In October 2023, Partido Comunista Revolucionario (PCR), the Mexican section of the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI), had 142 members. In October 2025, they had 379. By December 2025, they were up to 515 members.
This explosive growth of the forces of revolutionary communism in Mexico has been due to a concentrated focus by our comrades on connecting with young people – especially with students at schools and universities.
As a result, the largest university in Latin America, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, has been turned into a genuine fortress of the RCI. Our ranks have rapidly grown there from two to 80 comrades.
We spoke to leading PCR member Manuel Viveros to ask about how this was achieved and what the road looks like ahead.
The Mexican section has more than doubled in size in the last year – what made this possible?
Well, I think it all started with the ‘Are You A Communist’ campaign. The essence there was being bold and providing answers to this ever-growing layer of youth that have been drawing revolutionary conclusions.
View this post on Instagram
Internally, upholding the principle of being firm in our theory and flexible in our tactics allowed us to be comfortable with changing and adapting our way of doing things in line with this.
We were prepared to change everything to grow. This involved a lot of reflecting on what we were doing, why we were doing it and how to tackle the conditions and the general sentiment of the people.
You’ve had real success in building amongst the youth – how did you approach this and what did you learn along the way?
We had to build with what we had – and that was young people! Our generation always says that we really have known only crisis in our life, and with that comes an openness to the ideas of Marxism.
Even people around 15 years old are already developing inside the party, taking important roles in the leadership and organising work at the high school level. One of the leading organisers in Mexico City is 16 years old. By the time they go to university or start working they will already have a lot of experience.
Really most of us participating in all of our organising here in Mexico are very young comrades, from under 18 years old, up to 25 maybe. Demographically that’s our biggest bracket.
View this post on Instagram
How do you approach really convincing all these people of Marxist ideas once they have joined the party?
With such explosive growth also comes watering down the level of the experience and political level of the party.
Now the people who joined us have started building themselves. Going from a very small party to where we are today, the only way we could sustain and guide these new comrades was trusting them to do this.
Doing work in schools especially involves a really fierce ideological battle with postmodernism and other reactionary ways of thinking. While discussing these differences, the focus was on what we had in common – not necessarily going directly on the offensive against these ideas with each of them.
View this post on Instagram
What helped a lot was going through the fundamentals: explaining dialectical materialism one on one, that kind of thing.
From there you help build up the tools for them to reach the conclusion that the ideas they hold may not have been the best. It’s key that they reach these conclusions by themselves.
These then prove to be some of our best comrades, who are now teaching other younger comrades, continuing this positive loop.
After recruiting, how do you keep new comrades engaged in the work?
It’s interesting. For a long time we were holding on to this formula: we need Marxist cadres, we need to educate cadres – it’s easier said than done. Something that really helped to drive all our education was framing it by its application to our practical work.
At universities in Mexico it’s quite common to have these groups of ultra-left people who call themselves anarchists or radicals. Wherever we grow, we get into political discussions with these people.
View this post on Instagram
Having read up on genuine Marxist ideas, our comrades learn from these discussions how to explain our ideas in a real setting – and manage to convince many people! This also goes for things like feminism, or intervening in the LGBT movement. Having this practice has allowed our youngest comrades to really forge themselves.
Do you have any exciting plans ahead?
We’re stepping up on every level: our newspaper for example. We stepped up in how we manage it financially and the planning and design of it really improved. We’ve also looked a lot at our social media to give quick, clear answers to the questions of the day.
We aim to involve younger comrades in this who may not have the full clarity to provide these answers, but by working with them and providing them with knowledge to do a video or write an article that really helps them reach the conclusions on their own.
View this post on Instagram
Most exciting is that in the second half of 2026, we’re planning to do these big educational communist camps in each region. We had one as a test run here in Mexico City and it was very successful, so we’re hoping this initiative really goes well in other places too. We have a lot of people now, but not many experienced comrades!
