Uruguay's Urban Guerrillas

...There was to be a people's army manned largely by peasants, though not one joined Guevara's band in his 11-month campaign...

...But he and the others who formed the Tupamaros thought they could gain at least the implicit support of many law-abiding middle-class urbanites: "We will use the houses and streets of the capital in the same way that the National Liberation Front has used the jungles and countryside of Vietnam...

...The government refused to trim the nation's expensive welfare program (15 per cent of the gnp) and deficits mounted, abetted by heavy losses in state-operated industries...

...That would be a radical demarche for the Tupamaros, who until now have been committed, in their own words, to "revolutionary action in itself, that is, the process of arming and preparing oneself, acquiring equipment and finally carrying out actions that violate bourgeois legality, generate revolutionary consciousness, organization, and conditions...

...After all, 70 per cent of the population is urban, and almost half live in Montevideo...

...All of this has effectively established the Tupamaros as a "state within a state...

...The trouble started in the '50s, when the price of wool and beef fell drastically in the world market...

...On the other hand, the Frente Amplia threat might force a Colorado-Blanco alliance and give the electorate a true choice between Left and Right...

...Just as Mao once chose to abandon the city for the countryside, they are forsaking the countryside for the city...

...Stagnant productivity and a paralyzing series of strikes created a wage-price spiral that resulted in rampant inflation (a world record in 1967: 135.9 per cent...

...On another occasion the Tupamaros kidnapped Gaetano Pelligrini Giampetro, a prominent banker and newspaper publisher, as he arrived at his offices—just 100 yards from the Presidential Palace and within sight of its security guards...

...Encouraged by these developments, Latin American intellectuals apotheosized the peasant...

...It has become common practice for Tupamaros to disguise themselves in police uniforms on their missions...

...Encouraged by Chile's example, Leftists throughout the Hemisphere are more disposed to forsaking the violent for the electoral route to radical change...

...Yon Sosa and Luis Turcios, began organizing in the mountains in 1960, and a military coup in 1963 increased peasant support for their separate guerrilla forces—the Movimiento 13 de No-viembre and the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes...

...Thus, Uruguay—and perhaps most of the rest of Latin America—is more likely to become another Chile than another Cuba...

...Frente leaders think they can count on 25-30 per cent of the votes, and with Tupamaro support their share might run higher...

...In Chile, Salvador Allende won the Presidency with 36.3 per cent in a three-way race—an edge of only 1.4 per cent over the runner-up, Jorge Alessan-dri...

...Assisted by U.S...

...And these men issued a "Political Study" early this year suggesting that they may deign to participate in the electoral process, perhaps by joining forces with the Communist party they formerly scorned...

...Despite its suspension of individual liberties under "emergency security measures," the Pacheco Administration has never been able to recover a political hostage abducted by the group or to curtail its activities...

...The soil is fertile, the climate good, the people literate, friendly and prosperous...

...In Uruguay, the two traditional parties could similarly split a potential majority of moderate voters and lose to a Leftist plurality...

...Consistent with guerrilla policy throughout Latin America, they have denounced national elections and denigrated Uruguay's Communist party as effete and opportunist, berating its leader, RodFRANCES M. FOLAND, a previous contributor, is a Fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs and has traveled widely in Latin America...

...In the past the mln seemed to enjoy a unity unique among Latin American guerrilla organizations...

...The future of both the mln and Uruguay may well depend on how they resolve the conflict...

...in the early 1960s, most of Latin America's guerrilla organizations were attracted to the Cuban model, as developed by Regis Debray in Revolution in the Revolution?: "The Cuban Revolution offers an answer to fraternal Latin American countries...

...Both men were slain for their purported role in prison torture...

...Next, they took over the entire town of Pando, less than 20 miles from Montevideo: Simulating a funeral cortege, a string of cars stopped in the street and disgorged 40 men who proceeded to occupy the police station, telephone exchange, electric plant and three banks...

...Debray, representing the views of the Cuban revolutionaries, had only contempt for the cities, as epitomized in his oft-quoted dictum: "The mountain proletarianizes the bourgeois and peasant elements, and the city can bourgeoisify the proletarians...

...In many ways Uruguay is different from almost all the other nations of Latin America...

...In contrast to other Latin American guerrilla organizations, whose members tend to be university students in their early 20s, mln adherents more closely resemble those of Spain's Opus Dei in age and influence, if not in political orientation...

...Their decision was an indication of their independence...

...And if the Tupamaros achieve even a partial success at the polls next month, guerrillas in other Latin American countries can be expected to follow their example...

...Secondly, for all their hit-and-run successes and popularity, the Tupamaros have not brought the Uruguayans—still a basically moderate people—to the brink of revolution...

...Almost as a caricature of Robin Hood, the group held up a supermarket truck on December 24, 1963, and distributed its contents to slum dwellers...

...Similar to Chile's Unidad Popular, the Uruguayan coalition consists of Communists, Socialists, Christian Democrats and extremist elements, and its candidate is a moderate man who appeals to the middle class: Genera...

...In Peru, Hugo Blanco was stirring a campe-sino revolt in La Convention Valley, and his successors, Luis de la Puente Uceda and Hector Bejar, were to adopt the approach detailed in Guevara's guerrilla handbook...

...In fact, rural guerrilla movements throughout the Hemisphere were largely thwarted in the second half of the last decade...

...The prison break will also have major implications for the November 28 general elections and the future of Uruguay...

...For a time Debray's theories seemed to be working...

...With a core membership of perhaps 1,000, the Tupamaros include men in key government positions, professors, doctors, engineers, journalists, bank workers, and electrical and radio technicians...

...Unfortunately, an important difference between the Cuban and Chinese experiences was often overlooked: Unlike Mao, who mobilized large numbers of peasants, Fidel Castro enjoyed only the cooperation—and not the active participation—of the rural populace, drawing most of his followers and supplies from workers and professionals in the cities...

...Interestingly, a false passport issued in Uruguay—probably the work of the Tupamaros—enabled Che Guevara to enter Bolivia in 1966...

...Bolivia was chosen as the starting point because it came closest to fulfilling Debray's list of ideal conditions for guerrilla operations: a lack of communications facilities in the hinterland, a high density of rural popula-ion, common borders with a friendly country, and weak government forces without airborne troops...

...Among materials found in guerrilla caches was a document on police tactics so accurate that officials adopted it as a training manual...

...Castro himself had said, "The city is a cemetery of revolutionaries and resources...

...A Leftist victory at the polls could not only deprive the guerrillas of their traditional antiestablishment battle cry, but leave them no alternative except to cooperate with their declared enemies, the Communists...

...Bolivia was not Che's ultimate objective...

...And even if the mln did manage to overthrow the government, the result could be foreign intervention...

...No Latin American country completely matches Debray's ideal type, but much guerrilla blood had to be shed before the Cuban model was discredited...

...also discovered were machinery and paper taken from headquarters to forge police id cards...

...More important, the impunity with which the paramilitary group operates indicates that it is sheltered, informed and assisted by a substantial body of citizens...

...Apparently it has achieved the prime guerrilla goal set forth by Mao Tse-tung: the ability to move among the masses "like fish in water...

...Among the escapees who walked through a 120-foot runnel to waiting buses was the top leadership of the organization, including its chief founder, Raul Sendic...

...Some 1.5 million Uruguayans will cast their ballots on November 28 for a new President and a bicameral national Legislature...

...The strategic kidnap of Dr...

...there were estimates of 6,000 slain by the military and daily reports of corpses floating down the Motagua River, mostly peasants whose bodies often bore the marks of torture...

...Peruvians, Guatemalans, Colombians, Venezuelans and others have squabbled and parted ways over ideology and strategy, debilitating their effectiveness...

...A 1949 textbook, Latin American Politics and Government, described the country as "a Utopian land...

...Although the Communists make up the largest bloc in the Frente, the Christian Democrats have joined with them in an attempt to break away from the traditional Tweedledee-Tweedledum choice between the Colorado (liberal} and Blanco (conservative-nationalist) parties...

...advisers and Right-wing volunteers, the Guatemalan Army mounted a vigorous and bloody campaign from November 1966 to April 1967, isolating and overwhelming the revolutionary bands...

...Furthermore, Sendic and his circle saw the possibility that the high degree of unionization among the vast body of civil servants might enable the guerrillas to paralyze the government once they had gained the populace's support...

...In deciding whether or not to participate in the elections, the Tupamaros face two possible culs-de-sac...

...Now the election issue threatens to divide the Tupamaros into centrists and ultras, the flexible and the doctrinaire...

...departing with $6 million in jewels and cash, they were willingly escorted by one of their hostages...

...Whether or not the guerrillas ultimately succeed in bringing about a revolution—by vote or by violence —will depend mainly on the middle class, which is primarily concerned about the deteriorating standard of living...

...A part of the casino haul was returned to set up a fund for the employes...

...But they are skillful at turning their violent exploits to political advantage...

...Once in power, the middle-class revolutionaries would tend toward reformism rather than radicalism...

...Ulises Pereira Reverbal, a close friend of the President and head of the Electric and Telephone Services, was aimed at forcing a strike settlement favorable to bank employes...

...As one Uruguayan put it, "The people are absolutely fed up with the traditional parties, the traditional way, and the government...

...Yet while they may have assisted Guevara, the Tupamaros chose not to follow his lead into the countryside, preferring to concentrate instead in the cities...

...In Peru, de la Puente was killed, Bejar and Blanco jailed...

...Indeed, their insolent bravado so successfully captured newspaper headlines and the public's imagination that two years ago President Pacheco banned any mention of them in the press...

...The release three days later of Geoffrey H. S. Jackson, Britain's kidnapped ambassador to Uruguay—who had been held eight months in an underground "people's prison"—further proved Tupamaro immunity from government counterinsurgency efforts...

...By discrediting the government and forcing it into an authoritarian role that runs counter to Uruguay's democratic tradition, the guerrillas' eight kidnappings to date have been significant political victories...

...Though a Communist component might be included, the overriding ideology would be nationalist...

...rather, it was the road to "two, three, many Vietnams," spreading first to Peru and northern Argentina and then to the rest of the continent...

...Gaining power through free elections as in Chile, however, would keep the imperialists at bay...

...In 126 robberies from 1963-69, they seized an estimated $1.7 million...

...Raul Sendic, a 43-year-old former law student who started out as a union organizer among sugar-cane cutters, agreed with Debray about the futility of a rural revolution in Uruguay...

...Georges Jacques Danton: "Audacity, audacity, and more audacity...

...In Brazil before the 1964 overthrow of President Joao Goulart, farmers' syndicates in the Northeast were defying traditional forces...

...ney Arismendi, as a despicable bourgeois...

...Pelligrini's ransom of $6,000 was channelled to a worker's hospital and a primary school...

...After confiscating what might be useful to their operation, the guerrillas withdrew at their leisure...

...The middle class' shaken faith in the capacity of the democratic process to solve social and economic problems has provided an opportune climate for the Tupamaro cause...

...In 1969 seven of them, disguised as policemen, penetrated the Casino San Rafael—ultimate symbol of the posh high life of Punte del Este—and made off with $200,000...

...Though moving in the opposite direction, their reason for moving is the same as his was: defeat in their original terrain...

...Last year five men and four women held officials of Montevideo's Bank of the Republic at bay for three and a half hours while they sorted through the vaults...

...Uruguay's Urban Guerrillas BY FRANCES M. FOLAND In the dedication to his classic field manual, Guerrilla Warfare, Che Guevara cites the exhortation of the French revolutionary leader...

...While only 6 per cent of the electorate favored Marxist-Leninist candidates in 1966, a Gallup poll taken a few months ago found 45 per cent of the urban voters in sympathy with the aims of the Left-wing Frente Amplia (Broad Front...

...The guerrillas doubt that the United States would send in its own troops, but they fear that an American "lackey"—Brazil or Argentina—might execute a "peace-keeping operation...

...by means of the more or less slow building up, through guerrilla warfare carried out in suitably chosen rural zones, of a mobile strategic force, [which will become the] nucleus of a people's army and of a future Socialist state...

...in virtually every field they possess considerable expertise...

...Though Uruguay's urban guerrillas, the Tupamaros, may depart from the tactics Guevara advocated, they have fulfilled his call for audacity to the maximum...

...The Tupamaros—officially the Movimiento de Liberation Nacional (MNL)?come largely from the middle class...

...It is ironic that the most successful guerrilla movement has emerged in the most advanced nation on the continent...

...Their infiltration of the police force, though not officially conceded, is betrayed by a large number of incidents that strongly suggest the complicity of law officers...

...In Guatemala two revolutionaries...

...Finally, there was Che Guevara's Bolivian fiasco in 1966-67...

...Similarly, Debray dismissed Uruguay as a potential guerrilla site because its open pampas offered no cover for roving bands, and the sparsity of its rural population would hinder both the procurement of food and the recruitment of followers...

...In Venezuela, where urban guerrilla warfare failed in the early '60s, President Romulo Betan-court continued to be harassed in the provinces by the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberation Nacional (faln), and U.S...

...The guerrillas have generally avoided premeditated personal violence, with two notable exceptions—the American police adviser Dan A. Mitrione and Hector Moran Charques, chief of Uruguay's antisubversion squad...

...The remarkable SUCCeSS of the Tupamaros has led an increasing number of Latin American guerrilla organizations to shift from the Cuban to the Uruguayan model over the past five years...

...Having led the revolutionary movement from the campo back to the city, the Tupamaros may now be about to break another tenet of the original guerrilla dogma...

...In Colombia, the "self-defense zones" were overrun...

...An ineffective Executive and a narrowly based, highly factionalized Legislature were unable to agree on any realistic solutions...

...Uruguay's economy, based almost exclusively on those two exports, rapidly collapsed...

...The prison escape by tunnel last month of 106 members of the clandestine organization was a dramatic coup for the guerrilla cause and a deep embarrassment to President Jorge Pacheco Areco...

...A 1969 Gallup poll showed that the majority of Uruguayans held the Tupamaros in favorable esteem...

...As real income continued to decline, the various sectors of the economy—each unwilling to accept personal sacrifices-—fought to protect their own vested interests...

...In Colombia, Leftists held five back-land enclaves, so-called "zones of peasant self-defense," where the government had lost control...

...Liber Seregni was a respected staff officer and he conducts a low-key, convincing campaign...

...If they do not support the Frente and the Communist-Socialist-Christian Democrat coalition wins without being obligated to the mln, they might find themselves in the same frustrated position as the insurrectional Left in Chile today: neither in the government nor free to attack it...

...Eventually, economic stress undermined the country's political structure...

...help was required to train the Venezuelan Army in methods capable of countering the mobile tactics of leaders like Douglas Bravo...

...What went wrong with this "Switzerland of South America...

...The peasant leadership in Brazil was destroyed after the 1964 coup, and in Venezuela the faln was subdued by an energetic military offensive...

...Since their first sortie eight years ago, which garnered only 33 firearms, the Tupamaros have lived up to their revolutionary credo...