Gustavo Machado – The Pull Of The Land

El Bogotazo II

April 26, 2022April 27, 2022 Richard Barnes

The prior post in this series (El Bogotazo I) reviewed Fidel Castro’s violent career in Cuba during high school and college, including arrests and questioning for suspicion of murder and more. This is important background for today’s post, which picks up in 1948, when the United States, concerned by Communist infiltration throughout Latin America, recommended the creation of the Organization of American States (OAS), an idea which was quickly seized upon by South American countries.

The function of this new organization was to provide a forum for the nations in the American continent to meet to discuss and address regional problems. For example, fast forward to 1962: President Rómulo Betancourt demanded and got the expulsion of Cuba from the OAS given repeated, proven attempts by Fidel Castro to subvert and overthrow the government of Venezuela, including shipments of armaments and men to Communist guerrilla groups operating under Castro. See Spurning Fidel.

The OAS was to be inaugurated during an international conference taking place in Bogota, Colombia in April, 1948. Although one could argue the site was appropriate, nevertheless, one could also argue that the timing was all wrong. Colombia was gearing up to hold presidential elections less than two years later, in 1950, and the Unión Nacional de Izquierda Revolucionaria (UNIR, translated “National Union of the Revolutionary Left”) were vocal in asserting those elections would be won by their candidate, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a radical leftist populist.

Gaitán’s extremist nature was obvious, as witness his frequently repeated motto: “If I advance, follow me, if I retreat, push me, if I betray you, kill me, and if I die, avenge me! To the charge!” His bellicosity was not empty rhetoric. A few months before the OAS conference, he called for a march against the conservative government, “The March of Silence”, to which over 100,000 came, many of them fully armed.

To add to tensions, Rómulo Betancourt, who had assumed the temporary presidency of Venezuela by means of a military coup d’etat, and who was still known for his Communism, which was later abandoned (see Envy), had signaled his support for Gaitán and did not denounce rumors signaling that should the elections be fraudulent (interpreted to mean, should Gaitán lose), Venezuela would support the overthrow of Colombia’s conservative government. Talk about chickens coming home to roost: a little over a decade later, Betancourt led the expulsion of Castro from the OAS for having sought the overthrow of his government.

Opposed to the creation of the OAS, Argentina and the Soviet Union agreed together to sabotage it by surreptitiously financing a conference of Latin American “students” to denounce “Yankee aggression”, meaning the creation of the OAS. This conference would be held simultaneously with the OAS inauguration conference. The Soviet Union and Argentina sought to capitalize on the smoldering animosity between Colombia and Venezuela as well as the anti-American Zeitgeist in Latin American universities.

Argentina emerged from the Second World War as a major economic power. However, Juan Domingo Perón, yet another leftist military leader (see Right-Wing Military for discussion on military leftism) helped overthrow its government in a military coup and was its dictator from 1946 to 1955. He was very anti-American and had close ties with Nazi Germany and later the Soviet Union. Like all good Communists, he took Argentina from economic dominance to massive expropriations and economic decline. Argentina eventually became the poster child of hyperinflation which was eventually broken in the 1990s.

Perón and Stalin were determined to cause chaos in Bogota. They promoted, financed, and ensured the inauguration of the Congreso Estudiantil Latinoamericana (Latin American Student Congress) to be held alongside the assembly creating the OAS. The promotion and organization of the students to attend that congress was headquartered in Havana, Cuba, led by Fabio Grobart. The Congress itself was to be led by Gustavo Machado. And the star attraction of the Congress would be none other than Gaitán himself.

That would be the fuel. The lit matches would be groups of revolutionary Latin American students from all geographic points, directed from Argentina. These would travel separately and converge in Bogota a few days before the inauguration of the OAS. Their objective was to engage in violent street actions and sabotage operations ostensibly to prohibit the establishment of the OAS. The hard-nosed reality behind their purpose was actually to foment chaos.

Among the student groups traveling to Bogota would be a handpicked group of four from Havana, Cuba. And one of the four was Fidel Castro, fully in his element.

Juan Domingo Perón (1895-1974). Similar to Hugo Chavez, Perón was very charismatic and remained popular despite disastrous policies which did great economic harm to Argentina. He was overthrown and exiled in 1955 by a militar coup. Nevertheless, from exile, he used the Argentinian left and the Communist guerrillas to sow widespread chaos and lawlessness, eventually paving the way for his return to power in 1973.

Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) was yet another left-wing military leader who was diligent and successful in creating havoc, chaos, and death in the bloody 20th century. His “alliance” with the United States and England during World War II allowed unprecedented Soviet access to allied military and diplomatic sources which harmed the West and from which she has yet to fully extricate.

Rómulo Betancourt (1908-1981), circa 1945, a time when his sympathies continued to lean heavily to port, creating long-lasting animosity with neighboring Colombia, and throwing fuel to an increasingly volatile environment.

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (1903-1948). “If I advance, follow me, if I retreat, push me, if I betray you, kill me, and if I die, avenge me! To the charge!” He was assassinated in April, 1948.

Caribbean and South American Communism Protevangelium

March 25, 2022March 25, 2022 Richard Barnes

In recent posts we have documented the fact that Communist activity in Cuba and Venezuela did not begin with Fidel Castro, let alone Hugo Chavez.

Communism did not arise in Cuba as a reaction to Batista or in Venezuela in revulsion to Gómez or Pérez Jiménez. Nor did it come because of the “horrors” of the United States’ invasion of Cuba or her “exploitation” of Venezuela (or insert any south-of-the-border country). The usual shibboleths insisted upon by our betters simply will not hold under more than casual examination.

Communistic ideals, preached in the Paris communes in the 19th century predated the Spanish American War as did Lenin’s radicalism and destructive activism as well as his admiration for the French Revolution. His initial hateful attitude was directed to the Russian Tsarist regime. His glee at the outbreak of the First World War had nothing to do with the United States, which entered that cavalcade of horrors towards its end. He wanted war and mayhem because he was convinced it would enable the overthrow of the Tsarist dynasty and the consolidation of power under a Communist regime. In this he was correct.

But the United States did not enter into his fevered dreams at that stage.

Neither did she enter into the fevered imagination of another admirer of the French Revolution: Simón Bolívar. Like Lenin, Bolívar was an acolyte of the Jacobins and, initially, of Napoleon, who was seen as the one who would ensure the Revolution would endure and advance. If one is to judge Bolívar by his fruits, one would inevitably be confronted with the parallels between the bloodshed and mayhem in France and that in South America. One would see that in both cases, the fruit was bitter, and the deleterious effects, long-lasting, persisting to this very day. The power and glory of late 18th and early 19th Century France and South America are no more, and no comeback is on the horizon.

And neither, at the time, vocalized any blame to America for their own disastrous policies and actions. The rationalizations and blame-game came much later by way of their advocates and fellow travelers seeking to justify the savagery and terror as well as their own consolidation of power and overarching control over people: their own and others. (For this, American universities and high schools will One Day give an account.)

So, as for instance, we have the Cuban, Paul Lefargue (Lefargue), one of the most influential Communists who predated the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Lefargue was born in Cuba in 1842 and died in Paris in 1911. He married Karl Marx’ daughter, Jenny, and the two of them were indefatigable in their successful promotion of the Communist virus in France and Spain, from whence it sailed back to the Caribbean and South America where the successful infiltrators, the Polish Comintern agent, Fabio Grobart (1905-1994), and the Venezuelan Comintern agent, Gustavo Machado (1898-1983) (agents) both were enthusiastic carriers, having promoted the objective conditions necessary for its propagation: hatred for the colonial past and for the United States present.

Hugo Chávez was born in 1954. His first overt coup attempt was in 1992. However, to understand him, his actions, and the worldview that motivated them, one must review well over a generation before, as this blog has striven to do.

Fidel Castro was born in 1926. His first overt coup attempt was in 1953 (ignoring the aborted 1947 attempt to overthrow Trujillo in the Dominican Republic). However, here too, one must provide a broader context well beyond Castro, to understand his actions and motivations, setting aside the psychological aspects.

Absent the actions and evangelistic fervor of Paul Lefargue, Fabio Grobart, or Gustavo Machado, there would have been no Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, or Nicolás Maduro regardless of what the United States did or did not do. Special mention must also be accorded to Douglas Bravo, the Venezuelan guerrilla and erstwhile Castro ally, whose long-term strategy of infiltration of the Venezuelan armed forces and the use of Simón Bolívar as a euphemism for Marxist ideology enabled and ensured the rise of Chávez and Maduro and continues to pay dividends to this day. (Gustavo Machado had the same idea but was discovered during the Gómez dictatorship, resulting in his exile.)

Of course, these men did not act alone: the Comintern keenly sought and aided their success in the Americas; women of means and influence as well as United States reporters, bureaucrats, academics, and politicians were devoted disciples and promoters. Whether knowingly or duped is irrelevant; the results were horrible just the same.

Last photo taken of Lenin (1870-1924) in 1923. By this time he had had 3 strokes and was mute.

Early Communist activity in Cuba and Venezuela

March 15, 2022March 15, 2022 Richard Barnes

In our prior post we noted pre-Bolshevik and early post-Bolshevik Communist activity in Cuba and Venezuela (here), concluding with the arrival of Fabio Grobart in Cuba in 1922 and his role, along with Venezuelan Communist Gustavo Machado, in organizing the Cuban Communist Party. Grobart was an excellent organizer, having set up multiple cells with astounding success in infiltrating government, academia, and business. He recruited Fidel when the latter was an adolescent and remained his advisor till his death in 1994.

Machado was from one of the richest families in Venezuela. He was born in 1898 and by 1914 was already agitating against the General Gómez regime, making stratospheric statements about liberty and democracy, all the while seeking a Communist totalitarianism for his country. He entered Harvard and then the Sorbornne in Paris, where he participated in the founding of the French Communist Party.

Grobart and Machado had met in New York at his brother’s wedding — his brother, Eduardo Machado, married the daughter of Elmer Allison, a founding member of the Communist Labor Party of America. Birds of a feather….

Upon Gustavo Machado’s graduation in Paris, he signed up with the Comintern and was summoned by Grobart to join him in Cuba. The tactic they used most successfully in recruiting impressionable young men was fomenting hatred against the United States and presenting Communism as the most effective competing worldview. The hatred was fomented most effectively by using the “racism card” — the gift that keeps on giving.

Fidel Castro was born in 1926 to Ángel Castro and Lina Ruz, the daughter of a family who worked in his hacienda. The elder Castro’s adultery was not amusing to Mrs. Castro, who threatened divorce, causing her husband to resort to chicanery to appear bankrupt, thereby blunting the damages his wronged wife could seek.

Fidel Castro’s mother, Lina Ruz, was steeped in santería and his father is remembered for cruelty, especially his skill with the whip, used against his laborers. “The image of Ángel Castro with a whip in his hands and a gun in his holster yelling orders to the black Haitians on his property … ” was well known. Also, the elder Castro was possessed of a passionate hatred against the Yanquis, for having destroyed the once-great Iberian empire. Nevertheless, working with the americanos, he became one of the wealthiest men in Cuba, owning a 30,000-acre hacienda, with its own railroad and train.

At the time of Fidel Castro’s birth, Grobart and Machado had emigrated to Mexico to avoid prosecution for subversion. From Mexico they continued their activities, with a special focus on Venezuela, on whose behalf they founded the Revolutionary Party of Venezuela, which later became the Communist Party of Venezuela.

In Nicaragua, Augusto Sandino (Prior post) was also active and the Comintern ordered Machado to travel there and offer support, which he promptly did with success. In Venezuela, Communist activity was also in fervent, as “The Generation of 1928”, a group of university students led by Rómulo Betancourt — who would later mature and become anti-Communist — attempted a coup against General Gómez.

Although Julio Mella was assassinated by a fellow Communist in Mexico (prior post), the deed provided the pretext for violent rioting and pillaging by University of Havana “students” which, ultimately, persuaded the United States administration to work against the then president, Gerardo Machado (no relation to Gustavo) and remove him from office in 1933. However, riots persisted until Fulgencio Batista intervened and vowed to work with all parties, including the Communists and the Americans. He evidenced his good intentions by legalizing the Communist Party of Cuba, thereby sealing his and his country’s doom less than two decades later. Few realize the role the Franklin Roosevelt administration played in facilitating the rise of Batista, however inadvertently.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, further ferment occurred with the failed Falke expedition in 1929, a Quixotic attempt to overthrow General Gómez by sea. Although almost comical, it produced bloodshed and wide destruction.

By 1934, with the Communists legalized in Cuba, Fabio Grabart and Gustavo Machado returned to continue their nefarious yet successful activities.

The above narrates chaotic, seemingly unconnected events. They are indeed chaotic, but they are not unconnected. The spirit of totalitarianism feeds on anarchy and seemingly meaningless death, mayhem, panic, and fear. Its promulgators foment such an environment because it prepares their road to power and control.

“Generation of ’28” student Communists. Future president Rómulo Betancourt is in second row, second from left. He later turned against Communism and earned the eternal hatred of Fidel Castro.

Early 20th Century Communist Activity in Cuba and Venezuela

March 9, 2022March 9, 2022 Richard Barnes

“[T]he Venezuelan Army could not be relied upon to protect the country from a Communist takeover because its leadership was too compromised. And many decent Venezuelan soldiers eventually paid a high price for this.”
The “Right Wing” Military

It would appear that most high school and college history teachers and professors are in league to make the study of history appear about as exciting as waiting for water to boil. They teach it as a spattering of dates, places, names, and events; as if history were random chaos and meaningless occurrences. Other educators seem intent on teaching history as an endless litany of crimes against humanity committed by the United States and her European forebears. Underlying this approach is a hatred for Christianity, which is usually obfuscated by identifying her in racial terms.

However, properly taught, history highlights the plan of a sovereign God for the human race. This approach, in turn, helps us appreciate our own constitutional heritage and compares it with how other forms of government have or have not worked, and why. History also helps us understand the intent of those who lived and acted before us, including the fruits they produced, which are often not seen till long after they have departed. For example, this blog has already noted (and will continue to note, as occasion demands) the role that Simón Bolívar has played in our current travails. The impact of one man, for good or ill, will long outlive him.

When it comes to Communism in Venezuela and in Cuba, one has to go back in history at least to the French Revolution and its virulent anti-Christian fervor — which fervor actually begins in the Garden of Eden: “Ye shall be as gods”. Lenin was a devoted student of the French Revolution as witness 130 years later when he said that the Jacobins ceased the terror too soon, “We will not repeat that error.”

The 19th Century revolutions which convulsed South America and the Caribbean were children of the 18th Century French Revolution. And both bore like fruit: mass executions, unspeakable tortures, unimagined repression, and seas of blood. And those pandemoniums spawned revolutionary, hate-filled descendants who became active in the early 20th century and are with us to this day.

One of the most influential Communists who predated the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was Paul Lafargue, born in Cuba in 1842. Although he lived most of his life in France, he spent time in London where he frequently visited Karl Marx and married the latter’s daughter, Jenny. In France husband and wife were tireless in their propagation of the Communist faith. They committed suicide jointly (“hypodermic of cyanid acid”) in 1911. The suicide note ended with, “Long live Communism! Long live the international socialism!”

One of the speakers at their funeral was Vladimir Lenin who later told his wife, “If one cannot work for the Party any longer, one must be able to look truth in the face and die like the Lafargues.” The utter, cold, atheistic pitilessness of the adherents to this faith must never be minimized, let alone ignored. For stomach turning evidence of the practical, real life manifestations of their theories, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, would be a good place to start.

As for the founder’s life, Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals is a must read. Michael Bakunin, an extreme ideologue who was not so blind as to understand what he saw in Marx, wrote, “He does not believe in God but he believed much in himself and makes everyone serve himself. His heart is not full of love but of bitterness and he has very little sympathy for the human race.”

That describes the man to whose theories the Cuban Paul Lafargue devoted his life, never pausing to care that such a man’s fruits cannot possibly be good. On the contrary the Lafargue’s were very successful in promoting Communism in France and in Spain. And their fruit was the propagation and exportation of Marxist ideology across the Atlantic to Venezuela and Cuba.

In Venezuela, among the first Communists was Gustavo Machado, born in 1898; a man of action who dedicated his life to spreading the faith throughout the Caribbean. Machado blindly believed Marx’s aphorism, “Violence is the midwife of history.”

On the other side of the globe, the newly minted Comintern, created by the Soviet Union to promote Communist revolution globally, assigned Fabio Grobart to do just that in Mexico, Venezuela, and Cuba. “The first two countries had petroleum. Cuba occupied a strategically political geographical position in the Caribbean from which shipments to the United States could be controlled.”

Grobart arrived in Havana in 1922 and played a critical role in the development of the alien philosophy in Cuba. He arrived disguised as a poor tailor, a war refugee, and surreptitiously began recruiting university students amenable to leftist blandishments. In one of his first reports to the Comintern, Grobart affirmed that “objective conditions” existed in Cuba for a revolution, given the fall in sugar prices after the war and, most importantly, an easily provoked anti U.S. attitude among some university young people because of the Platt Amendment. He eventually worked with three of these, Julio Mella, Antonio Guiteras, and Enrique Lister, along with Venezuelan, Gustavo Machado, to found the Cuban Communist Party.

Decades later, Grobart discovered and mentored a young Fidel Castro.

Venezuela would have to wait a few years, since General Gómez understood the dangers of Communism and opposed it with an iron fist which the early agents had not been able to avoid. However, Gustavo Machado studied in France where he helped found the French Communist Party. He then moved to Cuba where he taught Julio Mella among many others. In 1926 he moved to Mexico as Cuba’s regime was onto the Communist threat. Machado also took his virus to Nicaragua where he collaborated with Augusto César Sandino, for whom the Nicaraguan Communists are named (Sandinistas).

Julio Mella was assassinated in Mexico by Communist Italian, Vitorrio Vidali, who also assassinated Trotsky. Antonio Guiteras was ambushed and killed by the Cuban army. Enrique Lister kept the faith till he met his reward in 1994 in Spain. Fabio Grobart also died in Cuba in 1994, advising Fidel Castro till the very end. Gustavo Machado died in Venezuela in 1983, having also participated in the founding of the Communist Party of Venezuela. Vittorio Vidali, one of the founders of the Communist Party of Italy, eventually returned to Trieste and remained there as leader of the Communist Party after it was annexed to Italy. He was a member of Italy’s parliament.

(Fidel Castro’s bald-faced opportunism is seen in how he refers to Mella as a “martyr” to the revolution, fully confident that very few know he was actually killed by another Communist.)

The shadows of these men are long in the Americas. Some might consider that to mean we are close to sundown. I prefer to think in terms of a new dawn. But for that to be so, we must seek to better understand.