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The brotherhood between peoples is not limited to formal exchanges between institutions. Rather, the modalities acquire cultural, literary, political and even culinary physiognomies. What happens between Mexico and Venezuela is no exception, whose history beyond the states is just beginning to be explored.
Not long ago, in his No revolutionary is a foreignerresearcher Sebastián Rivera Mira evoked the figure of Salvador de la Plaza, a Venezuelan militant who passed through Mexico on several occasions and who, at the time, came to found, along with others, the Venezuelan Revolutionary Party, of anti-imperialist and Marxist inspiration, which designed and coordinated actions in opposition to the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez.
The presence of other militants associated with the PRV was felt in efforts such as the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas, whose body took the Venezuelan name of The Liberatorbut also in the Hands Off Nicaragua initiative, at the beginning of Sandino’s feat. Special mention goes to the participation of Carlos Augusto León, a Venezuelan poet who actively participated in the Society of Friends of the USSR, which in the mid-1930s advocated for the Mexican Revolution to reestablish relations with the USSR and promoted solidarity campaigns, both symbolic and material, in the face of the world war conflict. The poetic work of Augusto León was published, among others, by the Morelos publishing house of the SAURSS under the title The living steps. Also in those years he was an active part of the Mexican section of the International Red Relief, highlighting his participation in the rallies in tribute to Julio Antonio Mella. Years later, with a dedication to the people of Guatemala and with quotes from Mao as an epigraph, it was published in The Voice of Mexico (organ of the PCM) his “Verse before the mural of The glorious victory” and in 1957, Mexico would be the place where his “I sing to Lenin” was published.
Along these lines, another little-known and fleeting exile was Miguel Otero Silva, an important left-wing writer whom The Machete (legendary newspaper of Mexican communism) published his “Song of Otero Silva to García Lorca.” His prolific and relatively forgotten work (at least outside of Venezuela) includes a conference titled “Mexico and the Mexican Revolution: a Venezuelan writer in the Soviet Union (1966)”, a speech dedicated to Mariano Picón Salas (friend of Alfonso Reyes and Venezuelan ambassador to Mexico), where he explains the paths and importance of the Mexican Revolution, its popular leaders and its main reforms, highlighting the Cardenista work regarding oil.
Another character about whom little is known about his time in Mexico is the important historian Germán Carrera Damas. An intellectual of miles of work, he came from an enlightened family with important ties to Venezuelan communism. His PCM membership record is kept at the CEMOS as he is a student at the National School of Economics. His master’s thesis in history was: “Contribution to the study of interventionist thought in Mexico in the 19th century.” Mexico would also be the place of publication of his “The renewal of historical studies: the case of Venezuela.” After his stay in Mexico, Carrera Damas is considered to have generated a true revolution in the discipline in his country.
Although the Cuban revolution attracted a good part of the link that revolutionary or Marxist militants previously maintained with Mexico, progressive figures found in our country a space to develop their ideas or make them known. Thus, in the 1970s and 1980s, under the shelter of the figure of Alonso Aguilar Monteverde and the Nuestro Tiempo Publishing House, some Venezuelan intellectuals visited Mexico (especially the Development Theory Seminar of the Economic Research Institute) or were published. This academic core actively participated in symposiums on the theory of imperialism and underdevelopment. Names like Faustino Maza Zavala, Héctor Malave Mata, Armando Córdova and José Agustín Silva Michelena were especially productive. Books like Venezuela, growth without development either Venezuela, domination and dissidence They appeared under the Nuestro Tiempo label in the Mexican capital. In the prologue to one of these books, Alonso Aguilar said: “The study of the Venezuelan process exhibits the understandable concern about oil.” Furthermore, Silva Michelena’s brother, the philosopher and poet Ludovico Silva, experienced publishing success when his books Theory and practice of ideology and especially Marx’s literary style They appeared in Mexican publishing houses. Silva is perhaps today the Latin American Marxist most cited by the closed and provincial intellectual circles of the “global north.”
These brushstrokes barely account for some paths of persistent, although often fragmentary, links. The life of the people shows that gestures of genuine solidarity also imply knowing a little more about those about whom one talks and gives opinions ad nauseum.
