The Comintern, the Communist Party of Mexico, and the “Sandino Case”

This chapter analyzes the complex relations among the Communist International, its national section in Mexico, and the Nicaraguan anti-imperialist movement that Augusto César Sandino led, in order to inquire into the causes of its creation and the breakdown of their alliance. Practically unknown Comintern documents housed in Moscow, as well as Sandino’s correspondence kept in Mexican archives, make it possible to recover the little-known history of the relations within the “triangle” formed by Sandino, the left, and the Mexican government in the second half of the 1920s. By showing that one of the reasons for the communists’ interest in Sandino was broadening their influence through frontist tactics, the chapter reviews those relations and explains the causes of the breakup between the Comintern and Sandino’s movement. Finally, the chapter concludes that Moscow and the Mexican communists were unable to maintain an adequate level of interaction with Sandino and that personal conflicts exacerbated the situation.