The Mexican Communist Party ( es, Partido Comunista Mexicano, PCM) was a communist party in Mexico. It was founded in 1917 as the Socialist Workers' Party (, PSO) by

Manabendra Nath Roy Manabendra Nath Roy (born Narendra Nath Bhattacharya, better known as M. N. Roy; 21 March 1887 – 25 January 1954) was an Indian revolutionary, radical activist and political theorist, as well as a noted philosopher in the 20th century. Roy ...

, a left-wing Indian revolutionary. The PSO changed its name to the ''Mexican Communist Party'' in November 1919. It was outlawed in 1925 and remained illegal until 1935, during the presidency of the leftist

Lázaro Cárdenas Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (; 21 May 1895 – 19 October 1970) was a Mexican army officer and politician who served as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. Born in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, to a working-class family, Cárdenas joined the M ...

. The PCM saw in the left wing of the nationalist regime that emerged from the

Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...

a progressive force to be supported—i.e. Cárdenas and his allies. In the end, the PCM disappeared after helping form the Party of the Democratic Revolution, a split from the PRI led by the son of Lázaro Cárdenas, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. The PCM later lost its registration in 1946 because it did not meet the new requirements of at least 30,000 registered members in at least 21 of Mexico's 31 states and the Federal District. It is not clear whether the party was unable to recruit enough members or whether, fearing repression, it refused to turn membership rolls over to the Secretary of the Interior, then in charge of elections. Over the next 30 years, the party had some minor influence in the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) and among the

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the in ...

of Mexico City. In the mid-1960s the

U.S. State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...

estimated the party membership to be approximately 50,000 (0.28% of the working-age population of the country).Benjamin, Roger W.; Kautsky, John H..
Communism and Economic Development
', in The American Political Science Review, Vol. 62, No. 1. (March 1968), p. 122. In 1976 the party nominated Valentín Campa as its presidential candidate, competing (unofficially) against José López Portillo. Following the electoral reform of 1977 that lowered the barrier for parties to get on the ballot, the PCM regained temporary registration for the 1979 mid-term elections. After its poor showing and a two decade-long period of moderation during which it adopted a " Eurocommunist" position, the PCM merged with three other

far-left Far-left politics, also known as the radical left or the extreme left, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single definition. Some scholars consider ...

political parties A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or pol ...

in November 1981 and became the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM). Most members of the PSUM then merged with somewhat more moderate left-wing groups to form the Mexican Socialist Party (PMS) in 1987. The PMS never competed in national elections alone, having joined the National Democratic Front (FDN)—a split from the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI)—to support the presidential bid of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1988. What was the PMS was then absorbed into the newly formed Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1989.

Secretaries-General of the Mexican Communist Party

*1959–1963 Collective Secretariat of the Mexican Communist Party *1963–1981 Arnoldo Martínez Verdugo

Secretaries-General of the Mexican Communist Party

References

Further reading