The Revolutionary Conservative The Zenith against the Center
Taking into consideration historical organizations such as the Revolutionary National Syndicalist Legion, the National Worker’s Commission, the National-Syndicalist Worker’s Youth, the Cuban National Fascist Party or the very same Cuban Falange; the rich island of Cuba had already had its first contacts with what would came to be known as the political third position.
With its first followers portraying gray shirts and marking at the pace of their leader Jesus Marinas, who portrayed with pride the gesture of an organic Fascism which seemed to have found the unique possibility of taking such doctrine to the Cuban people, on the modern streets of New Habana of 1938 and to the most rural fields of the agrarian landscape. Such was the initiative that would come to forge the first canvases of the revolutionary spirit, of a movement that emerged from its earliest tempest as a purely identitarian nationalism of popular character.
There exist three general roots to the emergence of the third position in Latin-America; the Fifth Column which looked to generate a support to the Axis powers during the conflict, the unknowing and thus manipulation of the term in favor of a varied purpose and the authentic symptomatic necessity of an alternative above the already tiring traditional politics. Being the case of Cuba, one almost exclusive under a comparison of continental reach.
The following text digs up a lost notion which orbits the specter of a new theme, which I exhibit in a collaborative work with the Sandinista, Peter.
Castro’s Fascism
The student formation of Castro plays a fundamental role as precedent to his life and work in so far as the revolutionary ideal. Fidel attended to School of Belen, having as teacher and tutor the Spanish Jesuit Armando Llorente S.J., a figure close to Fidel himself as he had affirmed already. Armando affirmed in one of his most recent interviews in the city of Miami that Castro kept a major interest in the fascist leaders, pointing out Mussolini, Hitler and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. This interest was not exclusive, given that the environment of the named school had added the promotion of the Falangist doctrine. In words of Llorente: «He sang Cara Al Sol twenty thousand times and with his arm raised.»
Years later when Castro was visited in Sierra Maestra by Llorente in December of 1958, he was questioned for his involvement in revolutionary movements of apparent socialist cut, to which he replied in a mocking way:
«Father, from where am I supposed to take up communism if my father is more of a Francoist than yourself?», being the father of Castro, Angel Castro, was part of the Caribbean Section of the National Spanish Committee. Despite the fact that given matter was never mentioned in his biography, Castro didn’t deny the facts in front of the signaling given by reporters Frei Betto and Ignacio Ramonet.
On the other hand, the work written by Castro confirms in an indirect way the facts, given that he mentions a continuous interest for historical events of the last century. On his stay at the School of Belen and regarding the Jesuits, Fidel mentioned:
«At that time, the Spanish teachers of my school, in Santiago, spoke of that war. From the political point of view they were nationalists, said it more frankly they were Francoists, all without exception.»
«They know how to form the character of the students (…) The Spanish Jesuit knows how to inculcate a great sense of personal dignity, the sense of personal honor, knows to appreciate the character, the frankness, the rectitude, the courage of the person, the capacity of enduring a sacrifice (…). And I believe that my temperament, which in part is from birth, forged also there with the Jesuits.»
Finally, Llorente added:
«He studied and read a lot, with special predilection books about the Spanish conquistadors and writings of the leaders of Nazism and Fascism, such as Hitler, Mussolini and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. »
According too with the clarifications of Jose Ignacio Rasco, close friend of Fidel during his years at the School of Belen and the University of La Habana, at arriving at the School of Law, Castro know by heart the book “Mein Kampf”; given also that he used to quote fragments of the speeches of Mussolini, Hitler and Primo de Rivera in his scholar oratory. It is pointed out that from Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, Fidel had numerous articles and essays from him in the iconic Command of the Sierra Maestra, from whom also had the book “Complete Works”: that very same he used to carry always in his backpack.
It is affirmed as well that the Brigades of Rapid Response (BRP) were formed by Castro and those very same wore the blue shirts of the Falange, were directly inspired by the already classic brigades of paramilitary militias of the first third-positionist movements.
At the same time, it is known that the flag of the Falange was used as a model for creating the flag of the Movement 26 of July (M-26-7).
The Falangist Perception
Spain had become an enclave such as no other after World War II, we outline the Francoist defects, but it is also impossible to ignore the clear function which the regime took as source of exile to figures such as Léon Degrelle, Ante Pavelic or Horia Sima, breaking point to both veteran and new fascists who were looking to revive such experience of that of a supposed fascism to power.
Inside it grew an enormous juvenile unconformity, product of the non-fulfilment of concrete policies from the regime which sought to bury the authentic core of the doctrine which it said to be harboring, a good bunch of such named youth rose their arms high in salute, but never in salute to Franco. It was this youth the one which took appreciation of the most radical brush strokes of the revolutionary aspect of Cuba, being the case that the revolutionary faction in question showed a strategic opposition against the United States and that which it represented –financial imperialism–, and also that in 1960, it would not had been possible to define the future closeness which it would have to the Soviet Block.
This explains the sympathy in the declarations in favor of the anti-colonial struggle on behalf of the student’s body of the regime, the Spanish University Syndicate (SUE), pointing out the Cuban revolutionary fight as the battle for Argelia’s liberation as well. Martin Villa, then the National Chief of the SUE, came to compare the Latin-American guerrillas to the first militants of the Falangist movement. The European sympathies for the Cuban Revolution and their participants was exclusive of the fascists, because for the communists it represented everything except the progressive internationalism to which they advocated.
Under such cultural context, it is not surprising for Ernesto Guevara to receive such excellent reception during his brief stance in Madrid in 1959 with the purpose of visiting other nations of Europe and the Middle East, under the only requisite to not meet with the regime’s opposition. He landed in the capital city on July the 13th of that very same year, being that he would fly off the next day, meeting with journalist Antonio Dominguez Olano and a young guy in that same profession, Cesar Lucas. It was in this occasion in which Olano gave Guevara a copy of the Selected Works of the Falangist intellectual Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, copy as much as dedicated to him as it was to Fidel, which can be found today in the museum established in Che’s home in the city of La Habana.
His second visit would be on the 28th of August, after a trip to Rome continuing from a brief appearance in Morocco in order to later come back to his new Fatherland on September the 8th due to technical issues with his transport. It was during this visit that he would spend his nights at the Hotel Suecia (Sweden Hotel) as a sponsored guest by the National Movement, being now denigrated by those who were at the service of the Francoist regime by the now nascent relations between national socialism and radical syndicalism which led to a possible alliance with the Soviet Union as the marginal Blas Piñar pointed out.
However, the favorable stances regarding the Cuban success persisted during the coming years on behalf of the doctrinal media, as this was the case with the newspaper “Diario SP”, being the regular Falangist independent of the regime the most popular of the nation. One of his writes, Jose Miguel Orti Bordas, who was National Chief of the SUE during 1964-1965 and afterwards Vice Secretary of the National Movement in 1969-1971, thought and suggested to establish relations with Cuba by being a revolution which was not part of the left and right dichotomy.
After the death of Franco, a delegation of the Spanish Authentic Falange (FEA) would be send to the XI World Festival of Youth and Students of 1978 a student delegation composed by Salazar and Gustavo Morales. During the absence of youth organizations for availability of the voyage, three militants from Barcelona were added.
The boarding of the sent elements to the soviet cruise Leonid Sobinov is agreed from the main port of Lisbon (Portugal’s Capital) in the saving of the implementation of direct sea line between Spain and Cuba. In Lisbon the Falangist designer Javier Gonzalez Alberdi from Murcia gets onboard as stowaway; who would be discovered by the daily count of breakfasts to which there was quite a demand for consumption by three hundred men, rising the suspects of the soviet sailors with the stealing of one breakfast in a daily manner.
They were uniformed with the blue shirt and the Falange’s symbol in the chest, singing the emblematic “Cara al Sol” and rising their left arm in a hybrid of Roman salute and Communist salute. Their young leader, Gustavo Morales who was only 19 years old, tells us of his encounter with Fidel in the next sentence:
«The commander came to greet us and stood surprised to see half a dozen in blue shirts. I saluted him with my arm in high and he extended his hand cordially: “I know what you are”.»
Fidel Castro was already familiarized with the Falangist aesthetics and doctrine, even being a follower of its ideal from his most premature youth under the tutorship of the Spanish Jesuit Armando Llorente.
In that same trip came seventy militants of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party) and the PCE (Spanish Communist Party) alongside many other organizations, being that the invitation was open to sympathizers above the already fractured world left.
European Neo-Fascism and Che
The figure of Ernesto Guevara extended above Europe as a myth. Of great mystery and absent of an extensive mold, resulted attractive for a Fascist youth which was left renegaded in front of their abandonment of the political margin and which also looked to separate themselves from the conservative germen of right-wing breath that had sadly characterized the post-war’s Third Position. The first movement outside of Cuba in order to put Guevara as an icon was the Jeune Europe, founded in 1962 by the ideologue and writer Jean Thiriart. Outside of the common margin under the wide majority of Fascist groups were managed, the Jeune Europe, quite the contrary to its sister organizations, would form bonds with non-aligned nations in the conflict between the West and the East. Such was the case with Syria, China, Irak, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Tito’s Yugoslavia and many others.
Soon, the spectrum of Che would reach the margins of diverse foreign sections of Jeune Europe, such was the case with the Italian regency of the party, until going to direct analysis by Thiriart himself. It is a fact that the Guerrilla Foquism (Foquismo Guerrillero) of Thiriart grouped with the so-called European “National-Communism” had more in common than they differed from with the Argentine revolutionary leader. In 1961, the Florentine section of the Italian Socialist Movement (MSI) (the biggest political faction of the third position after Mussolini’s death), in charge of the reception of Jeune Europe, would give honors to the figure of Che. Other positive mentions would come from the fascist newspaper “L’Orologio” and the National Federation of Combat of the Italian Socialist Republic (FNCRSI), guerilla and underground organization active during the period of black terrorism.
The fascination for the figures of the Cuban Revolution also came to a certain admiration for Fidel, in words of the Italian historian Franco Cardini, ex-militant of the MSI and from Giovane Europa and declared Castrist:
«In one way or another, we all loved him, Fidel. I can testify completely, personally, because then I was a boy who was playing in Third Position ranks: and, against the advice of our fathers and brothers to whom he was a mere “communist”, we too were all crazy for him. He was a man of politics translated into the dimensions of generosity and adventure. He was a little Robin Hood, a little bit of Garibaldi, a little bit of a character out of the Conrad and Melville books. He was a restorer of justice, a mistake mender, someone who stole the rich in order to give it to the poor.»
And it is that the fascist loved more the dead revolutionary than the living dictator. After the dead of Guevara in Bolivia, the Italian composer Pier Francesco Pingitore composed the song “Addio Che” while the journalist Adriano Bolzoni wrote the book “El Che Guevara”, piece which would turn into a film directed by Paul Heusch. Such fascination inside of the neo-fascist circles in the student movements of the same cut would survive up to the coming of the Gunpowder Years, phase of the Cold War in which multiple paramilitary Third Position organizations would pass to social and political revolt in Italy, especially the armed group Terza Posizione, whose founding leader Gabriele Adinolfi wrote many articles praising Che.
The Latin-American Fiume
From the tyranny of Machado to Castro’s revolution. There has always been links between European fascism through the local American nationalism, although Latin-America had been urbanized and isolated from Europe, Europe will always be in the eyes of Latin-America a mother, as Latin-America in the eyes of Europe will always be a son. In periods of revolution, with the boom of social movements, guided by ideologies which overthrew regimes that were being defeated by themselves, had rusted ideologies which inhabited their bronze age while idealized that still were in their golden age. An example of this would be Cuba, that in times of revolution, it was the Fiume of Latin-America.
Given that the Falange of the JONS in Spain were in the middle of civil war in Spain, as is explained in Andres Virga’s Doctorate Thesis called “Fascism and nationalism in Cuba”:
“The period of the Spanish Civil War was the algid point of foreign fascist influence in Cuba, given the influence exercised by the wealthier sectors of the Spanish colony, organized in the Spanish Nationalist Committee, in favor of the nationalist faction in order to raise money and obtain diplomatic recognition. With this, and not without some contrasts, the Foreign Service of the Spanish Falange had established a subsidiary in Cuba, which operated between the Spanish immigrants, with a section of Social Aid, which raised funds to finance assistant projects for poor Spaniards in Cuba and in the fatherland. On the other hand, Italy and Germany were less influential, given the scarce size of their communities independently.”
This thesis includes a definitive characteristic of the dialectic method, which is to sum, subtract and conclude a preliminary hypothesis with preliminary discoveries. As it explains that, according to Virga: “In the case of the history, the experimental moment consists with the collection and analysis of both sources primary and secondary. While the importance of the first cannot be underestimated, the second has always been almost as relevant. On the one hand, the secondary literature provides the readers of a grounded reconstruction of the historical facts, on the other hand, represents a moment of discussion between academics. In fact, the very same existence of a historical debate warns us against the positivist belief that only the fact matters, given that historiography have demonstrated that the subjective factors are in action, as much as in the preliminary election of relevant sources as much as in its criticisms.”
Virga affirms afterwards the aforementioned is true, given that in the first step of scientific investigation, which is the definition of the problem to solve. That despite of reducing to a question, this can be extended and deepened. Having retrospectives towards the original question.
The second step would be to qualify, reprise and examine which ones of all the answers had been chosen by the academic community. Where through historic literature it is established what is known and what is missing for the comprehension of the problem. In order to extend the historic sources and methods which are chosen to reason in an organized manner in front of the question.
Finally, the third step would be to find new historic material to complement with the already presented old historic material.
The thesis retakes what has been said before in order to ask itself the link between Cuban nationalism and European fascism. And their roles in the Cuban revolution after the crisis of liberalism in the Great Depression. When Latin-America was doubting of American interventionism and of Western liberalism. Where both socialists as nationalists repudiated the liberal regime which they want to overthrow, that which carried that very same regime to answer with violent repression or explicit assassinations of revolutionaries.
Another factor would be the Spanish immigration to Cuba after the Spanish Civil War. Which would constitute the 7% of total demographics. Despite that the literary status of ideologies close to the Falange or the JONS was in general very scarce, insomuch as local and foreign historiography. Conservative literature which was presented as an answer in front of the “dangerous, serious and alarming” militant-dissident literature thanks to the nature and proximity to the ideology of social nationalism. Which even today, this anti-fascist matter has not advanced beyond confusions and historical reductions.
It could be that those Spaniards would have come out of war through Cuba, but Cuba would end up entering into that war because of those very same Spaniards. Where those reactionaries with old shirts are dominated by the mild attitude of national-bolshevism or national-communism. Because those were men of conviction, because if you called them Nazis for loving Fascism as a way of life, did not kill their passionate love for Fascism. Only made them embrace these terminologies in order to impulse their pride of having a thousand names, but only one heart. Because they were not of those who spoke of a minority which was now not a minority in any place. Because the biologization of their nature never had been able to happen due to their lack of hierarchy in day-to-day social Darwinism. Where freedom is an impossibility inside of the chaotic heart of anarchism. Because of that we must unite against any danger, not just focus in only one problem. Not for everyone to think in Russian and speak only in English. It is time to sing in this war against the apes without God to who we face. Being Catholics without Jesus, socialists without socialism, the monarchist without a king, the bourgeois without bourgeoisie or the capitalist without money.
The “political freedoms” mean nothing without the liberties or the economic autonomy, being in the individual arena, or in the collective one. In the last one, because in a democratic regime it is those groups of richness the ones who control the press and all the other media for the formation of “public opinion” and of propaganda. To kiss death in her wet lips in order to know what it means to live on. Not having experiences in a life, and that the life to be an extended and deepened experience. To impose our soul to all others, at every hour and in all type of situation. To tread over those who we want to through our willpower and to break the social limitations imposed in front of us. Implacable in combat and generous in victory. We will only sing to our volk, because only from our volk comes our voice.
Although the samples of European fascism (in order to specify, of Spanish Falangism) during the government of Fulgencio Batista were already scarce, given that insofar as the ABC Party from the right, as the Orthodox Party from the left lacked something relevant, which is the revolutionary refutation to all manifestation of democratic bourgeois liberalism and the identitarian search of making the nation reborn. Even the Cuban Constitution of 1940 would not change its foundations, holding still the dependency of the United States. Nor the revolution of 1933 was looking for a Soviet Republic, a Social-Fascism or a National-Syndicalist State as Gustavo Morales said in support of Castro towards the JONSist Falange:
“Commander, we share dreams, enemies and origins; not party, nor system, nor friends”
https://idearionazbolfutur.blogspot.com/2019/12/el-fascismo-como-raiz-y-consecuente-de.html
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