CONTRIBUTION TO THE DISCUSSION ON GUERRILLA TACTICS IN LATIN AMERICA
By Hector Bejar
{The following article by the wellknown Peruvian guerrilla leader has been translated from the December, 1967, issue of Solidarité Pérou, the bulletin of the French Committee for Solidarity with the Victims of Repression in Peru. ]
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Our action in Peru in 1965 was spread out and lacked a real functioning leadership. We tried to solve the problems of the insurrection in diverse ways. The MIR [Movimiento de la Izquierda Revo-~ lucionaria -- Movement of the Revolutionary Left] and the ELN (Ejército de Liberacidn Nacional -- Army of National Liberation] applied different concepts in setting up their guerrilla foci. Thus, there was no practical coordination between the two organizations; and the dispersion of the guerrilla groups was by no means a favorable factor -- quite the contrary. Subjected to harsh trials, the guerrillas responded in accordance with their fighting capacities. All -- with the possible exception of Lobatén's guerrilla nucleus -- established themselves in definite zones, thus making it possible for the army to easily guard the points of outlet. Almost all of them allowed the enemy to get close to their positions; feeling sure of themselves and confident of their knowledge of the terrain, they all functioned in an amateurish way, while the army operated efficiently.
Moreover, the peasants only rarely had the opportunity to offer organized and active support to the guerrillas and, in any case, could not follow through on this support when it was organized in advance. The reason is clear: secrecy is not a characteristic of work among the peasants and the incompetence of the insurrectionary organizations, together with their excessive desire for publicity, left their collaborators at the mercy of the repressive forces, which acted, as should have been expected, ruthlessly and with cold calculation. The truth is that we were fighting a war for the first time and we were not really prepared. The guerrillas were liquidated less through conmbat -- in which they always displayed great courage and valor -- than through information given by ex-collaborators of low political level and poor fighting spirit or by deserters, who were given the choice of talking or being executed.
While the leaders fought exclusively in the countryside, a few embryonic supporter groups remained in the cities. They were quite limited and incapable of carrying out important actions. We thought that sweeping repressive measures would
force the entire left in one way or an-
other to join in the insurrectionary
movement. But the reactionaries used
repression in a calculated way and did
not attack those who failed to express
support for the insurgents. They sought
to isolate us from the rest of the left
-- and succeeded. The rhetorical and
formal support of groups and parties
was of no use to us at all so long as it
was not transformed into supporting ac-
tions. The army, which thus had few prob-
lems in its rear, had its hands free to
fight us in the interior of the country.
There, it instituted a general terror to
intimidate the civilian population --
in which it also succeeded.
And so, while the ruling groups
quickly joined forces for the defense of
the system, the rest of the left, includ-
ing the two Communist parties, took a
wait-and-see attitude and the urban pop-
ulation watched the dramatic events un-
folding far away with some bewilderment
and a certain indifference.
At the end of 1965 we drew up our
first balance sheet. It showed the loss
of an entire revolutionary leadership,
the product of long years of struggle;
and of very valuable cadres, irreplace-
able in the short run, cadres trained
in the struggle against reaction and
against the leaderships of the tradition-
al parties. At the same time, the fight-
ers figured as heretics in the eyes of a
pacifist and scholastic left. However,
the MIR and the ELN were able to maintain
their organizational apparatus and in the
struggle they gained a heroic image which
is irresistibly attracting the youth.
Now, the recent events in Bolivia
will compel the revolutionary left here
and everywhere to engage in debate. In
fact, we are already in the midst of
debate; whether we like it or not, these
failures oblige us to reflect. For the
ELN, some of whose members died at Che's
side in Bolivia, a second critical reck-
oning is inevitable.
The question is basically whether
Che's death was also the death of a con-
cept, of a tactic...This question right
now concerns the two most prominent
figures in the continental insurrection
at the moment, Che, the fighter, and
Debray, the theoretician.
We must begin with a glance at the
panorama of Latin America and of the guer-
rilla movements. It is an incontestable
fact that the guerrilla movements continue
despite all the offensives launched against
them. In Colombia, in Venezuela, in Guate-
mala and now in Nicaragua and Bolivia, they continue to stand up against all the attacks of powerful combined forces. And in other countries there are sporadic attemps with varying results...
All this shows us something which is almost a commonplace: we stand at the very beginning of a vast process of liberation. Latin America is an immense continent and will not be able to cast off in a few years the yoke of an imperialism which stands at the peak of its power. But we must not rest content with phrases. We must also note that this process cannot be contained within precise forms and rigid schemas. Its length cannot be predicted just as it is impossible today to predict what tactics revolutionaries will adopt in the circumstances which they must confront in their path. There is no point then in discussing this. However, it is important to stress that their success will depend on their analytic ability and on the degree to which they can free themselves from schematic preconceptions. Struggle against dogmatism, against every kind of dogmatism, is a matter of life or death for us.
During the lull preceding 1965, a campaign for armed struggle spread through our universities and also reached workingclass centers; this was purely a propaganda campaign, it must be said, but it was no less dangerous for the regime. Nothing could prevail against this current -which was inseparable from a certain sectarianism -- neither the failures suf~ fered nor the logical appeals to moderation by the more timid. The left which is insurrectional in fact and not just in words is inexorably gaining ground and -we can say it with absolute conviction -will engage in new armed insurrections.
This fact merits an explanation -it lies in the radicalization of our middle classes. The middle classes have always played an important role in our country, both in a negative and positive sense. They have provided the conservative extreme right's military leaders, but they also gave rise to the liberal, anti-imperialist upsurge of the thirties. Today again, transformed by the new conditions nationally and internationally, they are in ferment, seeking to make the country over,either by peaceful or violent means. And the impoverished and backward sectors of this class are assuming the role of standard-bearer of the armed struggle. With a romantic and heroic spirit, they have created the guerrilla movement. The dual nature of-this petty bourgeoisie is faithfully reflected in the virtues and faults of the guerrilla struggle: it is behind the bold successes but also of the errors and failures.
This petty bourgeoisie is being held back by uneducated masses, still in-
capable of theoretical abstraction, with-
out which Marxism is impossible. This
leads me to point out that the number one
problem of the Peruvian revolution is how
to link up the insurrectionary activity
of this class with the rebellious peas-
antry and the demands of the working
class hit by economic crisis. The con~
sciousness of the masses has developed
quite unevenly, and therein lies the prin-
cipal advantage of the oligarchy, which
has learned how to defend its class in-
terests through long exercise of power.
The Cuban revolution, in a certain
sense, gave the answer to this question
and Debray has presented it in great de-
tail. But Debray's book is necessarily
the generalization of a method and a
resumé of the experiences of the past.
There are new experiences and new situa-
tions which his analysis does not take
into account. Therefore, it is dangerous
to end every discussion by referring to
Debray's analysis. Guerrilla tactics
must undergo a twofold adaptation -- to
the new economic and social conditions
in our countries and to the experience
which the armies have gained in irregular
combat. In order to achieve this we must
start from the reality in each country.
In Peru our peasants are an un-
stable mass. Both individually and col-
lectively they have difficulty in in-
corporating themselves into the national
economy. They emigrate to the suburbs of
Lima but in these belts of misery they
continue to function as peasants and
maintain very strong sentimental and
economic ties with their places of origin.
In many cases the suburbs of the
cities serve to a certain extent as the
brain of the peasant groups. Thanks to
the natural evolution of the economy as
well as force, the peasants are freeing
themselves from latifundism. But now that
they sell their products and do not just
consume them, they demand land more in-
sistently and are beginning to demand
education and state aid.
Land is still the basic lever for
mobilizing the peasants, but in the near
future opposition to feudalism may lose
its importance as a revolutionary rally-
ing cry. Urbanization and elementary edu-
cation may temporarily satisfy the peas-
ants but they open up the way to free
thinking. A peasant who organizes unions,
demands roads and public works and aspires
to a real agrarian reform is a different
kind of peasant. He is a peasant, who,
bringing pressure to bear on the state
apparatus in manifold ways, can no longer
be ignored by the authorities.
In confronting this problem the
regime has a certain margin for maneuver.
We have already seen it dealing with
major points of conflict by calling for
collective labor, by constructing means of communication and by executing bloody repressions where it is deemed necessary. Agrarian reform, popular cooperation, demagogy and repression all enter into a Single bourgeois strategy the aim of which is at least to temporarily contain the peasants' demands.
The ruling classes won a success in their repressive campaign but failed in their reforms. The peasantry, whose unions have been dissolved and which still bleeds from the wounds suffered in the guerrilla struggle, is recovering slowly. But we must not make the mistake of considering its present setback to be final. The tide will soon turn and it will find the bourgeois state tied down more than ever by a disastrous fiscal situation, by limited resources and the ever more powerful domination of the reactionary economic groups.
Accelerated urbanization has swelled the ranks of the working class, now standing at a mi’lion and a half in round figures. The country's industrial development will not be sufficient to absorb this gigantic supply of manpower. In its financially weakened condition, the state will not be able to meet the most elementary needs for jobs, housing and public works. This mass of unskilled workers with a perfunctory education, who live largely by part-time labor, are half-satisfied and waver between the cities and the country, between revolutionary demands and reformisn.
For the time being, they largely constitute the electoral following of the capitulators to the bourgeoisie and represent an appreciable element of stability for the system. But how long will their patience last? The ruling classes are terrified at the thought of a mobilization of these semiproletarian social strata.
Its lack of skills and the surplus of manpower makes the working class defenseless against the bosses. These two factors are the principal causes of the unions' general weakness and also give rise to the "mediating" role played by their leaderships. Thus the working class -88~—
does not express itself openly, but discontent exists and constantly mounts. It is semiconcealed and expressed only in sporadic explosions of protest which reveal its great potential power.
Favored by the powerlessness of the people, the ruling classes grow ever more cynical. Our representative democracy can function without serious difficulties, limited to the parties of the right, and in the next few years it can be broadened to accommodate a legal left which accepts the rules of the game.
As long as they control the basic mechanism of power, the ruling groups will feel sure of themselves and will look to the future with optimism. They will not, however, be able to prevent disillusion, rejection and revulsion at the system as a whole from mounting around then.
Something new has appeared in this context -- the insurrectionary groups with their radicalism and their heroism, by giving their lives and their blood, offer the people a cause, a mystique. The groups have been thrown into confusion by defeats; they must learn to be at once idealists and realists, poets and pragmatists. The years have not passed in vain. The oligarchies and their armies have learned from the struggle and profited from the imperialist experience in Algeria and Vietnan. To the armies of reaction on the march we must oppose disciplined vanguards, wellgrounded in military tactics, skilled, mobile, omnipresent. The struggle in the cities and the struggle of the masses must not be neglected. We must fight on every terrain, while maintaining guerrilla warfare as the strategic backbone, as the fundamental tactic.
In a situation so much in flux, seizure of power is not yet on the order of the day. Actively constructing a united political-military organization and a military force equal to the demands of the revolutionary situations of the future, however, is.
Lima, San Quintin Prison,
November, 1967.
STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITY OF MADRID RESIST POLICE
A week of dramatic clashes between Spanish