Venceremos Organization
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Venceremos, Spanish for "We Will Overcome", or "We Will Prevail", was a radical left political group. The group took its name from the battle cry of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a revolutionary communist leader from Argentina and high ranking member of Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba.
Venceremos was initially a Chicano political group centered on the San Francisco peninsula. An early chairperson of the organization was Aaron Manganiello. In 1971, about half of the Revolutionary Union, a Maoist organization, split to join Venceremos, and Venceremos became a "multinational" organization. Among the people who moved from the RU to Venceremos was H. Bruce Franklin, one of the RU's founders. Venceremos's next chairperson was Katerina Del Valle.
Franklin's version of the reason for this split is that it had to do with racial issues: originally, Venceremos had been a Chicano organization, while the RU had a policy of suggesting to prospective black members that they join the Black Panthers instead. Franklin and others believed that this racial separation of the organizations was inappropriate, the Venceremos went on to become a multieithnic organization. They also believed that the lumpenproletariat had a strong revolutionary potential.
Some sources say that the issue was Venceremos' belief that revolution was imminent, but Franklin says that is incorrect. Still other sources say that the split had to do with ideology, with Venceremos having a more voluntarist or anarchist approach, rather than a Marxist one.
Venceremos advocated armed self-defense of the citizenry, community control of the police, and reform of the prison system. To these ends, the group's members engaged in a number of legal activities, such as working to educate prisoners and defend war protesters. They also participated in various anti-war demonstrations.
This group should not be confused with the Venceremos Brigade, a group that sends annual work brigades to Cuba as an act of political solidarity.
