Vol. 74/No. 25      June 28, 2010

Events in working-class history that were part of Garza becoming a communist and his subsequent party activity were depicted in photos and news clippings on display at the meeting: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, the postwar strike wave, anticolonial revolutions in the 1940s and ’50s, the Cuban Revolution, and Black liberation struggles.

The son of a Puerto Rican Taino (indigenous) mother, and a Mexican father, Garza grew up in the South Bronx in New York. His mother was a garment worker who also took in boarders; his father, a waiter and bartender.

Garza was a senior in high school in 1945 in New York when he attended a “welcome home” meeting of 800 people for party leaders, including leaders of the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes in the ’30s, who had just finished serving prison sentences, said Joel Britton, a member of the SWP in San Francisco, who chaired the meeting. They were framed up on “sedition” charges for opposing U.S. entry into the imperialist slaughter of World War II, he said.

The party was deeply involved in the class struggle at the time, with members working in fractions in auto, steel, and other industries. Party members helped Garza get a job as a sailor so he could join the effort to build the party among industrial workers, Britton said.

Garza recalled later that although racist discrimination was against the policy of the National Maritime Union, which he belonged to, “race was a big issue” on the ships. He and other party members helped fight against discriminatory treatment of sailors who were Black.  
 
Cuban Revolution
Betsey Stone, of the SWP in San Francisco, spoke about the contribution of cadres of Garza’s generation in helping the party take advantage of new openings for revolutionary activity that came with the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the mass proletarian battles that broke the back of Jim Crow segregation.

“Across the country, party members joined with others in building the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, sponsoring programs and building demonstrations in response to U.S. attacks on the revolution,” Stone said. In 1961 Garza ran for mayor of New York on the SWP ticket, campaigning in defense of Cuba.

When Fidel Castro came to New York to speak at the United Nations in September 1960, thousands of working people gathered at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem where the Cuban delegation was staying.

In a message to the meeting, Sherry Finer, a leader of the Young Socialist Alliance at the time, recalled how Garza was there, night after night, joining the discussions and helping to lead the party’s participation. “We sold countless copies of the Militant and of the Young Socialist!”

This was also the year that students began to sit in to desegregate lunch counters in the South. Garza participated in the picket lines in New York outside Woolworth department stores in solidarity.

In April 1964, Garza chaired the first of three Militant Labor Forums in New York where Malcolm X spoke.

During the 1960s and ’70s, Garza was a leader of the party’s participation in the struggle of Puerto Ricans in the United States. He helped draft a resolution adopted at the 1976 convention. The resolution reaffirmed the party’s position, held since its founding in 1938, of support for independence for Puerto Rico. That document was later published in the book Puerto Ricans in the U.S.: The Struggle for Freedom.

After almost four decades of revolutionary activity, Garza resigned from the party in 1982. Although no longer active, he continued to support the party and contribute to it financially.  
 
Bolshevik party
Ellie García, a member of the SWP in Los Angeles, told the meeting how studying a report by Garza to the 1977 party convention had a big impact on her learning what a Bolshevik party is. The report took up why separate caucuses or social affairs based on nationality have no place in a proletarian party.

As a new member in 1980, “I considered myself a Chicano nationalist,” García said. She explained that the report given by Garza defended the right of women, Blacks, and others to organize separate committees in unions or organizations on campus. Building a revolutionary party required something different.

Quoting the report, she said, “Our party is not composed of caucuses or caucus-like formations struggling for their ‘rights’ in the party. We are a centralized combat party… . Party members must have confidence and mutual trust in each other if they are going to go into battle together.”

“I became attracted to the idea of building a disciplined, multinational party where you could be a leader of the party, not just a leader of a section of the party. Dealing with this question was a necessary step for me and others working in industry where the key question is uniting the working class—overcoming the divisions the ruling class fosters among workers so we can unite in combat.”

Members and friends of Garza’s family joined Socialist Workers, supporters, and others for food and refreshments before and after the program. Participants donated $1,120 to build the party.  
 
 
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