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Obituary

Miguel Romero (1945-2014)

Sunday 26 January 2014, by François Sabado, Paco Robs

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For us as militants of the Fourth International of these last forty years, Moro – the Moor [1] – was a militant reference point.

He was one of the founders of the Liga Comunista Revolucionario, Spanish state section of the Fourth International in the 1970s. At the end of the 1960s he participated in student organizations in Madrid, in particular the FLP (Frente de Liberation Popular - Popular Liberation Front) against the Franco dictatorship. Moro was one of those young students produced by the radicalization of the late 1960s who linked their commitment to anti-Francoism to the revolutionary uprisings of the time: May 68, the liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people, and the Prague spring. He was deeply internationalist. May 1968, the intervention of the JCR (Revolutionary Communist Youth) and the first years of the Communist League in France led him to work with the Fourth International.

He was the principal leader of the LCR during all the years of clandestine work and the post-Franco transition. He was then, against the current of the disenchantment of the period after the Franco dictatorship, one of the figures of the LCR but beyond that of the revolutionary left of the Spanish State. Moro was also one of the principal leaders of the Fourth International in Europe but also in Latin America, where he took part in a series of strategic debates of the Latin-American revolution, in particular in Central America. He also, among others – notably Daniel Bensaïd, to whom he was linked by real political complicity and deep friendship – contributed to building the sections of International in Bolivia, Mexico and Brazil. He then chose to continue his political commitment by creating the Viento Sur review, significant for its quality as well its intellectual and political openness. He was the editor and driving force in it until the end of his life, in spite of the cancer which ravaged him and his declining strength.
With the creation of Izquierda Anticapitalista there was once again a revolutionary organization that took on the commitments he had continued to share, and he gave it all the support he felt able to give.

Moro was an example of political commitment for our generation. From the underground to the day-to-day building of revolutionary organizations, Moro was always present. Far removed from any dogmatism and sectarianism, he sought in all revolutionary experiments what could change things, what could make politics concrete. But he was in particular an example of the relations between political activists: deep respect for individuals, looking for what linked rather than what divided, and a real empathy.

Footnotes

[1This nickname was given because he was born in Melilla, in (then) Spanish Morocco.