Introduction
This article analyzes a letter dated December 1924 by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Krim al-Khattabi (henceforth al-Khattabi) to the peoples of Latin America as a political document situated within the broader history of transnational anti-colonialism during the interwar period. It focuses on one of the clearest expressions of al-Khattabi's internationalist vision: his correspondence addressed to these very peoples on the occasion of the centenary of the Battle of Ayacucho. Fought on 9 December 1824 in Peru under the command of Antonio José de Sucre, the Battle of Ayacucho constituted the decisive military encounter that sealed the defeat of Spanish royalist forces in South America and effectively ended Spanish imperial rule over most of the continent. It represented the culmination of the long Spanish American wars of independence, a struggle that had earlier been led by figures such as José de San Martín.
To understand the importance of al-Khattabi's letter, it is necessary to examine why the Rif War held such significance for Latin American anti-imperialists. As Thomas K. Lindner argues in *A City Against Empire: Transnational Anti-Imperialism in Mexico City 1920–30*, the Rif War (1921–1926) held a distinctive place in the political solidarity and comparative reflections of Latin American anti-imperialists for several interrelated reasons. Unlike other colonial struggles of the period, the Riffian resistance confronted Spain—the very European power that had once ruled nearly all of Latin America. This dynamic prompted anti-imperialist intellectuals and activists across the region to reassess Spain's lingering symbolic and political legacy in the post-colonial Americas during the 1920s. Furthermore, al-Khattabi emerged as a transnational icon of anti-imperialist defiance, standing alongside contemporaries such as Nicaragua's Augusto Sandino. Finally, the Rif War ignited debates among Latin American anti-imperialists concerning race and the political role of Indigenous peoples in liberation movements. Alongside the Chinese civil war, the Rif conflict became a key reference point for the emergence of tricontinental solidarity—linking struggles across Africa, Asia, and the Americas—within Latin American political discourse.[1] Building on Lindner's framework, this article contends that al-Khattabi's 1924 letter can fruitfully be read as a deliberate intervention into this emerging anti-colonial solidarity—one that strategically invoked the centenary of Ayacucho to forge a shared anti-colonial genealogy between Morocco, the Arab world, and Latin America.
The article proceeds in three parts. First, it examines the historical background and intellectual networks that connected the Rif struggle to Latin American political and Arab diasporic milieus during the 1920s. Second, it offers a close reading of al-Khattabi's letter, focusing on its political vocabulary and historical references. Third, it traces the reception and reinterpretation of al-Khattabi in Latin American intellectual and political circles from the interwar period to contemporary writings, demonstrating the enduring presence of the Rif experience within Global South liberation references.
The Path to the Invitation of al-Khattabi to the Centenary of Ayacucho
The anti-colonial struggle led by al-Khattabi in the Moroccan Rif during the 1920s occupies a particular significance in the history of resistance to empire. More than a localized uprising against Spanish colonial rule, the Rif War (1921–1926) emerged as one of the most consequential anti-imperialist movements of the interwar period. The Riffian victory at the Battle of Annual in 1921 destabilized prevailing assumptions about European military supremacy and reconfigured the symbolic geography of anti-imperial struggle.[2] In a short time, al-Khattabi transcended his status as a regional military commander and came to be perceived internationally as a revolutionary figure articulating a political language of anti-colonial sovereignty, self-determination, and transnational solidarity.
Yet the affinities between the Rif struggle and Latin America were not forged exclusively in the 1920s; they drew on a deeper history of diplomatic contacts dating back to the early nineteenth century. The Battle of Ayacucho (1824) provides a useful chronological reference point for early Moroccan–Latin American diplomatic contacts in the post-independence era following Gran Colombia’s establishment in 1819.
Morocco was the first Arab, African, and Muslim country to recognize the independence of Gran Colombia.[3] On June 6, 1827, the Colombian vessel Pichincha anchored in Tangier carrying Simón Bolívar's plenipotentiary, John Maitland, who requested that Colombian warships and citizens be granted access to Moroccan ports. Sultan Moulay Abderrahmane accepted, provoking Spanish diplomatic irritation. For many scholars, the opening of the Brazilian consulate in Tangier in 1861 constituted the third major diplomatic rapprochement between Morocco and Latin America, following these early contacts with Gran Colombia and an alleged Haitian mission of 1825.[4] As Moroccan historian Abdelhak Hiri notes, the early diplomatic contacts between Morocco and Latin America may be regarded as one of the earliest manifestations of South–South cooperation, illustrating how transatlantic political solidarity between Latin America and North Africa predated twentieth-century anti-colonial movements.[5]
This transatlantic orientation of the Moroccan state was not limited to Latin America. Morocco had also been the first country to recognize the independence of the United States of America, signing a treaty of friendship with the new republic in 1786. Nevertheless, the focus here remains on Latin American connections, which followed a distinct trajectory. Notably, al-Khattabi had already signaled his diplomatic strategy in 1924, before addressing the peoples of Latin America. In a short letter to the American people, he saluted them and declared that the Riffians were struggling for their liberty and were inspired by the high principles of the United States. This appeal to North America, together with his subsequent correspondence with Latin America, reveals a deliberate strategy of engaging multiple American audiences—North and South—as part of his broader effort to internationalize the Rif cause.
Given this historical context, the invitation extended to al-Khattabi by the Latin American Union to participate in the Ayacucho centenary represented an advanced stage of Moroccan–Latin American political ties. The "Latin American Union" refers to the Unión Latinoamericana, which emerged from the intellectual and political milieu formed around José Ingenieros' anti-imperialist journal Renovación (1923–1930). Its editorial board included Ingenieros and Aníbal Ponce, and it helped consolidate a network of writers, jurists, and political activists. This network eventually created the Unión Latinoamericana in 1925, an organization dedicated to anti-imperialist struggle and transcontinental solidarity.[6] The invitation itself went beyond a ceremonial gesture, reflecting a growing recognition of the Rif resistance as part of a wider anti-imperialist constellation. Al-Khattabi was honored by the invitation but ultimately could not attend. His response—published in December 1924 in Renovación[7]—must nevertheless be understood as a political and intellectual intervention rather than a mere diplomatic message. In this letter, he situates the Rif struggle within a shared genealogy of anti-colonial revolutions linking North Africa, the Arab world, and Latin America, constructing a symbolic continuity between nineteenth-century Latin American independence movements and contemporary anti-colonial resistance in the Maghreb.
The dissemination of the Rif cause across Latin America was also mediated through diasporic political and intellectual networks. The Sudanese activist and journalist Ahmad Hassan Mattar played a central role. He worked to publicize the Rif struggle in Latin America, establishing a support committee and building networks with Arab migrant communities. His trajectory began with anti-colonial movements in the Arab Mashreq and anti-British activism in Egypt. He later traveled to Europe, then to Tangier to meet al-Khattabi, remaining there for several months as a self-described "envoy." He then traveled to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, expanding his networks among Arab diasporic communities. However, it remains unclear how directly Mattar was involved in the publication and circulation of al-Khattabi's December 1924 letter in Latin America. While his broader activism undoubtedly contributed to the diffusion of the Rif cause, the precise extent of his role in disseminating this specific correspondence is not fully documented. Al-Khattabi later acknowledged Mattar's efforts in a formal letter of thanks (1949), preserved in Mattar's autobiography Sinbad of the Sudan, though this recognition refers to Mattar's general support for the Rif struggle rather than any direct involvement with the Ayacucho centenary correspondence.[8]
Alongside Mattar's individual trajectory, institutional initiatives emerged across Latin America. The Pan-Islamism Association of Buenos Aires, founded in 1922 by Saifuddin Rahhal, later became the Islamic Center of the Argentine Republic. In early 1924, its leaders addressed a letter to King Alfonso XIII of Spain proposing an international peace conference to resolve the Arab question in North Africa, defending the right of Arab peoples to "defend their independence and aspire to a free life like the other nations of Europe."[9] This activism was paralleled by cultural expressions of support. In 1924, the Lebanese-Brazilian poet Elias Farhat established a "Committee for the Liberation of the Arabs" in Brazil.[10] He composed a poetic tribute to al-Khattabi following the Battle of Annual:
"Your qualities, O 'Abd al-Karim—indeed they are
The qualities of a resolute, clear-minded hero.
You have quenched the anguish of the East, O best of its sons,
And revived the dead hopes and aspirations."
The letter was returned to Farhat and remained in his possession for more than three decades before he personally delivered it to al-Khattabi in Cairo, where al-Khattabi had settled in the Egyptian capital in 1947.
Al-Khattabi's Letter to the Peoples of Latin America: A Content Reading
Within these historical and contextual circumstances that preceded the letter's December 1924 publication, the analysis now turns to the text of al-Khattabi's letter to the peoples of Latin America. The letter is presented below in italics in three parts, each followed by a short analysis.
My dear brothers,
In response to the kind appeal of the “Grupo renovación” in Buenos Aires, I turn—with my heart overflowing with joy—to all the peoples of Latin America on this glorious day on which they celebrate the military action that granted them independence and freed them from the yoke of foreign domination. There is no right more sacred, more sublime, or more inviolable than the right of every people to govern itself and to choose for itself the form of government that best corresponds to its nature and aspirations. The celebrations organized to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of Ayacucho find their echo in the hearts of all peoples struggling for their freedom, and I share your sentiments at this moment, with legitimate enthusiasm, as the provisional leader of the Republic of the Rif.
This opening cannot be read as a mere protocolary or ceremonial formulation, but rather as a structuring element of al-Khattabi's political discourse. The address "My dear brothers" functions not as a marker of cultural or religious proximity but as a political signifier that presupposes a shared historical condition shaped by colonial domination and resistance. It thus establishes a relational vocabulary grounded in political fraternity, replacing diplomatic formalism with a broader transnational framework of anti-colonial solidarity.
Similarly, the reference to "all the peoples of Latin America," rather than to individual states, reflects a mode of political address that departs from interstate categorization and instead privileges collective historical experience. This discursive choice constructs Latin America as a politically and culturally unified field, allowing al-Khattabi to situate the Rif question within a wider geography of anti-imperial resistance. In doing so, diplomatic language based on state-to-state relations is displaced in favor of a logic that transcends the state—a solidarity grounded in comparable colonial histories and shared trajectories of emancipation.
The heroic people of Morocco are fighting at this very moment for the same ideals defended by Miranda, Moreno, Bolívar, and San Martín. I have always loved and admired the heroes of your nation, and even today we continue to feel admiration for the daring and courageous exploits of Maceo and Martí. We possess, in terms of race, culture, and religion, qualities that prevent us from accepting the domination of any European power whatsoever. And just as you did, a century ago, in your struggle for independence, we today offer the sacrifice of our lives and our property on the altar of national freedom.
Europe, corrupted by the world war, unleashed by the imperialism inherent in its capitalist regime, has already lost the right to impose its thinking and its will on the peoples who, on another continent, wish to inaugurate new cultures based on ideals of human peace and social justice. We, the peoples of the Arab origin, seek to repel the yoke of England, France, Italy, and Spain. Our brothers in Egypt have struck the first blow, and I hope the world will witness the second blow that will be dealt here in Morocco; then will come the hour of Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli, whose peoples are also preparing for the moments of great national self-sacrifice.
“Our cause, as yours once was, is a just cause. We are not driven by hatred toward Spain, which was in the past our homeland and the cradle of our ancestors. Every educated Spaniard knows that, during the golden age of the arts in Spain, the Arabs constituted the majority. At the decisive moment when the religious war drove us away from the peninsula—adorned by our arts and enriched by our activity—a dark hour struck, leading to this decline that cast this beloved heritage into a state of irreparable deterioration, which still envelops it to this day.
The pathological nationalism of the military and Catholic classes in Spain dragged the Spanish people into a reckless and disastrous war, turning Morocco into a graveyard for its sons and into a bottomless pit for its military budgets. Even now, poor young Spaniards are here, exposed to death, just as they were sent a hundred years ago to meet their fate in the valleys of the Andes, and thirty years ago in the jungles of Cuba.”
Such massacres disgust us! Let us ask Spain to abandon these adventures that bring nothing but pure loss; and to leave Morocco as it left ‘your Americas,’ so that we may begin to carry out the project of peace, work, and renaissance, which will enable us to build nations no less dignified than those which you have built.
I address you as brothers, because the Spanish blood that runs in your veins is for the most part Arab blood, as is the case with all Spaniards in the south of the peninsula, those who set out from Palos, from Seville, and from Cádiz, to sow in your Americas the Arab love that was reborn in the gauchos and the llaneros, even if it is covered by the marks of another religion.”
Al-Khattabi opens this passage by placing the Rif struggle within a broader anti-colonial tradition. He invokes Latin American figures such as Miranda, Moreno, Bolívar, San Martín, Maceo, and José Martí. These are not mere historical references. They are figures who fought against Spanish rule and sought political unity through regional integration. By naming them, al-Khattabi claims a shared horizon of resistance. He does not construct a systematic theory of global anti-colonialism. Instead, he uses these familiar names to assert that the Rif struggle is legitimate, recognizable, and morally equivalent to the Latin American wars of independence.
A key dimension of the passage is its articulation of political emancipation through sacrifice. The reference to the offering of "lives and property on the altar of national freedom" reflects a recurrent revolutionary idiom in early twentieth-century anti-colonial discourse. In this framing, liberation is not only a political demand but also an existential commitment grounded in collective endurance, loss, and self-offering.
Within this broader transcontinental context, Latin American expressions of solidarity with Morocco appear as an early, relatively isolated but conceptually significant antecedent. José Martí's essay "Los moros en España" (1893), published in Patria, expresses sympathy for resistance in the Rif region against Spanish expansion.[11] He frames it as a legitimate struggle for land, dignity, and survival. His phrase "Let us be Moors" demonstrates that Morocco had already entered Latin American anti-imperial imaginaries decades earlier, serving as a symbolic reference point for anti-colonial resistance.
Returning to al-Khattabi's own language in the letter, from the perspective of political vocabulary, his reference to "los pueblos de tronco árabe" ("peoples of Arab origin/stock") belongs to the semantic field of early twentieth-century nationalist discourse. The term "tronco" evokes lineage and shared descent, a common idiom for articulating collective identity in this period. Al-Khattabi's later association with initiatives such as the Committee for the Liberation of the Arab Maghreb, as well as his support of Arab unity, including Syrian-Egyptian unity in 1958, reflects a consistent unionist Arab political identity rather than a shift in ideology.[12] This stance is already evident in the letter itself, where he writes: "Our brothers in Egypt have struck the first blow, and I hope the world will witness the second blow that will be dealt here in Morocco; then will come the hour of Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli, whose peoples are also preparing for the moments of great national self-sacrifice." Yet he was not a classical pan-Arab leader in the mold of the Ba'athists or Nasserists. His position is better understood alongside his Algerian contemporaries such as Ibn Badis and al-Ibrahimi, who articulated a unionist Arab political identity through anti-colonial struggle and cultural belonging, not through a fixed doctrinal system.
A central feature of the passage is its historical parallelism between Moroccan resistance and Latin American anti-colonial struggle. When al-Khattabi states, "Our cause, as yours once was, is a just cause," he aligns the Rif War with Latin America's wars of independence against Spain. The Rif War is thus presented not as an isolated revolt, but as part of a broader pattern of resistance to Spanish imperialism.
Another important dimension is al-Khattabi's invocation of al-Andalus as a symbolic site of Arab–Iberian interconnection. His reference to the Arab presence in the "golden age of the arts in Spain" is not primarily a demographic claim. It functions instead as a counter-narrative that challenges rigid colonial distinctions between Europe and North Africa. In this sense, al-Andalus operates as a symbolic link, situating the colonial present of that period within longer Mediterranean histories of exchange, rupture, and entanglement.
To clarify the Arab identity dimension in al-Khattabi's conception of al-Andalus, reference may be made to contemporaneous intellectual figures such as the Spanish Arabist Rodolfo Gil Benumeya and the Lebanese intellectual Habib Estéfano. This reference is not evidence of direct intellectual influence or transmission. Rather, it serves as a heuristic device that helps situate al-Khattabi's discourse within broader early twentieth-century configurations of transcontinental identity construction linking the Arab world, southern Europe, and Latin America.
Habib Estéfano was part of Arab intellectual and diasporic networks in Latin America that sought to preserve Arab cultural identity among migrant communities. His significance lies not in systematic theory but in his contribution to a transcontinental idiom of Arab cultural continuity in diaspora – a context worth considering alongside al-Khattabi's own transnational discourse. Rodolfo Gil Benumeya offers a more explicitly articulated framework for understanding interconnections across three spheres: the European (particularly Spanish), the Arab Eastern, and the Hispano-American worlds.[13] In his interwar writings, these spheres are connected through a long historical arc that includes al-Andalus, Spanish imperial expansion, and migration to the Americas.[14] Within this framework, al-Andalus functions not merely as a historical episode but as a symbolic point of contact through which boundaries between Europe and the Arab world become porous and mutually constitutive. Read in this light, al-Khattabi's invocation of al-Andalus can be understood as not a nostalgic gesture, but as a strategic deployment of shared history to challenge colonial hierarchies.
From a broader interpretive perspective, later mediated representations of al-Khattabi further contribute to his transatlantic construction as an anti-colonial figure. An article in the Argentine magazine Revista Vea y Lea (February 1963), published shortly after his death, attributes to him a pronounced familiarity with Argentine history. In this account, he explicitly compares himself to General Martín Miguel de Güemes.[15] He is also described as drawing parallels between the Riffian resistance and the gaucho forces of the Argentine War of Independence. While these claims are mediated through journalistic reconstruction and must be treated cautiously, they are analytically significant. They contribute to the posthumous construction of al-Khattabi as a figure legible within Latin American revolutionary history.
This mediated construction of al-Khattabi differs from his own correspondence: the Vea y Lea article lacks the idiom of kinship that he himself articulates. When he writes, "I address you as brothers, because the Spanish blood that runs in your veins is for the most part Arab blood," he invokes "shared blood" as an idiom of kinship. This is a stronger articulation of brotherhood than his first use of "my dear brothers" in the opening of the letter. In contemporary Latin American political rhetoric, Hugo Chávez has at times mobilized similar idioms of affective proximity to the Arab world, including claims of Arab blood. In a interview with Syrian state television, Chávez stated that he felt he had Arab blood in his veins, using this claimed connection to articulate solidarity with Arab causes.[16] Rather than indicating continuity with al-Khattabi's thought, this parallel points to a structural repetition: the use of perceived kinship and historical entanglement as means to forge political solidarity within anti-imperial projects separated by time, place, and ideology. What remains significant is that al-Khattabi's letter already deployed this rhetorical structure decades earlier, making it available for reactivation in later anti-imperial contexts.
The prayers that rise to God for your well-being and happiness, from all the sons of the Republic of the Rif. At the same time, I ask you to urge your gods and saints to hasten the day of our independence ever closer, just as your own day has already arrived.
The glorious memory of Ayacucho is a source of inspiration for all oppressed peoples. It is a lesson we carry in our hearts, and if attaining freedom were to cost us thousands upon thousands of lives, we would never say that the number was too great. We shall fight without ceasing until we complete our mission: the liberation of all Arab peoples on the shores of the Mediterranean and in West Asia. A free Morocco and a free Egypt will be the two pillars upon which the renaissance of a nation will be built—a nation that has honored three of humanity’s great civilizations.
My dear brothers, I ask you to give sympathetic attention to this message which the people of Morocco send you through my voice, with their hot blood burning in their hearts. It is not necessary for me to tell you that, in appealing to your sympathy, we are not asking you to take a position against Spain, with whom you have reconciled since it agreed to recognize your sacred right to independence. And we too, after the day of our Ayacucho—which God and our courage will soon enable us to reach—will see our right to independence finally recognized by Spain, and then we shall once again become friends, she and we, like an old and beloved sister.
We regret that our state of war and our lack of recognition by the imperialist states of Europe have prevented us from sending a special embassy to the celebrations of the glorious Ayacucho. But rest assured that we will not wait for the next centenary to establish firm relations with your peoples, founded on love and fraternity rather than on the conventional hypocrisy of the present diplomacy of capitalist imperialism.
My dear brothers, thus speaks to you the Moroccan people, from the battlefields that the enemy abandons day by day, associating themselves with the centenary of Ayacucho through your friend.
Signed,
Abd el-Krim al-Khattabi
Provisional President of the Republic of the Rif
The third and last part of al-Khattabi's letter brings together affective language, diplomatic positioning, and collective self-representation. The opening invocation of prayers establishes a reciprocal spiritual register between the Moroccan side and Latin American audiences. This exchange of supplication functions as symbolic mutual recognition, operating outside doctrinal boundaries and emphasizing ethical rather than theological connection.
The emotional register of the passage reinforces this relational dimension. References to collective intensity, such as the expression of "hot blood," construct a sense of immediacy and shared presence between speaker and addressee. These formulations do not introduce new ideological content, but rather reinforce the embodied dimension of political discourse.
The conclusion also introduces a clear diplomatic temporal structure in relation to Spain. While maintaining the legitimacy of resistance, al-Khattabi opens a future horizon in which reconciliation becomes possible after recognition of independence. This produces a distinction between colonial conflict as a present condition and post-conflict normalization as a conditional future stage.
Within the same closing movement, Arab unionist liberation is reactivated. Al-Khattabi declares: "We shall fight without ceasing until we complete our mission: the liberation of all Arab peoples on the shores of the Mediterranean and in West Asia." As shown in the middle section, where this unionist Arab identity was linked to his later positions, this recurrence reinforces rather than expands his argument. The reappearance of Arab unity reaffirms its position as a central horizon of meaning in al-Khattabi's political vision.
Al-Khattabi reveals a precise strategic awareness. He represents the Rif Republic—the resisting state that confronted France and Spain—and frames his national liberation project in opposition to any contemporary separatist movement. His words and actions, he affirms, represent the Moroccan people as a whole. The signature—"Provisional President of the Republic of the Rif"—is the final performative act. It transforms the letter from a plea into a statement of sovereign equality.
The Resonance of al-Khattabi's Letter and the Reception of His Legacy in Latin America
Having analyzed the letter itself, this section now turns to three dimensions of al-Khattabi's legacy in Latin America: first, articles written in the aftermath of his letter and the Rif War; second, his military influence on revolutionary movements in the region; and third, an overview of contemporary Latin American texts engaging with his figure.
In a response by the Argentinian anti-imperialist intellectual José Ingenieros, published in Renovación (January 1925), al-Khattabi's letter reads within a Latin American anti-imperialist framework.[17] Ingenieros highlights the Moroccan leader's military successes against Spanish forces and interprets them as confirmation of a broader anti-colonial struggle, comparable to the Latin American wars of independence, particularly the Battle of Ayacucho. He also criticizes Spanish colonial rhetoric, especially the use of "patriotism" by General Primo de Rivera, which he sees as a reversal of its true meaning, framing Spanish rule as occupation. Ingenieros places al-Khattabi within the tradition of Latin American independence leaders such as Bolívar, San Martín, Sucre, O'Higgins, and Artigas, situating the Rif struggle within a shared anti-colonial pattern.
In an article published in Variedades (Lima, 1 August 1925), the Peruvian Marxist thinker José Carlos Mariátegui framed al-Khattabi's struggle as part of a broader global confrontation between imperialism and insurgent peoples.[18] He noted that both reactionaries like Raymond Poincaré, who claimed "Western civilization feels threatened by Abd-el-Krim," and democrats like Paul Painlevé, who argued France had a "civilizing mission" in Morocco, arrived at the same conclusion: France had the right to intervene. By naming both a right-wing nationalist and a left-wing republican, Mariátegui demonstrated that imperialism united the French political class across ideological divides. Like Ingenieros, Mariátegui placed al-Khattabi within the tradition of Latin American independence leaders by stating that the new generation of Spanish-speaking Latin America greeted al-Khattabi's struggle as a repetition of the enterprise of San Martín and Bolívar. In his concluding lines, Mariátegui wrote that al-Khattabi represented "la causa humana" — the human cause itself.
He interpreted the Rif uprising as part of a broader "resurrection of the Eastern peoples," a reawakening that undermined Western hegemony. France, which had initially viewed al-Khattabi as merely a problem for Spain, began to see him as an adversary of the capitalist West. For Mariátegui, this confirmed that the Rif War exposed a systemic crisis rather than a purely colonial dispute. At the same time, he criticized the different strategies of imperial expansion. The United Kingdom and France, he noted, acted more pragmatically, tolerating local institutions as long as economic exploitation remained secure. Mariátegui suggested that Spain's inquisitorial colonial instinct, unlike the flexible pragmatism of other European powers, played a role in provoking the Riffian insurrection.
In a similar vein, the Peruvian anti-imperialist politician and writer Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, in the mid-1920s — in the context of the Rif War (1921–1926) — adopted a markedly radical position. In September 1925, he wrote the article "El asesinato de un pueblo" ("The Murder of a People"), which was later included in his 1927 work Por la emancipación de América Latina.[19] In this text, he sharply condemned Spanish military actions in North Africa and argued that the silence of Spanish intellectuals regarding the crimes committed in Morocco deprived them of any moral legitimacy.
He interpreted the involvement of foreign — including American — actors in the Moroccan conflict as a form of practical training in colonial domination and the systematic destruction of Indigenous populations in peripheral and mountainous regions. Like the previous writers discussed in this section, he placed al-Khattabi alongside the great liberators of Latin America. In his article he asked: "The greatness of Bolívar, of Hidalgo, of San Martín, the greatness of our founding fathers — can it be denied to Abd-el-Krim, champion of his people?" For Haya, Morocco was not a distant conflict but a mirror of Latin America's own past and a warning of its possible future.
Peruvian intellectuals such as Mariátegui and Haya de la Torre, alongside the Argentine José Ingenieros, played an important role in reinterpreting the Rif War within a Latin American anti-imperialist framework. Yet it was Mexico City that emerged as the true revolutionary beacon of tricontinental solidarity during the interwar period. According to Lindner, the Comintern actively cultivated this transcontinental consciousness through organizations such as the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas (LADLA) and its magazine El Libertador, which openly connected Latin American anti-imperialism with anticolonial struggles in Africa and Asia, including al-Khattabi's liberation movement in Morocco. The Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas (LADLA) came into existence in January 1925 in Mexico City. It emerged from a partnership between the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) and the Workers Party (WP)—the name under which the Communist Party of America operated legally between 1921 and 1929. Yet beyond these Comintern-backed efforts, Mexican political circles generated their own distinct responses to the Rif War.
In May 1925, the magazine La Antorcha, published in Mexico City under the direction of José Vasconcelos[20], portrayed Abd el-Krim al-Khattabi not merely as a local resistance leader but as a central figure in a broader global struggle against imperial domination.[21] Emphasizing his tenacity and undeniable talent, Vasconcelos' magazine noted that after years of determined warfare in the Rif mountains, he had succeeded not only in reclaiming vast territories in northern Morocco but also in introducing a new spirit of disciplined organization into the anti-colonial struggle—one that echoed the modernizing and national reorganization undertaken by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in post-Ottoman Turkey.
Crucially, Vasconcelos' magazine framed al-Khattabi's struggle as part of a wider project of Arab emancipation. What had initially emerged as a resistance movement against Spanish colonialism evolved into a broader confrontation with French imperial power, thereby extending its scope beyond the Rif into a more expansive vision of liberation for Arab peoples. In this sense, al-Khattabi was presented not only as a Moroccan leader but as the embodiment of an anti-imperial awakening. Addressing a Latin American readership, the magazine warned: "Republican America would betray its very reason of existence, if it were to hypocritically turn a blind eye towards the fight that the admirable Riffians maintain against the decadent imperialisms of the Mediterranean, unfortunately represented by Latin people."
If Vasconcelos warned against turning a blind eye, Rafael Carrillo—Secretary-General of the Mexican Communist Party—showed that Latin Americans were not just looking away: they were being recruited to fight for Spain.[22] Carrillo wrote about the recruitment practices of the Spanish Foreign Legion in Latin America. According to him, Spanish consuls succeeded in recruiting thousands of young men by "stirring romantic enthusiasm among the youth of America," indoctrinating them with the idea that they were fighting for "civilization," for the "freedom and honor of the white race," and other imperialist fictions, while in reality they were participating in a war of domination and plunder that not only endangered them but also rendered them complicit in the reproduction of European control over Africa.
This dynamic was not limited to ideological influence but also took on a concrete socioeconomic dimension. High-ranking Spanish-Cuban officers, born in Cuba or formed during the Hispano-Cuban War, held key command positions in the Spanish military campaigns in Morocco. Alongside them, a significant number of low-ranking Latin American mercenaries joined the ranks of the Legion, likely driven by poverty and precarious living conditions. The scale of this recruitment from Latin America was notable. In September 1921, shortly after the "Disaster of Annual," 287 men departed from Buenos Aires as volunteers for the Spanish Legion in Morocco.[23] Soon thereafter, 731 mercenaries left Havana for Morocco, the majority of whom were Cubans.[24]
Among the most illustrative examples of this broader recruitment pattern are the Yaqui fighters of Sonora, whose trajectory makes visible the lived realities behind these trans-imperial mobilizations. In the aftermath of the Yaqui Wars, the Mexican state had consolidated control over Sonora but remained fearful of further rebellion. Simultaneously, Spain, reeling from the disastrous Battle of Annual (July 1921), found itself desperately in need of elite fighters. Approximately 500 Yaqui men were recruited from camps in Sonora; they sailed from Veracruz to Cádiz and were incorporated into the 16th Company of the Spanish Foreign Legion. Deployed to Spanish Morocco, these Yaqui fighters—seasoned by decades of guerrilla warfare in the deserts and mountains of northern Mexico—were sent to fight Moroccan guerrillas in the Rif using the very mountain tactics they had honed against Mexican government forces.[25] This tragic circuit of imperial recruitment reveals how European powers exploited the precarious conditions produced by one colonial theater to sustain domination in another, transforming Latin America from a site of anti-colonial solidarity into a reservoir of mercenary manpower.
While colonial warfare relied on the circulation of soldiers across imperial spaces, anti-colonial struggle generated its own forms of circulation, through which military knowledge and figures such as Al-Khattabi were taken up and reinterpreted in Latin American revolutionary movements. In this context, Al-Khattabi's impact on Latin American military tactic is perhaps best illustrated by his influence on Augusto César Sandino, the Nicaraguan anti-imperialist leader who fought against U.S. occupation and was described by contemporaries as belonging to "the school of Abd-el-Krim." In a 1930 article published in The Sunday Star (Washington), Rafael de Nogales Méndez—Venezuelan soldier, adventurer, and writer who met Sandino and later wrote about his anti-imperialist struggle in Nicaragua—described Sandino as a tactician "after the school of Abd-el-Krim of Morocco fame."[26] In this formulation, al-Khattabi functions as an interpretive benchmark through which Sandino's strategy is assessed, while also illustrating the role of Latin American observers in producing comparative readings of anti-colonial warfare.
The timing and nature of this influence, however, require further scrutiny. As Mevliyar Er argues in her research article "Abd-el-Krim al-Khattabi: The Unknown Mentor of Che Guevara," Sandino's revolt started as soon as the Rif War ended in 1927. Sandino did not immediately adopt the guerrilla tactics that the Rifis had mastered; he turned to them only after his initial conventional attacks proved unsuccessful.[27] This gradual adoption suggests that the transmission of Khattabist military knowledge was neither automatic nor immediate.
A more direct channel for this transmission appears to be Antonio Dahud (also known as Antonio Talhami), a Colombian-born fighter of Palestinian origin who joined Sandino's forces in Nicaragua while still young. His revolutionary trajectory suggests a deeper, more sustained engagement with al-Khattabi's legacy. After Sandino's death, Dahud traveled to the Arab East, where he participated in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. During this period, he met all-Khattabi—then in exile following the collapse of the Rif Republic. Contrary to suggestions that this encounter remains unconfirmed, the contact between the two men is documented.[28] While al-Khattabi followed the fighting from behind the scenes, Dahud joined him in leading Arab volunteers in the struggle. This documented encounter represents a direct, embodied transmission of the Khattabist experience from the Rif to the Palestinian struggle, and potentially beyond.
Dahud would later resurface in the Americas, where he became acquainted with Fidel Castro. He joined the Granma expedition and fought in the Cuban Revolution. Through this winding revolutionary itinerary—from Sandino's Nicaragua to a documented encounter with al-Khattabi, and from there to Castro's Cuba—Dahud may have served as a living conduit through which the tactical and strategic lessons of the Rif War were transmitted to the Cuban Revolution. Rather than al-Khattabi's influence flowing through printed texts or mediated discourse alone, Dahud's peripatetic career suggests a more direct, embodied form of transmission: a guerrilla who fought with Sandino, probably learned from al-Khattabi, and through him reached the next generation of Latin American revolutionaries. Further research is now needed to determine what exactly was transmitted. What specific tactics, organizational principles, or strategic lessons did Dahud possibly carry from al-Khattabi to Castro's fighters? Archival research into Dahud's writings, personal documents, or testimonies from revolutionaries who knew him could help answer these questions.
In this sense, the circulation of al-Khattabi's legacy did not end with the revolutionary networks of the early twentieth century but continued to resonate within later Latin American intellectual and journalistic production. Beyond the immediate military and colonial dynamics of the Rif War, al- Khattabi has increasingly been reinterpreted in the region as a key reference for anti-colonial struggle and guerrilla warfare. In the 21st century, his figure continues to circulate within Latin American publications as a symbolic and analytical point of reference for broader reflections on revolutionary history and South–South intellectual exchanges.
In this regard, the 2020 Mexican publication De Abd-el-Krim a Fidel Castro by Fredo Aras de la Canal examines perceived continuities between the Rif War and the Cuban revolutionary movement, with particular attention to the transmission of guerrilla practices and anti-colonial military experience.[29] As Aras de la Canal writes, the reference to Abd-el-Krim in his book is justified because he was fought against in Morocco by Alberto Bayo, the republican soldier who trained the Cuban revolutionaries who, under the command of Fidel Castro, started the revolution – as Bayo recounted in his work Mi aporte to the Cuban Revolution. Alberto Bayo thus represents an influential framework on the Cuban Revolution through his direct transmission of Rif War experiences – a point confirmed by multiple sources, among them the previously cited article by Mevliyar Er. Similarly, the Paraguayan journalist and member of the Academy of History and Military Geography of Paraguay, Luis Agüero Wagner, in his article "Maestro marroquí para la guerra de guerrillas," confirms al-Khattabi's influence on the Cuban Revolution once again, explicitly through the figure of Alberto Bayo.[30]
The article by Argentine journalist Leandro Albani, “Cuando la figura de Abd-el-Krim sobrevoló América Latina” (2024), shows how the figure of Abd-el-Krim and his letter to the peoples of Latin America represented a symbolic bridge between the anti-colonial struggle in North Africa and the independence movements in Latin America.[31] In doing so, Albani mainly discusses selected fragments of Abd-el-Krim (El-Khattabi)’s letter to the American and Latin American peoples, presenting its content in an accessible way for a broad audience.
On a more scholarly level, the Argentine historian Martín Bergel has extensively examined the transcontinental circulation of anti-colonial ideas, particularly in his work De los "Viajes" de Sarmiento a la recepción 'prototercermundista' de la Guerra del Rif: tres momentos en las conexiones culturales entre América Latina y el Norte de África. In this study, he identifies three key phases in the historical connections between Latin America and North Africa: the representations produced by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento during his nineteenth-century travels in Algeria; the intensified circulation of information on North Africa following the late nineteenth-century communications revolution and its reinterpretation within Latin American media; and the emergence, after the First World War, of intellectual and political affinities between Latin American actors and anti-colonial movements such as that led by al-Khattabi.[32]
Taken together, these processes situate the Rif War within a broader genealogy of transregional exchanges that contributed to the development of a Latin American "tricontinental" sensibility within the framework of the Third World. This line of inquiry has been further enriched by the work of the Mexican historian Yolotl de María Valadez Betancourt, whose master's research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, completed in September 2025, constitutes an early systematic study of the reception of al-Khattabi in Latin America.[33] Her work focuses on the ways in which news of the Rif War was received, interpreted, and rearticulated within Latin American intellectual, political, and journalistic spaces.
Within this evolving field of Latin American reception and reinterpretation of al-Khattabi's North African anti-colonial experiment, the ways in which his political experience and message have been received and reinterpreted acquire particular significance. His address to the peoples of Latin America has, throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, come to be understood as a key articulation of an evolving sense of solidarity. In this perspective, his letter can be read not merely as a historical document, but as a recurring political reference that has framed and sustained visions of anti-colonial cooperation between Arab and Latin American societies. Its continued reinterpretation may contribute to broadening the horizons of emancipatory thought within the Global South, giving this convergence a lasting theoretical and political dimension that extends well beyond its original historical moment.
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