Letter to Mandel (1976)
The letter we present here, signed by Hugo Bressano (Nahuel Moreno) and addressed to Ernest Mandel, the principal leader of the Fourth International (Unified Secretariat) — to which the Morenoist current belonged at the time, organised as an internal faction alongside the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) of the United States — is one of many exchanges between the two leaders. The significance of this letter lies in the fact that it was written less than a month after the military coup led by Videla, Massera, and Agosti on 24 March 1976, in Argentina.
This military dictatorship was the bloodiest in Argentine history, despite the characterisations by some sectors — such as the (Stalinist) Communist Party — which described Videla as a “democratic general”. The unleashed repression did not target only guerrilla groups; it also targeted the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (PST) and its militants, the workers’ and popular vanguard, and even leaders of the bourgeois political parties. As a result of the repression suffered before and during the dictatorship, the PST lost more than one hundred comrades who were murdered or disappeared, not counting the political prisoners. One of the first measures decreed by the military junta was the banning of the PST. The activities of all other political parties, including the Communist Party, were frozen.
In this letter to Mandel, Moreno provides an initial description and characterisation of the situation that unfolded with the coup. As he states in The Tiger of Pobladora, “Our analysis in that letter to Mandel is correct. Yes, I admit that there were conjunctural and tactical errors but within the framework of a correct analysis” (p. 62; available at nahuemoreno.org).
Relations with Mandel would break down in August 1979 when the USec supported the Ortega government in Nicaragua and accepted the expulsion of the Simón Bolívar Brigade.