The Doctrinal Core of the Socialist Program: Secularism – “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”

1. The Rights of Man in the Self-Managing Society: to Become Informed, Dialogue and Vote

We have already seen that the SP plans to educate the citizen from the cradle to the grave, molding his soul at work and leisure, in culture and art, and influencing even the arrangement of his own home. How will this affect individual freedom?

At this point what was said in the beginning about the relationship between and liberty and equality in the trilogy of the French revolution is confirmed. Indeed, if liberty means having nothing and no one above oneself, and consequently doing anything one wishes – for this is the radical and anarchical sense of the term – the self-managing citizen is only apparently free. But at no moment of his life will he be really free.

The self-managing citizen will find the realm of his purely individual choices, in which he manifests the unique and unmistakable character of his personality, ever more restricted. Both at work and at leisure he will be free to become informed, to dialogue and to vote. But decisions will normally be made by the community. His freedom will be limited to saying what he wishes in public debates and to voting as he likes. As a voter, he is free to choose names and cast his ballot in the decision-making assemblies As an individual, he is pushed by the Program to the very limits of nonbeing.35 This is not done directly by the State, but rather by a social fabric or mechanism comprising business and non-business self-managing groups.

The real power structure in the self-managing society starts out from the assemblies, moves up through the committees and other agencies of society until it finally reaches the State – that is, until self-management heads for the final dissolution of the State and the distribution of its powers to small, autonomous communities.36 The worker could envision the power structure in the shape of a diamond. At one end is his own company, in which he is a speaking and voting molecule. At the opposite end is the State. But the State would be at the top of the diamond and the workers’ assembly at the bottom. We are not suggesting here that self-management, once established, would be a mere façade behind which the State would manipulate everything. That could happen. But we are not discussing the deformations that a self-managed society could suffer once established. We are only considering what the genuine socialist mirage would be if applied in its entirety.

So, it would be consistent with the Program to suppose that: a) Once the self-managing society is established, the powers of the State will “gradualistically” wither; b) But in establishing it by law, the State is omnipotent. As long as the law serves as the foundation and rule of that society, it will live by virtue of the omnipotence of that act which organized and established it. And at least as long as the State exists, it may at any time abrogate or expand this act as it wishes; c) In the societies of the West, the State does not exercise such ample powers. Countries in both East and West have generally adopted the principle of the sovereignty of universal suffrage. But in the West this sovereignty is self restrained by the recognition of greater or lesser individual liberties. In the East the principle of government by the people has no practical value, and it is clear that it will have none in the self-managing society, where the liberty of the individual is restricted to speaking and voting in the assemblies.

The State decides everything in a self-managing society. It annihilates the family and supplants it. It allots to the self-managing molecules the tatters of rights that will remain for them in society. It has unlimited power to legislate on all self-managing undertakings, whether they be businesses, schools, or what have you. It teaches. It forms. It levels. It fills one’s leisure time In short, it installs itself in the mind of the individual. All that is left to him is his condition as a robot whose only signs of life are becoming informed, dialoging, and voting. This trilogy would be the concrete implementation of the other: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

In a word, the self-managing society has its own morality and its own philosophy,37 which the robotized worker will inhale even in the air he breathes.

2. Religion and religions in the Program

The self-managing society does not confine itself to eliminating or restricting the individual’s liberties but, as we have seen, it even seeks to form his very conscience. These considerations naturally prompt one to ascertain to what extent the Program mutilates the rights of Religion: a) One could say that every word, every letter of the Program is laicist. There is no thought of God in it. According to the program, the source of all rights is not God but man and society. It entirely ignores the next life, Revelation, and the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ.”38 b) Religion, or rather, religions – as far as the Program is concerned, since it does not recognize the supernatural character of any of them – are merely social realities which have always existed and still exist. They are realities extrinsic to the self-managing society that clash head-on with its laicism.

This leads one to foresee that the self-managing society, which tends to destroy everything extrinsic and contradictory to it, will work to extinguish religions “gradualistically.” True, the Program guarantees freedom of worship.

But this freedom is restricted to a bare minimum in a world opposed to the Church in everything that society conceives and implements regarding the economy, social organization, political totalitarianism, perpetuation of the human species, the family, and even man himself.39

The Program implies such a global vision of society that it necessarily presupposes – although not explicitly – a global vision of the Universe. For the Universe is, in a certain way, the context of society. A global, laicist and self-sufficient society corresponds to an analogously global, laicist and self-sufficient universe.

In turn, a vision of the Universe implies either an affirmation or a denial of God, a denial perfectly real even though expressed by silence.40 The Program is therefore “atheist,” without God.

It is licit to ask whether or not the Program’s silence about God is merely a “gradualist” stage leading to some kind of a plausibly evolutionist pantheism.

This reference to a possible pantheism is made because the Program attributes a kind of redemptive function to society as a whole. There the individual is rescued from the shipwreck into which his very condition as an individual puts him. It is the path to the solution of all problems.41

The reference to evolutionism is, in turn, related to the arbitrary, anti-natural and artificial character of socialist reformism, and even more closely related to the fundamental relativism that it holds.42 On the basis of very obscure philosophical concepts with whose influence it is nevertheless thoroughly permeated, the Program denies most fundamental principles of the natural order (such as the distinction between the mission of men and women, the family, marital authority, patria potestas, as well as the principle of authority at all levels and in all fields, private property and the right of inheritance). The Program, warring against the work of the Creator, aims at reconstructing a human society diametrically opposed to the God-given nature of man.

All of this presupposes that nature, which the SP holds to be indefinitely malleable, can be molded by man as he wishes. This is suggestive of evolutionism.

3. The Attitude of the French Episcopate Toward the SP

In view of all this, we as Catholics cannot fail to express our astonishment – an astonishment that will be shared by all nations until the end of time once the present confusion in people’s minds is dispelled – that the French Bishops’ Conference uttered not a single word of warning about the country’s peril in elections capable of bringing the mentors and leaders of the SP to power and threatening the Church and the still living remnants of Christendom. Indeed, in the two statements that it released (February 10 and June 1, 1981), the Standing Committee of the French Episcopate expressed its neutrality toward all candidates, affirmed that it did not “wish to influence the personal decisions” of French Catholics, and made an appeal for the electoral campaign to take place in a climate of “respect for men and groups, including adversaries” (Statement of February 10, 1981).43

Who will be the American Walesa?

In their statement of June 1, entitled “On the Occasion of the Parliamentary Elections,” the bishops pointed out that “it is proper to a democratic society” to choose between “opposing” projects and programs. Thus, the Catholic Church was presenting “her own reflections on the near future of our society not to support a group or to oppose anyone, but to draw attention to the essential values of the personal and communitarian life of men.” In so doing, the bishops wanted to contribute “to the dignity and generosity of the debate.”44

This attitude of the bishops is consistent with the document “For a Christian Practice of Politics,” which they approved almost unanimously in Lourdes in 1972 (cf. “Politique, Eglise et Foi” in Le Centurion, Lourdes, 1972, pp. 75110). In this document the prelates state that “French Catholics today can be found through the whole fan of the political chessboard [sic]” (op. cit., p. 80). That is to say, in the SP and CP as well. In face of this monumental fact, the bishops merely affirm the legitimacy of pluralism and comment with obvious sympathy on the commitment of “numerous Christians” to the “collective movement of liberation” animated by Marxist-inspired class struggle, which they do not condemn clearly.45

In view of these precedents, the fact – astonishing in itself – that for ten years now socialist doctrine has been penetrating with impunity into the fold entrusted by the Holy Ghost to the zeal and vigilance of the French Shepherds, is no longer a matter of great surprise. Now, the votes of Catholics who have strayed into the ranks of the socialist electorate contributed considerably to the victory of self-management in the recent elections.46

Considering these facts – and there are so many more in today’s world – one better understands how true it is that the Holy Church finds Herself as Paul VI noted, in a mysterious process of “self-destruction” (Allocution of 12/7/68) and penetrated by the “smoke of Satan” (Allocution of 6/29/72).

35 “One of the foundations of the self-managing socialist society is the recognition of small social groups and consequently of collective interests very close to the individual and easy to grasp (family, shop, school class, association, neighborhood, etc.). Decisions must be made her as well; the existence of community interest must definitely be translated into a procedure. This is why the socialists…affirm that in the last resort legitimacy can only be derived, tomorrow as today, from universal suffrage. Common good and democracy are not at war with each other. The common good simply cannot be defined except by democracy” (Program, p. 131).

36 Just like the French socialists, the communists have the self-management of society as their final goal. In the preamble of the Russian constitution one reads: “The supreme objective of the Soviet State is the building of a communist classless society in which communist social self-management will develop” (Constitution – Ley Fundamental de la Union de Republicas Socialistas Sovieticas, October 7, 1977, Editorial Progreso, Moscow, 1980, p. 5).

There is, therefore, no doctrinal discrepancy between communists and socialists on this point. A discrepancy appears only in their conceptions of the disappearance of the State.

The Institute of Philosophy of Soviet Russia’s Academy of Science define the role of the State in the period of transition to self-managing society as follows:

“The development of socialist democracy strengthens the power of the State an at the same time paves the way for its extinction along with a step to a social regime in which society may be run without the need for a political apparatus or state coercion…

“Now then, to call for a more rapid disappearance of the State on the pretext of fighting bureaucratism and to proclaim, at the same time, the need to renounce state power amounts, in the [present] conditions of socialism while the capitalist world still exists (and what is even more grave, during the period of transition to socialism), to disarming the workers in the face of their class enemy.

“The process of the extinction of the State cannot be accelerated by any kind of artificial measures. The State will not be abolished by anyone, rather it will gradually fade away when political power ceases to be necessary. This will be possible when the socialist State fulfills its historical mission, but it requires, in turn, the strengthening of political power. Hence there is no opposition between solicitude to strengthen the Socialist State and the perspectives of its extinction; they are two sides of the same coin.

“From the standpoint of dialectics, the problem of the extinction of the state is the problem of the transformation, form the socialist State, into the communist self-management of society Some social functions analogous to those now fulfilled by the State will subsist under communism. But their character and their application will not be the same as they are in the current stage of development.

“The extinction of the State means: 1) the disappearance of the necessity of state coercion and of the organs applying it; 2) the transformation of the organizational, economic and educational-cultural functions now fulfilled by the State into social functions; 3) the integration of all citizens into the running of public affairs and the disappearance of the need for public agencies.

“When all traces of the division of society into classes have been erased, when communism has definitively triumphed, and when the forces of the old world opposed to communism leave the scene, the necessity for the State will also disappear. Society will no longer need special contingents of armed men to guarantee social order and discipline. Then, as Engels has said, the State machinery can be put into the museum of antiquities with the spinning wheel and the bronze ax” (INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY, ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF THE USSR, Fundamentos de la Filosofia Marxista, F. V. KONSTANTINOV, Editorial Grijalbo, Mexico, 2nd, ed., 1965, pp. 538-539).

37 “One does not adhere to socialism without a certain view of man, of what he wants, of what he is able to do, of what he must do, of his rights and of his necessities” (Program, p. 10).

38 “The Socialist Party does not aim at self-gratification or at bearing witness to the beyond but rather at transforming the structures of society” (Program, p. 33).

“The explanation of society…is one thing, the ultimate destiny of man another,” the Program affirms, as if anything could be explained without considering its end.

But, under the guise of consolation, the program slickly adds, “to the degree that clericalism is erased, anti-clericalism loses its justification. This is an enrichment of laicism a not a precious acquisition of the socialist struggle over the last few years” (Program, p. 29). In fact, more than clericalism, it is the clergy and the Church that are thus “erased” in the Program.

39 Catholics are frequently more sensitive to transgressions of the Law of God having to do with the institution of the family than to those respecting the institution of private property. So it is possible that some Catholic reader more or less complacent with the idea of self-management in business will try to imagine an application of the Program strictly limited to that field without touching the individual, the family, or education. But this would be an illusion, because the natural correlation between family and property makes such a separation impossible. The mere reading of this work makes it clear that business self-management as described in the Program is inseparable from its philosophical and moral foundations. Once accepted, these conditions necessarily affect all the aspects of human life.

40 The pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes contains a quite synthetic description of modern atheism with various nuances. From this standpoint, it is useful to quote it here: “The word atheism is used to signify things that differ considerably from one another. Some people expressly deny the existence of God. Others maintain that man cannot make any assertion whatsoever about him. Still others admit only such methods of investigation as would make it seem quite meaningless to ask questions about God. Many, trespassing beyond the boundaries of the positive sciences, either contend that everything can be explained by the reasoning process used in such sciences, or, on the contrary, hold that there is no such thing as absolute truth. With others it is their exaggerated idea of man that causes their faith to languish – they are more prone, it would seem, to affirm man than to deny God…There are also those who never inquire about God; religion never seems to trouble or interest them at all, nor do they see why they should bother about it” (apud. Vatican Council II, The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, Scholarly Resources, Inc., Wilmington, Del. 1975, pp. 918-919).

41 “To our understanding, collective is synonymous with grandeur, beauty, profundity and the joy of living” (Program, p. 157).

42 “The whole movement of science fits into a permanent questioning of the postulates of the preceding phase” (Program, p. 135).

“In our view there could be no knowledge constituted once and for all. Since it implies rectification and even continuous reconstruction of reality as we see it, knowledge can never be said to have been attained and must constantly be questioned” (Program, pp. 136-137).

43 This position of evasive neutrality toward the elections was emphatically reaffirmed by Msgr. Jean-Marie Lustiger, the new Archbishop of Paris, when speaking about an open letter addressed to him. In this letter, published in Le Monde (May 10 and 11, 1981) a Catholic Action organization (the JEĆ, Catholic Student Youth) asked him to confirm or deny reports that he supposedly had taken a personal position in favor of the outgoing president. In his statement, the Archbishop expressed shock at the report, which he formally denied, and affirmed his agreement with the position expressed by the Episcopate as a whole on February 10 (cf. La Croix, 5/12/81).

In the context of these declarations, some vague promises of combative action made by Msgr. Jean Honoré, Bishop of Evreux and President of the Episcopal Commission for the Educational World, appear rather inadequate. He said that the Catholic schools are not the “priority of priorities” for the Church. The bishops wish to reserve their words “for the day when the Catholic school will be in danger” (Informations Catholiques Internationales, no. 563, June 1981).

44 For the sake of brevity, the full text of the statements of the French bishops on the presidential and parliamentary elections are not reproduced here. A leaflet reproducing their complete text, transcribed from La Documentation Catholique, no. 1803, 3/1/81, p. 248 and from Le Monde, 6/3/81, respectively, with an English translation, was available for $1.00 postpaid from the American TFP.

45 In this document, the French bishops state: “Our pastoral ministry makes us witnesses to the evangelical imperative that animates numerous Christians in all social milieux, and to the hope which moves them as they participate in the collective movement of liberation, with those with whom they are or perceive themselves to be solitary in their daily lives. The bishops of the Commission of the Workers World, among others, have expressed this in the working document in which they inform us about the first phase of their conversation with workers who have opted for socialism” (op. cit., p. 88).

“Today, a new fact has come to the fore. Christians in diverse milieux – blue collar workers, farm workers, intellectuals – are expressing their experience with a vocabulary of ‘class struggle’

“Obviously, this analysis in terms of ‘class struggle’ has helped many militants to define with more precision the structural mechanisms of injustice and inequality. We must also note that, to a greater or lesser degree, they do this taking as reference point elements of the Marxist analysis of class struggle.

“An effort of lucidity and discernment is required so that their ambition of achieving a more just and fraternal society not be degraded along the way, and so that all along the way it may benefit from positive impulses derived from the evangelical meaning of man” (op. cit. p. 89).

46 The well-known progressivist Catholic magazine Informations Catholiques Internationales (no 563, June 1981) affirms: “Everyone agrees: one-fourth of those considered to be practicing Catholics are in favor of Mitterrand, and three-fourths are for Giscard …The fact that one out of four of those Catholics voted for Mitterrand, and is of decisive political importance. Many more than a million votes went to swell the camp of the left. Now…if only half of these Catholics had voted for the outgoing president, it would have been enough to reelect him. François Mitterrand owes his success to, among other causes, the movement that led part of the Catholic to the left.”

Note that the magazine singles out only the “practicing Catholics.” One should ask how many baptized by non-practicing Catholics who consider themselves Catholics could have been influence by a firm and enlightening word form the bishops and this have refused to vote for the socialist candidate.

In pointing out the reason for Mitterand’s victory, prestigious organs of the press, whose testimony in this mater is not suspect, comment that the most significant advance of the left took place in the Catholic provinces of Western, Eastern and Central France. (cf. La Croix, semi-official organ of the Archdiocese of Paris, 5/12/81; L’Express, 5/5-11/81 and 5/12-15/81, and even L’Humanité, official organ of the Communist Party, 5/15/81).

Furthermore, as the Program joyfully notes, Catholics not only vote for the SP but even join it, apparently without any major problems of conscience: “The Socialist Party has always aimed to gather, without distinction of philosophical or religious belief all workers who find in socialism their ideal and their principles. So there are more and more Christians who not only join the Party but adopt socialist [methods of] analysis themselves without thereby renouncing their faith…” (Program, p. 29).

This fact, by the way, is public and notorious in France.

Lest there be any doubt about the meaning of the verb “join” in the citation above, Mitterrand makes it clear in his Conversations avec Guy Claisse:

“Militant Catholics are not a cover-up for the Socialist Party. They are at home [in it]. There are very many of them in the Party…

“– Are they among the grassroots militants?

“– Yes. But also in the national leadership and in the local executive boards” (François Mitterrand, Ici et Maintenant – Conversations avec Guy Claisse, Fayard, Paris, 1980, p. 12).

Therefore, the bishops’ failure to enlighten these Catholics is entirely inexplicable.

Finally, we must note that this openness of Catholics to socialism is not something new, but dates from the middle of the last century, as Mitterrand himself is pleased to register in his above-mentioned book:

“From the beginning, my efforts have been to make Christians faithful to their faith, recognize themselves in our Party, that the multiple sources of socialism may flow towards the same river. In the middle of the nineteenth century, except for the vanguard of people like Lamennais, Ozanam, Lacordaire, and Arnaud, French Catholics belonged to the conservative camp. The Church, shaken by the first French Revolution, concerned about the progress of the Voltairian spirit, had closed ranks alongside the power of the bourgeoisie, the power of a narrow-minded, egotistic social class, ferocious when necessary…

“With Christ obscured, the Church an accomplice, there was no way out but to wage a manly struggle to achieve, here and now, a state of affairs delivering you from every, misery and humiliation. By a natural inclination, a majority of the socialists adopted theories that rejected the Christian explanation…

“A deepening rationalism and the rise of Marxism accentuated in the proletariat the rejection of the Church and her teaching. Socialism, which was made without her, began to be made against her. But also, what a silence of Christianity! What a long silence!…

“Nevertheless, at the end of the century, Leo XIII in Rome and the Sillon among us began the turnaround. The First World War accelerated the evolution. The camaraderie of the front, death everywhere and for all, the country in danger, taught everyone to recognize in each other the colors they subscribed to, even if their laicist or religious translations remained different, if not antagonistic. The initial appeal again rose up from the depths of the Church and the Christian world. The personalism of Emmanuel Mounier finished giving Christian socialism its title of nobility” (op. cit., pp. 14-15).

In the face of this historical panorama painted so much in accordance with socialist taste and style, but unfortunately not lacking many elements of truth, one would expect the French bishops to imitate the mettle and courage of Saint Pius X, who in his Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique of August 25, 1910, vehemently condemned the Sillon movement (cf. footnote 4) so reverently recalled by Mitterrand.

Is this Interference in France’s Internal Affairs?

The elections of a chief of state and representatives to the Chamber of Deputies are internal affairs of each country. Freedom to do this without foreign interference is a fundamental element of its sovereignty. So, an objection could be raised: How can thirteen associations, twelve of them from countries other than France, judge that they should publish throughout the West a commentary whose essential theme is the recent French elections with the object of fostering the choice of a strategy in view of their outcome?

This objection is conceivable only in someone unaware of the full scope of the Socialist Program, of the nature of the French SP and of the inevitable and extensive repercussion of the socialist victory in the political and cultural life of the various nations of the West.

The Program actually states that one of its goals is interference in the internal politics, and more particularly in the class warfare, of other countries. Therefore, since the SP has risen to power, we must fear that it will use the resources of the French State and France’s international influence to achieve this goal.47 Thus, for the twelve foreign associations to take a position alongside the esteemed and promising French TFP on the goals and action of the SP in a document published in France and in their respective countries, is not to interfere in exclusively internal affairs of another country but rather to take precautionary action to safeguard the future of their own countries. By publishing this pronouncement, the TFPs and similar associations of the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela, in conjunction with the TFP of France, are doing nothing more than exercising their legitimate right of self-defense.

It is therefore appropriate for associations from twelve Western countries to address their fellow-countrymen, alerting them to the problems that can be expected from the rise of the French Socialist Party. It is also proper for these associations, with the support of their French brothers-in-ideal, to make the French people aware of the internal complications into which Socialist Program’s predominantly ideologico-imperialistic approach to international politics may entangle them.

Providence has conferred on France such a position among the nations of the West that issues and debates arising there are, more often than not, related to universal problems. The French genius, agile in coming to grips with problems, lucid in thinking, brilliant in expression, has shown in numerous historical junctures that it knows how to discuss these issues on a level that relates them to the universal thoughts of the human mind. Thus, in dealing with France’s current situation, the societies signing this Message clearly realize that many issues presently in varying stages of fermentation in their own countries may be hastened, or even thrust, to a critical point as a consequence of the worldwide repercussion of what may happen in France in the coming months (cf. Chap. 1, no. 4). This is one more reason to affirm that self-managing socialism represents a grave threat not only to France but also to the whole world.

47 “There could be no socialist program for France alone. The dilemma, ‘liberty or servitude,’ ‘socialism or barbarism’ is one that goes beyond our country” (Program, p. 108).

“The Socialist Party is a Party at one and the same time national and international” (Documentation Socialiste, supplement to no. 2, p. 50).

“Socialism is international by nature and vocation” (Program, p. 126).

“The Socialist Party adheres to the Socialist International” (Statutes of the SP, article 2, in Documentation Socialiste, supplement to no. 2, p. 51).

“The moment it no longer identifies with a universal message, France ceases to exist. France is either a collective ambition or it does not exist” (Program, p. 163).

“France, therefore can be the pole of attraction of a new internationalism” (Program, p. 164).

“A country like ours…has immense possibilities for carrying high and far, in Europe and in the world, the universal message of socialism” (Program, p. 18).

“France will contribute to the democratization of the [European Economic] Community, it will use its institutions to favor directing social struggles toward a common goal” (Program, p. 352).

“The Socialist Party…aims at a socialist transformation of international society” (Resolution of the Congress of Nantes in 1977, in Documentation Socialiste, supplement to no. 2, p. 130).

“Socialism is either international by nature or it denies itself” (Documentation Socialiste, supplement to no. 2, p. 153).

“The search for the autonomy of our development is inseparable from the international perspectives of self-managing socialism. In guiding our action abroad as well as inside our borders, it bases our participation in international cooperation on solidarity with the exploited classes” (Program, p. 339).

In this regard, it should be remembered that Mitterrand is one of the vice-presidents of the Socialist International (cf. L’Express, May 22 to 28, 1981).

He is also a founding member of the International Committee for the Defense of the Sandinist Revolution (cf. Le Figaro 6/26/81). This makes it easy to understand how Comandante Arce, of the Sandinist National Liberation Front greeted Mitterrand as “a militant of the Nicaraguan cause” and a “friend of the Sandinist revolution” whose victory in France has “an immense political value in Nicaragua and Latin America” (cf. Le Monde, 5/13/81).

On the day of his inauguration, Mitterrand chose to pay homage, with a luncheon in the Elysée Palace, to European socialist leaders and chiefs of state, as well as to representatives of the Latin American left. At his express desire, the widow of Marxist ex-president Allende sat at his right (cf. El Espectador, Bogota, Colombia, 5/24/81).

As President, Mitterrand declared France’s support of the fight of the Salvadoran people as an “urgent priority” and he promised to help Nicaragua “in its difficult job of reconstruction. Latin America does not belong to anyone. It is trying to belong to itself, and it is important that France and Europe assist in the realization of this goal.” Mitterrand declared (cf. Jornal do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 7/19/81).

Thanking Fidel Castro upon receiving his congratulations, Mitterrand sent him a telegram expressing his joy at the personal ties uniting him to the communist tyrant and manifested his hope to “strengthen the friendship between France and Cuba” (cf. Le Monde, 6/3/81).

Confirming that intention, Antoine Blanca, personal assistant of Prime Minister Mauroy and the man in charge of relations between his Party and Latin America and the Caribbean, declared that the French SP will not tolerate any aggression, economic blockade or discrimination against Cuba (cf. Folha de São Paulo, São Paulo, 7/27/81).

More recently, the French and Mexican governments signed a joint communiqué categorically supporting the “Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front,” a guerrilla organization made up of five Marxist groups working to overthrow the regime in El Salvador. The communiqué, released simultaneously in Paris and in Mexico, was delivered to the UN for distribution among member countries (cf. Folha de São Paulo, 8/29/81) and provoked a strong reaction from twelve Latin American countries, which declared the attitude of France and Mexico a “flagrant interference,” in El Salvador’s internal affairs (cf. Jornal do Brasil, 9/4/81).