When Nahuel Moreno died, his former comrade and political adversary, Ernest Mandel, remembered him like this: “Who has left us is one of the last representatives of the group of leading cadres who, in difficult conditions after the Second World War, maintained the continuity of Leon Trotsky’s struggle…”. Nothing could be more accurate. Moreno’s merit was precisely that he was the continuator – in our opinion the worthiest of them all – of the struggle of Leon Trotsky. The continuator of that long march that has a landmark in the triumph of the glorious Russian Revolution, that went on with the III International, in the Left Opposition and the in the foundation of the IV International. We can only fully understand Moreno’s life and work within the framework of this battle, and that is why each one of his deeds is interwoven with the great events that took place in an epoch fraught with wars and revolutions.
1917
The Russian Revolution overcomes. Workers and peasants, organised in Soviets and led by the Bolshevik Party, seize power. The figures of Lenin, the unchallenged leader of the Party and Trotsky, chairman of the Soviet of Petrograd,. are the outstanding figures of that leadership.
1918
The civil war begins in the USSR. All the Russian and world reaction get together to destroy the first workers’ state.
Trotsky is nominated People’s Commissar for defence.
The Republic of Councils is proclaimed in Germany.
1919
In the USSR, in the middle of the Civil War, 52 representatives of 21 countries take part in the foundation Congress of the III International.
Communists are annihilated in Berlin. In Germany, Karl Liebnecht and Rose Luxemburg are murdered.
1920
Second Congress of the III International. 217 representatives of 37 countries vote – among other most important resolutions – the statutes of the International and the 21 conditions to be part of it.
During the Congress of the III International. Trotsky, commander of the Red Army, reports on several victories over the counterrevolutionaries that preannounce the final victory of the revolutionary forces.
Trotsky writes the book Terrorism and Communism.
1921
General revolutionary strike fails in central Germany.
Third Congress of the III Communist International. 605 representatives in representation of 48 countries participate in the Congress.
1922
Lenin’s health is failing. In that year he suffers from two brain strokes.
Trotsky does not accept Lenin’s proposal to substitute him at the head of the government. Stalin is nominated Secretary General of the CP of the USSR.
The general strike fails in Italy. Mussolini takes over.
In the USSR bureaucratism accrues.
Lenin proposes that Trotsky should build a block against bureaucratism in general and the organisation commission in particular Lenin writes his testament alerting of a feasible split in the party as from the confrontations between Stalin and Trotsky and pointing out that Trotsky was “…presumably the most capable man in the current Central Committee”.
Fourth Congress of the III Communist International.
1923
Lenin dictates a postdate to his testament where he recommends that Stalin be set apart from the post of Secretary General of the Party.
Personal Lenin – Stalin split.
Trotsky’s letter denouncing the regime of the party and the bureaucratisation of its apparatus.
Statement of the 46 addressed to the Political Bureau saying, “… the current policy of the majority of the Political Bureau is a threat of real disasters for the entire Party”.
1924
24 January, at the age of 54, Lenin died. Stalin deceives Trotsky as to the date of the burial in order to keep him away from the funeral.
The CC of the CPUS learns about Lenin’s testament and they refuse to destitute Stalin. Nadeja Krupskaia, Lenin’s wife, protests that the testament has not been publicised.
XIII Conference of the Party. Trotsky does not take part. His standpoint and that of the 46 is condemned.
Stalin describes “Trotskyism” as enemy of Leninism and launches the demand: Socialism in only one country.
In China, Kuomintang, (bourgeois nationalist party) is reorganised with the aid of Russian advisers.
In Argentina, in a town called Rivadavia, Hugo Miguel Bressano Capacete is born who was to be known during his entire militant life as Nahuel Moreno.
1925
Trotsky resigns as People’s Commissar for the War and is given news post in order to try and keep him away from the party grassroots and from the toiling masses. He is nominated chief of the electronic explorations and chairman of the scientific-technical board of the industry.
New Opposition emerges.
Trotsky writes the book – Where is England going?
1926
The generals strike fails in England.
At the plenary of the CC of the CP of the USSR a joint opposition emerges headed by Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky. The Statement of the Thirteen is published attacking the “bureaucratic degeneration of the Workers’ State”.
Trotsky and Kamenev are expelled from the Political Bureau of the CPUS.
1927
A coup by Chiang Kai Shek, chief of the Kuomintang in Shanghai, China. Massive execution of communists and workers with over 100 000 killed.
Trotsky criticises Stalin’s policy for China and his capitulation to Kuomintang.
Declaration of 83 old Bolsheviks in the name of Opposition.
Public demonstration of the Opposition with their own demands.
Trotsky and Zinoviev are expelled from the CC (and then from the Party) accused to holding “counterrevolutionary demonstrations”. The same thing happens to the remaining members of the Opposition. They could be returned to the party provided they denied their ideas.
As a protest against the expulsion the frail Bolshevik leader, Adolph Joffe commits suicide. He had been on all kinds of positions in the party and in the soviet government. As a response to this attitude, Stalin had his wife and son deported to Siberia where they disappear. His funeral originates the last demonstration of opposition. Trotsky delivers an address by his coffin in which he says, “follow the example of his life but no of this death.”
1928
Trotsky is sent to Alma Atta, in Kazakhstan . The opposition as a whole is dispersed.
Kamenev and Zinoviev capitulate to Stalin. They accuse Trotsky of divisionism and are reintegrated into the party. Platakov, Antonov-Ovsenko and Krestynsky also capitulate.
1929
Since the tremendous collapse of the New York stock exchange, the depression of the 30s begins.
Trotsky is expelled from the USSR accused of “preparing armed struggle against the power of the soviets”.
Karl Radek, Ivan Smilga and Evgeueni Preobrazensky, leading 400 militants, resign opposition and capitulate to Stalin. Later Smirnov leads another 100 new oppositionists who also capitulate.
The Russian Left Opposition publish the first number of the magazine Biuleten Opozitsi, edited by Trotsky.
Trotsky writes the books Permanent Revolution and My Life.
1930
Nazism spread in Germany. They obtained 6.4 million votes in the elections while their storm troops gathered 100 000 members.
International Committee of the International Left Opposition is created in Paris. Kurt Landau, Pierre Naville, Andrés Nin, Alfred Rosmer, Leon Sedov and Max Shachtman were its members.
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, La Verdad (The Truth), the first periodical of the Left Opposition in Latin America is published.
1931
Leon Sedov (Trotsky’s son) sets up the editing office of Biulleten Opozitsi in Berlin.
Trotsky writes Germany, key to the international situation.
1932
Nazis achieve 14 million votes in Germany (37%) and become the first party in the country.
Central Executive Committee of the Soviets withdraws Trotsky’s soviet citizenship.
Zinoviev and Kamenev are once more expelled from the Communist Party.
1933
Nazis seize power. Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor or Germany. In the USSR, several leaders who had capitulated and consequently received back in the party are arrested, among them Smirnov and Smilga.
In Berlin, Zinaida, Trotsky’s daughter, who had been denied by soviet authorities the right to join her family, commits suicide.
The pre-conference of International Left Opposition meets in Paris.
Zinoviev and Kamenev again capitulate to Stalin.
Since the victory of nazism, Trotsky calls on the Left Opposition to abandon all intent to reform the III International. He claims for the construction of a new International and revolutionary parties in all the countries in the world.
1934
Cristian Rakovki, one of the top leaders of the Russian Left Opposition, capitulates to Stalin.
Moscow announces that 130 000 members of the Communist Party were expelled.
A Stalinist leader, Kirov, is murdered and in retaliation 100 people are executed.
1935
Zinoviev, Kamenev and other 17 arrestees are convicted to several years in prison for their “moral responsibility” for the homicide committed on Kirov.
In the USSR capital punishment is extended to 16-year-old children.
III International (after seven years) holds the seventh and last congress, which votes the Popular Front guideline.
1936
Electoral victory of Popular Front in Spain and France.
With Franco’s fascist insurrection the Spanish Civil War is started.
First Moscow Trial: Zinoviev, Kamenev and other fourteen Bolsheviks “confess” their crimes and are convicted to death penalty and executed.
Trotskyist deported to Vorkuta hold a four-month hunger strike.
The first International Conference is held in Paris in order to consider the construction of the Fourth International.
Trotsky writes the book Revolution Betrayed.
1937
Second Moscow Trial. Piatakov, Sembriakov and Radek are convicted. The two former are executed. Radek goes to jail where he is murdered. Further eleven indicted are shot. Trotskyism is accused of having turned into “… a department of the SS and Gestapo”.
Tugachevsky, Yakir, heroes of the civil war, and other chiefs of the Red Army are executed.
Trotsky reaches Mexico, his last and final exile.
Secret Agent Ignace Reiss of the GPU splits away from the CPUS and approaches the Iv International.
In Switzerland, GPU murders Ignace Reiss and in Spain Erwin Wolf, member of the International Secretariat and former Trotsky’s secretary.
1939
Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov, is murdered.
Third Moscow Trial. Buharin, Rikov, Kretinsky and other 18 old Bolsheviks are executed.
In Vorkuta, Trotskyist prisoners are shot.
Rudolph Klement, administrative secretary of the IV International is kidnapped and killed.
On 3rd September, in Perigny (near Paris) with the most absolute clandestine character, 21 representatives for eleven sections, found the IV International and vote as their central document Trotsky’s Transitional Programme.
A well known leader of the lumber workers in Argentina, Mateo Fossa, interviews Trotsky in Mexico and joins the IV International.
Trotsky writes Their Morals And Ours and dedicates this brochure to his murdered son.
Trotsky, together with Andre Breton and Diego Rivera writes a manifesto titled For Independent Revolutionary Art.
1939
The Spanish Civil war finished with Franco triumphant.
German-soviet non-aggression pact.
With the German invasion of Poland, II World war begin.
Poland is divided between USSR and Germany.
In the American SWP, main section of the IV International, a debate begins a to the character of the USSR. A minority of the Party, headed by Schachtman and Butham, challenge Trotsky’s characterisation that the USSR is Workers’ State. They are against defending it in case of a possible future attack by imperialism.
In Argentina, 15-year old Hugo Bressano joins Trotskyism recruited by a maritime worker, Faraldo. In 1077 was kidnapped by the Videla military dictatorship. Currently missing.
Moreno, together with Faraldo and three anarchists participates in the foundation a cultural centre, the Teatro de la Luna.
1940
Trotsky writes his testament in which he points out that, “if I could start once more, I would evidently try and avoid some of the errors of the past, but the main features of my life would not change. I shall die as a proletarian revolutionary, as a Marxist, as a dialectic materialist and, consequently, as irreducible atheist…”
Two frustrated attacks on Trotsky’s life. During one of them, one of his guardians, Robert Sheldon Harte is kidnapped and killed. Later it was known that Harte was really an infiltrated man of the GPU
Emergency Conference of the IV International passes Trotsky’s text Imperialist war and world proletarian revolution.
On 20th August, Stalinist agent, Ramón Mercader, commits another attack on Trotsky’s life. Trotsky dies the following day as a result of the fatal wounds received. Trotsky died at the age of 60. His last words were: “… I believe in the triumph of the IV International…! Keep on fighting!”. According to press estimates of the time, over 250 000 participated in the funeral.
1941
Terence Phelan, an American Trotskyist travelling in representation of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International makes a tour of Latin America
In Argentina he tries to get all the different Trotskyist group together. As an outcome of this activity, the PORS (Workers’ Party for the Socialist Revolution) is constituted as a section of the IV International in Argentina constituted by those who regarded themselves as Trotskyists except LOR with Liborio Justo at the head. PORS had 75 militants and LOR 27).
Among others, the following are part of PORS: Jorge Abelardo Ramos, J. Posadas, Aurelio Narvaja and the Perelman brothers.
Hugo Bressano joins the PORS which, alike the entire Argentine Trotskyism of those days, is totally divorced from the working class. Their existence is limited to endless meetings in Buenos Aires bars.
Moreno tries to put an end to the marginality of the Argentine Trotskyism by contacting the workers’ movement. In the Alpargatas factory he meets a leader who was to impress him very much: Fidel Ortiz Saavedra, a half-illiterate Bolivian, great speaker with much political talent.
1942
Bressano splits away from PORS and explains his reason in an article titled Three Months Of Life In Confucianism. He challenges the PORS methods (scheming and slandering) and policy. Moreno defends Liborio Justo’s theory according to which the central task in semi colonial countries had to be national liberation.
Bressano joins LOR, the organisation headed by Liborio Justo, who dubs him Nahuel (tiger in the language of the Araucanian Indians) Moreno, because of the dark colour of his hair.
In the LOR he meets Mateo Fossa, a workers’ leader who in 1938 interviewed Trotsky.
Moreno challenges Liborio Justo because of his method of wielding personal accusation in order to settle political discussions. As the only response, Liborio Justo expels him from LOR accusing him publicly of being a !police agent”. Mateo Fossa stands up in his defence but the expulsion was upheld.
Moreno begins to meet a group of teenagers. Most of them were workers of Jewish origin. Moreno, the eldest, was 18. With these youngsters he studied Lenin’s What to do? And so, with the help of the Bolivian workers Fidel Ortiz Saavedra, he recruited them to Trotskyism.
1043
In Stalingrad, the nazis suffer a defeat from the masses; it was to be definite. As from then a new stage begins of great ascent all over the world.
III International is dissolved on Stalin’s orders and Churchill’s recommendation.
The group of young workers under the leadership of Moreno carry out their first internationalist activity. They publish the Letter to Bolivia in which they express solidarity with the exiles from that country in Argentina.
Moreno is elected Secretary General of Popular Bolivian Union, an organisation of exiles.
At a First of May rally, the group forms a small column (four or five) and they march chanting Fourth! Fourth! in allusion to the IV International and are beaten up by the Socialist Youth.
A discussion begins in the PORS as to the tactics for the elections planned for 1943 and that originates a deep crisis. PORS disappears. LOR is reduced to two militant: Liborio Justo and Enrique Carmona. The latter commits suicide at the age of 25.Moreno writes his first party text, a brochure titled The Party in which he highlighted a central conclusion. “What is urgent, what is immediate, today just as it was yesterday, is to approach the proletarian advance guard and to reject as something opportunist any attempt at drifting away from that guideline, even if it is presented as a possible task”.
1944
Moreno, springing out from the group of young workers, founds GOM (Workers’ Marxist Group). Mateo Fosa acts as their consultant on how to penetrate workers’ movement.
On the First of May the first posters of GOM and the Fourth International can be seen.
1945
The end of the II World war.
In Argentina, colonel Perón, who has been obtaining important support from the workers thanks to the policy of concessions practised from the Secretariat of Labour and Prevision. Faced with this fact, the army splits. Trade unions claim for his freedom. CGT call for a general strike for 18th October but a day before, on the 17th, workers march out into the streets and manage to set Perón free. Peronism is spawned at that moment. 17th October is remembered as the main date of the Peronist movement, especially by the working class.
The GOM, under the leadership of Nahuel Moreno has an outstanding role in support of the strike of the Anglo Ciabasa packinghouse. With its 12 000 workers, it was one of the most important factories in the country. By the end of the strike, and important group of activists and leaders of the factory join the GOM.
After the meat strike, Moreno and an important part of the GOM, in a definite split from the “Bohemian Trotskyism” of the bars, go to live in Villa Pobladora, a neighbourhood in the town Avellaneda, the most important workers’ concentration in the country. In a short time, Villa Pobladora becomes a “Trotskyist fortress”. Moreno is chose Secretary General of the neighbourhood club Corazones Unidos where GOM militants teach workers how to read and write and lecture on the French and Russian revolutions.
1946
In Argentina, with massive support from the working class, Juan Domingo Perón wins the election and reaches the presidency of the Republic.
In Bolivia miners’ representatives from all over the country get together. The Trotskyists of POR present a series of theses that are taken by most of the representatives. These theses became known as the Theses of Pulacayo, say – among other things: “mobile scale of wages, trade union independence, workers’ control in the mines, weapons for the workers.
In order to participate in the Bolivian election, the Trotskyists formed “Workers’ Block” which won the elections in the mining districts and chose a senator and five representatives. Once elected, this block uses the tribune of the bourgeois parliament to call for the destruction of the army and for replacing it by workers’ militias.
In order to reorganise the forces, a first conference of the IV International after the II World War is held.
In Argentina, the GOM publishes its first periodical called Frente Proletario
GOM reaches 100 militants, mostly workers.
1948
In Paris the II Congress of the IV International (first after the II World War) is held; it begins by debating the central point, the issue of the social character of the USSR. The new events (expropriation of the bourgeoisie in the East of Europe and the Chinese Revolution) are not discussed
GOM sends Moreno to participate in the II Congress of the IV International. At the Congress he meets the most important leaders of the international Trotskyist movement: the Greek Michel Raptis (Pablo), Healy and Bill Hunter from England, Ernest Mandel from Belgium, Pierre Lambert and Pierre Frank from France, Liviao Maitan from Italy, Peng from China and the Americans Cannon, Joseph Hansen, Farrell Dobbs and George Novack.
At the Congress, Moreno participates in three commissions and reports on Latin America.
After the Congress, GOM – under Moreno’s leadership – undertakes an important international activity. They ensure a meeting with the participation of representatives from Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and the three groups already existing in Argentina. The BLA (Latin American Bureau) stems out of this meeting, during which GOM acted in block with the Brazilians and the Bolivians. The aim is to build the IV International in the Southern Cone.
In Avellaneda, Argentina, Nahuel Moreno is pone of the speakers at a rally organised by GOM as a memorial to Leon Trotsky. About 200 people take part of it, most of them workers. It is the first Trotskyist public rally in Argentina. A few days later, on the anniversary of Trotsky’s death, a new rally is organised and about 500 people take part.
Taking this experience into account and the accumulated militancy, GOM decides to become a party. On 25th December the Foundation Congress of POR (Workers0 Revolutionary Party) is held.
Moreno writes his first weighty piece of theoretic work: Four Theses on the Spanish and Portuguese Colonisation in which he challenges the vision of most of the left according to which the colonisation had a feudal and not capitalist character. He also writes Argentine Agrarian Situation, Industrial Theses and Latin American Theses
1949
Triumph of the Chinese Revolution
Inside the IV International an important debate crops up as to the character of the new states in European East where bourgeoisie has been expropriated. Two opposite tendencies emerge. Ernest Mandel and J. Cannon uphold that they are still capitalist states. Pablo, Hansen and Moreno sustain that they are new workers’ states.
In Argentina, in the province of Tucumán, a powerful strike breaks out of sugar workers, organised by FOTIA (Workers’ Federation of the Industry of Sugar) against the owners and the Perón administration. In response to the strike, the CGT – controlled by the Perón administration – intervenes FOTIA. Moreno poses a position that is to cause a great stir with the other Trotskyist groups. He says: “We must pose that FOTIA split from CGT. All other solutions are abstractions… If the CGT is a state organism, we must split”.
1951
In Bolivia, Victor Paz Estensoro, of the MNR (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) wins presidential elections as the toiling masses regard him as an anti oligarchic and anti imperialist leader. The military refuse to hand over to him and they carry out a coup.
In the midst of the “Cold War”, the III World Congress of the IV International is held. Under the great impression of the “cold war”, Pablo and Mandel arrive at the conclusion that III World War is inevitable, that Stalinism will be forced to confront imperialism and will have a very progressive role. The great task for Trotskyists is to join communist parties. This tactic is known as “entrism sui generis”.
Moreno and Jose Speroni participate in the III World Congress of the IV International as representatives for the Argentine POR.
The Congress recognised the group under the leadership of J. Posadas, which defended the positions of Pablo and Mandel. Faced with this fact, the representatives for SWP of the USA proposed to modify the statutes of the International so as to allow the existence of sympathising sections.
Discussing with Posadism, Moreno writes The Fourth International Group, ideological agents of Peronism
1952
In Bolivia, the police and a sector of the army, in agreement with the MNR, try to produce a counter coup but are defeated. On the other hand, the Oruro miners arise, defeat the army of the region and march, weapons in hand, on La Paz where, together with the peasant, they annihilate seven armies. Paz Estensoro, of the MNR, takes over as President, but the real control of the country is in the hands of the workers and peasants, who got organised in the COB and formed a 100 000-men strong armed militia, in most cases, led by Trotskyists.
Mandel’s and Pablo’s sui generis entrism policy causes resistance in the International. The French section refuses to join the Communist Party.
International Secretariat of the IV International separated 16 members of the French section, tries to impose a new leadership and finally raids the offices and expels the entire section of the IV International.
1953
The death of Stalin causes a great stir in the USSR and the rest of the world.
Workers’ uprising in Eastern Germany; a general strike against the ruling bureaucracy inaugurates a process of political revolution in the European East.
Pablo and Mandel, consistently with their policy of seeing a progressive course in Stalinism, at first support the government of Eastern Germany against the masses and extend their policies to the national bourgeois movements. In the case of Bolivia, they give critical support to the bourgeois Paz Estenssoro administration.
The Argentina POR, with Moreno in the lead, split from Pablo and the International Secretariat.
The Pablo-Mandel policy with respect to Stalinism as well as the attacks on the French Section caused a division in the IV International. French, English, American and most of the South American militants split with the International Secretariat and form the International Committee (CI).
From the periodical Frente Proletario, Moreno launches the demand for Bolivia: All Power to the COB!
Moreno writes: Two Guidelines, the opportunist and the revolutionary one for the Bolivian Masses and Split-away from Pablism letter.
1954
Fourth World Congress of the “IV International” organised by the IS; it is actually a fractional congress where all the capitulating orientation was asserted.
On the other hand, the International Committee, headed by the SWP of the USA, does not call for any international meeting. From the Argentine POR, Nahuel Moreno urges the International Committee to confront Pablism and act as leaders for regrouping of the orthodox Trotskyism. With this guideline he begins by reorganising the orthodox Trotskyist of the Southern Cone. One of the leaders of the POR, Luis Viale, is sent to Chile and at the same time he contacts the Peruvian Trotskyists. Orthodox Trotskyist of Argentina, Peru and Chile constitute an organism to centralise activity in the region, the CLA (Latin American Committee).
In Argentina, the POR, acting in clandestine way, tries to take advantage of some scraps of legality and so enters the PSRN (Socialist Party of National Revolution) where he leads the Buenos Aires Federation as from which he publishes the periodical La Verdad.
Moreno writes 2954, Key year to study Peronism.
1955
In Argentina, a coup d’etat promoted by the American imperialism and with the support of most of the national bourgeoisie, the Church, CP and the middle class, pulls down the Peronist government.
Argentine workers, forsaken by General Perón and by their trade union leaders resist the coup, even with weapons, spawning like this what was later known as “Peronist resistance”.
Trotskyists led by Moreno and their press La Verdad have been constantly exposing the preparations for the coup and demanding that Peron should give out the weapon for the workers to resist and, once the coup actually takes place, they join the Peronist resistance.
As the 17th October – an important date for Peronists – draws nearer, the hatred of the workers against the military accrues. The leadership of the CGT once more begs for peace. The country action is taken by Moreno’s Trotskyists who launch thousands of leaflets saying “Because those who claim to be the leaders of the workers keep silent, the Buenos Aires Federation of the Socialist Party of the National Revolution, who run the periodical La Verdad , claim the historic responsibility to call on the workers for a peaceful general strike for October 17th, a day of protest and struggle against the employers and imperialism…”. Only one sector of Peronism, National Peronist Command, backed this call and, to the surprise of many, there was an ample following from the workers. 70% of the industrial proletariat, in spite of the dictatorship and against it, complied with the call for the general strike issued by the Trotskyists.
The strike causes a crisis inside the PSRN. The National Executive Committee issues the order to scab the strike. La Verdad points out that “a shameful situation has been reached that cannot continue any more”. In a letter signed by Moreno and other leaders, they disclaim the authority of the National Executive Committee. As from that moment La Verdad is published as “organ of the left – majority – of the new National Committee of the PSRN”.
Moreno writes Letter to the Latin American Committee (CLA) on Bolivia.
1956
Deep crisis in Stalinism. In the USSR, at the XX Congress of the CPUS, its secretary general, Nikita Khrushchev, violently exposes Stalin’s crimes and at the same announces that it is practically impossible for other wars to be wagged and that capitalism could be defeated by means of parliament and election.
Nikita Khrushchev’s address causes a deep impression on the world communist world as well as on Trotskyism.
Nahuel Moreno expresses the opinion that the speech on the XX Congress is a manoeuvre of the bureaucracy and, in terms of international policy, it is the “… most right-wing [speech] in the entire history of the CP of the USSR”. Pablo and Mandel, on the contrary, see it as progressive from the USSR position, for it expresses the existence of two trends inside the CPUS “…one deeply opposing the other”.
In Poland, shortly after the XX Congress, almost three months of strikes and protests, the population rises in the city of Poznañ. The movement, headed by workers’ committees, is brutally suppressed by Russian tanks. Four months later, a massive mobilisation with occupations spread all over the country and it could only be stopped by means of concessions.
In Hungary great insurrection and mobilisations take place attacking Russian troops, raiding Communist party building . Workers’ committees become generalised. The insurrection is drowned in blood. Russian troops attack the population and shoot dozens of activists and leaders.
In Argentina, the military dictatorship decrees the dissolution of the PSRN and their press and activity is banned. Consequently, members of the National Executive Committee stop acting while Trotskyists appear as POR in their internal documents and as Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialism in the public material. They issue a new periodical: Unidad Obrera.
In Argentina, while the dictatorship holds over 30 000 political prisoners, the most important workers’ strike against the government takes place. Over 180 000 metallurgic workers, the most important guild in the country, confronts the employers and the government. After forty days on strike, a violent repression manages to defeat the strike and this is how the possibility is lost of a new leadership – emerged from the resistance – to lead the workers movement as a whole.
The Trotskyists led by Nahuel Moreno due to the weigh achieved in the factories, co-lead the strike. Moreno, who is not a metallurgist, participates in the National Strike Committee. The repression and the defeat of the strike have serious consequences for the party. A great number of workers as dismissed and many end up in jail.
Moreno writes And after Perón what? explaining that the fundamental task for Argentina is to reorganise workers’ movement to recover the trade unions and the CGT from the hands of the dictatorship.
1957
The First Conference of Latin American Orthodox Trotskyism (TOLA), held in Lima, Peru, resolves to create the secretariat for Latin American Orthodox Trotskyism (SLATO) of which Moreno became secretary general.
Fifth World Congress of the IV International, again organised by the IS.
Conversations are initiated between the Pabloist IS and the SWP(CI) to unite the IV International. Moreno stands against.
In Argentina, the POR, together with an important sector of Peronist workers’ sectors, build the MAO (Movement of Workers’ Groupings) that publishes the periodical Palabra Obrera. It is a Revolutionary United Front that, with the tactic of entrism, acts inside the Peronist Movement.
The POR, together with two intellectuals (Miliciades Peña and Luis Franco) begins to publish a theoretic-political magazine, Estrategia para liberación nacional y social de Latinoamérica of which Moreno was to become the director.
In La Plata, Argentina, a Peruvian student, Hugo Blanco, begins his militancy in Palabra Obrera who, years later was to turn into what Moreno defined as “the greatest Trotskyist mass leader after Trotsky”.
Moreno writes The Historic Framework of the Hungarian Revolution, Who knew how to fight against the Liberating Revolution* before 16th September 1955? and Comments to some Marxist theses on national movements
1958
Moreno, in representation of SLATO, participates in the Conference of the International Committee held in June in Leeds, England. He discusses very strongly on the need to challenge and defeat “Pabloism”.
Hugo Blanco returns to Peru and gets a job in a factory in Lima. After a violent demonstration against the visit of Richard Nixon, the police order his arrest. To protect him from repression, the Peruvian POR sends him to Cuzco, where an important ascent of popular struggles was taking place.
In Cuzco he works as a newspaper vendor and soon organises the Trade union of vendors of periodicals. And, as representative of that trade union, he joins the Federation of Workers in Cuzco (FTC). In the FTC, Hugo Blanco contacts its most fighting sector, the peasants, and starts working with this sector.
Moreno writes The Leeds Theses and The Argentine Economic Structure
1959
In Cuba, on the 1st January, dictator Fulgencio Batista, harassed by the guerrilla and the masses, flees the country. On 8th January, Fidel Cato enters Havana. That was how the first socialist revolution triumphed on this continent.
The triumph of the Cuban Revolution creates a wave of enthusiasm all over the continent. Thousands of youngsters of different countries regard the Cuban revolutionaries as a landmark and get ready to follow their example.
The Cuban Revolution causes a great discussion inside the IV International. Pablo supports from the beginning the movement 16 July led by Fidel. The others have a more cautious attitude.
Nahuel Moreno has a mistaken attitude at the beginning he compares the triumph of Fidel with the “Revolución Libertadora Argentina (the military coup against Perón(. Ten months after the seizure of power by the guerrilla, Palabra Obrera says: “Fidel Castro is still the American’s trusted man…”. In November Moreno begins to change his position and he admits that the Cuban Revolution is part of the anti imperialist struggle.
1960
As time goes by, the Trotskyist movement seems to be approaching a common position on Cuba. The Sixth World Congress of the IS defines Cuba a “workers’ state” and so does the American SWP.
Inside SLATO, Moreno proposes a resolution that says: “active defence of the Cuban Revolution will be an important task of our sections”.
In Cuzco, Peru, Hugo Blanco is arrested charged with having attacked a police patrol during a demonstration. Peasants move in his defence and the FTC threatens with a general strike in demand of his freedom. The government recoils and sets him free. When he leaves the jail, he goes to the countryside and starts working on a piece or rented land. With the peasants of his region, he organises the first peasants’ strike that becomes the advance guard of land occupations. As from that experience , Peruvian POR, following the orientation of Moreno, call for the formation of United Revolutionary Front.
Moreno writes Cuba, política y lucha de clases.
1961
A SLATO meeting held in Buenos Aires, passes a resolution that states that in Cuba there is a workers’ and peasants’ government and Workers’ State in transition.
At the SLATO meeting Peru is also discussed where peasants’ mobilisation accrue constantly and the vote is passed “the advance guard of the revolutions is the peasants masses, the engine is the occupation of land… the demand of United Party for the Revolution is on the agenda for action”.
Peruvian representatives present at the SLATO meeting return home with a long letter from Moreno to Hugo Blanco.
During the following months, seeing the headway of the peasants’ struggles and the role of leadership played by Hugo Blanco, the Argentine POR sends several leaders and militants to help the Peruvian POR. The centre of SLATO is moved to Lima. The cry Otac allpa otac huañuy” (land or death) can be heard along the valleys in the Andes. When Hugo Blanco went to the countryside there were six peasants’ trade unions; by the end of the campaign, there were one hundred and forty-eight.
In order to support and develop the Peruvian revolutionary process, Argentine POR tries to contact the Cuban leadership directly. Nahuel Moreno meets Che Guevara in Punta del Este (Uruguay) but does not find him very receptive. Later on he visits Peru.
In Peru, Nahuel Moreno contacts the revolutionary process strengthened by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution but he also find a very deep deviation towards putsch actions encouraged by the policy of Fidel and especially Che Guevara who proposed creating guerrilla focuses at any time and place without taking into consideration the struggles of the masses.
The Peruvian POR, with the support and encouragement of Argentine cadres who went there to help, work out a plan to raid the headquarters of Gamarra (meant to be the Peruvian Moncada). For that purpose they intend to obtain a thousand rifles and they began by raiding a banking agency.
Moreno writes Cuba sacude América and Vanguardia de la revolución.
1962
Moreno tries to halt the putschist deviation. In a letter to Daniel Pereyra (one of the cadres of the Argentine POR) he points out “… they believe that the problem of the insurrection is a mere technical problem… We are against organising guerrilla groups in Peru. We believe that, in opposition to guerrilla groups, we must foster armed militias of the peasants… Organised and armed struggle to defend the occupation of land by the peasantry, yes; as an aim in itself, no!”
In a last attempt at saving the Peruvian party from the guerrilla deviation, Moreno decides to move definitely to Peru. In April, in Lima, once again SLATO meets with Moreno present. A tough discussion follows but no solution is reached. A few days later, a command of nine militants of FIR carry out a spectacular raid on the Miraflores branch of the Credit Bank. They get away with 100 000 dollars – an immense fortune for those days. The press comments on the “robbery of the century”.
One of the raider is identified and soon after that a persecution against the FIR is unleashed. The decision is taken to move the expropriators to Cuzco. Moreno is in charge of preparing the breakout and a few days later he travels to Bolivia in order to organise support for Hugo Blanco.
The expropriators, hidden in a lorry, reach Cuzco, but at the end of the trip they are spotted by a police patrol. After intense shooting they are all jailed. Daniel Pereyra, whom the press calls the “Che Pereyra”, is brutally tortured. In a few days, the repression annihilates FIR leaving Hugo Blanco completely isolated in the countryside.
In Bolivia Nahuel Moreno is arrested and an extradition warrant is passed by the Peruvian government who accuse him of being “the brain” behind the Miraflores robbery. Workers’ organisation in that country demand his freedom and achieve that aim a month later.
In the meantime, Hugo Blanco remains isolated from his party and from the SLATO just when the struggle of the peasants accrues and chooses him Secretary General of the Province Peasants Federation of La Convención and Lares – the centre of the agrarian revolution.
After destroying the FIR in Cuzco and Lima, repression spread into the countryside. In this way, Hugo Blanco and a group of peasants are forced to organised the guerrilla in order to defend themselves.
Moreno decides to return to his country secretly and finds that a putsch deviation was installed in the Argentine POR, which, in his absence had decided to start armed struggle. The central task for the militants was to receive military instruction and votes that an important group of cadres, under the leadership of Angel Bengochea, should travel to Cuba to receive guerrilla training.
After a long discussion, Moreno manages to revert the situation. A plenary meeting of Palabra Obrera votes that the central task of the party is to support the Peruvian peasants’ insurrection. Another vote passed is to reduce the contingent to five comrades who would travel to Cuba but with a different mission. The central task was to ask the Cuban leaders for material help to prevent Hugo Blanco from getting hedged in by the repression.
A month after his arrival in Buenos Aires, Moreno is once more arrested and place at the disposal of National Executive Power. The accusation is the same: responsible for the raid on banks in Peru. Not before six months elapsed was he set free again.
Moreno writes Latin American Revolution.
1963
In June the Congress of Reunification of the IV International is held. Most of the Trotskyist trends of the International Secretariat and of the International Committee, who acknowledge that in Cuba a new Workers’ State has emerged in Cuba, got together spawning the United Secretariat of the IV International. Out of the reunited Fourth is the trend headed by Berry Healy and Pierre Lambert.
The Argentine POR headed by Nahuel Moreno, even if they were part of the trend that regarded Cuba as a workers’ State, stayed out of USec because of the different policies and methodology in relation to Pabloism and also with the American SWP who dissolved the International Committee bureaucratically, without any balance sheet at all of either Pabloism or even of the IC itself.
In Cuba, the five Argentine POR militants do not comply with what was voted. They undergo outstandingly a tough guerrilla training and are decorated by the Cuban leadership. Che Guevara recruits Angel Bengochea and the other members of the group for the idea of building a guerrilla focus in the province of Tucumán (Argentina).
In Peru the Hugo Blanco Guerrilla sweeps the valleys encouraging land reform until, on May 15th, after a confrontation with the police, Hugo Blanco is arrested, tried and sentenced to death.
Hugo Blanco’s imprisonment spawns a great international campaign to save his life. Important personalities of politics and culture all over the world stood up to defend him. The campaign was victorious. Peruvian authorities commuted death penalty for 25 years in jail.
Shortly after their return from Cuba, the Bengochea group split from POR.
Nahuel Moreno meets Mario Roberto Santucho, leader of the FIRP (Popular Revolutionary Indoamericanist Front. They agree to start work together in Tucumán among the sugar workers.
Moreno writes Peru: two strategies and the book Argentina, un país en crisis.
1964
Faced with the fail accompli of the reunification of the IV, and so as not to be isolated, the Argentine POR – in spite of all the differences – joins the USec.
Angel Bengochea and four militants of his group die in an accidental explosion in a deposit of explosives. Nahuel Moreno and several leaders are investigated by the police. The periodical Palabra Obrera renders honours to the former comrades and in the end points out that: “we still believe that it is our duty to those dead and those alive, no matter how heroic, bold and brave that they may be, to continue saying the truth: terrorism and guerrillas isolated from mass movement and without a correct policy are good for absolutely nothing…”
Palabra Obrera considers entrism in Peronism as finished.
United Revolutionary Front is formed between Palabra Obrera and FRIP by means of a Paritary Committee tending to a unification.
Moreno writes Two methods for Latin American revolution.
1965
Merger between Palabra Obrera and the FRIP. A 21-member Central Committee is formed (14 for Palabra Obrera and 7 for FRIP). The new Party is called Revolutionary Workers’ Party
In Switzerland, the eighth World Congress of the IV International (second after the reunification) is held. Representatives of 20 countries take part.
In the election in Argentina, a militant of the PRT, Leandro Fote , leader of the sugar workers, is elected to the House of representatives in Tucumán province. He is the first Trotskyist member of parliament in this country.
Moreno writes the book Bases for the scientific interpretation of Argentine history.
1966
In Argentina, the military seize power by means of a coup. General Juan Carlos Onganía leads the dictatorship.
Moreno writes La situación Latinoamericana and the book La lucha recién comienza.
1967
Pressures from guerrilla trends spawned by the Castro leadership cause a split in the Argentine PRT. One sector headed by Moreno asserts that armed struggle is subordinate to class struggle and that the party is supposed to be increasingly connected with the working class. The other sector, headed by Santucho, defends the beginning of armed struggle independently from the level of class struggle and consequently the militarisation of the party.
The split in the party spawns the PRT (La Verdad) and the PRT (El Combatiente). Later on, PRT (La Verdad) becomes PST (Socialist Workers’ Party) and the PRT (El Combatiente) builds the ERP (People’s Revolutionary Army).
Moreno writes the book The Chinese and Indochinese revolutions and Latin America and the OLAS.
1968
In France, a powerful students’ mobilisation (“French May”) that reaches workers challenges the government and becomes an international landmark for the youth.
The debate for and against guerrilla warfare begins in the IEC of the IV International.
1969
In Argentina, in an important city, Córdoba, a workers’ and popular semi insurrection begins (“El Cordobazo”) and opens the pre-revolutionary stage in the whole country.
In France the IX Congress of the IV International is held. Representatives and observers from 30 countries. Hugo Blanco, in a Peruvian jail for the past seven years is honorary member of the board of the Congress.
Moreno (together with Ernesto González) participate as representatives.
Once more, the party led by Moreno (PRT – La Verdad) is not acknowledged as an official section. PRT-ERP, due to its pro-guerrilla positions, fills that vacancy. A short time later, PRT-ERP splits away from the IV International.
Because of the trial on the raids on the banks, Moreno is arrested for several months in Peru.
Moral writes the book After the Cordobazo and, from his jail the brochure Bolshevik morals or spontaneist .
1970
In Chile, Popular Front with Salvador Allende in the lead wins the 4th September elections.
Moreno writes the book Marxist Logic and Modern Science
1972
Moreno adopts a position that is to arouse great discussion on the Argentine left: the need to use the legal margins achieved after the Cordobazo. The PRT (la Verdad) still under the military dictatorship opens semi legal offices and reaches an agreement with sectors of socialism to legalise a new party and participate in the elections. This new party is the PST (Socialist Workers’ Party).
In Chile, a group of Brazilian exiles, among them Tulio Quintiliano, former militant of a guerrilla (PCBR); Zeé and Jorge Pinheiro, former militants of another guerrilla organisation (MNR); Enio Buchioni former militant of Popular Action (AP) and Waldo Mermelstein, with the mediation of Hugo Blanco (who was in Chile) contact the IV International and from a group Starting Point.
Moreno writes Argentina and Bolivia (co-author), the brochure A revolutionary electoral campaign and Lora denies Trotskyism.
1973
In Chile, a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet pulls down the Salvador Allende administration and unleashes a violent repression against left organisations and workers’ and popular activism.
The group of Brazilian exiles, Starting Point, suffers the consequences of the coup. Tulio Quintiliano is murdered. Enio is imprisoned in the National Stadium but manages to obtain asylum in France. Zezé, Jorge and Waldo flee to Argentina where they join the PST led by Moreno and, with the intention of returning to Brazil, they found the Liga Operaria and start publishing the periodical Independencia Operaria.
While the ample majority of the Argentine left does not participate in the elections, PST carries out a successful electoral campaign. The number of militants of the party is multiplied several times (over 1 000) and becomes one of the biggest Trotskyist parties in the world.
In March TILT (Leninist Trotskyist Tendency) is formed hinging round the document Argentina and Bolivia: a Balance Sheet and headed by the Argentine PST and the American SWP. In August the TLT becomes FLT (Leninist Trotskyist Fraction).
The old leader of timber workers, Mateo Fosa, joins the Argentine PST.
As part of the debate against Ernest Mandel, Moreno writes Un documento escandaloso (better known as El Morenazo) that was published as a book titled The Party and the Revolution.
1974
In Argentina, The Three A (Argentine Anti-communist Alliance) emerges out of the loins of the Peronist administration; they work out lists of left-wing and popular militants who are pressed to leave the country. Those who do not comply are summarily tried and executed. Nahuel Moreno is at the top of one of the first lists.
PST militants are murdered. The first one to fall was the “Indio” Fernandez, a metallurgic worker.
The PST offices are shelled from machine-guns and raided with bombs. A fascist command attacks one of the offices and murders three militants of the party. The leadership of the party publicly demand that the administration hand out heavy weapons to PST to defend their offices. The government does not respond. The funeral of the three murdered militant is an impressive rally, Nahuel Moreno call publicly for the left to form joint groups of self-defence. The left does not respond. The leaders of the PST issue an order for the militants to defend the offices. Several hundred militants, men and women, start military training and ensure armed defence of the offices.
The group of Brazilian exiles in Argentina start returning home where they continue building Liga Operaria and they publish the periodical Independencia Operaria.
1975
General strike against the Isabel Peron administration pulls down two of her most important ministers: Rodrigo and López Rega.
Attacks on the PST accrue. The central office is shelled. In the city of La Plata, eight militants, among them half the regional leadership) are murdered. That is when the leadership takes the decision to close the offices and start clandestine activity.
Moreno visits Portugal and contacts the revolution directly.
Moreno writes the brochure Revolution and counterrevolution in Portugal.
1976
Military coup in Argentina. Thousands of workers’ and popular activists are jailed, tortured and murdered. Kidnapping and disappearance become a routine.
Over one hundred PST militants are murdered.
Moreno leaves Argentina secretly for Bogotá (Colombia) where he settles and founds the Bolshevik Tendency (TB) , which soon is to become a fraction (FB).
Moreno recruits the Socialist Block of Colombia for IV International and the Bolshevik Tendency; it becomes the Socialist Workers’ Party.
With this new location, Moreno and a group of Argentine cadres and the leadership of the Colombian PST fosters the construction of revolutionary organisations in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela, Mexico, Sweden, El Salvador, Spain, Portugal, USA, Brazil, Peru…
1977
The struggle against dictator Somoza spreads in Nicaragua. FSLN (Sandinist Front of National Liberation) is regarded with increasing sympathy by ample sectors of the Nicaraguan population.
The Bolshevik Fraction poses the demand: Victory to FSLN! SWP criticises FB for this policy and attacks FSLN straight on. Mandel does not take a stand.
In Brazil, the tiny group of Liga Operaria, as part of the Bolshevik Fraction led by Moreno, takes root in the national reality. In three years of activity they are already 300 militants.
Moreno travels to Europe. He visits Portugal again and takes a decisive part in the discussion on the construction of a section of the Bolshevik Fraction in that country.
In Spain Moreno follows closely the first steps of the formation of the Socialist Workers0 Party (PST). Based on this experience he writes With the courts against the Monarchy where he develops a polemic topic: “Against monarchy in defence of the Republic”.
Moreno writes: Angola, the Black Revolution is Marching on.
1978
Popular insurrection spreads in Nicaragua; several cities are taken by the population.
In Brazil, the Movement Socialist Convergence, fostered by Liga Operaria, that now is called PST) holds the first National Convention with about 1200 people present. Moreno takes part in this event.
From his exile, Moreno accompanies the heroic struggle of the PST against the military dictatorship in Argentina. On several opportunities he secretly meets members of the Argentine CC in Brazil until the day when, together with about twenty Brazilian militants, he is arrested after participating of a convention of Socialist Convergence and was getting ready to take part in a meting with CC of the Argentine PST.
An international campaign, to which personalities of all over the world adhere, prevents him from being sent to Argentina where most probably he would be jailed or one of the “missing”. Brazilian government deports him to Colombia and bans him from ever returning to Brazil.
Before being jailed Moreno issues a recommendation to the Brazilian Trotskyists to call on the trade union activists and workers to build a PT (Workers’ Party).
Moreno writes the book The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
1979
In Peru a workers’ and peasants’ front is formed, the FOCEP, the most outstanding figure of which is Hugo Blanco. In the elections, in spite of all the fraud, FOCEP obtains 11% of the votes. Trotskyism becomes outstanding. Hugo Blanco, who adheres to the position of the American SWP, is elected to the house of representatives, the same as Ricardo Napuri (at that time, Lambertist) and Enrique Fernandez (of the Bolshevik Fraction).
In Brazil, the militants of the CS, following Moreno’s advice, all to build a PT. At the IX Congress of the Metallurgists of the State of Sao Paulo, Jose Maria de Almeida, a metallurgic worker of Socialist Convergence, proposes that a manifest be voted calling on “all Brazilian workers to get together for the construction of a party of their own, the Workers’ Party.” The motion is passed. That is how the construction of one of the biggest workers’ parties in the world begins.
In Colombia, the Socialist Workers’ Party, following Moreno’s directions, call for the formation of a Brigade of Volunteers Simon Bolivar to join the FSLN in the armed battle against Somoza.
Over a thousand people, most of them Colombians, but also Costa Ricans, Panamanians , Ecuadorians, Bolivians, Argentines and Chileans, respond to the call of the Colombian PST; over a hundred of them entered Nicaragua and joined the armed struggle. Three of them were killed in action and several more were wounded.
After a 45-day general strike, Somoza and the commanders of the Civil Guard flee the country. The FSLN column enters Managua triumphantly.
One part of the Simon Bolivar enters Managua together with the southern column of the Sandinists while the other frees the city of Bluefields (main port on the Atlantic Ocean.
Sandinists impose a government of National Reconstruction integrated by the Sandinists and sectors of the bourgeois opposition.
Oriented by Moreno, after the fall of Somoza, Simon Bolivar Brigade took up organising the working class and building trade unions. This activity was so successful that, when the Sandinist trade unions central is founded, 70% of the trade unions attending the event were newly-founded by the Brigade.
A march of over 3 000 Nicaraguans accompanied the Brigadists who request that the government should grant them Nicaraguan citizenship.
Sandinist arrest the Brigadists and expel them form the country, handing them over to the Panamanian police who take them to a jail, beat them and torture them.
Bolshevik Fraction calls on the United Secretariat to repudiate the repression on the Simon Bolivar Brigade. The USec fails to do so.
The United Secretariat sends several of their most important leaders to meet the Sandinists and hand over a letter in which the Simon Bolivar is disowned.
The CC of the French OCI as well as other Trotskyist trends express their solidarity with the Bolshevik Fraction and with the Simon Bolivar Brigade.
Bolshevik Fraction, directed by Moreno, splits away from the USec.
Between the Bolshevik Fraction, the CORCI (organisation headed by Lambert) and the TLT (a fraction of the USec) a paritary committee is formed in order to test the possibility of joining these three trends into a joint international organisation and so leap forward in the reconstruction of the IV International.
1980
The Paritary Committee defines in favour of unification of the three trends. Moreno is in charge of working out the programme of the new international organisation. It is against this background that the Bolshevik Fraction holds a conference in Madrid and votes their dissolution.
The foundation congress of the new international organisation called CI(CI) International Committee-Fourth International is held in Paris.
Moreno writes the book Theses for the Updating of the Transitional Programme.
1981
In France, the Popular Front headed by Francois Mitterrand wins the elections.
The Workers’ Party (PT) is founded in Brazil.
In Spain, Moreno carries out a tough discussion against the leadership of the PST warning against the enormous error that underlies the recognition of the regime as democratic bourgeois and the imperious need of resetting the combat against monarchy.
The French OCI, main organisation of the CORCI, capitulates to the Mitterrand administration.
A strong discussion begins inside CI(CI) on the point of the policy that revolutionaries are supposed to have in France; it is brutally interrupted by Lambert who expels the critics from his party.
The CI(CI) explodes. The former CORCI is regrouped and so is the Bolshevik Fraction, which is approached by two leading public figures of Lambertism, Ricardo Napurí from Peru and Alberto Franceschi of Venezuela.
Moreno writes General Considerations on the Latin American Revolution; Complement to the project of resolution on Poland; the Mitterrand administration – its perspectives and our policy and Central America: six countries, one nation one revolution.
1982
In Bogotá, Colombia, Moreno presides over the founding conference of the IWL-FI, attended by representatives of 18 countries, mostly from the former Bolshevik Fraction and also adhered to by Ricardo Napurí and Alberto Franceschi together with an important group of militants.
The Falkland war between Argentina and Great Britain. Moreno adopts a very polemic position criticised by the left in Argentina and the rest of the world. Following Trotsky’s recommendations, he calls on the Argentine working class to takes sides, from the military point of view, on the same side as the murderous dictatorship against the “democratic” British Empire.
During the war, two of the prisoners of the dictatorship of longest standing, important workers’ leaders of the Argentine PST – Matosa and Paez – volunteer to go and fight against the English in the Falklands.
Argentina is defeated by the English and the dictatorship receives a mortal wound.
Moreno return secretly to Argentina and dedicates himself entirely to the construction of a new party, the MAS (Movement of Socialism), formed as from the militants of the PST.
Moreno writes the Theses for the Foundation of the IWL; 1982, Revolution Begins; Why does Fidel negotiate secretly with Reagan?; Some Reflections on the Polish Revolution; and The betrayal of OCI.
1983
The MAS, led directly by Moreno develops very fast. In a few months after its creation, there are 300 offices opened, an important number of militants is recruited and rallies are held on important football stadiums with thousands of people. The MAS quickly turns into the most important organisation of the Argentine left.
1984
Moreno settles in Spain for several months to help PST that is going through an important crisis. The fundamental orientation that Moreno proposes for the Spanish party is to more towards the working class and its struggles. Following this orientation, the PST intervenes fully in the great strike of the shipyards.
In Brazil, Socialist Convergence leads the trade union list that wins one of the most important trade union in the country: Metallurgic of Belo Horizonte and Contagem.
Moreno writes Revolutions of the XX Century; Conversations with Nahuel Moreno; Theses on Guerrillaism and Our experience with Lambertism.
1985
When the military dictatorship ends, the new Brazilian administration allows Moreno to return to the country. After seven years of banishment, he visits Brazil and contacts the most important pieces of work among the workers undertaken by Socialist Convergence. He gives this party a recommendation that was to become decisive for its construction: concentrate most their activity on workers’ struggles and trade union oppositions.
List headed by Socialist Convergence win the election in the Bank Workers in Rio de Janeiro and in the Metallugists of Sao Jose dos Campos.
1986
Moreno travels to Europe and interview important leaders of the Workers Revolutionary Party of Great Britain In Spain the accompanies the process of mobilisation for the referendum of the NATO against the Felipe González administration; his participation is decisive to guide the PST in the battle of the general elections (84 000 votes) and in the trade union elections.
Moreno writes Elementary Political Concepts and Sandinism and Revolution.
1987
25th January, at the age of 63, Nahuel Moreno dies unexpectedly in Buenos Aires from heart insufficiency. Several thousand militants come to his funeral and letters of sympathy come from most of the Trotskyist parties in the world as well as trade union centrals in Spain, Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia. Hugo Blanco writes his farewell and homage: “I regard him my greatest teacher of Marxism and I have always regarded him as such in spite of the fact that different paths of revolutionary struggle have set us apart a long time ago. Latin America ha lost a indefatigable and intelligent fighter for the revolution”.
* Liberating Revolution – name the military gave to their counterrevolutionary coup.
