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activists, former Communist members - went into personal<br />
'underground,' dropping out of all activity,<br />
rebuilding lives in enclaves of suburban and urban obscurity.<br />
" (6)<br />
What was most telling is that for 4 years the<br />
CPUSA structure went underground not to wage renewed<br />
and heightened struggle, but to passively hide until full<br />
bourgeois democracy returned. Their whole movement<br />
surrendered and fell apart under the first pressure from<br />
Washington. They never even faced any real repression.<br />
When Russian Prime Minister Khruschev made his<br />
disillusioning revelations about Stalin's rule at the 1956<br />
20th Party Congress of the C.P.S.U., it was just "the icing<br />
on the cake." Once a white workers vanguard and later a<br />
mass party for reform within the oppressor nation, the<br />
CPUSA had finally been reduced by U.S. imperialism to a<br />
thoroughly house-broken and frightened remnant. From<br />
70,000 members in 1947 the CPUSA evaporated down to<br />
7,000 in 1957. Working class radicalism had effectively<br />
ceased within the settler society, and its former main<br />
organization had politically collapsed.<br />
The capitalist newspaper headlines of that day<br />
paid little attention to that phenomenon, however, The<br />
media of the late 1940s and early 1950s was preoccupied<br />
with the larger aspects of this same imperialist campaign to<br />
whip up Euro-Amerikan society for the global confrontation<br />
with communism. The bourgeoisie then demanded only<br />
the most rigid, reactionary and monolithic outlook from<br />
its settler followers. All had to fall in line. This McCafthyism<br />
was aimed not so much at the bottom of settler<br />
society but at the middle - at purging the ranks of<br />
generals, educators, congressmen, diplomats, and so on.<br />
All Government employees had to sign new loyalty oaths.<br />
We must remember that the infamous U.S. Senator Joseph<br />
McCarthy never harassed revolutionaries. His targets were<br />
all U.S. Government employees and officials, from Army<br />
officers to clerks. In a telling statement, the well-known<br />
liberal journalist George Seldes wrote at the time:<br />
"There is fear in Washington, not only among<br />
Government employees but among the few remaining<br />
liberals and democrats who hoped to salvage something in<br />
the New Deal. There is fear in Hollywood ... There is fear<br />
among writers, scientists, school teachers, among all who<br />
are not part of the reactionary movement." (7)<br />
So that McCarthyism reflected a power struggle<br />
within the imperialist ranks between liberal and conservative<br />
forces, as well as being part of the general move of<br />
the Empire to tighten-up and prepare for world domination.<br />
In no sense was this 1950s repressive campaign<br />
directed at crushing some non-existent revolutionary upsurge<br />
within settler society. At the same time - on fronts<br />
of battle outside of Euro-Amerikan society - U.S. imperialism<br />
was conducting the most bloody counterinsurgency<br />
campaigns against the colonial peoples. This<br />
had little to do with the CPUSA and the rest of the oppressor<br />
nation "left."<br />
3. The Case of Puerto Rico: Clearing the<br />
Ground for Neo-Colonialism<br />
It is generally known that U.S. imperialism chose<br />
neo-colonialism as the main form for its expanding Empire<br />
in the immediate post-WWII years. In 1946 the U.S.<br />
Philippine colony was converted with much fanfare to the<br />
supposedly independent "Republic of the Philippines" (to<br />
this day occupied by major U.S. military bases). In 1951<br />
the Puerto Rican colony was converted into a "Commonwealth"<br />
with limited bourgeois self-government under<br />
strict U.S. rule. What is less discussed is that neocolonialism<br />
is no less terroristic than colonialism itself.<br />
Neo-colonialism, after all, still requires the military suppression<br />
and elimination of the revolutionary and national<br />
democratic forces. Without this political sterilization after<br />
WWII imperialism's local agents would not have been able<br />
to do their job. This was true in the Mexicano-Chicano<br />
Southwest, in the Philippines, and other occupied territories.<br />
The 1950 U.S. counter-insurgency campaign in<br />
Puerto Rico is a clear example of this. It also gives us a<br />
compariscm to further illuminate the CPUSA by. By 1950<br />
U.S. Imperialism had decided that its hold over Puerto<br />
Rico would not be safe until the Nationalist Party was<br />
finally wiped out. That year U.S. Secretary of War Louis<br />
Johnson spent three days in Puerto Rico planning the<br />
counter-insurgency campaign. The puppet Governor,<br />
Munoz Marin, was told to arrest or kill the Nationalist<br />
leaders. Police pressure on the revolutionaries increased.<br />
Nationalist Party leader Don Albizu Campos was openly<br />
threatened. U.S. Congressman Vito Marcantonio complained<br />
on October 19, 1949:<br />
"The home of Pedro Albizu Campos is surrounded<br />
day and night by police patrols, police cars, and jeeps<br />
with mounted machine guns. When Dr. Albizu Campos<br />
walks along the streets of Sun Juan, he is closely followed<br />
by four or five plainclothes policemen on foot, and a load<br />
of fully armed policement in a car a few paces behind.<br />
"Every shop he enters, every person to whom he<br />
talks, is subsequently visited by representatives of the<br />
police department. A reign of terror descends on the<br />
luckless citizens of Puerto Rico who spend a few minutes<br />
talking to Dr. Albizu Campos. " (8)<br />
By late October of that year the colonial police had<br />
begun a series of "incidents" - of ever more serious arrests<br />
and raids against Nationalist Party activists on<br />
various charges. Finally in one raid police and Nationalists<br />
engaged in a firefight. Faced with certain annihilation<br />
piece-meal by mounting police attacks, the Nationalists<br />
130 took to arms in the Grito de Jayuya. On October 30, 1950