The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 69/No. 17           May 2, 2005  
 
 
We’re going bilingual in June!
A message to readers from the editors of the
‘Militant’ and ‘Perspectiva Mundial’
(front page)
 
The Militant is going bilingual! Beginning in June, the monthly Spanish-language news magazine Perspectiva Mundial will be combined with the weekly Militant, the editors of the two publications have announced.

“Every week a number of pages of the Militant will be in Spanish, with lead articles and editorials appearing in both languages,” said Militant editor Argiris Malapanis in reporting the decision. “The new bilingual Militant will make it possible to reach out more broadly to working people, both English- and Spanish-speaking.”

Combining Perspectiva Mundial with the weekly Militant will give readers more timely news and analysis in Spanish than was possible with a monthly magazine. It will also mean a small increase in the total amount of Spanish-language coverage in any given month. The paper will go from 12 to 16 pages.

A substantial number of readers whose first language is Spanish also read English to varying degrees. Now, in addition to the Perspectiva Mundial section of the Militant, they will also have the benefit of the weekly coverage appearing in the English pages of the paper. This includes the Militant’s regular on-the-scene reports on the union-organizing battle by coal miners in Utah. There will also be coverage on questions ranging from the U.S. rulers’ moves to transform their armed forces in preparation for the imperialist wars of today and tomorrow, to how working people in Cuba are fighting to advance their socialist revolution, to firsthand reports on working-class resistance to the employers’ assaults in the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere.

The weekly paper will have a single editor and core of regular contributors, including volunteers around the country who help translate articles from English to Spanish as well as from Spanish to English.

The section in Spanish will keep the Perspectiva Mundial name and flag. Starting on the back page, it will carry many of the lead news and opinion pieces that appear in the Militant.

The new bilingual paper will present the same balance of political coverage and the same working-class perspective to English-speaking workers and to those whose first language is Spanish. That will set it apart from other publications in the workers movement whose Spanish-language pages are largely geared to “Latino issues.”  
 
28-year record
This is in continuity with Perspectiva Mundial’s nearly three-decade-long record. Its first issue came off the presses on Jan. 19, 1977. The magazine was launched as a way to reach out to the broad political radicalization that unfolded in the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s. The Chicano liberation movement was on the rise, as was the fight for Puerto Rico’s independence from U.S. colonial rule. These struggles were deeply interconnected with the mass movement for Black rights, the exploding opposition to the U.S. rulers’ war against the Vietnamese people, and the rise of the fight for women’s rights. The victory and advance of the Cuban Revolution at the opening of the 1960s also had a deep and ongoing impact among radicalizing youth. Chicano, Puerto Rican, and other Latin American workers and young people engaged in fights against deportations, for affirmative action, for bilingual education, and other social demands.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Spanish-speaking component of the working class in the United States began a steady expansion, one that exploded in the following two decades with the accelerating immigration from Latin America. Many of these workers became involved in union-organizing drives and other labor battles.

Perspectiva Mundial arose from a Spanish-language section of several pages that was published from 1974 to 1976 in the international socialist newsweekly Intercontinental Press. When it was launched in January 1977, it resembled IP in its appearance and content, with a focus on international news and analysis.

As it began to be used more and more broadly by socialist workers in the United States, Perspectiva Mundial developed a format and style of its own. Its focus shifted somewhat, becoming directed primarily to Spanish-speaking workers in the United States. From the beginning the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial have shared worker-correspondents and other resources, and many PM articles have been translated from news and analysis appearing in the Militant. In its first decade PM was published biweekly, going monthly in late 1986.

Leafing through the pages of Perspectiva Mundial over the past 28 years, one can see the wide range of world events and working-class struggles the magazine has covered and been a part of. U.S. labor battles from the victories of the United Farm Workers in the late 1970s and the coal miners’ strike of 1977-78 to the struggles of meat packers in the Midwest today. Demonstrations for a woman’s right to choose abortion. Actions in support of the rights of immigrant workers. The revolution in Iran that toppled the U.S.-backed shah in 1979. Protests against U.S. military intervention in Central America and the Caribbean. The popular movement that swept the racist apartheid regime in South Africa from power. Feature coverage from reporting teams throughout Latin America, as well as Yugoslavia, the Mideast, and the imperialist countries of Europe. Many firsthand reports from revolutionary Cuba.

From 1979 to 1990 Perspectiva Mundial and the Militant maintained a Managua bureau that provided eyewitness coverage of the Nicaraguan revolution, including how Nicaraguan workers and peasants confronted and defeated the U.S.-organized contra war in the mid-1980s. For more than a decade, the two publications followed the rise and decline of the workers and peasants government in that country. In addition, the socialist publications had a bureau in Grenada during much of the 1979-83 revolution in that Caribbean country.

Like the Militant, PM provided ample coverage of the successful lawsuit by the Socialist Workers Party against FBI spying and disruption, including the 1986-87 federal court rulings in its favor. The two publications have made available, in English and Spanish, speeches and writings of revolutionary leaders such as Fidel Castro, Maurice Bishop, and Thomas Sankara. And they have reported consistently on the fight to build a revolutionary workers party in the United States, and the international communist movement that the SWP is part of.  
 
Source of books, pamphlets
In cooperation with Pathfinder Press, material first published in Perspectiva Mundial has been used to produce numerous pamphlets and books. These include La revolución granadina (The Grenadian revolution) by Maurice Bishop and Fidel Castro, Sudáfrica: la revolución en camino (The coming revolution in South Africa) by Jack Barnes, and Cincuenta años de guerra encubierta: el FBI contra los derechos democráticos (50 years of covert war: the FBI versus democratic rights) by Larry Seigle. They also include the Spanish-language editions of Abortion Is A Woman’s Right! by Pat Grogan and Evelyn Reed, Peru’s Shining Path by Martín Koppel, and Puerto Rico: Independence is a Necessity by Rafael Cancel Miranda.

Other material published in the magazine includes the introduction to the Pathfinder book Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women by Mary-Alice Waters, and the article “The Second Assassination of Maurice Bishop” by Steve Clark, published originally in New International no. 6.

Among the most popular features of Perspectiva Mundial in recent years has been the serialization of Spanish translations of The History of American Trotskyism by James P. Cannon and Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs, both now available as Pathfinder books.

The latest book to be serialized is Teamster Power, the second in Dobbs’s four-volume series on the 1930s strikes and organizing drive that transformed the U.S. labor movement across the Midwest and beyond. The Spanish translation of the book, Fuerza Teamster, will be published by Pathfinder by the end of this year thanks to the efforts of PM’s regular contributors and volunteer translators.

The last two chapters of Teamster Power will be published in the June Perspectiva Mundial, which will be the final issue in its current format.

In the coming weeks the Militant will also institute other changes. To make the paper more readable, it will increase the size of its type and the spacing between lines.

After the June issue, Perspectiva Mundial subscribers will not miss a beat. They will receive the new bilingual Militant for the remainder of their subscription period—four weeks of the Militant for each month of PM.

Róger Calero, associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial, will continue to write for the Militant. Following the 2004 presidential election campaign, in which Calero led the Socialist Workers Party ticket, he has also taken increased national leadership responsibilities in the SWP.

Perspectiva Mundial editor Martín Koppel, also a Militant staff writer, is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York in the November elections. You will read about the socialist campaign in the pages of the Militant—in both English and Spanish.

But don’t just read about it. Join us in campaigning for the working-class alternative in the 2005 elections!  
 
 
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