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the youth of the world has many reasons to protest: the exhausting exploitation, job insecurity, lack of access to housing and education and the environment of violence that is spreading to more and more places on the planet. Added to the justified dissatisfaction with the present is the uncertainty of the future, which foresees very poor pensions and, if that were not enough, the threat of a new war of global dimensions.
Youth require perspectives of radical transformation to confront the course of war set by imperialism, which has already demonstrated its willingness to exercise the same barbarity as in the 20th century in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine. But what perspectives do youth have today? Is it condemned to spontaneous rebellions without ideological clarity, which raise the flag of an anime while becoming cannon fodder in the political disputes of the various groups of the same imperialist order?
Youth must evoke their history of struggle to have light on the path forward, and this task involves remembering that this November 10 marks 80 years since the creation of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (FMJD), an international political group that emerged to organize the youth of the world around an anti-fascist and anti-imperialist program, in order to confront the warlike ambitions of the capitalist camp at the end of the Second World War.
The creation of the FMJD had as a precedent the existence of the World Youth Council, created in November 1942, based in England, whose objective was to group young people around anti-fascist positions. This council, at the beginning of 1945, convened the World Youth Congress, which met between October 29 and November 10. Democratic-oriented and national liberation organizations attended, although the backbone was the youth organizations and militants of the communist parties that had belonged to the Communist International.
As a result of the World Youth Congress, the FMJD was created, with a clear anti-fascist and anti-imperialist orientation that, within the framework of the cold warpositioned himself in favor of socialism and the people who fought against colonialism. The socialist imprint of the FMJD was reaffirmed by naming as its president Guy de Boisson, a militant of the anti-fascist resistance, member of the Patriotic Union of French Youth and, in 1945, deputy of the Communist Party.
The FMJD, as one of the mass organizations promoted by the Soviet Union at the beginning of the cold war –like the World Peace Council (WPC)–, it is recognized by the UN with consultative status. This led the CIA to spy on the work of this youth group and seek to boycott its activities, among which the organization of the World Youth and Student Festivals stands out.
In Mexico, the call to the 1945 World Youth Congress was published in The Voice of Mexiconewspaper of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), an organization that at that time practiced the tactics of the Popular Front and, therefore, collaborated with the Mexican government led by the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM). In the union field, this policy implied the convergence of communist forces in the CTM and the erroneous delivery of its leadership to Lombardo Toledano; In the youth sphere, the Popular Front led to the confluence of youth and student organizations – including those with a communist orientation – in the Confederation of Mexican Youth (CJM), an organization that, like the CTM, ultimately became a body related to the government.
Before the 1945 Congress, the World Youth Council organized a tribute to Ernesto Madero Vázquez, a young journalist and diplomat who had been part of the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists (LEAR). At the beginning of 1944, Madero worked at the Mexican consulate in London, which allowed him to be a WJM delegate to the World Youth Council. This fact fueled the participation of young Mexicans in the World Congress.
Within the CJM, Manuel Popoca was the president; Salvador Gámiz (Arturo Gámiz’s uncle), the Secretary of Organization, and the communist Manuel Terrazas, the Secretary of Press and Propaganda. Popoca and Terrazas were responsible for participating in the 1945 Congress, and thus the CJM was one of the founding organizations of the FMJD. In turn, the Federation of Socialist Peasant Students of Mexico (FECSM), due to its affiliation to the CJM, is also considered a founding organization of this international organization.
Terrazas said that around 500 representatives from 64 countries were present at the Congress, representing 30 million young people. With emotion he highlighted that the presidency of the FMJD fell to Guy de Boisson; that the four elected vice presidents represented the USSR, China, the United States and England, and that Popoca was appointed member, being the only Latin American to hold that position.
Although the most widespread activity of the WFDY is the World Festival of Youth and Students – which I will talk about on another occasion – this organization and its affiliates maintain a set of permanent tasks: the anti-imperialist struggle, solidarity with the peoples who fight for their liberation, support for those who face oppression and racism and the search for a lasting peace that can only be achieved by putting an end to imperialism.
The broad nature of the FMJD and the participation of the CJM in its foundation opened the door for, in the following decades, on the part of Mexico, organizations of various political shades to participate in its activities such as the World Festival of Youth and Students, among them, the communist youth, the youth of Lombardy orientation and even the youth of the PRI. However, the FMJD maintained its communist-oriented imprint, calling to combat the imperialist system of which all capitalist countries are part today.
At 80 years old, the FMJD still exists and is not limited to resistance against imperialism, but rather advocates the overthrow of capitalism as an alternative to end exploitation and put an end to the jaws of war that threaten youth. This alternative program for the new generations was summarized by the Soviet poet Oshanin Lev Ivanovich in the FMJD anthem, which in one stanza points out a path for youth:
Let’s destroy the forces
that chain happiness,
let’s defeat death
and let us impose eternal peace.
* ENAH Historian
