WEEKLY SUMMARY SPECIAL REPORT CUBA AND SUBVERSION: OLD STRATEGY, NEW TACTICS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00875R001500020024-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 16
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 14, 2009
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: May 8, 1970
• Content Type: REPORT

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Secret
DIRECTORATE OF
INTELLIGENCE
WEEKLY SUMMARY
Special Report
Cuba and Subversion: Old Strategy, New Tactics
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RED Jg I 1E.61
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N2 665
8 May 1970
No. 0369/70A
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CUBA AND SUBVERSION: OLD STRATEGY, NEW TACTICS
Fidel Castro has been involved in subversion and armed struggle in varying degrees
ever since the Cayo Confites expedition in 1947. Almost every Latin American Republic
has felt his interference at least once. His involvement has taken many different forms
ranging from direct personal participation, as in the abortive Cayo Confites adventure
against dictator Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, to the supplying of tons of arms
and ammunition, as in Venezuela in 1963. His efforts.have consistently met with failure,
with the single exception of his war against former Cuban president Fulgencio Batista.
Even then it took two attempts before Batista was ousted. Despite his many setbacks, he
has adopted revolution as a .'lay of life, and there are no signs that he plans to reject it as
a basic tenet of his personal philosophy. His tactics might change because of the
circumstances peculiar to a particular situation, but the fundamental precept seems
immutable.
Castro's predilection for armed struggle as the main road to political power has
brought him into conflict with many of the Moscow-oriented Communist parties of
Latin America and even with some orthodox Communists in Cuba. His domestic critics
are too timid and too few to constitute a serious problem; they are handled in typical
Castro steamroller fashion through public denunciation followed by various forms of
banishment. The foreign parties, however, have the ear of the Soviet Union, Cuba's most
important benefactor, and are less easy to silence. Party leaders, many of whom were
well-established disciples of Marx and Lenin long before Castro began dabbling in
politics, view the Cuban dictator as a latecomer to the Communist movement and as an
arrogant, self-appointed oracle of revolutionary doctrine. Castro in turn thinks of them
as ossified theoreticians corrupted by the soft life and blind to political reality. On
occasion, Castro has beery willing to accommodate Soviet reaction to complaints from
Latin American party officials by agreeing, as he did in 1963 and 1964, to allow the
local Communist party leaders to determine the road-peaceful or nonpeaceful-to
power in their respective countries. Such agreements, however, have been honored only
for relatively brief periods of time and Castro invariably has returned to cramming his
guerrilla tactics down their throats.
When Castro's most carefully conceived guerrilla venture-Che Guevara's operation
in Bolivia-met disaster in late 1967, party leaders throughout the hemisphere could
scarcely restrain an audible sigh of relief. In their eyes, Castro's theories of violent
revolution had at last been proved wrong. A toning-down of propaganda and a hiatus in
Havana's support of guerrilla warfare operations suggested that Castro had finally
recognized his folly and was adopting a change of strategy. This hope, however, has
proved to be false. Evidence of the past two years shows clearly that Castro clings as
strongly as ever to his thsories of armed stw,uggle and violence. His tactics have changed,
but his strategy remains the same. Moreover, armed struggle and violent revolution seem
to be such basic elements in Castro's psychological make-up that they will probably
remain Cuban policy for as long as he is in power. But whatever Castro's theories, a
variety of factors will tend to make him selective in his support of revolutionary groups.
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BACKGROUND: THE ROAD TO REFLECTION
The capture and execution of Che Guevara
in October 1967 and the subsequent destruction
of his guerrilla group in Bolivia caused Fidel Cas-
tro to pause and reflect at length on his policy of
exporting revolution. The Bolivian fiasco, which
was merely another in a long string of fruitless
and costly Cuban adventures in subversion, was a
particularly disastrous setback because the nu-
cleus of the guerrilla group consisted of 16 vet-
eran Cuban combatants-three of them members
of the Cuban Communist Party's Central Commit-
tee-who were hand-picked and led by the man
whom Castro considered the most experienced
and daring guerrilla warfare tactician in Latin
America. The group was theoretically the best
team that Havana could field.
The startling lack of success in Bolivia be-
came apparent to Castro when he finally gained
access to Cuevara's campaign diary in the spring
of 1968. Castro found out that, far from estab-
lishing a viable guerilla front, Guevara's band was
constantly on the run, was barely able to survive
the harsh terrain, and was unable to recruit Boliv-
ians through his highly touted tactic of "armed
propaganda." The circumstances of the defeat
indicated to Castro that a rethinking of Cuba's
strategy was in order.
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IMPROVING THE SUBVERSIVE APPARATUS
In addition, a hard look was taken at the
Interior Ministry (MININT), which is charged
with carrying out foreign intelligence operations
such as the Bolivian affair. A reorganization of
MININT was initiated in mid or late 1968 at the
same time a similar process was set in motion in
the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
(MINFAR), another government branch deeply
involved in subversion. That this shake-up was
long overdue became even more apparent when a
series of defections of key personnel sho
MININT in 1968 and 1969.
The revamping of MININT included both
personnel and structural changes. In July 1968,
the first vice minister of the armed forces, Major
Sergio del Valle Jimenez, replaced Major Ramiro
Valdes Menendez as interior minister. (Valdes,
who had directed the ministry since 1961, was
not in disfavor, however; after completing a
lengthy high-level course of politico-military stud-
ies, he assumed in January 1970 the position that
del Valle had previously vacated.) Major Eddy
Sunol Ricardo, a member of the party's Central
Committee, who had often been used by Raul
Castro as a trouble shooter, was named to the
newly created post of MININT vice minister for
political work. The first vice minister, Major
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Manuel Pineiro Losada, who also functioned as
the chief of the foreign intelligence apparatus
(DGI), retained the DGI under his general com-
mand but turned over direct responsibility for its
management to Major Joaquin Mendez Com-
inches, a former comrade-in-arms of Raul Castro.
Pineiro's title is now first vice minister and techni-
cal vice minister. Major Jose Abrantes Fernandez,
who as chief of the Department of State Security
(DSE) was charged with counterintelligence and
security responsibilities, apparently was "kicked
upstairs" and has been identified since last Sep-
tember as vice minister and chief of the general
staff. Like Pineiro, Abrantes presumably still has
the DSE under his command but may have turned
over direct control to an as yet unidentified in-
dividual.
room for doubt concerning Cuba's continued ad-
herence to armed struggle and violent revolution.
At the conference of the Economic Commission
for Latin America held in Lima in April 1969,
Rodriguez answered Venezuelan charges that
Cuba was still supporting guerrillas by saying that
"Cuba has the conception that for the develop-
ment of the revolutionary p cess of most of the
countries of Latin America, armed struggle is the
fundamental instrument. We continue to hold to
that conception." To those delegates who talked
of resuming relations with Cuba if the Castro
regime would publicly reject export of the revolu-
tion, Rodriguez replied: "Cuba is not going to
change its position to enter into relations with
any Latin American government."
Both the reorganization of MININT and the
reassessment of Cuba's policy of subversion were
probably completed by late 1969 or early 1970.
There apparently never was any intention of dis-
carding armed struggle; the reappraisal seems to
have addressed only the problem of how and
when to employ it.
With Fidel Castro's almost total preoccupa-
tion with domestic problems, Minister without
Portfolio Carlos Rafael Rodriguez emerged as a
key spokesman for the regime on foreign policy
matters after late 1968. His statements leave no
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The new MININT hierarchy consists of (from left to
right) Majors Pineiro, Abrantes, Mendez Cominches,
and Leyva and Captains Pupo, Aguilera, and Franco.
In an interview published in a leftist Chilean
magazine in September 1969, Rodriguez sought
to clarify "Cuba's position with respect to the
revolutionary struggle in Latin America," which
he said had "often been the object of inexact
interpretations.... He said: "Cuba conceives of a
'continentalization' of strategy. That strategy is
based fundamentally on the use of armed struggle
and, in particular, guerrilla warfare in the major
part of the countries of Latin America, but it
does not exclude other forms of revolutionary
violence or even of nonviolent political struggle."
He characterized as remote and difficult, How-
ever, the possibility of attaining power without
violence or previous armed struggle. Regarding
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the situation in Chile, he derided the decision by
leftist political parties to attempt to achieve
power through democratic elections and said that
"Chilean revolutionaries must be prepared for a
struggle in which violence will be the decisive
element, even in the case of their obtaining power
by the nonviolent electoral road."
More recently, the Cuban press agency
Prensa Latina reported that, in conversations with
newsmen at the United Nations in New York in
March, Rodriguez said that "Cuba supports the
liberation movements in Latin America ... ti-Lis is
not only our right but our duty."
(Cuba's appearance of
"mo eration"' in its support of subversion should
not be mistaken for a basic switch in policy. He
claimed that "where we used to support rural
guerrillas we are now more interested in urban
guerrillas." He also noted some "promising" ele-
ments in both the clergy and the armed forces
and further implied that wherever an opening
should arise, Cuba would not hesitate to try to
exploit it.
Finally, on 22 April, on the 100th anniver-
sary of the birth of Lenin, Castro himself
staunchly reaffirmed in definitive terms his com-
mitment to support the subversion of other gov-
ernments by violence: "Cuba has never nor will it
ever deny support to the revolutionary move-
ment. This is not to be confused with support of
any fake just because he is using the name of
revolutionary .... That type of pseudorevolutionary
can expect no aid from Cuba, of course. But
revolutionaries like Che, willing to struggle to the
final consequences, willing to fight, willing to
die-they will always be able to count on Cuba's
help .... But one must not worry about our posi-
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tion toward the revolutionary movement. So long
as there is imperialism, so long as there are people
struggling, willing to fight for their people's lib-
eration from that imperialism, the Cuban revolu-
tion will support them."
UNSUCCESSFUL REBELS LOSE SUPPORT
It is the Cuban subversive effort in Latin
American countries that has been the most
affected by Castro's policy reassessment. One re-
sult was the reduction or complete withdrawal of
support from groups-such as those in Venezuela
and Colombia-that have demonstrated incom-
petence and leadership weaknesses culminating in
Venezuelan guerrilla chieftain Douglas Bravo lost
Castro's support.
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a splintering of the local revolutionary movement.
By early 1969, for example, all Cuban guerrilla
advisers in Venezuela had been recalled to Havana
and material support had been reduced so much
that several guerrilla leaders complained publicly.
In his speech of 22 April, Castro admitted that
Cuban support had been withdrawn from groups
that had constantly performed poorly, but lie
made it quite clear that he would back those that
produce concrete results.
REVOLUTIONARY THEORY REVISED
Another outcome of the reassessment was a
fundamental change in revolutionary theory.
Previously, the Cubans had maintained that the
guerrilla unit in the rural areas, basing its support
on the Peasants, was the focal point of the revolu-
tionary movement. Units in urban areas func-
tioned only in support of the rural guerrillas. In
revising this concept, Castro seems to have real-
ized-probably as a result of Guevara's experience
in Bolivia-that the peasant in the countryside is
basically a conservative individual with a rela-
tively low degree of political consciousness and
therefore a poor prospect for recruitment. Castro
thus has apparently adopted a more flexible doc-
trine in which the students and workers of the
cities-who have a greater political awareness and
a more liberal bent-initiate the revolutionary
process by means of urban terrorism, later moving
to the rural areas to start the second-or guerrilla
warfare-stage.
Carlos Fonseca Amador, president of the
pro-Cuban Sandino Front of National Liberation
(FSLN) in Nicaragua, described the new theory in
early 1969 in a critique of previous FSLN opera-
tions: "Under conditions in Nicaragua-more or
less the same as Latin American countries gen-
erally-the center of action of the revolutionary
war has to be the countryside. However, the role
that the city should play also has particular im-
portance, since in the first stage of the struggle
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the city must provide the countryside with the
most developed cadres in order to direct the or-
ganization of the political and military.,detach-
ment. Generally, the urban revolutionary cells can
be developed more easily in the first stage. Such
elements include the revolutionary sector of the
workers, the students, and a certain strata of the
petit bourgeoisie." Havana, which described
Fonseca Amador as "one of Nicaragua's finest
sons," gave its imprimatur by publishing the cri-
tique in Tricontinental magazine in late 1969.
The same theory appeared again in Tricon-
tinental in April 1970 when Carlos Marighella's
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"When you are very close to the prospective target, the 'Molotov' cocktail is
an extremely effective weapon. If you are not close enough to throw it, it is
possible to adapt hunting rifles equipped with a special device. The weapon
which we christened the M-16 during the war, is a sawed-off, 16-gauge shotgun
to which a fork is attached in such a way as to form a tripod with the stock. The
weapon thus prepared has a firing angle of about 45 degrees which can be
modified by moving the fork backwards or forwards. It is loaded with an open
cartridge from which the shot has been removed. You can attach it to a wooden,
cylindrical stick which then becomes a projectile and comes out of the barrel of
the weapon. To the projecting end, we add a tin attachment with a rubber shock
absorber at the base, and a bottle of gasoline. This device can throw incendiary
bottles 100 meters or more which makes it possible to aim with sufficient
precision at places where the enemy has wood structures or inflammable mate-
rial, or even to attack armored cars on sloping terrain."
(Che Guevara: Guerrilla Warfare) I
It is also useful in urban guerrilla warfare when fired from a terrace, a balcony,
inside courts, and other locations.
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As these illustrations indicate, Tricontinental's main theme is violence.
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"Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla" was pub-
lished. Marighella, the Brazilian terrorist reader
who was killed in a police ambush in Sao Paulo
on 4 November last year, originally wrote the
"minimanual" last June but apparently had for-
mulated his ideas of the revolution in Brazil two
years prior when he made his break with the
Brazilian Communist Party. Although Triconti-
nental acknowledged that Marighel.la had written
his article with the specific case of Brazil in mind,
it claimed that the "minimanual" has a "special
importance" and that it "will become one of the
principal books of every man who, as a conse-
quence of the inevitable battle against the bour-
geoisie and imperialism, takes the road of armed
rebellion."*
Marighella himself had explained his thesis in
an interview granted last September to a repre-
sentative of a French publication. "Under the
present conditions of dictatorship in this country
(i.e., Brazil)," he said, "propaganda and educa-
tional work is possible, a priori, only in the cities.
A number of mass movements, particularly those
organized by students, intellectuals, and certain
groups of militant unionists, have established a
climate politically favorable for a tougher strug-
gle, by which I mean armed actions. All the
antidemocratic measures taken by the govern-
ment ...have created a climate of revol.t....The city
contains all the objective and subjective condi-
tions necessary for a successful guerrilla war. But
out in the countryside the situation is markedly
less favorable. This means that the war in the
rural districts will have to come after the war in
the cities, which will play a distinctly tactical
role. Besides, the comrades who go out to fight in
the countryside will already have undergone their
baptism of fire in the urban struggle. The very
bravest of them will be sent out into the coun-
try."
Marighella, Fonseca Amador, 4nd other rev-
olutionaries a. e unanimous in support of Castro's
conviction that the local Communist parties have
failed to recognize the validity of armed struggle
and have been reluctant to put it into practice.
The footdragging and sometimes outright treach-
ery of the local Communist parties on this point
have long been a sensitive issue with Castro. He is
particularly bitter toward the Venezuelan Com-
munist Party, which he believes sabotaged the
guerrilla effort in the mid-1960s, and the Bolivian
Communist Party, which he largely blames for
Guevara's downfall. Although his last major state-
ment on the subject was made almost two years
ago on the occasion of the publication of Gue-
vara's diary in Havana, there is ample evidence
that his sentiments have not changed as a result of
the policy reappraisal. At the Moscow conference
of Communist parties in June 1969, for example,
the Cuban observer, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, ac-
curately reflected Fidel's views when he chal-
lenged a portion of the proposed conference re-
solution that stated that "the Communist and
Workers Parties head the democratic forces and
maintain on high the banners on the anti-im-
perialist struggle, fight selflessly and courageously
for the demands of the masses and for the attain-
ment of revolutionary changes...." Rodriguez
acidly charged that "in our opinion, that image
does not correspond to reality with regard to
certain Communist parties in Latin America" and
then chastised parties that "underestimate the
dangers of imperialism" and "bourgeois reform-
ism." Although Rodriguez' criticism of the Latin
American Communist parties was rather mild
when compared to some of Castro's bitter dia-
tribes, the forum in which Rodriguez delivered
the rebuke indicates clearly that the so-called
"thaw" in relations between the parties and
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Havana is pure fiction. Castro withdrew aid from
certain guerrilla groups not to placate the local
Communist party chieftains but because the guer-
rilla groups were so ineffective for so long that
Castro lost faith in their ability and desire "to
make revolution." To use Castro's own words:
"They had the opportunity to start and conduct a
revolution; they did indeed have the opportunity
and they fumbled it." Furthermore, he has flatly
stated that he plans to continue support for "rev-
olutionaries like Che," which is just the type of
activity that earned him the condemnation of the
parties.
The new importance given to armed struggle
in urban areas as a result of Castro's policy
reassessment raised questions in the minds of
many revolutionaries because it seemed to con-
flict with the theories expounded by Jules Regis
Debray in Revolution Within the Revolution? In
this treatise-much publicized by Havana-Debray
discussed at length basic guerrilla warfare doctrine
as he understood it after a year of study in Cuba.
Although Debray wrote the essay, its concepts are
generally accepted as being those of Castro and
Guevara. Thus, the high value now placed on
urban struggle compared to the low value place
on it in Revolution Within the Revolution? leaves
Castro vulnerable to charges of inconsistency in a
matter of life-and-death importance to revolu-
tionaries who are putting his theories into prac-
tice. Juan Antonio Blanco, an instructor in the
Department of Philosophy at Havana University,
for example, admits, in the October 1969 issue of
the Cuban theoretical journal Pensamiento
Critico, that "Debray, for reasons very well
known, is closely tied to our country and our
ideas about the problems of Latin America. A
criticism of his essay Revolution Within the Rev-
olution? is in part, a criticism of our own ideas."
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To absolve Guevara, Castro, and even
Debray himself of any inconsistency, however,
Blanco explained further: "Despite the fact that
Debray tries to summarize the basic ideas of Ma-
jor Guevara and Fidel Castro, this does not pre-
vent certain personal viewpoints, or a poor or
simply brief statement of some aspects, from
causing different interpretations which do not
always have to coincide with Debray's own
thought." When it was first published is 1966 in
Havana, Debray's essay was highly touted by the
Cubans as an important work "for those wlx
know that `the duty of every revolutionary is to
make the revolution.' " Blanco claimed three
years later, however, that "Debray was not trying
to write a manual of guerrilla warfare or a socio-
logical treatise on the Latin American revolu-
tion."
In a further effort to disabuse the revolu-
tionary faithful of any misconceptions about the
theories in Debray's book, Havana published in
Pensamiento Critico in August 1969 a preface
that Debray had written more than two years
earlier for the French edition of the book. Debray
wrote that the purpose of his book was "to seek a
maximum of revolutionary efficiency," and he
then warned the reader to avoid "any definitive
conflict between theory and practice.... Let the
combatants figure out for themselves the theory
of their fight..."
An article in the January 1969 issue of Tri-
continental also tried to disentangle Debray from
the results of his writings. The "acritical mechan-
ical application" of Debray's theses by some
Latin American revolutionary circles, said the ar-
ticle, was "something Debray himself did not
intend to happen." The article then goes on to
explain why the Tupamaros National Liberation
Movement in Uruguay is so successful in waging
armed struggle in spite of the fact that Debray
claims in his book that in Uruguay "there are no
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immediate prospects for armed struggle." So, in
the fashion of George Orwell, Debray wrote what
he didn't mean and his manual on revolution is
not a manual after all.
SETBACKS CAUSE PAUSE IN AID
The de-emphasis of Debray's theories means
that Havana has become more flexible in its ideas
on how the armed struggle should be applied and
not that the importance of the basic doctrine has
dwindled. The de-emphasis happens to come at
the same time that Havana has decided to with-
hold support from lackluster guerrilla groups and
when a series of disasters involving pro-Castro
revolutionaries has caused the Cubans to slacken
the flow of support until the situations of various
leaderless groups clarify. These disasters include:
the jailing of Nicaraguan FSLN chief Carlos
Fonseca Amador in Costa Rica last September for
bank robbery; the killing of Carlos Mar?hella-a
most promising guerrilla prospect-by Sao Paulo
police last November; the death in prison last
November of the pro-Castro secretary general of
Panama's Revolutionary Unity Movement, Floyd
Britton; the death last September of Guido "Inti"
Perero Leigue, the survivor of the Guevara de-
bacle who succeeded in regrouping Che's National
Liberation Army (ELN) in Bolivia; and the killing
of Gerald Brisson and many other leaders of the
Cuban-supported Unified Party of Haitian Com-
muiiists.
Assistance to rebel groups continued even
during the period of policy reassessment. Several
of Marighella's followers had been trained in
Cuba, for example, and about 50 Cuban-trained
guerrilla fighters were sent to Bolivia in the spring
of 1969 to be incorporated into "Inti" Peredo's
ELN. Another group of 30 was to have been
infiltrated into Bolivia in March 1970, but this
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plan may have been upset by several successes
scored by the police against the ELN in the latter
half of last year. In addition, the period following
the death of Peredo was marked by considerable
in0rision in the ELN leadership, and it was not
until early this year that some semblance of order
seemed to be restored to the organization under
the direction of Peredo's younger brother
"Chato."
Although tb' three Cubans who survived
Guevara's defeat in 1967 eventually went back to
Havana, and the Cubans serving with guerrillas in
Venezuela had returned home by early 1969,
Havana is apparently still willing to send Cubans
to Latin America for special operations under
certain circumstances. Several, for example, were
to have been sent to Bolivia in July or August
1969 to join the ELN's jungle campaign. An ad-
ditional tlire, or four Cuban advisers are also
believed to be in Guatemala working with the
guerrillas of the Rebel Armed Forces.
Evidence of Cuban support in the form of
arms or money is extremely difficult to produce,
particularly in view of Havana's exhortation to
guerrilla groups to demonstrate their in.lepend-
ence by robbing banks or other businesses and by
buying or stealing arms locally. Marighella found
this to be a successful tactic and claimed that he
had never received arms or financial aid ficrn 'Ile
Cuban support of subversion is not confined
to Latin America. Although Havana's involvement
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25X1 he
u an guerria
experts were in ongo (Brazzaville) in
1969 training guerrillas of the Movement for
Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
in addition to the instructors, the
Cubans had given the MPLA a small quantity of
supplies. Havana's support of the MPLA has been
kept to its current low level, however, because of
the restrictions imposed by the government of
Congo (Brazzaville) following the dabbling in
domestic Congolese politics by the Cubans and
the MPLA. 25X1
Actions of both the MPLA and the PAIGC
receive prominent play in the Cuban press, and
red carpet treatment is extended to any leaders of
the movements that visit Cuba. For propaganda
support, PAIGC war communiques are regularly
for publication in the party newspaper.
in clandestine activities in Africa has declined
considerably since the mid-1960s, Castro has
sought to maintain contact with Marxist-oriented
guerrilla organizations targeted against white Af,-i-
can governments. In a speech at the UN General
Assembly on 8 October 1969, Cuban ambassador
Ricardo Alarcon said: "Cuba reaffirms her com-
plete support for the struggle of the African
peoples for their full national independence and
proclaims her militant solidarity with the libera-
tion movements of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and
Mozambique, and with the oppressed African
peoples in South Africa, Namibia, and Zim-
to became evident the following month when
Portuguese military units in Portuguese Guinea
captured a Cuban army officer serving with an
African guerrilla band operating out of the neigh-
boring Republic of Guinea. The officer reportedly
admitted that he was only one of several Cuban
officers who had been on active duty with the
guerrillas of the African Independence Party of
Guinea and Cap Verde (PAIGC) since ntid-1969.
-babwe." What type of support Alarcon referred late
African guerrilla units such as this MPLA detachment
pictured in Havana's Party newspaper.
Special Report
25X1 25X1
The MPLA maintains a permanent repre-
sentative in Havana for close liaison. Cuba also
maintains loose contact with the Liberation Front
of Mozambique (FRELIMO), but this tenuous
relationship seems to have cooled somewhat since
the assassination early last year of FRELIMO
President Eduardo Mondlane.
URBAN TERRORISM
The new em phasis on urban terrorism has an
important side benefit for Cuba. Bank robberies,
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payroll holdups, raids on gun shops, and attacks
on small police or military posts have provided
various guerrilla groups with more than enough
money and weapons for their operations. Kid-
napings for ransom have also proved richly re-
warding for guerrilla groups in Guatemala, Colom-
bia, and Uruguay. Demanding the release of polit-
ical prisoners in exchange for kidnaped diplomats
or other high-level political figures is another pop-
ular tactic of terrorist organizations.
Although Castro is undoubtedly aware that
his own diplomats serving abroad are vulnerable
to terrorist attacks, he has made no attempt to
renounce publicly the kidnaping or assassination
of foreign service officials. In fact, when 13 of the
15 prisoners released by Brazil in exchange for US
Ambassador Elbrick chose to travel to Cuba for
asylum, Castro was on hand at the airport and
saw to it that they got red carpet treatment upon
arrival. A warm welcome was also given to four of
the five prisoners freed in exchange for the Jap-
an'bse consul general in Sao Paulo and to 19 of the
20 Dominicans freed in a trade for an attache of
the US Embassy when both groups sought refuge
in Cuba.
The Cuban press has been outspoken on the
subject. A radio commentator in Havana, for ex-
ample, called the kidnaping o? Ambassador El-
brick "the most brilliant action carried out re-
cently," while Tricontinental of December 1968
characterized the assassination by pro-Castro re-
bels of US Ambassador Mein in Guatemala City as
"punishmen.t well deserved." Similarly, Verde
O1ivu, the Cuban military weekly, reported the
assassination by the same retel group of.two US
military officers in Guatemala ;n January 1968 as
being "the only language that the native oligarchs
and their patrons, the Yankee imperialists, under-
stand."
The Cubans until 1969 had always under-
played the importance of urban terrorism in the
Special Report
revolution of 1957-58. The guerrilla war in the
mountains had always dominated accounts of the
overthrow of Batista. Last August, however,
Pensamiento Critico published the text of a talk
given in closed session to Latin American journal-
ists in 1967 by Major Fatistino Perez, the man
who directed Castro's urban apparatus during the
war. Perez' remarks were probably released be-
cause by 1969 the policy reassessment had indi-
cated that added importance was to be given to
url-an terrorism in the revised revolutionary
theory. Perez' historical review closely paralleled
the theses expounded by Fonseca Amador and
Marighella. His reason for employing terrorist
tactics is simple: urban terrorism creates a "situa-
tion of insecurity in the so-called economic
classes. ..who are going to feel that their base is
shaky and are themselves going to be thinking of
the necessity of change, the necessity that this
situation cannot Continue.... A state of general
opinion in the people favorable to change will be
created. In other words, even those who are not
revolutionaries realize that this cannot continue
and will assume an attitude favorable to change."
Perez laid great stress, as did Marighella and
Fonseca Amador, on the participation of students
in the revolutionary process. Students have a de-
veloped political consciousness, a certain lack of
caution, and have the fitness of youth. The vio-
lence that students have precipitated throughout
both North and South America in the past few
years has apparently impressed Castro with re-
spect to revolutionary possibilities. In late 1969,
he 'initiated plans to resurrect his old student-
front group, the Continental Organization of
Latin American Students (OCLAE), which was
formed in Havana in 1966 to act as a suppor'
apparatus for the Guevara adventure in Bolivia..
OCLAE has lain dormant since Guevara's failure,
but last December its permanent secretariat in-
vited to Havana a select group of student leaders
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in several Latin American countries who favor the
Cuban position on armed struggle.
During this secret "consultative" meeting, a
critique of the organization was held that resulted
in structural changes in OCLAE to make it "more
dynamic and effective, based on concrete actions
against North American imperialism." Castro him-
self talked with the students, and Perez also
chatted with them about the Cuban experience in
urban terrorism. A similar meeting is schedule)
for late 1970 when plans will be drawn up for the
Fifth Latin American Student Congress.
What was meant by "concrete actions" be-
came evident when one of the delegates from
Chile, Jorge Fuentes Alarcon, returned home and
assumed one of the three vice presidential posi-
tions on the newly formed Committee of Support
for the Bolivian People and the ELN, the rebel
group of Guevara and "Inti" Peredo. Fuentes, a
leader of the terrorist-prone Movement of the
Revolutionary Left (MIR), clearly stated his be-
liefs: "We must launch armed conflict to do away
with the power of the oligarchy and build a new
society and the new man in Latin America... .The
place of the student in Latin America would be to
join the armed struggle wherever it is being
waged-either in the city or the countryside-to
develop that war and to carry it to the cities, to
give the guerrillas increased fighting capacity and
to supply them a means to keep fighting." It can
safely be assumed that the other delegates to the
meeting in Havana harbor similar sentiments and
that Latin American students in general will re-
ceive increasing attention from Havana as suitable
material for subversive operations.
The Cubans are also favorably impressed by
the growing tide of sentiment within the Catholic
Church for revolutionary social and economic
changes. Havana's propaganda contains heavy
doses of material on members of the clergy such
as Camilo Torres, the Colombian priest who
joined the LEN and srrved under arms with the
guerrillas until killed in combat in 1966. Another
Colombian and former priest, German Guzman
Campos, who maintains that "revolution is the
only way," so impressed the Cubans that lie was
invited to the Havana Cultural Congress held in
January 1969. In January 1970, Radio Havana
characterized as "one of the most significant
phenomena in Latin America in recent times" the
"growing participation of some of the progressi f
Catholic clergy in the struggle of the peoples." A
month later, the Cubans, apparently searching for
another Camilo Torres, gave considerable press
Carrillo Torres is Castro's
example of the ideal
rebel priest.
Special Report -12-
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play to the reported arrival in the ranks of the
Colombian ELN of Father Domingo Lain, a
Spanish priest who was expelled from Colombia a
year ago for interfering in the country's internal
affairs. Castro has commented favorably on the
revolutionary clergy several times in his speeches
and probably looks on cassocked rebels as having
excellent potential for guerrilla support activities
such as those carried out by various religious
orders in Brazil in conjunction with Marighella's
terrorists.
Castro will continue to support subversion
abroad but is now being much more cautious as
to whom he should support and what type of
support is to be supplied. If the situation were
particularly promising, he would not hesitate to
send money, arms, or even Cuban advisers, but
th? rewards would have to be commensurate with
the risks. He seems to have learned that exporting
Cubans to lead a foreign revolutionary movement
is counterproductive, and he will probably de-
pend on foreign nationals who have the charisma
and aggressiveness of a Carlos Marighella to pro-
vide the necessary leadership. He will not insist, as
he did with disastrous results in Bolivia in 1967,
that he control the revolutionary movement, and
he will probably be satisfied to confine Cuban
participation to support and advice. He is showing
signs of being parsimonious with financial and
material assistance, urging revolutionaries to svu-
tain themselves by means of holdups, bank rob-
beries, and similar actions that have become so
prevalent in Latin America in the past year.
He will exert special care in situations like
that in Peru where military officers seem to be
making a genuine effort to institute fundamental
economic and social changes by means of na-
tionalization and agrarian reform. In such cases,
he will soft-pedal violent revolution to avoid up-
setting the applecart. He considers the case of
Bolivia a special one, however, and will oppose
the Ovando government no matter what changes
are instituted. Castro blames Ovando for the exe-
cution of Guevara and seems to be intent on
exacting revenge. Honorato Rojas, the Bolivian
who led Guevara's rear guard into a fatal ambush
in August 1967, has already been liquidated by
the ELN, and the same fate has apparently been
decreed for Mario Monje, the now-imprisoned
Bolivian Communist Party official who refused to
aid Guevara, and for Ovando himself.
The bulk of Castro's support for revolution-
aries will probably consist of propaganda and the
training of recruits in guerrilla warfare and special
operations techniques. Candidates for training
will probably be screened much more closely than
in the past, and this policy may result in a drop in
quantity but an improvement in quality.
Castro will establish and maintain liaison
with, and support, those groups that are willing to
engage in armed struggle for the overthrow of
their native governments but will be less dogmatic
when it comes to the fine points of revolutionary
theory. He now recognizes that each country has
its peculiarities and that the Cuban experience
cannot be repeated in other countries unless his
general theories on revolution undergo consider-
able revision. He will continue to scorn most of
the established Communist parties in Latin Amer-
ica and will seek out those revolutionary leaders
who are willing to apply in their respective coun-
tries the general guidelines of urban terrorism (to
create the proper revolutionary climate), guerrilla
warfare (to provide a combat nucleus for con-
fronting the forces of repression), and the
people's army (to overthrow the government,
seize power, and continue the revolution's eco-
nomic and social phases). Castro is a compulsive
rebel and will probably remain committed to vio-
lent revolution,
Special Report
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