The Myth of the Guerrilla

...Viewed in the light of principles, his actions are contradictory...

...At the time, the democratic regime had just succeeded the Perez Jimenez dictatorship and was still new and fragile...

...The guerril las included veterans of armed struggle, notably in Cuba...

...Cesar Montes, Turcios' successor, called El Nino (The Child) because of his youth, has chosen a strategy of movement...

...GUEVARA WILL CERTAINLY gain the tribute of those for whom his disappearance was a great relief...

...VERY DIFFERENT is the story of the Venezuelan guerrillas...

...Convinced that a new regime will offer him better opportunities than the es tablished order, he goes into an ideological maquis—even if he stays quietly at home, as in the great majority of cases he does...

...Besides, there is no love lost between the detachments controlled by the Colombian CP led by Manuel Marulanda (called Tiro Fijo—Sure Shot...

...Yesterday, it was the example of Mexico, with its national epic, its popular wars, its struggle against foreigners, its revolutionary party in the government...

...From which social strata, which environment...

...Third, if guerrilla war is to begin, grow, and triumph, it must be planted in a favorable ground: the peasant environment...

...A deeper analysis shows—as Latin-American sociologists like Fals Borda and Albornoz have demonstrated — that the Venezuelan guerrilla movement was born at the University of Caracas...

...The choice of the place and the composition of the group suggest that the aim—at least the short-range aim—was not to create a guerrilla movement for Bolivia but rather a school for guerrillas in an area close to Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay...

...but they must be sub LUIS MERCIER VEGA ordinated to the politico-military leadership "in the mounains," which is out of reach of political deals and compromises...

...A simple reading of the newspapers in countries where guerrillas are active will prove it...

...Hector Bejar, journalist...

...In this it differs totally from the socialist concept—all socialist concepts—of the counter-society...

...The first guerrilla imprisoned in Bolivia was Jorge Vasquez, student, son of a well-known historian...

...But the strong and intelligent President-elect Romulo Betancourt managed to gain the time needed to build a new Venezuela...

...Here we come up against a contradiction between a vocabulary borrowed from European socialism, with generous use of the terms "working class" and "poor and landless peasants," and a different reality that is authentically Latin-American...

...IN COLOMBIA TOO, contrary to the assertion of well-organized propaganda campaigns abroad, there is a distinct decrease in the number of guerrilla focos, the strength of their fighting units, and the size of their operations...

...So we first have the Cuban experience and the revolutionary Havana government born of that experience...

...The guerrillas are not in fact the sole revolutionary center which can subordinate the many other manifestations of political and social life...

...General Barrientos is a product of the revolutionary MNR party...

...It enjoys the support of Cuba, and sets itself up as a revolutionary force op...

...The Peruvian guerrilla movement would have made sense only if it could have participated in a vast offensive on a continental scale...

...OF THE PERUVIAN guerrillas only the dead, the prisoners, and the exiles are left...

...Only three years ago, the miners' leader Juan Lechin asked him to be his Vice-Presidential candidate in the next elections...

...What, then, is left...

...Gonzalez Fernandez Gasco, university professor...

...Until the day Batista fell there was no question of MarxismLeninism, politico-military power, antiYankeeism, solidarity with the socialist camp, or struggle on a continental scale...

...Such disturbances do not favor military action...

...Now there is a theory of guerrilla warfare...

...The answer is, of course, not simple...

...WHY DID INTELLECTUALS, and especially young intellectuals, take up arms under conditions that were often suicidal...

...His operations greatly LUIS MERCIER VEGA alarmed the government and opposition parties and caused disputes between the President and Parliament...

...The only advantage of the guerrillas—a good third of them non-Bolivians, the rest students, revolutionary militants, and a few recruited in the "base" itself—was their in itial superiority over the army...

...WHERE DO THE GUERRILLAS come from...

...The peasants have remained hostile to the guerrillas and refractory to their propaganda...

...In this period of great transformations that confront almost all Latin-American countries, the crudity of guerrilla methods, their romanticism, their adolescent courage, but also their taste for total power and their oligarchic contempt for the masses whom they judge incapable of achieving their own emancipation, will doubtless be replaced by a less exalted but no less difficult search for a revolution that would start from below...

...It may even behave like a political party, and it can, under certain conditions, display initiative and enterprise...

...He reconstituted his government several times, to make room for men who had previously backed the guerrillas or profited by their existence...

...Its leader, Luis de la Puente, no doubt conceived of it in that perspective...

...he bows to the Soviet Union, to which he owes his subsistence, but which he defies in Latin America...

...To Latin Americans, all this is obvious...

...The army is not necessarily a simple tool of a power or decadent by nature...

...But they left a legacy: military experts now joined the city fighters who had turned guerrillas...

...It then generalized this experience, to apply it to all of Latin America What does this theory say...

...it is a party...

...Leoni, the new President, has won over some opposition groups with his policy of a "wide base...

...the fighting militants tended to reject the control of the political apparatus...

...The guerrilla army is not an agency used by a party...

...names and professions are given, and the vast majority are those of students and sons of professional men—of doctors, government officials, bankers, and governors...

...but as soon as a decree charged the army with "restoring order" in the guerrilla zones, the game was up...

...But it is a movement of perpetual retreat...

...Finally, there are the guerrillas themselves...

...First, that guerrilla warfare has only one aim: the seizure of power...

...For several months, the young resistance movement was easygoing, and friendships between the rebel officers and their old, regular army colleagues often helped the guerrillas get sup plies and keep in contact with the cities...

...Nor are those in political power always absurd in their actions or lacking in imagination...

...But despite propaganda and threats, the great majority of Venezuelans voted for the Betancourt government...

...For the new genera tion, the system is not only morally to be censured—it also fails to offer avenues for promotion...

...The police and the army soon recovered from this surprise...

...There la violencia, a bitter civil war between liberals and conservatives, started in the 1940's and lasted until the 1956 agreement which arranged for the Presidency to alternate between the two parties...

...It did not exist when a handful of Cuban exiles disembarked in 1953 for their struggle against Batista...

...Then the guerrilla foco became politicized...

...but the social problems that did unleash it remain unsolved...

...The country has no class enemy, easily named and identified, who is traditionally hated...

...No LATIN-AMERICAN GUERRILLAS, extinct or still fighting, sustain the ideas demanded by the theory of Che Guevara...

...They studied the lessons of civil strife that had taken place in other countries, and soon they began to make life difficult for the terrorists, who had alienated public opinion by some murderous actions...

...Student extremism can thus be seen as part of a general phenomenon: the pressure of intellectuals, professionals, and technicians in a society where they cannot find social space...

...The extreme Left claimed that the people of Venezuela rejected this "electoral farce...

...The most dramatic aspect of the present situation in Colombia is the peace-making alliance between the liberals and conservatives, which limits itself to putting an end to violence...

...True, an occasional transport or building worker may be found among the guerrilla fighters, and some peasants or agricultural workers may join a guerrilla group that establishes a foco (center) in their area...

...his partisans there are peasants who have guns and can handle them...

...When the Politbureau was temporarily out of commission because its members were in exile or prison, the military command of the Armed Forces of the National Liberation, which has a Communist majority, proclaimed itself autonomous, as did the National Liberation Front...

...Most of the leaders, organizers, and volunteers of Latin-American guerrilla groups are intellectuals of middle-class origin...

...Workers and peasants are rare...

...Barrientos is solidly popular in his native region of Cochabamba...

...First, the secretaries of Communist parties will salute his sacrifice, and continue to resist his tactics by all the means at their disposal...

...far from organizations which, even if workingclass or democratic, are conceived for reformist tasks and tolerate the power which must be brought down...

...In 1962 the military rebellions of Carupaho and Puerto Cabello were crushed by THE MYTH OF THE GUERRILLA the army...

...Until now, on the doctrinal plane at least, all socialist schools have put their hopes in an evolution of society itself or in a revolution led by strata of the population within that society...

...Here as elsewhere, the Communist bureaucracy is accused of curbing the guerrillas instead of encouraging them...

...The great rural Indian population, which is moving slowly but irrepressibly in the last few years toward the reconquest of its lands, did not respond to the guerrillas...

...In Colombia, the guerrilla bands and detachments of all allegiances are made up of peasants...

...But if, as the pro-guerrilla propagandists abroad say, it was really intended to launch a guerrilla war in Bolivia, under the conditions of 1966-67, then it was an unseasonable adventure, even in terms of the theory...

...In Mexico there is an unwritten but real guarantee that all the country's university graduates can participate and partake in the responsibilities and advantages of power...

...Second, that it must be led by only one politico-military group...

...In these two areas the creation of guerrilla focos was not linked to any specific critical situation, and so neither group gained any popular base...

...The raw recruits learned while they fought...

...Such data as we have would indicate the latter...

...Polemics, exchanges of theses—then of insults—between the Venezuelan CP and the guerrilla leaders Douglas Bravo and Fabricio Ojeda, soon moved into the sphere of international Communist politics...

...The five focos created in Peru in 1965 were set up by Luis de la Puente, lawyer...

...It does not aim at finding humane and progressive solutions to the grave social problems that afflict the people...

...The Cuban Revolution has a strong romantic appeal: the revolutionaries of the 26 de Julio were a small band of 12 men when they launched their struggle...

...First of all, there is a generational motivation which, by defi THE MYTH OF THE GUERRILLA nition, is ever renewed, and in a period of great social changes, as now in Latin Amer ica, it gains special importance...

...In Venezuela violence exploded in Caracas, where a solid terrorist organization was quickly set up with the aid of the MIR (the Movement of the Revolutionary Left), a militant group which had split off from the government party, the Democratic Action...

...IN GUATEMALA, there are two guerrilla movements: the MR 13 of Yon Sosa, and the National Liberation Army of Cesar Montes, who succeeded Luis Turcios Lima upon his death...

...CUBA HAS DEMONSTRATED, since 1959, that even a small country can make its revolution work, and that the great powers cannot stop it...

...The MIR guerrilla movement has split into several factions, some in favor of violence, others demanding a return to legal political action...

...Guillermo Lobaton, journalist...

...it has a politics of its own...

...Both movements were born in a rebellion against the dictator General Ydigoras who ruled Guatemala in 1960...

...They knew the country well, after living in it discreetly for several months—whereas the army patrols were in a strange territory, and consisted of recruits fom the Altiplano, with only three to four months' barracks training...

...It came exactly as in Peru—despite the pres ence of Che Guevara...

...COLOMBIA IS AN EXCEPTION regarding this view on the social origins of the guerrillas...

...There now is a break between the Communist party of Venezuela and that of Castro's Cuba...

...The reaction of the young man is classic...

...But—the guerrillas contradict the experience...

...News items report casualties, dead and wounded, and prisoners...

...The theory of Che Guevara has thus far not stood the test of experience...

...But the repression by the Ydigoras government increased, and the army organized clean-up operations wherever guerrillas were active...

...There is a discernable break between the trenchant, logical, yet unrealistic revolutionary positions of city intellectuals, and the peasants' tactic of constant pressure which is devoid of ideology but is aquiring the characteristic of a real revolution...

...If we should use the Marxist phraseology that is de rigueur among their sympathizers, we would say that the guerrillas are of ruling-class and middle-class origin...

...At first, the Communist party was hesitant...

...he trades with Franco Spain and imperialist Britain...

...The general elections of 1963 were to decide whether the Betancourt experiment was genuinely popular...

...The MNR leader Victor Paz Estenssoro, who was then President and is now in exile, asked him to do the same thing, running with him...

...The "bite and flee" tactics of the guerrilla strategists could not be applied to an army that bit and advanced...

...The great exchanges of ideological arguments between Chinese partisans and the followers of Moscow are useless to Latin America...

...and the guerrillas are now reduced to a small number and are operating in three isolated areas...

...The Communist party was also shaken...

...In Peru, the movement was started by urban revolutionary groups in five focos which were chosen primarily for geographical reasons and had no support from the workers or roots among the peasants...

...And almost all are young...

...Finally, the practical argument is made foolproof with a comfortable theory founded on the inexorable March of History, which abolishes most problems apparently invented by the lukewarm and the bureaucrats to curb revolutionary action...

...and the Army of National Liberation whose spokesmen are Fabio Vasquez and Victor Medina...

...Now Yon Sosa is prudently trying to maintain his guerrillas' hold in a remote area...

...WHAT MODEL can appeal to the young intellectual...

...Yon Sosa had been an army lieutenant, Turcios a second lieutenant...

...It is, in a number of cases, the backbone of the state...

...The decisions for action for these focos were made in the cities...

...it is composed of MIR militants and Communist leaders...

...Once in action against the guerrillas, the army merely asked for a chance to prove itself...

...there is no apparent possibility of taking the initiative...

...Next, we have the theory that claims to base itself on the Cuban experience...

...But proletarian elements are not the founders of guerrilla movements, nor are they characteristic of them...

...Their arms were modern...

...THE GUERRILLA WARFARE attempts in Argentina's northwest (1963-64) and Brazil's Matto Grosso (1966) are already past history...

...the system to which he owes his for tune or power keeps the son out of leader ship and authority...

...a revolution made by nonprofessionals, a revo lution that starts from—and returns to—the people...

...and 2-3,000 men surrounded the area...

...Can there be better proof of the virtues of voluntary action...

...Moreover, both the Argentine frontier border police and the Brazilian army are well-functioning machines which cannot be penetrated by the theses of antirevolutionary and student circles of the extreme Left...

...but it soon joined the movement of direct action, for fear of being out-flanked from the Left and of losing its hold on the young...

...Soldiers from the forest zones began to "rake" the suspect zones...

...To be sure, action in the cities, the struggles of the labor unions, political parties, and student associations are important...

...The Peruvian army does not resemble Batista's old Cuban army...

...Since 1966 there is a new political alignment among Venezuela's guerrillas...

...The answer can save us from many errors, for it eliminates almost the whole propaganda literature on guerrillas, both pro and con...

...He also realized that the Democratic Action govment was saved by its strong base in the labor organizations—in the Federation of Venezuelan Workers, and in the rural Peasant Federation...

...PROCLAIMED BY ERNESTO "CHE" GUEVARA, the theory came later...

...On the Caracas campus the methods of urban terrorism and of mountain fighting were perfected...

...For a dozen years there has been purposeless, blind, and bitter violence...

...In many Latin-American countries, however, universities produce a surplus of diplomas which are unrelated to the economy's needs, and so political or industrial advancement is narrow and restricted...

...Some of these arguments have a ring of scientific certainty, fortified with quotations from Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tsetung...

...and from there came the movement's theoreticians— men like Professor Humberto Cuenca whose books on the university, the army, and the revolution exalted the role of the students...

...To bolster and justify this theory, Guevara did not analyze in detail •the national situations of Latin America...

...Another point to remember is that revolutionary factions often proliferate among the social strata that aspire to leadership— though any social system that holds out a prospect of jobs and power to its young intelligentsia offers an attractive lure...

...Contact with the cities became difficult...

...Yon Sosa came under the influence of a Trotskyist group, and Turcios broke with him and turned to the Communist party...

...As for Castro, he is a chief of state, and as such must define a foreign policy that will enable him to last...

...Groups of the extreme Right took action against anybody suspected of sympathizing or cooperating with the guerrillas...

...It has largely ceased now...

...The society lives on and transforms itself...

...The political atmosphere in Venezuela is becoming less and less favorable to the guerrillas...

...The end is known...

...It was born of an a posteriori interpretation of the Cuban experience...

...Any offensive would have to pass from the forests to the high valleys or the Altiplano— and this means climbing mountains 10-12,000 feet high...

...Bolivia went through a profound revolution in 1952, whose results are land reform, nationalization of the tin mines, and arming of strong contingents of workers and peasants...

...Soon thereafter urban terrorism was replaced by rural guerrilla warfare...

...The father is the profiteer, the conformist, the hypo crite...

...Judging by the speeches, manifestos, and appeals of the 26 de Julio movement, and even by the declarations of the first months of 1959, the only purposes were a true parliamentary democracy and a friendly collaboration with Washington...

...Elio Portocarrero Rios, law student...

...Next Fidel Castro, who could not bear to have at his side a revolutionary of the stature of the Argentine doctor, will pay his respects...

...The new thesis is: seize power...

...The explanations governments give are not indications of their true intentions, and their ways of burying Che Guevara are no indi cations of their policies...

...The characteristic feature of Guevara's theory is that it represents a technique for seizing power—a counter-state...

...Like the young Regis Debray who followed him with much less experience but all the more assurance, Guevara merely presented certain factors which he considered evident and favorable: the growing pauperization, the privileged classes which can stay in power only by complicity with American imperialism, the collisions between the exploiter and the exploited which pose ever more clearly a problem of force...

...And so for a few weeks the guerrilla groups ran rings around the army...

...The guerrillas can progress and triumph from the small beginnings of a nucleus of revolutionary will only if the actions of the governments and leading classes are so crude, clumsy, and cruel that the people, and especially the most disinherited, can see no way out except for armed struggle...

...posed to the Communist party...

...We must be prudent and ask the preliminary question of whether Nancahuazu was a guerrilla foco or a training camp...

...Their camp was set up in the low tropics of Eastern Bolivia, whose few inhabitants are small farmers, worried not about a nonexistent land problem but about the problems of living in a "green hell...

...A new guerrilla movement has appeared and has been much in the news, but its members are mainly students...

...Far from the cities which corrupt...

...The latest guerrilla experience, that of the Southeast Bolivian Resistance movement which was associated with Guevara himself, also does not seem to correspond to his theoretical scheme...

...Its detachments took the initiative: they constantly bombed, harassed, and finally liquidated the guerrillas...

...It views itself as the guardian of the great national interest and as an arbiter between the political parties...

...The guerrillas did not install themselves in the areas where the tin miners are concentrated...

...But then the military machine started functioning...

...The Chinese have no official apparatus or commercial interests in these parts, so they can afford to preach radical methods...

...The Soviet Union uses as best it can the old party bureaucracies...

...But today most of these armed groups no longer exist, and city-based political organizations are trying to manipulate their survivors...

...The counterstate cannot escape the phenomena of the society it intends to conquer...

...THE MYTH OF THE GUERRILLA In the power structure the military are preponderant, but one shouldn't be so blinded by formulas as to lose sight of simple facts...