I just realized you are also Spanish and I have a funny old story for you. Some decades ago the woman I was with had a mother who was Spanish, father was from a Caribbean island and they lived in the US. The mother was born in Tangir Morocco from Spanish parents, I knew of this for a while but didn’t think much more of it. At some period elections were coming up and between joke and casual discussion the mother said she was and will always vote republican (the more conservative of the two conservative parties dominating US elections). I dared asked why and she said my father was republican so I am a republican too. Republico in Spain in her father’s time meant he was against fascism and Franco. To confirm how much of a republico he was she explained that his friends (fishermen) called him Rojo. So I returned and I said that not only was he an anti-fascist he must have been a communist. She went crazy and didn’t want to hear about it, but she said the entire family and many relatives were exiled from Spain because they were “republican”.

The youngest son in early teen age, somehow paid extra attention and found this discussion interesting, so I offered to bring him books or what to ask for in library. I guess because he never met his grandfather but had his name became overly interested on what all this really meant. A few years later he has a music group playing songs about class war, filling up his school and neighborhood walls with graffiti about class war, and dedicated his life to radical anti-capitalism.

I had a cat named rojo for a while and many times I thought of this story when I used his name.

Rojo Vive no struggle is ever waste … it travels through time and generations, it is a seed that grows and replants itself and will never be uprooted.

That so wonderful comrade! I live in the Deep South USA and while i think my parents know my leanings, i think if i came out and said it they’d probably disown me. But I am a very vocal communist to everybody else in my life

You make it sound as coming out of the closet :)

Realities vary so much from different parts of the world, in some social situations it would be a shame not to be one due to the history of the family, the community. Although in many such realities many people were communist without really deeply knowing what this meant, and had many contradicting practices between what they claimed and what they really were. There were religious communists, communists who did nothing else in their life than enterprise and devise ways to make more money (and exploiting everyone around them), some were family abusers, cheaters, cons, etc. To make things worse some were even racist and ethnocentric, while defending their communist identity. But there are such places, social situations.

I had even witnessed an entire village of communists calling the cops to do a massive blockade of a beach and arresting and fining young people for free camping, because they owned campgrounds and rented rooms to tourists and this was bad competition, to be camping free near “their beach”.

Hopefully, since it is by choice and not by birth or origin, you will take your new public identity with more respect and live accordingly.

comrade mother