Think History, Change the World. Comrades and their Journal: Historia y Sociedad (1965-1970)

Abstract

Journals are sites for the march of ideas, allowing theoretical and scientific concepts to travel from one culture to another, one continent to another, and even one historical period to the next. This is the case of the journal published by Mexican communists entitled Historia y Sociedad. In its first phase (1965-1970), it reflected efforts to conceive Mexico and Latin America as subjects of study for Marxist theory and as a battlefront in the anti-imperialist struggle. This article analyzes the configuration of a field of transfer between socialist nations and Latin America through Historia y Sociedad, and a - fundamentally theoretical- project devoted to studying Mexico and Latin America from a materialist perspective, the Soviet question, and movements of the so-called New Left. The journal was not a simple propaganda vehicle and, although its profile was clearly pro-Soviet, its content does not indicate any absolute, ideological, cultural, or intellectual dependence. To the contrary, it took advantage of its relations with communist parties to articulate a network of alliances that sought to configure a Latin American current of critical Marxism from Mexico