It is considered that the first Mauritanian left-wing movement was born on 23 July 1968, when the majority of youth and student groups of various tendencies who were residing at that time outside Mauritania participated in a conference held by Mauritanian students in Damascus, Syria. This meeting later led to the creation of the first National Democratic Movement (MND) in the Takomadi village in Gorgol, southern Mauritania. The MND was explicitly Marxist, renouncing to pan-Arabism and preferring an internationalist outlook instead.
