International Secretariat (Trotskyists) and the Formation of the Trotskyist Movement in Latin America

Created by supporters of L. D. Trotsky at the beginning of the 30s, the International Left Opposition (ILO), as its ranks expanded at the expense of dissident groups in the communist parties, needed a coordinating and leading body of the emerging Trotskyist movement. This was the International Secretariat of the ILO, which took upon itself the labor of rallying and political orientation of Trotskyist groups and parties all over the world. This work is an attempt to study the activities of the Secretariat in the Latin American area, based on the available documents of the RGASPI (H. Sneevliet Fund). The author analyzes and proves his hypothesis of the failures of international Trotskyism in its original ideological and political heterogeneity, which came into conflict with the strict centralization and ideological intolerance inherited from Bolshevism and the Comintern. The International Secretariat was unable to give impetus to the unification of the scattered Trotskyist groups into a single political trend, dooming it to a marginal existence.