Transnational Communism across the Americas offers an innovative approach to the study of Latin American communism. It convincingly illustrates that communist parties were both deeply rooted in their own local realities and maintained significant relationships with other communists across the region and around the world. The essays in this collection use a transnational lens to examine the relationships of the region’s communist parties with each other, their international counterparts, and non-communist groups dedicated to anti-imperialism, women’s rights, and other causes. Topics include the shifting relationship between Mexican communists and the Comintern, Black migrant workers in the Caribbean, race relations in Cuba, Latin American communists in the USSR, Luís Carlos Prestes in Brazil, the U.S. and Puerto Rican communist and Nationalist parties, peace activist networks in Latin America, communist women in Guatemala, transnational student groups, and guerrillas in El Salvador.

Contributors: Marc Becker, Jacob Blanc, Tanya Harmer, Patricia Harms, Lazar Jeifets, Victor Jeifets, Adriana Petra, Margaret M. Power, Frances Peace Sullivan, Tony Wood, Kevin A. Young, and Jacob Zumoff

Marc Becker teaches history at Truman State University. He is the author of The CIA in Ecuador. Margaret Power is professor emeritus of history at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is the author of Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964–1973. Tony Wood teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of Russia without Putin: Money, Power, and the Myths of New Cold War. Jacob A. Zumoff teaches at New Jersey City University. He is the author of The Red Thread: The Passaic Textile Strike.

Introduction: From the National to the Transnational

Marc Becker, Margaret M. Power, Tony Wood, and Jacob Zumoff

Part I: Bolshevism and the Americas (1917-43)

1. The Comintern, the Mexican Communist Party, and the “Sandino Case”: The History of a Failed Alliance, 1927-30

Lazar Jeifets and Victor Jeifets

2. Black Caribbean Migrants and the Labor Movement and Communists in the Greater Caribbean in the 1920s and 1930s

Jacob A. Zumoff

3. The “Negro Question” in Cuba, 1928-36

Frances Peace Sullivan

4. Semicolonials and Soviets: Latin American Communists in the USSR, 1927-36

Tony Wood

5. A Relationship Forged in Exile: Luís Carlos Prestes and the Brazilian Communist Party, 1927-35

Jacob Blanc

Part II: Latin American Communism in the Cold War Frame (1945-89)

6. Latin America and the Communist World in the Early 1950s: The Networks of Soviet Pacifism and Latin American Anti-Imperialism

Adriana Petra

7. Breaking the Silence: Communist Women, Transnationalism, and the Alianza Femenina Guatemalteca, 1947-54

Patricia Harms

8. A Political and Transnational Ménage a Trois: The Communist Party USA, the Puerto Rican Communist Party, and the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, 1934-45

Margaret M. Power

9. Transnational Youth and Student Groups in the 1950s

Marc Becker

10. Our Vietnamese Compañeros: How Salvadoran Guerrillas Adapted the “People’s War” Strategy

Kevin A. Young

Afterword: Remapping the Past

Tanya Harmer

Bibliography

Contributors

Index