Published: The Stanford Daily, Volume 162, Issue 2, 26 September 1972.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Longtime Bay Area activist Aaron J. Manganiello, 29, was removed from his position as chairman of Venceremos’ Central Committee during the summer, the Daily has learned.
Apparently the position presently is being filled by Katarina Davis Del Valle, a Central Committee member and the group’s former Minister of Information. Manganiello, who was one of the founders of the original Venceremos organization and who headed the now-defunct Venceremos College in Redwood City, apparently has remained in the organization in a non-leadership position and will continue to teach a “political education” class.
Venceremos, a predominantly Chicano, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organization with collectives in many communities on the Peninsula, follows a leadership structure known as democratic centralism. Under democratic centralism, the chairman of the Central Committee is the leading member of the entire organization.
An internal document circulated by Venceremos and obtained by the Daily states that Manganiello has a “problem of individualism and egotism,” and accuses him of fostering “non-struggle attitudes” which could “split the organization.”
“He (Manganiello) thought it was just a matter of time before he was exposed as an ’individualist opportunist’, [sic] that is, as someone who could say all the rhetoric but did not have the love for the people and the organization,” the document says.
“On one hand,” the statement continues, “Aaron is a leader with a lot of knowledge, we need him to give guidance to Venceremos and the movement. If he is going to be looked to for leadership all the time then it would be bullshit for him not to be on the CC [Central Committee].
“On the other hand Aaron could not deal with his problems of individualism and egotism by still being on the CC. Aaron cannot be in leadership on the CC and be in a collective and under someelse’s [sic] leadership. Who would be under whose leadership?. . . ”
Daily records show that Manganiello was Chairman of the Central Committee for slightly over one year.