Латиноамериканский исторический альманах (Nov 2022)
"Long live a free China!": the Mexican communist press and the construction of Mao's leadership (1924-1949)
Abstract
The attention on China and its revolutions during the 20th century were the object of interest of communist organizations in Mexico before the Mexican government established relations with the Asian country. In this article we intend to trace this process of rapprochement and its interpretation of the revolutions in China that Mexican communists made. Our work points to a panoramic vision in which the “dialogue” between revolutions is central, since Mexican communists recognized in China a parallel with the route that Mexico had acquired with its own revolutionary process. How did this rapprochement come about? What interpretation did Mexican communists have of the Chinese case? These are some of the questions we intend to answer in the following pages. By this we mean that Mexican communists, based on their position in the national political framework, and depending on the historical moment in which they found themselves, translated the importance or significance of the revolution in China. This is what allows actors belonging to such a diverse ideological spectrum to welcome the Chinese phenomenon. Having said this, the analysis will be based on a division into two major periods. The first will be between 1924 and 1938, which was linked to the conception of the country's unity and national liberation. Then, as a second period, we will take the 1940s, where the epic will be divided between the commitment to na-tionalism and later to the Chinese Communist Party. The analysis will be based on the review of the communist press, where they projected their political ideas and their vision of the world. The objective of this work is to highlight the presence of the Chinese case, as well as the slow construction of the leaderships associated with the revolution prior to the emergence of "Maoism" as a current with its own identity.
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