This article by Ángel Chávez Mancilla originally appeared in the November 15, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Mexico Solidarity Media*, or the Mexico Solidarity Project.*
The world’s youth have many reasons to protest: grueling exploitation, precarious employment, lack of access to housing and education, and the ever-increasing climate of violence. To their justified dissatisfaction with the present is added the uncertainty of the future, which foreshadows meager pensions and, to make matters worse, the threat of a new global war.
Young people need prospects for radical transformation to confront the course of war marked by imperialism, which has already demonstrated in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine its willingness to perpetrate the same barbarity as in the 20th century. But what prospects do young people have today? Are they condemned to spontaneous rebellions devoid of ideological clarity, waving the flag of an anime while becoming cannon fodder in the political disputes of the various groups within the same imperialist order?
Youth must recall their history of struggle to gain insight into the path ahead, and this task involves remembering that this November 10th marks 80 years since the creation of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), an international political group that emerged to organize the world’s youth around an anti-fascist and anti-imperialist program, in order to confront the warmongering ambitions of the capitalist camp at the end of the Second World War.
The creation of the WFDY was preceded by the existence of the World Youth Council, established in November 1942 and headquartered in England, whose objective was to unite young people around anti-fascist positions. This council, in early 1945, convened the World Youth Congress, which met between October 29 and November 10. It was attended by organizations with democratic and national liberation orientations, although its backbone consisted of the youth organizations and activists of the communist parties that had belonged to the Communist International.
As a result of the World Youth Congress, the WFTU was created, with a clear anti-fascist and anti-imperialist orientation that, within the context of the Cold War, positioned itself in favor of socialism and the peoples fighting against colonialism. The socialist character of the WFTU was reaffirmed by the appointment of Guy de Boisson as its president. De Boisson was a militant in the anti-fascist resistance, a member of the Patriotic Union of French Youth, and, in 1945, a member of parliament for the Communist Party.
The WFDY, as one of the mass organizations promoted by the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War —like the World Peace Council (WPC)—is recognized by the UN with consultative status. This led the CIA to spy on the work of this youth group and seek to sabotage its activities, most notably the organization of the World Festivals of Youth and Students.
World Festival of Youth and Students, Berlin, DDR, 1973
In Mexico, the call for the 1945 World Youth Congress was published in La Voz de México, the newspaper of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), an organization that at the time practiced the Popular Front tactic and, therefore, collaborated with the Mexican government headed by the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM). In the labor movement, this policy led to the convergence of communist forces within the CTM (Confederation of Mexican Workers) and the misguided transfer of its leadership to Lombardo Toledano. Among young people, the Popular Front resulted in the merging of youth and student organizations—including those with communist leanings—into the Confederation of Mexican Youth (CJM), an organization that, like the CTM, ultimately became an arm of the government.
Before the 1945 Congress, the World Youth Council organized a tribute to Ernesto Madero Vázquez, a young journalist and diplomat who had been a member of the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists (LEAR). In early 1944, Madero was working at the Mexican consulate in London, which allowed him to serve as a delegate of the CJM to the World Youth Council. This event boosted the participation of young Mexicans in the World Congress.
Within the CJM, Manuel Popoca was the president; Salvador Gámiz (Arturo Gámiz’s uncle) was the organizing secretary; and the communist Manuel Terrazas was the press and propaganda secretary. Popoca and Terrazas participated in the 1945 Congress, making the CJM one of the founding organizations of the FMJD. In turn, the Federation of Socialist Peasant Students of Mexico (FECSM), due to its affiliation with the CJM, is also considered a founding organization of this international body.
Terrazas recounted that the Congress was attended by approximately 500 representatives from 64 countries, representing 30 million young people. He excitedly noted that Guy de Boisson was elected president of the WFDY; that the four elected vice presidents represented the USSR, China, the United States, and England; and that Popoca was appointed a member, the only Latin American to hold that position.
Although the most widely publicized activity of the WFDY is the World Festival of Youth and Students – which I will discuss on another occasion – this organization and its affiliates maintain a set of permanent tasks: the anti-imperialist struggle, solidarity with peoples fighting for their liberation, support for those facing oppression and racism, and the pursuit of a lasting peace that can only be achieved by putting an end to imperialism.
The broad scope of the WFDY and the participation of the CJM in its founding paved the way for Mexican organizations of diverse political leanings to participate in its activities in the following decades, such as the World Festival of Youth and Students. These included communist youth groups, Lombardist-oriented youth groups, and even the PRI youth wing. Nevertheless, the WFDY maintained its communist orientation, calling for the fight against the imperialist system of which all capitalist countries are now a part.
Eighty years later, the WFDY still exists and is not limited to resisting imperialism, but rather champions the overthrow of capitalism as an alternative to end exploitation and put an end to the jaws of war that threaten youth. This alternative program for new generations was summarized by the Soviet poet Oshanin Lev Ivanovich in the WFDY anthem, which in one verse points out a path for youth:
Let’s destroy the forcesthat chain happiness,Let’s defeat deathand let us establish eternal peace.
80 Years of the World Federation of Democratic Youth
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