AMADO KILLED IN GUATEMALA
By José Valdes
At the beginning of April, after a short skirmish, the repres- Sive forces of the dictatorial Guatemalan government murdered Francisco Amado G. and Francisco Arce.
According to the May issue of El Rebelde [The Rebel], the journal of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria [MIR -- Left Revolutionary Movement] in Chile, Amado was "a talented 36-year-old university professor in charge of the organization and politics of the.MR+1%3 de Noviembre [Movimiento Revolucionario 143 de Noviembre ] in Guatemala. City and the urban centers, and was at the same. time in-eharge of publishing the journal Revolucién Socialista. Amado was the faithful comrade-in-arms of Comandante Yon Sosa from the time both of them were cadets in a military school. In 1961, Amado gave up his chair at the University of Mexico and joined the guerrilla struggle. From that time on, he faced the constant risk of being arrested for his steady underground activities in the urban centers. Amado combined the characteristics of both a man of action and a theoretician. He was one of the signers of the Declaration of the Sierra de las Minas; and his firm position as a revolutionary Marxist brought him into conflict with the reformists and revisionists, those who vilely slandered and even informed on him."
. These two new crimes follow the murder of Alejandro de Leon,
Vallese, Vicente August Lorca and Rodolfo Chac6én and others. A number of prisoners are faced with summary execution. These include David Aguilar, Ménica Castro, José Angel Pesquera, Beto and more than one hundred workers and peasants. These losses have been felt bythe MR-13, but its guerrillas and militiamen continue to struggle reso- . lutely.
- As for the FAR [Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes] led by Iuis Augusto Turcios Lima, which separated from the MR-13, it initiated a series of actions, the most spectacular of which was the kidnapping of the head of the Supreme Court and the'secretary of the press and news of the presidency of the republic. These actions, aimed at winning the release of imprisoned guerrilla fighters and workers, do not exactly follow the line of the "peaceful road" advocated by the PGT [Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo -- the Communist party] which nevertheless wields influence in the political program of the FAR. This consists of reviving the old, bankrupt line of a "revolution by stages"; that is, first make a front with the bourgeoisie in order to make the bourgeois (antifeudal?) revolution, and then (when?) struggle for. socialism. ~
As evidence of this, in the recent presidential elections, the PGT and the FAR supported Mendez Montenegro.
Nevertheless, the tactics of the FAR indicate the possibility that it is not a monolithic body under the complete control of the PGT. It seems rather to include various tendencies, one of which is the line of armed insurrection.
Within coming months, it is likely that we will witness political differentiation within the Guatemalan guerrilla movement, as has occurred in the other insurrectional movements, particularly in Venezuela, Colombia and Peru.