Document created: 22 October 03
Air University Review, September-October 1973
The Urban Guerrilla
in Latin America
Dr. Charles A. RussellMajor Robert E. Hildner
In October 1967 Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a renowned strategist and tactician in the field of guerrilla warfare, was killed while leading a band of would-be revolutionaries in Bolivia. Guevara’s death at the hands of the Bolivian armed forces marked not only the death of a hero of the “Revolutionary Left” but also the end of rural-based guerrilla warfare as an effective instrument of change in Latin America. Che learned too late that if revolutionary war is to alter the political face of Latin America, it will have to be waged in the cities, not in the countryside.
Since October 1967 the shift of guerrilla warfare in Latin America from a rural to an urban focus has been pronounced. A number of reasons account for this movement to the cities. The first is a steadily diminishing rural population, resulting from accelerating urbanization. Drawn by the prospects of better employment, improved living conditions, and greater opportunities for themselves and their families, more and more of Latin America’s peasants are moving to the cities. The net result is a situation wherein more than 50 percent of Latin America’s population is urban, at least fifteen cities having more than one million inhabitants. Because of this trend toward urbanization, the countryside, in most cases, is too underpopulated to support a rural-based insurgent movement.
Coupled with the increasing urbanization is a concentration of radical students and young intellectuals in most metropolitan areas. Products of an educational system still strongly influenced by Marxist political and economic theories, they are quick to embrace terrorism and violent revolution as a means of effecting political and social change. Consequently, they provide a substantial and readily available manpower source for guerrilla movements.
In addition to urbanization and the concentration of radical student and intellectual elements in metropolitan areas, another factor contributing to the shift to urban insurgency has been the rather conspicuous failure of rural insurgencies in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, and Venezuela as well as the Guevara-led debacle in Bolivia. To those intent on overthrowing the existing political and social order, Guevara’s untimely demise in the hills of Bolivia confirmed what many had begun to suspect: that waging guerrilla warfare in the countryside often is equivalent to suicide. Not only is rural insurgency likely to end in disaster, it also ignores the very real advantages of waging urban guerrilla warfare. These advantages include a multiplicity of terrorist targets, such as government officials, diplomatic personnel, prominent business firms, etc., which, if attacked, guarantee instant and widespread publicity for the guerrilla movement at home and abroad. Furthermore, the cities provide a readily available source of material and facilities such as food, medical care, transportation, and communications, all of which are essential for a viable insurgent movement.
In the years since Guevara’s death, there has been a proliferation of urban-based guerrilla and terrorist groups, not only in Latin America but throughout the world. Of all the existing urban guerrilla movements, however, few have achieved the notoriety or significance of Uruguay’s Tupamaros. They have become perhaps the most effective such movement in all Latin America and are emulated in many respects by similar groups elsewhere. In an attempt to explain the objectives, strategy, and significance of what many regard as the archetype of the modem urban guerrilla movement, Maria Esther Gilio, an Argentine journalist, has written a book, The Tupamaro Guerrillas.*
*Maria Esther Gilio, The Tupamaro Guerrillas, translated by Anne Edmondson (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972, $6.95), 204 pages.Of all the countries in Latin America where one might expect an insurgent movement of any type to take root, Uruguay might well be the last chosen, at least at first glance. Possessing a generally tolerant and relatively homogeneous population, Uruguay has had a remarkably stable and democratic political system. Transfers of power have usually been peaceful and elections orderly as far back as most Uruguayans can remember. With a life expectancy exceeding that of any other Latin American country, a social security system of such proportions as to rival that of the most advanced industrial nations, and a standard of living higher than that found in most areas of the world, there appears to be little reason to suspect that Uruguay would become a battleground of revolutionary war. Nevertheless, even a superficial examination would reveal Uruguay to be a democracy in serious trouble.
Uruguay’s most pressing problem is inflation. Prices have risen 600 percent during the period from 1958 to 1970. The cost of living increased about 49 percent in the first seven months of 1972, and the peso was devalued six times in that same year. In addition to runaway inflation, Uruguay’s economy, which is based primarily on agriculture and animal husbandry, is stagnating as a result of the country’s failure to keep pace with technological developments. Further straining of the economy is caused by a welfare system whose provisions are so generous as to outstrip the economy’s ability to support them. Uruguay also is experiencing serious demographic problems brought about by one of the lowest birth rates in Latin America, declining immigration, and a high rate of emigration. As a result, there is a serious question as to the population’s ability to provide an adequate market, even if the economy were to industrialize. With approximately 80 percent of the population living in cities and half the total concentrated in the capital city of Montevideo, Uruguay is one of the most urbanized societies in Latin America. It is against this backdrop, then, that the Tupamaros and Miss Gilio’s book must be viewed.
The subtitle of the book, “The Structure and Strategy of the Urban Guerrilla Movement,” would lead one to believe it is an in-depth and reasonably analytical study of the urban guerrilla movement in general and the Tupamaros of Uruguay in particular. Unfortunately this is not the case. What little treatment there is of these subjects is superficial at best and appears coincidental rather than intended. Were it not for the subtitle, perhaps Miss Gilio should not be criticized too strongly for this failure, since the extreme secrecy practiced by all guerrilla groups, particularly urban ones, makes it extremely difficult to obtain a reasonably clear picture of their structure. Strategy is similarly neglected in Miss Gilio’s book, there being little to indicate exactly what the Tupamaros hope to achieve in the way of ultimate goals. Like most urban guerrilla movements, the Tupamaros have been somewhat reticent about the precise aims and objectives of their campaign of urban terrorism, and no real ideology or theoretical basis for the movement has emerged. The Gilio book also is silent on this question, the answer to which would appear central to an understanding of the urban guerrilla phenomenon, at least as it exists in Uruguay.
If, then, the book treats neither the structure nor the strategy of the urban guerrilla movement, as exemplified by the Tupamaros, one might properly ask just what its purpose and subject matter are.
The book is a collection of interviews that were conducted by the author from 1965 until 1970. They include interviews with representatives of various segments of the population, such as laborers, school children, skilled artisans, the aged and infirm, convicts, and, of course, a number of alleged Tupamaros. These interviews are intended to illustrate dramatically the central thesis of the book: that a regressive, insensitive, and repressive regime has driven ordinary men and women into terrorism and urban guerrilla warfare as the only way of achieving political and social justice. In essence, then, the entire book is a thinly veiled apologia for the Tupamaros that carefully ignores their propensity for violence and cold-blooded murder. Its total lack of objectivity is apparent, and its central thesis, while interesting, has little basis in fact.
Tupamaro is the nickname for the Movement of National Liberation (MLN-Movimiento de Liberación Nacional) and is derived from Tupac Amaru, the leader of an unsuccessful Inca revolt against the Spanish in the late eighteenth century. Although the name “Tupamaro” first appeared in 1965, when a protest against the Vietnam war was circulated in Montevideo following the bombing of the Bayer plant, the origins of the group go back to the late 1950s. It evolved not out of a desire for social justice or in response to the repressive policies of the Uruguayan government, as Miss Gilio would have us believe, but as a result of an abortive attempt on the part of Raul Sendic, a former law student turned labor organizer, to change a rural, northern-based sugar workers’ union into a springboard to political power and influence. Failing in his attempt to establish a rural power base, Sendic and his supporters concluded that the road to power lay through urban armed struggle. Joining with other radical elements, Sendic formed an underground revolutionary movement, which became the nucleus of the MLN.
Since their inception, the Tupamaros have hoped to bring about civil war in Uruguay by capitalizing on the discontent generated by a stagnating economy and by encouraging a polarization of political forces. To achieve this goal, they have initiated a systematic campaign of terrorism, kidnapping, and assassination designed to engender a feeling of anxiety and insecurity in the populace and undermine faith and confidence in the government and its security forces. The “Robin Hood” aura surrounding many of their activities masks a small group of determined terrorists intent on the destruction of a democratic society—an aspect of the Tupamaros which this book studiously avoids.
While it is certainly true that the Tupamaros have been both spectacular and successful, this success has not been attributable to widespread popular support and assistance, as Miss Gilio’s book implies. Rather, it has been due to the slowness of Uruguay to recognize the real nature of the threat posed by the Tupamaros and, until recently, the inability of its police and security forces to cope with that threat once it was recognized. The Tupamaros draw considerable support from radical students and lower-level civil servants, who have felt the economic squeeze most; but such support is hardly widespread among the general populace. Perhaps the clearest indication of this lack of support came in the November 1971 election in which a left-wing coalition, calling for significant social change and supported by the Tupamaros, only garnered slightly better than 20 percent of the vote. In an election in which an estimated 90 percent of eligible voters participated, this is hardly indicative of an oppressed people eagerly awaiting a Tupamaro-led revolution.
The Tupamaro Guerrillas is a very shallow treatment of an extremely complex and important phenomenon. The significance and long-range impact of the Tupamaros extend far beyond the borders of Uruguay, for they illustrate only too well that a small group of determined men, lacking both resources and widespread popular support, can threaten the very existence of a democratic society. As such it deserves a more serious and objective approach than that afforded by Miss Gilio.
Washington, D.C., and
Montgomery, Alabama
Note
For those who read Spanish and are interested in an objective and quite accurate evaluation of Tupamaro strategy and tactics, we suggest Antonio Mercader and Jorge de Vera’s Tupamaros: Estrategia y Acción (Montevideo: Editorial Alfa, 1969). In contrast to Miss Gilio’s book, this text explores in detail the origins of the Tupamaro movement, its transition from a rural-based insurgent group to an urban terrorist force, its contacts with Cuban and other Latin American revolutionary elements, and the differences in strategy between the Tupamaros and Cuban revolutionary theorists and apologists (particularly Guevara and the French Marxist Regis Debray). The Mercader and de Vera text also contains a substantial amount of detailed information on overall tactics of the group, recruiting and training of personnel, and even data on government countering operations. For anyone interested in the Tupamaros and an understanding of their objectives and strategy, the Mercader and de Vera book is a must.
Contributors
Dr. Charles A. Russell (J.D., Georgetown University; Ph.D., American University) is Chief, Acquisitions and Analysis Division, Directorate of Special Organizations, Hq AFOSI. From 1951 to 1971 he served in the Directorate of Special Investigations, Hq USAF. With Major Hildner, he has lectured at Air Command and Staff College and USAF Special Operations School on insurgency in the underdeveloped world and the role of counterintelligence in counterinsurgency.
Major Robert E. Hildner (M.S., University of Colorado) is Chief, Operations Division, AFOSI District 65, Rome, Italy. Other assignments have been in the Directorate of Special Operations, Hq AFOSI, as Chief, Middle East, Africa, South Asia Branch, and Chief, Western Hemisphere Branch, Acquisitions and Analysis Division; as a counterintelligence officer, OSI, Japan; and as Commander, AFOSI Detachment, Da Nang AB, Vietnam. Major Hildner is a 1973 graduate of Air Command and Staff College.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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