). Many were killed, tortured or driven into exile – some went to Argentina, others to Central America.

In one of the greatest examples of international solidarity, thousands of Cuban internationalists joined with the Angolan Liberation Army, in decisively defeating the racist South African invading army – setting in motion the process of liberation of South Africa.

The advance of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua was accompanied by the entry into combat of international revolutionaries from El Salvador, Panama, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay. Arms and political support flowed from Panamanian President Torrijos, Cuba and other anti-dictatorial regimes.

In early 1979 when I traveled to the Southern front of Nicaragua in the final days of revolution, I met friends and comrades from Chile and Argentina; I discussed politics with Salvadorian fighters. Thousands of internationalists fought to victory in Nicaragua and many died, anonymous deaths – having burned their identity cards to avoid spurious charges of “foreign subversion”. Following the victory in Nicaragua, many internationalists joined the decade long liberation struggle in El Salvador; nurses, doctors, communication specialists, teachers, human rights activists joined the popular movements El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980’s like the Spanish Civil in the 1930’s polarized the world. The US, like Nazi Germany, took sides with the death squads, landowners and military; the democratic and socialist internationalists from Spain, Germany, Latin America and elsewhere fought with the people’s armies.

The two century long tradition of revolutionary internationalism lives on, in the story and biographies published in this book written by and for the carriers of that grand tradition from Marx, Bolivar, Marti to Guevara, Roque Dalton, to the thousands of anonymous fighters who fought for freedom everywhere.