Founding organizations

The idea behind the concept of a communist "League" was to agglomerate all the armed socialist organizations that were active in Mexico. While it was successful in doing so with many small, newly formed and beaten out organizations, it wasn't able to convince bigger organizations like that of Lucio Cabañas, the Partido de los Pobres (PdlP). Some of the organizations (in no particular order) are the following:

• Los Lacandones: Formed from the remnants of the 1968's student movement in Mexico City. They first started acting as an armed organization during 1969, making "expropriations" in order to maintain their weapon supplies, as well as to pay for food and housing. After a series of successful assaults, six members of the organization were detained, on the 21 of February, 1972. By November of that year, most of the members of the armed group had been detained by the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS). By February 1973, only three members were still free. After hearing of the unification proposal of Los Procesos, they joined the Organización Partidaria.
• Los Macias: With a Spartacist (Mexican Marxist school of thought created by Mexican poet José Revueltas, not to be confused with the German spartacist movement or the American Trotskyist organization) background, the organization was created in 1968. It was a splinter from the Movimiento Espartaquista Revolucinario, MER (Spartacist Revolutionary Movement) led by Mónico Rentería Medina and active in the state of Durango. After a few "expropriations", Rentería left the organization and the rest of the group, now led by Eduardo Medina Flores, decided to join the Organización Partidaria.
• Los Guajiros: Originally known as the Grupo N (N Group), conformed, mainly, by young people of northern origin (Baja California, Chihuahua, Durango, etc.) and started performing military actions in 1970. They were one of the first organizations to get in touch with other national groups (like the PdlP and the Procesos). They were named "Guajiros" by Lucio Cabañas. After a series of successful "expropriations", by 1972 the armed group suffered huge casualties, including that of their leader, Diego Lucero. The remnants of the organization joined the LC23S.
• Los Procesos: A splinter from the Juventudes Comunistas (Communist Youth), its main leader was Raúl Ramos Zavala, a student from the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León. It was the first group to come up with the idea of creating a "federation" of armed groups that would work in coordination throughout the country. Like the Guajiros, they had a series of successful "expropriation" actions, which later resulted in enormous casualties. Ramos Zavala was executed on February 6, 1972.
• Grupo 23 de Septiembre:
• Los Enfermos (The Sick Ones): The radical wing of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa’s Students Federation. Its aims and goals shifted from academic objectives to more broad, social issues.
• Los Vikingos (The Vikings): Sometimes described as a gang, los Vikingos was a group of young people from a neighborhood in Guadalajara who, through the influence of liberal politicians, socially conscious Catholic priests and communist sympathizers, got involved in social and university activism. They would join the LC23S and become one of their main suppliers of guns and ammo.
• Movimiento 23 de Septiembre:
• A splinter section of the Movimiento de Acción Revolucionaria, MAR (Revoluctionary Action Movement): Created in 1969 in Moscow, by students affiliated to the Mexican Communist Party. They got military and political education in North Korea. After being crushed by the security forces, a small splinter section would later join the LC23S.
• MAR-23 de Septiembre: Some of the surviving members of the MAR organization decided to separate from their main group, and join forces with the Movimiento 23 de Septiembre. They later joined the LC23S.
• A section of the Movimiento Estudiantil Profesional, MEP (the Professional Student Movement): A group of radical Catholic students who, at first, were active in different social causes and later became convinced that real change would only be achieved through revolutionary actions.
• A section of the Frente Estudiantil Revolucionario, FER (Student Revolutionary Front): First appeared in the Universidad de Guadalajara in 1972, as a response to the political violence that was taking place. It disputed the political control of the university with the Federación de Estudiantes de Guadalajara (Guadalajara's Students Union).

Formative and offensive stage (1972–1974)

On May 15, 1973, as part of a joint effort by several armed organizations in the country, the September 23rd Communist League was formed. It is the only guerrilla organization in Mexico, created in the seventies, which came to be considered as an actual internal threat to national stability, due in part to the large number of militants they had, as well as to the extent of the territory in which they had presence. Despite being made up of workers and peasants, the largest part of its members belonged to the student sector. Their short term objective was divided in two: First, the formation of a national union of armed organizations, which should work around the ideological and political ideas that National Directive established. The second part, once the homogenization process was completed, consisted of the creation of a vanguard party (in accordance with Leninist theory), which should be strong enough to guide the workers and peasants through the revolutionary process. In this sense, the LC23S never considered itself a full fledged party, but a transitional step towards it. Several groups, from different places and with different backgrounds, decided to join the project: Los Lacandones; Los Macias; Los Guajiros; Los Procesos, part of the Student Revolutionary Front (Frente Estudiantil Revolucionario, FER) of Guadalajara; the radical wing of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa's Students Federation, known as Los Enfermos (the sick ones); MAR-23; the Professional Student Movement (Movimiento Estudiantil Profesional, MEP); Grupo 23 de Septiembre; as well as several small groups without previous partisan organization or militancy. Through prints, pamphlets and the distribution of its own publication, Madera, periódico clandestino, they intended to make visible their political program, as well as to recruit new members. The organization was present in at least twenty of the thirty-two states that form the United Mexican States. It was during this period, on September 17 1973 that LC23S murdered Monterrey businessman Eugenio Garza Sada in a failed kidnapping attempt.^[7] This event further prompted President Luis Echeverría to intensfify its crackdown of the organization.

Defensive stage (1974–1976)

Even before the death of Ignacio Arturo Salas Obregón, the internal divisions within the League had started to show. After the disappearance of their main leader following a shootout on April 25, 1974,^[8] the process of polarization and division within the LC23S exacerbated, leading to accusations of infiltration, treason, revisionism, bourgeois opportunism, militarism, etc. The accusations escalated to a point where executions of supposed police infiltrators were carried out. Many of the militants separated themselves from the organization and continued working either within the legal political system or through new armed organizations. David Jimenez Sarmiento picked up the leadership of the organization during this time.

This stage is marked by a more militaristic approach, which left the political activity on a secondary plane. It ended with the failed kidnapping attempt of the sister of the Mexican president-elect, Margarita Lopez Portillo, on August 11, 1976.^[9] The purpose of this action was to gain leverage, catch public attention and request the liberation of political prisoners. The failed kidnapping attempt provoked many casualties, including Sarmiento, and left the leadership of the organization in the hands of the editorial committee of the Madera newsletter.

Survival stage (1976–1979)

After the death of David Jimenez Sarmiento, the increased violence put forward by the security forces, and the changing political landscape, the LC23S went through a restructuring and self-criticism process. During this time, their military activities diminished, focusing mainly on political actions and propaganda distribution. Great numbers of the newsletter Madera were distributed around the country. The main leader of the organization during the first half of this stage (1976–1979) was Luis Miguel Corral García, El Piojo Blanco (The White Louse).^[10]

During this time, the government, in a joint effort by the DFS, Departamento de Investigaciones Politicas y Sociales (DGIPS, Political and Social Investigations Department), the army and Mexico City's police, created the Brigada Especial (Especial Brigade) or Brigada Blanca (White Brigade) as was known by the population. Created June 7, 1976, under the project Plan de Aniquilamiento de la Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre (Plan of Annihilation of the Communist League September 23)^[11] the BE worked essentially as a paramilitary organization. Its main objective was to physically and politically destroy the League and, in order to do so, it came up with two strategies: The Campaña de orientación al público contra la Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre (Public orientation campaign against the Communist League September 23) and the Plan de Operaciones No.1 Rastreo (Operations Plan No. 1. Tracking). The first one consisted of psychological warfare, while the latter one was in political violence.

Extinction stage (1979–1982)

While on the one hand the LC23S was suffering casualties thanks to the BE, on the other side, the Political Reform (Ley Federal de Organizaciones Políticas y Procesos Electorales, LFOPPE) of 1977 was the final blow to the organization. Said law opened a small political space to the opposition, as well as permitted once again the legal participation of the Mexican Communist Party in national and local elections. This, effectively, destroyed the foundation on which the League had built its militancy: the lack of democracy and political competition in Mexico. During this time Miguel Ángel Barraza García (El Piojo Negro) was the main leader. Although the political and military activity (propaganda distribution and “expropriations”) were still taking place, they were in a much smaller size than years before. This did not mean a diminishing in the activities of the Especial Brigade, who intensified their annihilation strategy. The Especial Brigade had started an infiltration strategy, which consisted of getting jobs at factories and waiting for members of the LC23S to go there and hand out propaganda. At that point, the BE would start shooting at the brigade, without any attempts to make an arrest.^[12] On January 24, 1981, near Ciudad Universitaria (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México), Barraza was killed, leaving the National Directive directionless. The last issue of Madera was published later that year. Without its main leader, the LC23S slowly dismantled, with some of its members joining the legal activism, while others remained clandestine.