'THE DEATH OF THE LATIN AMERICAN GUERRILLA MOVEMENT', ALAN RIDING, WORLD, 3 JULY 1973.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-01194A000100860097-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 4, 1998
• Sequence Number: 97
• Publication Date: July 3, 1973
• Content Type: REPORT

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"THE DEATH OF THE LATIN AMERICAN GUERRILLA MOVEMENT", Alan Riding,
World, 3 July 1973. CPYRGHT
Because i
needed to crush guerrilla movements, this article is not suited
for replay in most countries. It is, however, a highly realistic
appraisal of the birth and demise of the continental guerrilla
movements and the reasons for their failure. It is essentially
a call for a reasoned approach to alleviating social discontent
and living conditions in those areas where guerrilla movements have
heightened impatience for a better life. The main point is that
nationalism can succeed where violent revolution fails.
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CPYRGHT
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29 The Death of the Latin American Guerrilla Movement
by Alan Riding
Latin American guerrillas have been unable to seize power
in any country other than Cuba. While the movement has failed,
it has awakened oppressed sectors to the need for change.
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THE DEATH OF THE
LATIN AMERICAN GUERRILLA MOVEMENT
CPYRGHT
by Alan Riding
The revolutions inspired by Castro and Guevara have faltered
and in some cases died. Yet the Latin American guerrillas "are not forgotten....
They have awakened many oppressed sectors to the need for change."
At dawn on February 3 this year,
Colonel Francisco Caamano Deno
and nine khaki-uniformed guerrillas
scrambled ashore from a forty-two-foot
launch at Playa Caracoles on the south-
ern coast of the Dominican Republic.
Caamano, the charismatic leader of the
Leftist forces during the 1965 Domini-
can civil war, had been
in exile for more than six
years, and this was his
long-awaited return.
One of the guerrillas,
wearing civilian clothes,
set off for the capital of
Santo Domingo to make
contact with opponents
of the right-wing gov-
ernment of President
Joaquin Balaguer. The
other guerrillas, includ-
ing thirty-eight-year-old
Caamano, headed for
the hills and jungles
near San Jose de Ocoa.
The plan was simple:
to emulate Fidel Cas-
tro's uprising in the
Sierra Maestra fifteen
years earlier, to estab-
lish a. rural guerrilla
force, and, eventually, to
overthrow the central
government.
Within a few hours of
the landing, Caamano's
group was spotted and
reported by local peas-
ants; by the next day
hundreds of govern-
ment troops, helicopters,
planes, and artillery had
near Testero de Mejia; then the govern-
ment declared a state of emergency, ar-
rested hundreds of Leftist sympathizers,
and placed tanks around the capital; and
on the afternoon of February 16 Caamano
and two of his cornpaneros were killed
by troops. By late March three more
guerrillas had fallen in battle, one had
guerrilla movement was strong, grab-
bing world attention with daring kid-
napings and assaults and shaking nearly
every regime on the continent. But
more recently it has suffered a series of
disastrous setbacks, and the list of mar-
tyrs is growing: Camilo Torres in
Colombia; Ernesto Che Guevara in Bo-
livia; Carlos Marighela
and Carlos Lamarca in
Brazil; Turcios Lima and
Yon Sosa in Guatemala;
Genaro Vazquez in Mex-
ico; and now Francisco
Caamano in the Domin-
ican Republic.
Despite misery and
unrest throughout Latin
America, the continen-
tal guerrilla movement
has effectively been
crushed. There are still
occasional extremist con-
vulsions, as in Mexico
and Argentina recently.
Joseph Scrofani
Che Guevara,
arrived in the area, about 100 miles west
of Santo Domingo; two days later three
soldiers died in a clash with the guerrillas
Alan Riding specializes in Latin American
affairs and is a contributor to the Economist
and the Financial Times of London.
1928-1967-"... and the list of martyrs is growing."
died of starvation, two had surrendered,
and one had sought asylum in the Mexi-
can embassy.
The guerrilla uprising was over, and
the impossible dream of the Left had
claimed new victims.
A few years ago the Latin American
But the wild, young ad-
venturers of the late
Sixties have almost all
been killed or jailed;
most guerrilla organiza-
tions have been broken
up; and even Fidel Cas-
tro has withdrawn his
support for the "violent
path" to revolution.
Yet if social discon-
tent is growing and liv-
ing conditions are de-
teriorating across the
continent, why have the
guerrillas failed? Why
has the Cuban example
not been repeated?
One problem was the Cuban example
itself. Most young guerrillas were daz-
zled by the romance of the revolution,
but they failed to examine it in detail.
While they studied Fidel's military and
political strategy against the Batista dic-
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tatorship, they overlooked elements pe-
culiar to the Cuban experience.
The essential point, of course, is Cuba
came first. Much of the Cuban bour-
geoisie was already opposed to the
Batista regime when Fidel and El Che
began their offensive in the hills. More-
over, Fidel never claimed to be leading
a Communist revolution, but rather a
middle-class uprising against an un-
popular dictatorship. In other words,
many of Fidel's supporters in the late
Fifties, including many liberal Ameri-
cans, would have opposed him had they
known how things would develop.
The Cuban example was therefore as
much a warning to the oligarchies as it
was an inspiration to the Left. It meant
that all future guerrilla movements
would immediately be branded as Com-
munist' and that the United States and
the local ruling elites would mobilize
at any cost to prevent "another Cuba."
In April 1965 the United States dis-
patched 25,000 marines to the Domini-
can Republic to implement this policy.
The political situation on the continent
was further polarized, and Cuba be-
came a "special case" that could not
be repeated.
Nevertheless, Cuba has had im-
mense political impact on the continent.
It created a new political dimension, a
new awareness of the social injustices,
the economic inequalities, and the polit-
ical repression that are the norm in
Latin America. And it inspired a guer-
rilla movement that hoped to alter this
state of affairs quickly and violently.
IN ALMOST all countries, the guerrillas
were middle- and upper-class university
students and intellectuals. They were
impatient young fighters rebelling
against the conservatism and pro-Soviet
dogmatism of the traditional Communist
partiesi The Brazilian Carlos Marighela
was a ,rare example of a Communist-
party militant's turning guerrilla. Most
guerrillas severed all relations with their
local Communist party and sought
ideological and strategic guidance
solely from the Cuban example.
But the same individualistic flair that
led young Latinos to become guerrillas
also produced disciplinary problems and
ideological disagreements. Frequently,
small national guerrilla movements were
fragmented into splinter groups follow-
ing Mao, Castro, Trotsky, Stalin, and
assorted local heroes. And contrasts be-
tween the Cuban revolution and the So-
viet, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Algerian
ones caused more disputes than mo-
ments of enlightenment.
"The guerrillas grabbed
world attention with daring
kidnapings and assaults ...
shaking nearly every regime
on the continent."
Once the guerrillas were established
in the hills, they suffered other problems
because of lack of adequate support or-
ganizations in the cities. The local Com
munist parties were both jealous of the
guerrillas and unwilling to risk their'
bourgeois comforts by helping the rebels
with food, arms, and money. At times
the situation in the hills became so
desperate that some guerrillas actually
died of starvation.
Disagreement, or just simple confu-
sion over strategy, was common. For
example, until Clie Guevara's death in
Bolivia in October 1967, Havana's pol-
icy was to sponsor rural guerrilla move-
ments, as in Venezuela, Peru, Guate-
mala, Colombia, and Bolivia. But there
were conflicts: Should the guerrillas try
to be entirely self-sufficient, or should
they rely on urban support; should they
establish fixed bases or remain nomadic;
should they fight in single columns or
divide themselves up into small units?
Many guerrillas adopted as their Bible
the treatise Revolution in the Revolu-
tion, by the young French Marxist Regis
Debray. Yet the book's argument that
rural guerrillas should be entirely self-
sufficient was later denounced by Ha-
vana as "erroneous."
Dissent within the revolutionary
camp increased in the late Sixties with
the eruption of urban guerrilla warfare
across the continent. Havana's strate-
gists were strongly opposed to brining
the fight to the cities, arguing that ov-
ernments could be toppled only by rural
campaigns that would eventually isolate
the capital. But it was the urban guer-
rillas of Guatemala, Uruguay, Brazil,
and Argentina who ultimately had the
most impact.
In many cases urban guerillas
emerged after their rural colleagues had
been eliminated. And being in the heart
of each country, they could act with
smaller numbers to greater effect. Diplo-
mats and government officials could be
kidnaped or murdered, banks could be
assaulted, police patrols attacked, and
student groups easily infiltrated. While
rural rebels could be dismissed as iso-
lated problems, urban guerrillas c uld
draw world attention to the impot nce
of governments and the chaos of soci-
eties. Indeed, in the countries where
urban guerrillas were most acti~e-
especially Brazil and Guatemala-
for-eign opinion focused on the repressive
tactics employed by local regimes rather
than on the terrorism of the guerrillas.
But the urban guerrillas also faijled,
and they, too, were largely wiped Out.
"We lacked experience, and we lacked
structure," said one exiled Brazilian
guerrilla. "We were too anxious to get
away from the traditional schemes of
the Communist party; we were in ;too
much of a hurry. The early sue ess
spoiled us. Everyone wanted to join in.
We thought we were going to oer-
throw the government, and we made
no political preparations. We con en-
trated too much on the military aspects."
Nevertheless, the failure of both
rural and urban guerrillas was due
more to outside factors than to their own
shortcomings and divisiveness. Above
all, lack of popular support left them
vulnerable when the inevitable repres-
sion came.
Once again, the Cuban example:
Fidel's main backing came from the
middle classes of Havana, but this same
social stratum in other Latin Ameri -an
countries has by now been awakene to
the guerrilla threat. In any event, he
revolutionary purity of the later g er-
rillas taught them to seek a partners ip
with the rural and urban masses, of
with the petite bourgeoisie. And b Ore
they failed disastrously.
After 450 years of external and inter-
nal colonialism, the Latin American
masses are oppressed and apathetic. In
country after country the rural guer-
rillas have enormous difficulty in c m-
municating with the peasantry. In C n-
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tral America and the Andean nations of
South America, the rural populations
consist of isolated groups of Indians, or
mestizos, who live in extreme poverty
and communicate in Indian languages,
and who are invariably exploited by the
local landowner, or cacique.
The guerrillas, on the other hand, are
usually white, or at least whiter than the
rural mestizos, and are immediately
identifiable as "foreigners." Frequently
there is a language barrier; invariably
there is a cultural barrier. The peasants
feel no loyalty to the guerrillas and, if
anything, are afraid of them. The tradi-
tion of paternalism has taught them to
respect authority: News of the arrival
of "foreigners" is therefore quickly con-
veyed to the local cacique, and soldiers
arrive soon afterward. Both Che Gue-
vara and Carlos Lamarca died after
peasants had revealed their whereabouts.
"We were like a heart transplant," one
former guerrilla said. "The heart worked
well, but the body rejected it."
In isolated cases, however, owing to
conditions of extreme poverty and ex-
ploitation, peasants have assisted the
guerrillas. But this has always brought
on fierce repression of the rural inhabi-
tants who, unlike the mobile guerrillas,
are highly vulnerable. For example, in
1966 and 1967 Guatemala's Rebel
Armed Forces (FAR) were active in the
Zacapa region. Yet when the govern-
ment response came, it was the peasants
who were shot down indiscriminately.
At present, in Mexico's turbulent Guer-
rero state, a local guerrilla leader, Lucio
Cabanas, has emerged and is unques-
tionably supported by the impoverished
local peasantry. Because the army has
been unable to capture Cabanas, it has
adopted a policy of broader repression
in the hope of turning the guerrilla lead-
er's protectors against him. On April 24
this year, for instance, soldiers entered
the village of Piloncillos and executed
six peasants for giving food to Cabanas.
Obviously a point is reached where
peasant hatred for the army is sur-
passed by resentment of the guerrillas.
Then the guerrillas are also vulnerable.
In the cities the guerrillas need not
depend on local support for the basic
necessities of food, clothing, and medi-
cine. Formed into small cells and ra-
cially assimilated, they can lead double
lives without easy identification. Never-
theless, they have failed to awaken the
urban masses to their cause.
Most inhabitants of Latin American
cities are slum-dwellers, and most of
these are recent migrants from the
campo. They bring with them a sense
of social hierarchy and fear of author-
ity; if they manage to build a home or
even find a job, they are unwilling to
risk political involvement. Control of the
media by government or oligarchy also
prevents the urban poor from recogniz-
ing and appreciating the alternative of
violent rebellion. "The slum-dwellers
were not unsympathetic," one Brazilian
exile recalled, "but they didn't feel part
of the movement. It was our fault for
not bringing them in."
The trade-union movements, on the
other hand, are invariably interested in
protecting the rights of their members,
not against the private sector of the
government, but rather against the
masses of unemployed. The unionized
therefore cultivate good relations with
the authorities in order to preserve their
privileges as "proletarian elite." These
are the "new" middle classes, and as the
Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist has
pointed out, it is the middle class and
not the guerrilla that is taking over the
continent. Of course, the guerrillas do
receive student backing and occasion-
ally even clandestine support from fac-
tions of local Communist parties. But
they are not "the people." And "the peo-
ple" are not with them.
Yet despite internal divisions and ex-
ternal apathy, the guerrillas were at
first able to score dramatic military suc-
cesses against the Establishment be-
cause local security forces were ill-pre-
pared. The guerrillas suddenly erupted
with assaults, bank robberies, and kid-
napings, and the governments were
constantly caught off-guard.
Where the local oligarchy was united,
however, the police and armed forces
were given intense counterinsurgency
training-under the guidance of U.S.
military advisers provided under Agen-
cy for International Development (AID)
programs-and within a few months
they were able to respond to the
guerrillas. Interrogation techniques and
antiguerrilla tactics developed in Viet-
nam were used with even greater effec-
tiveness in Latin America.
In the countryside huge numbers of
troops were used-the "ideal" ratio was
about a hundred soldiers for each guer-
rilla-to isolate and surround the rebels.
Peasants were then intimidated or tor-
tured for more detailed information on
the guerrillas' whereabouts. Aircraft
would frequently bomb or napalm sus-
pected rebel hideouts. And eventually,
direct contact would be made, a battle
would follow, soldiers would die, and
the guerrillas would be eliminated.
The torture of captured guerrillas or
suspects has been the single most suc-
cessful technique used against urban
guerrillas. The absence of strong struc-
tures in the rebel movements and the
brutality of the torture methods left the
young guerrillas highly vulnerable. Ac-
cording to one former guerrilla, who
was himself badly tortured, "One com-
panero would be caught, and after a
few days of beatings and electric shocks,
he'd reveal a name or two. Another
cornpanero would be picked up, then
another and another. In no time the en-
tire group was dead or in jail,"
Brazil's military' regime, which was
able to crush the guerrilla movement in
about eighteen months, won fame for its
"sophisticated" torture methods. But
every government on the continent that
has faced or faces a guerrilla threat has
resorted to similar techniques. In the
war to prevent "another Cuba," normal
constitutional and human rights are
ignored. In Mexico suspected guerrilla
contacts or their relations often disap-
pear for months; in Guatemala they dis-
appear forever. But from a military point
of view-which is the point of view of
the passionate anti-Communists who run
most security forces in Latin America-
the end justifies the means. And the ob-
jective is achieved consistently.
Only in one set of circumstances-
when the local oligarchy has been di-
vided along traditional party lines or
between moderate reformists and ultra-
reactionaries-have the guerrillas been
able to survive. The Cuban case is well
known. In Guatemala the guerrillas
flourished between 1966 and 1970 be-
cause of just such a division; but when
the bourgeois majority turned to a "law
and order" government under Gen.
Carlos Arana Osorio three years ago,
the guerrillas were quickly smoth-
ered. In Uruguay the Tupamaro guer-
rillas took dramatic advantage of social
disintegration during the mid-Sixties
and early Seventies. But when the Tupa-
maro-backed "Broad Front" candidate
won less than 20 percent of the vote
in the November 1971 elections, the
army took the initiative and within a
year rounded up most of the young guer-
.101.1s, including Tupamaro leader Raul
Se:ndic. Even more recently, in Argen-
t=ina. the political confusion wrought by
seven years of ineffective army rule has
enabled the Trotskyist People's Revo-
lutionary Army and other groups to
make great headway in a short time, con-
centrating mainly on gathering funds
through bank robberies and kidnapings
of wealthy foreign industrialists. Fol-
lowing the victory of the Peronist candi-
date, Hector Campora, in the March
elections, the guerrillas stepped up their
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activities, presumably to improve their
bargaining position within the broad
Peronist coalition now that Dr. CAmpora
has taken over. This was the same tactic
adopted by Chile's Leftist Revolutionary
Movement (AIR), which since Presi-
dent Allende took office in November
1970 has grown from 1500 to about 30,-
000 members and now acts as a revo-
lutionary lobby close to the regime. But
in both Argentina and Chile, the guer-
rillas lack mass support, and they are
acting essentially as extremists and not
as vanguards of a popular government.
Cuba's loss of interest in the conti-
nental guerrilla movement became ap-
parent after El Che's death in 1967.
There were, of course, other factors,
notably Cuba's economic problems and
its need to depend more closely on as-
sistance from the Soviet Union, which
had long opposed Fidel's dream of "ex-
porting revolution" and El Che's dream
of "one, two . . . many Vietnams." But
Che's death was the real blow: The
chosen leader of a continental revolu-
tion was dead, and the Cuban model,
implemented by one of its creators, had
failed on the South American mainland.
THE GAP BETWEEN Cuban and other
Latin American revolutionaries grew
markedly after 1968 when Fidel op-
posed the switch to urban guerrilla war-
fare and reduced his assistance to
several rebel groups. Many Latin Amer-
ican guerrillas also began to resent Ha-
vana's revolutionary dogmatism and its
apparent insistence that Cuba's expe-
rience should be the model for all
continental revolutions. For example,
Venezuela's perennial guerrilla leader,
Douglas Bravo, began to complain pub-
licly about lack of Cuban support. Ha-
vana-based guerrillas found themselves
discouraged from launching new offen-
sives. And more recently, it has been
rumored that Francisco Caamano was
forced to leave Cuba in order to prepare
his "invasion" of.the Dominican Repub-
lic this February.
The emergence of a Left-leaning mili-
tary regime in Peru in October 1968 and
the election of President Allende in
Chile two years later gave Cuba further
cause to reconsider its view that violent
revolution was unavoidable. Since 1970
Havana has not only supported Peru
and Chile but has "blessed" nationalist
trends - in _ Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela,
and Argentina. In other words, far from
"exporting" revolution, as the Nixon ad-
ministration maintains, Cuba is actively
seeking friends among the bourgeois
governments of Latin America.
What guerrillas then still exist, and
what are their prospects?
Argentina's rebels are still strong, but
they may be outmaneuvered by the new
Peronist regime. In Uruguay, Brazil, Bo-
livia, Guatemala, and Venezuela, there
are remnants of the once-strong guerrilla
movements, but they are broken, leader-
less, and concerned with survival, not
revolution. In Brazil new Maoist-line
groups have appeared in the Amazon
jungles, but they are isolated and, by
definition, relatively harmless.
In Colombia three different groups-
one pro-Soviet, one Maoist, and one
Castroist-have been active in the coun-
tryside for a decade. But in terms of na-
tional politics they are unimportant. De-
spite frequent clashes with troops, the
guerrillas are restricted to remote moun-
tain districts and are unable to operate
on a large scale. A similar situation
exists with Lucio Cabanas and his fol-
lowers in Mexico: They have killed sev-
eral dozen soldiers but are limited to a
region they know. In effect, there is a
standoff that Cabanas cannot win. Sev-
eral small urban guerrilla groups have
also appeared in Mexico in the past two
years-including one that kidnaped the
U.S. consul general in Guadalajara,
Terrance G. Leonhardy, in May and
freed him only after thirty political pris-
oners had been released and flown to
Cuba. But the Mexican police and army
have always managed to break up these
groups quickly. Leonhardy's captors are
similarly doomed.
Against this background, the reasons
for Caamano's failure this year are ap-
parent. His attempt to reinstate the
reformist president Juan Bosch during
the 1965 civil war won him great fame
and popularity locally. But in 1967 he
disappeared from his diplomatic post in
exile in London; he went to Cuba, lost
contact with his mass supporters, and
lost touch with the Dominican reality.
Ile could not have hoped for active sup-
port from the rural population where he
planned his base; 'yet the Dominican
Republic's repressed Leftist groups were
not ready for him. In addition-and in
this case crucial-the conservative gov-
ernment of President Balaguer enjoys
the full support of the army, which had
been equipped and trained by U.S. "ad-
visers" for just such an eventuality.
But why have the Latin American
guerrillas failed when the Chinese and
the Viet Minh succeeded, when Black
September and other Palestinian groups
continue? Perhaps the main difference is
that the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Arabs
all had apparent foreign enemies: Mao's
guerrillas gained strength against the
Japanese invaders; Ho Chi Minh's guer-
rillas resisted the Frenc ; Black Septem-
ber, the Israelis. For the Latin American
Left, the United States is the ob-
vious foreign enemy, but the American
presence is more symbolic than visible.
The real enemy is the domestic Ri ht,
and in an underground civil war, he
Left does less well. The Palestinian guer-
rillas discovered this when they c al-
lenged King Hussein's loyal forces in
September 1970 and were crushed. And
they suffered a new drubbing when tl ey
took on the Lebanese army this spring In
other words, nationalism can succ ed
where revolution fails.
But perhaps the guerrilla efforts . and
sacrifice have not been entirely in vain.
They have failed to seize power in any
country other than Cuba, but they have
awakened many oppressed sectors to
the need for change. Previously apolit-
ical sectors have been made aware' of
their own leftism by the martyred gr er-
rillas. In a quasi-religious sense, the idea
that El Che or Camilo died fighting on
their behalf has had enormous imp et.
Although the guerrilla tactics failed, lie
dead heroes personify the dreams; of
more and more Latin Americans. The bm-
possible dream of the guerrilla revolution
has been replaced by impatience f or a
better life. "The outcome of today's
struggle is not important," Che Guevara
wrote shortly before his death:
As far as the final result is concerned, it
does not matter whether one movement or
another is temporarily defeated. What inde-
cisive is the determination to struggle w ich
is maturing daily, the awareness of the reed
for revolutionary change, and the certainty
of its possibility.
The guerrillas are gone but not tor-
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000100860097-6