The Legacy of Che Guevara

8/18/2019 The Legacy of Che Guevara

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3 COMMENTARY/DECEMBER 1967

camps and underground supply depots of the People's Guerrilla Army (which police agentshad previously infiltrated), killing six guerrillasand capturing twelve others before the army,after six months of training and preliminary con-tacts with the rural population, could even beginoperations. In Peru, three Castroite guerrillabands, which in 1965-66 had tried to establishthemselves along the eastern slopes of the Andes,were knocked out of action within seven monthsof their first ambush. In the La ConvencionValley of southern Peru, the guerrilla band ofLuis de la Puente Uceda, an old friend of Castro,was literally destroyed by internal quarrels; de laPuente himself was shot by the army a few daysafter he was captured without resistance.* InGuatemala, two rival insurgency movements thatwere gaining ground steadily for four years havebeen inactivated over the past year by an armycampaign of rural slaughter in which peasantshave been impressed into right-wing vigilante or-ganizations (using weapons supplied in the U.S.military aid program).

HE DEATH OF Ernesto Guevara in BoliviaSeems to fall quite naturally into place in

this general history of failure and rout. But theBolivian disaster is also compounded by the factthat that country seemed to be a relatively com-fortable theater for guerrilla operations. It is acountry with a strong revolutionary tradition;its army has been twice defeated by popular up-risings since World War II; and its sparsely-populated national territory contains vast areas

of lowland jungle and savannah-abundant inwater and game animals-capable of hiding andsupporting a small guerrilla movement for manyyears. In his 1965 article, Castroism: The LongMarch in Latin America, t Regis Debray, theyoung French theorist of Castroism, rhapsodized: Bolivia is the country with the best subjectiveand objective conditions, the only South Ameri-can nation where revolution is the order of theday, despite the reconstitution of an army totallydestroyed [in battles with the workers andminers] in the 1952 revolution. It is also the onlycountry where the revolution can restore the clas-sic Bolshevik form-the

proof is the 1952 prole-tarian insurrection-on the basis of soviets, thatburst the state apparatus with a short and de-cisive armed struggle. The U.S. Army AreaHandbook for Bolivia (1963) noted that in thefifteen-thousand-man Bolivian army conscripts(mainly Indians speaking little Spanish) receive

no regular pay for their services. Instead they areprovided with food, clothing, and lodging and, onrare occasions when funds are available, they maybe awarded small monetary gratuities or issues ofalcohol. The details of the defense budget are notmade known publicly, but a probably valid as-sumption is that rates of pay for officers and non-commissioned officers . . . range from the equiva-

lent of $18 a month for colonel to about $8 forthe lowest noncommissioned officer grade. Forthat reason it is officially approved that servicepersonnel are given sufficient free time to earn asupplementary income. The morale of the Boliv-ian army is such that officers often earn this supplementary income by selling the foodraised for army rations on the open market, andby letting recruits go home months before com-pletion of the usual one-year hitch in order tocapitalize on their maintenance allotments and toreduce the political risks" of barracks revolts.

The Bolivian army, it should be noted, has be-come the nation's leading political party since theNovember 1964 coup which ousted PresidentVictor Paz Estenssoro and the Movimiento Na-cional Revolcionario (MNR) and installed ReneBarrientos, the former Vice President and airforce chief of staff and a kind of LatinAmerican Captain Marvel. Between 1964 and 1965the military budget was doubled, army officers werenamed to key administrative posts, and GeneralBarrientos's incumbency was formalized in riggedelections twenty months after the coup. An astuteand glamorous loudmouth who, a Uruguayanjournalist once wrote, "even looks like an Amer-ican, Barrientos has maintained a popular base bybuying off the leaders of the peasant sindicatoscreated by the 1952 revolution, and by being verykind to the faction-ridden officers' corps. He react-ed to the outbreak of guerrilla warfare by scream-ing for $1 million worth of modern U.S. militaryhardware: mortars, jeeps, jet aircraft, tanks, na-palm, helicopters, and automatic weapons. This

equipment was meant to replace the old Mauserrifles from the Chaco War with Paraguay (1932-35)with which his army had been combating the

guerrillas. In turn, U.S. Ambassador DouglasHenderson initially cabled Washington that Bar-rientos was exaggerating the guerrilla emergencyto exploit it for his own purposes. One U.S. offi-cial said: We are certainly not going to supplythe means for Bolivian army hotheads to startbombing and napalming villages or even suspect-ed guerrilla jungle hideaways. Civilians would in-evitably be killed and we have a long experiencethat this inevitably produces a stream of recruits

for the guerrillas. ** Shortly thereafter, Barrientoscomplained publicly that Bolivia was fighting allAmerica's war, in the long-range interests ofthe United States, without adequate support. (Hisproblems were complicated during the guerrillainsurrection by the sudden need to send troopsiAto the nationalized tin mines to suppress a re-bellion by the miners, who had expelled the po-lice from the two biggest mining areas and de-clared them free territory. )

See my Letter from Peru, in COMMENTARY June 1964,and Peru's Misfired Guerrilla Campaign, The Reporter,January 26, 1967.

t In Les Temps Modernes, January 1965. The New York Times, April 12, 1967.


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THE LEGACY OF CHE GUEVARA 33

All in all, the Bolivian army was so unpreparedfor guerrilla warfare, according to one Boliviancolonel, that our officers dressed differently andwore different arms than the soldiers when out onpatrol, so that the guerrillas killed the officers firstin the early ambushes. The soldiers, with their oldrifles, could not respond to the fire of the guer-rillas, who had automatic weapons, so we lostmany men at first. To bolster flagging morale,Barrientos himself went to the guerrilla zone ona few occasions to spend the night with armypatrols. At the start of hostilities, a dark comedyof blunders .prevailed on both sides. The guer-rilla operation was discovered prematurely onMarch 23 when a guerrilla column-headed, theBolivian government said, by a Cuban named Marcos -disobeyed orders to hold fire and am-bushed an army patrol, killing seven, woundingfive, and capturing two officers and several moresoldiers, who were then stripped of their uniformsand arms and set free forty-eight hours later. Most

of the dead were conscripts who had been in thearmy less than a week. According to the govern-ment, guerrilla defectors said that Marcos wasstripped of his rank as Comandante for this actof disobedience. At any rate, the ambush led thearmy to find the guerrillas' main base, a cattlehacienda called Casa Calamina. According to thearmy, Casa Calamina had been bought by RobertoParedo Leigue - a known member of the BolivianCommunist party and a leader of the guerrillaband - and registered in his own name only a fewmonths before the opening ambush,t about thetime Che was said to have entered the country

on a false Uruguayan passport. According to De-fense Minister Alfredo Ovando, the defectorssaid the guerrillas were not scheduled to begincombat operations until August. However, itis also possible that Casa Calamina was neverintended to be more than a relatively permanent

* The following reconstruction of events in Bolivia comeslargely from the press and from statements of Bolivianand Cuban leaders. Unfortunately, very few foreign journ-alists ventured into the guerrilla zone to corroborateofficial reports of individual raids and ambushes. However,what seems to be an incisive and richly-detailed series ofdispatches was filed by Edwin Chacon of the La PazCatholic-leftist daily, Presencia.

t Some aspects of this story are strange, if not totallyabsurd: for example, the official contention that Paredoopenly scouted the villages of the area looking for asuitable farm to buy. Or the claim that the guerrillas leftbehind, in a cave, clothing with the label Casa Albion deHavana. But one must accept most of this story, thoughit reflects an almost incredible stupidity on the part of theguerrillas that is bound to be most damaging to Castroin his disagreements with Moscow and the Latin AmericanCommunists. For to fabricate such a story out of wholecloth would necessarily involve a conspiracy among FidelCastro, President Johnson, the Bolivian government, RegisDebray, and from thirty to fifty persons in the guerrillazone, not to speak of the prisoners, "defectors," and thefamilies of some of the thirty-odd Bolivian soldiers saidto have died. As Castro said himself in his October 16speech confirming Che's death, such a fraud would be veryhard to bring off.

training base, like several others the Cubans havebeen trying to establish along the eastern slopesof the Andes, with the Cuban army officers actingas guerrilla instructors. (This seems to be theexplanation for the presence of Cuban guerrillawarfare specialists in Venezuela about the sametime, after the Venezuelan Communist partywithdrew its trained cadres and switched to elec-toral tactics.)

HE OFFICIAL VERSION cites the following inci-Tdentsafter the first ambush this year: army

patrol waylaid at Iripiti on April 10, eleven sol-diers dead, seven wounded, and a Major Sancheztaken prisoner; an ambush (no date given) at ElMeson, killing a guide, a policeman, and a policedog; at the end of April, at Taperilla, two soldierswere killed by guerrillas; a few days later, anotherarmy patrol was ambushed at Rancahuazu, withthree more dead and three injured. Furtherclashes are subsequently reported, with threeguerrillas dead and several wounded, after theguerrillas had split into three groups, the prin-cipal one-led by Che-heading north for thecountry's only paved highway, which connects thecities of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. After a fewweeks without fresh battle reports, the guerrillas'apparent ascendancy reached its peak on July 7,with what the army calls an audacious raid onthe town of Samaipata on the main highway. Be-fore seizing control of the town for an hour, theguerrillas barricaded the highway, cut telephonelines, and halted several vehicles. They also wiredbeforehand, in military code, to Samaipata's small

army garrison, sending the soldiers away in anoth-er direction. Around 11:15 P.M. they entered thetown, disarmed and undressed the twenty remain-ing soldiers in the garrison, who offered no resist-ance. They entered the town's stores to stock upon food, clothing, and antibiotics, paying the mer-chants two and three times the normal prices.(Most of the town slept through the raid.) The

guerrillas then commandeered a Gulf Oil truck(which they later returned) and drove to anothertown, La Tranca, where they took nearly all thelocal officials hostage and killed a soldier who re-sisted their entry. Then they disappeared before

dawn, without a single loss.In late July, the Fourth and Eighth Divisionsof the Bolivian army were reinforced with special-ly-trained anti-guerrilla units brought in from theinterior. This signalled the beginning of twocounter-insurgency drives, Operation Cynthiain the southern part of the guerrilla zone, and Operation Parabano in the north. On July 20,four guerrillas were killed when an army patrolsurprised the camp of Guevara's column, seizingten knapsacks, small radios, a short-wave receiver,weapons, and some audiotapes. On August 31, anarmy patrol ambushed a column of ten guerrillasheading north across the Rio Grande river,which divides the Departments of Chuquisaca


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34 C O M M E N T A R Y D E C E M B E R 1967

and Santa Cruz. According to the army, the guer-rillas had impressed an Indian peasant as a guide,and sent him across the Rio Grande to see if anytrouble awaited them on the other side. He wascaught by an army patrol, which forced him to be-tray the guerrillas' intention to cross the riverthat day. The guerrillas were frightened becausethe guide did not return, an army officer said. The army patrol waited for sixteen hours on theriver bank before the guerrillas decided to cross.They held their fire until the whole guerrilla col-umn of nine men and one woman were deep inthe water. The army patrol was made up of In-dian recruits, and it took a lot of discipline tohold their fire until the guerrillas were helplesslydeep in the water. Nine of the guerrillas werekilled and the tenth taken prisoner.

On September 2, a further clash occurred in YajoPampa; four guerrillas and one soldier died. Afew days later, an army patrol stumbled on alarger group of twenty-five guerrillas, who with-

drew from the scene leaving behind one dead anddeposits of arms and documents. These and othercaptured documents, together with informationgleaned from the interrogation of prisoners, led toa large roundup of political suspects in La Paz,after which the army claimed to have destroyedthe guerrillas' logistical rear-guard support or-ganization. By September 26, about six hundredBolivian Ranger troops, who had been rushedthrough an intensive course taught by U.S. Spe-cial Forces instructors, had joined the final hunt forthe guerrilla columns, which had been reducedfrom some fifty-four men to between twenty-five

and thirty. It is possible that the reason the Rangers were sent in so precipitously was astrange event that had occurred a few daysearlier, on September 22. At 4 A.M. on the morn-ing of that Friday, a column of about twenty-fiveguerrillas had marched into the mountain villageof Alto Seco while its three hundred inhabitantswere still asleep. Alto Seco lies at the edge of adesert mountain area that forms the principal nat-ural barrier to an escape route from the easternjungle in the direction of the highland city ofCochabamba, the tin mines, and the Pacific coast.At 5 A.M. the villagers began emerging from their

houses to find the guerrillas waiting for them.The guerrillas asked the location of the commu-nity's only telephone and then cut the line, al-though the phone had not been working forweeks. Apparently in no great hurry, the guer-rillas dug trenches and built barricades near thecemetery which lies on the only trail leading tothe village. They then asked for the village head-man, whose wife said he had gone away. (He washiding in a neighbor's house.)

Then El Che himself appeared. The peasantssubsequently told Edwin Chacon of the La Paznewspaper Presencia that the chief arrived on amule. He was a man of medium height with longchestnut hair. . . . It seems he was sick, because

they helped him to dismount. He wore armycamouflage pants and red socks and carried anolive-green windbreaker and a worker's leathercap. Some of these clothes were changed when theguerrillas bought new provisions from the vil-lagers and burned their old garments. The guer-rillas called a town meeting, attended by onlythirty-five peasants, at which a speech was givenby the Bolivian leader of the group, Roberto"Coco" Paredo, who was killed in a clash with thearmy a few days later. Paredo asked for volun-teers, saying, Here you have no drinking wateror electricity. You are abandoned, like all Boliv-ians. This is why we are fighting here. Accordingto the peasants, Che then intervened: We wouldlike you to come voluntarily, not by force. Thearmy says it killed Joaquin and other comrades,but this is a lie, all army propaganda. The corpsesthey showed in Vallegrande were taken from acemetery. They haven't killed any guerrillas, andthis I assure you because only two days ago I com-municated with Joaquin. The peasants werefrightened and did not volunteer. After they hadrested and changed clothes, the guerrillas beganleaving in three different groups. They hadstayed in Alto Seco for three days.

NE OF THE last pages of Che's handwrittenO diary, transmitted in facsimile by wirephotothroughout the world, contained this entry: Theeleven-month anniversary of our guerrilla organ-ization has arrived without complications. Earlyin the day we descended with the mules, past someprecipices that caused a spectacular plunge of the

macho The trail was longer than we thought,and only at 8:15 we realized that we were nearthe brook, which Miguel followed at full speed,but could only reach the camino real [highway],since it was already completely dark... . We ad-vance with precaution, and note nothing abnor-mal, for we occupied an empty house. The armyhadn't come any closer, losing its chance. We findflour, oats, salt, and goats, killing two of them,making for a little feast together with the flour,although . . . we consumed the night expectingsomething. In the morning ... In his October16 speech, Castro read the last entry (October 7)

of the diary: "At noon, an old lady grazing hergoats entered the canyon where we had camped,and we had to hold her. The woman would notgive any reliable information about the soldiers.To every question, she replies that she does notknow, that she has not been there for some time.She only gave information about the roads. Fromthe report of the old lady, we learn we are rough-ly one league from Lleras and another fromHaguey, and six from Pusara. They give the oldwoman fifty pesos with orders to say nothing, butwith little hope she will keep her word. Seventeenof us went out with a very small moon; themarch was very dangerous, leaving many signsalong the canyons. There are no houses nearby,


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but only potato plots along the ravine, as we ad-vance between two high ridges without vegeta-tion. The army has a report that there are 250revolutionaries.

Colonel Joaquin Zenteno Anaya, commander ofthe Bolivian army's Eighth Division, said at acrowded press conference on October 10 thatErnesto Guevara had been gravely wounded twodays before at the junction of two narrow ravinesin a battle with an army patrol that lasted atleast two hours. Five more guerrillas were killed(a Peruvian, two Cubans, and two Bolivians,Zenteno said), with four soldiers also dead andfour wounded. In his speech of October 16,Fidel Castro reconstructed the incident to saythat, instead of withdrawing quickly as guerrillasnormally do when confronted with superior num-bers, the members of the band chose to make adesperate last stand around the body of theirwounded leader. The army said Che was taken ina coma to Vallegrande, where his body was ex-hibited October 10. A Bolivian medical examiner,Dr. Jose Martinez Cazo, subsequently told report-ers that the fatal bullet wound-which pierced theheart and lung-had killed Guevara instantly onlyfive hours before he, Martinez, examined thecorpse on Monday afternoon, October 9. Thenthe Bolivian government suddenly announcedthat the body had been cremated, with two fingerssevered beforehand for purposes of fingerprintidentification. And this is all we know.

Are we to believe the official story? It is ofcourse possible that the telltale photos of theguerrillas could have been taken by an infiltrator,

or that some U.S. Special Forcestroops out of uni-form could have played a key role in huntingdown Che and his men. (The Americans did as-semble most of the impressive montage of evi-dence presented by Bolivia to the OAS.) But evenif these possibilities were proved to be true, theywould not change the essential nature of the dis-aster. Some doubts were relieved by Fidel Castro'sOctober 16 speech to the Cuban people confirm-ing the news of Che's death:

In other words, the diary [found in Che's knap-sack] is authentic in our judgment. The photo-graphs are authentic. It seems to us to be utterlyimpossible to organize all this on false grounds.Many forgeries can be made but it is impossibleto forge the most subtle features of the person-ality, the bearing, and the facial features of aperson. And having analyzed all the data, all thedetails, all the angles-diary, photographs, newsreports, the manner in which the news breaks-in our judgment it was technically impossible tofabricate these facts.

But let us go further afield. In the bosom ofthe Bolivian regime there are so many rivalriesand problems that it becomes absolutely impos-sible for them to get together and agree even totell a lie. They could tell some lie or give somenews that they killed some guerrillas and theirbodies never turned up But many of these re-

ports are usually given by reactionary govern-ments and they have not the slightest impor-tance. From the technical standpoint, [a fraud]would require a quantity of resources that doesnot exist there.

II

6 C EL CHE

WASthe only member of theCuban Revolution's high com-

mand with extensive experience in South Amer-ica, and the one most concerned-aside from Fidel-with the revolution's world role. The big bill-board portraits of Che throughout post-revolu-tion Cuba displayed him in the likeness of a soul-ful, husky movie star, with dark, distant eyes anda flowing mane, in a black beret and olive greenuniform open romantically at the throat to exposehis manly chest. (In reality, he was lean and asth-matic, with a catlike irony and quick, impisheyes.) A large portrait of him was also hung overthe speaker's rostrum at the Chaplin Theater inHavana last August during sessions of the LASO(Latin American Solidarity Organization) con-ference, at which a kind of Castroite Cominternfor Latin America was formally established. Chewas the conference's honorary president ; hewas so much Fidel's other self that his mysterious disappearance * enabled Castro figuratively tobe at once in Cuba and in many other placesthroughout Latin America.

The rumors generated by the Che mysteryplaced him at different times in the DominicanRepublic, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bo-livia, Chile, and Guatemala-as well as in theCongo, China, and Vietnam-always plotting rev-olution with some menacing and inscrutablebunch of desperadoes. Che's disappearancemay be seen as a ploy to buy time to resolve apolitical conflict with the Russians over guerrillawarfare; at the same time, it generated a cheapand flattering windfall of publicity in the specula-tions over Che's whereabouts; in any case, it pro-vides a telling example of Castro's propagandagenius. John Gerassi, an American writer whooften reflects the hopes of the Cuban leaders, re-ported in an August 22 dispatch from Havanaappearing in the October Ramparts:

Like a revolutionary phoenix, Che Guevara isrising from the ashes of his own, self-imposedobscurity. Long thought by the American pressto have been killed or betrayed by the veryCuban revolutionary regime he had helped tocreate, Che has once again assumed a clear roleas the world's foremost proponent of a revolu-tionary internationalism which knows no alle-giances to state power or political party. AndChe, by his independent vision of revolution,

The last time he was seen publicly was at Havana'sRancho Boyeros airport on March 15 1965, when he re-turned from a three-month journey to Africa and Asia.

There he had spoken in a way that foreshadoweda harden-ing of Castro's foreign-policy line.


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also haunts the Kremlin policy-makers, compli-cating diplomacy within the Communist worldand frustrating Russian hopes for a securedetente with Washington. The revolutionaryspirit symbolized by Guevara is everywhere un-dercutting the influence and the dynamism ofold-line Communist parties....

It is always interesting to know how one ac-quires such revolutionary credentials. Guevara'sroad to Marxism began when he left his familyhome in Cordoba, Argentina, in 1952 (at agetwenty-four) to cross the Andes on a motorbike toPeru via Chile. By coincidence, this writer hap-pened on his path two years ago while covering aCastroite guerrilla insurrection based on the Ha-cienda Chapi in the mountains of central Peru-awild and vast cattle estate at the approaches to theAmazon basin, requiring a week to cross on footand situated at two days' walk from the nearestroad. Neighbors in the area recalled that Che hadworked on the hacienda in an anti-leprosy cam-

paign headed by a Peruvian Communist physi-cian, Dr. Hugo Pesce. (Childhood friends of hisfrom Cordoba recently told me that, as an adoles-cent, Ernesto used to ride fifty miles by bikeduring his summer vacation to spend a few daysat a leper hospital in the town of San Francisco,where he read Goethe's Faust aloud to the pa-tients. As a guerrilla leader in the Sierra Maestra,he gave literacy classes to his peasant recruits,reading aloud to them from Cervantes, RobertLouis Stevenson, and the poetry of Pablo Neruda.)

In Peru, Che fell in with the youth of the(then) leftist and outlawed APRA party, some of

whom later said they had supported him duringhard days in Lima. He went to Bolivia to look fora job-he didn't find one-in the governmentcreated by the convulsive revolution of 1952, arevolution which destroyed the Bolivian army,abolished serfdom, and nationalized the tin mines.Then he went to Guatemala and got a minor postin the land-reform agency a few months before theoverthrow of the Communist-dominated regimeof Col. Jacobo Arbenz-by a CIA-backed invasionfrom Honduras which the Guatemalan army re-fused to oppose. After two months of asylum inthe Argentine embassy in Guatemala City, he

went to Mexico City where he soon becamea

friend of Fidel and Raul Castro, who had justbeen released from jail for staging the abortiveand suicidal attack on the Moncada army barracksat Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953. Guevarajoined the group of young Cubans being trainedin guerrilla warfare by General Alberto Bayo, anelderly Republican emigre from the Spanish CivilWar, who had been born in Cuba; along witheighty-one of these youths, he took part in the invasion of Cuba in December 1956 under thecommand of Fidel Castro.

A Cuban exile who worked with Che for a yearafter he became President of the Cuban NationalBank in October 1959, recalled recently how Che

would enter the bank daily at 1 P.M.-in his olivedrab uniform and paratroop boots-to begin officehours that would last until 6 A.M. the next day.(Three nights a week, between 2 A.M. and 4 A.M.lie would take tutorial classes in economics andmathematics as a self-imposed measure to compen-sate for his lack of training in these subjects. Atthe same time he required his bodyguards, peasant

boys from his guerrilla column in the SierraMaestra, to take literacy instruction; when theyslacked off, he sent them to jail.) As Minister ofIndustries (1961-65), he involved himself in along and acrimonious ideological debate withCarlos Rafael Rodriguez, an old-line Cuban Com-munist who had once served in the cabinet ofBatista, Che arguing for moral incentives asagainst material incentives to increase produc-tion and efficiency in the Cuban economy. (Ulti-mately, in typical fashion, Fidel relieved Cheof his ministerial post and Rodriguez of his job asdirector of INRA [Instituto Nacional de la Re-

forma Agraria] while temporarily deciding to useboth pay incentives and psychological rewards tostimulate better work performance.)

Che's reading in Marxism was so meager at thetime the rebel army of the July 26th Movementdlescendledl victoriously on Havana in 1959, that he,like Fidel, had to start becoming a Communistvirtually from scratch. In both of these youngmen, the common denominator was anti-Yankee-ism, an emotion of which Communism seemed tobe the most extreme and dramatic form. Thisanti-Yankeeism has also been the logos of Cubanambitions for Latin America, which is why Fidel's

kind of Marxism has had so little positive ideo-logical thrust, and has been so far confined-witha few exceptions-to the student circles that haveadopted Castroism as a cult of adolescence.

HE EMERGED again this year as the ideal example-second only to Fidel himself-of a newrevolutionary personality defined by Castro in hisacrid debate with the Venezuelan Communistparty (VCP) over the VCP's cowardice and re-pugnant opportunism in abandoning the armedstruggle (lucha armada) in the face of crushingmilitary and police repression, as well as the grow-ing viability of the Venezuelan democratic system.On March 13, the anniversary of the suicidal 1957attack on the National Palace led by Havana Uni-versity students in an effort to kill Batista, an an-niversary used repeatedly by Castro to attack orthodox Communists in Cuba and elsewhere,Castro made what is perhaps the most daringtheoretical statement of his career:

Our position toward Communist parties will bebased on strictly revolutionary principles. Tothe parties without vacillation or contradictionin their line and that, in our judgment, take aconsistently revolutionary position, we will givetotal support. But in any country where thosewho call themselves Communists do not know


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how to fulfill their [revolutionary] duties, we-will support those who, though not labeled Com-munists, behave like true Communists in actionand struggle. Because all true revolutionaries,who carry within themselves revolutionary voca-tion and spirit, will always terminate in Marx-isml

This could provoke a parting of the ways betweeninsurrectional Castroism and official Socialismas molded by Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev,with the future role of Communist parties every-where in dispute. The role of Che Guevara as anew kind of revolutionary-and the manner of hisdeath-may help to shape this struggle.*

III

HE GUEvARA was an inspiration to insurgents all over Latin America.His romantic portrait of the guerrilla fighter associal reformer, written in terse and graceful prosein his 1960 manual, Guerrilla Warfare, represent-ed an attempt to elaborate upon Lenin's conceptof the professional revolutionary. It was aimed atthe idealism of Latin America's alienated popula-tion of students, ex-students, and non-students astruly as had been Lenin's appeal to the same classin Russia:

The guerrilla fighter . . . must have a moralconduct that shows him to be a true priest of thereform to which he aspires. To the stoicism im-posed by the difficult conditions of warfare shouldbe added an austerity born of rigid self-controlthat will prevent a single excess, a single slip,whatever the circumstances. The guerrilla soldiershould be an ascetic.... The peasant must al-ways be helped technically, economically, moral-ly, and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be asort of guiding angel who has fallen into thezone, helping the poor always and bothering therich as little as possible in the first phases of thewar. But this war will continue on its course;contradictions will continuously become sharp-er; the moment will arrive when many of thosewho regarded the revolution with a certain sym-pathy at the outset will place themselves in aposition diametrically opposed; and they willtake the first step into battle against the popular

* The recriminations have already begun. In an October25 Pravda article, Rudolfo Ghioldi, a Politburo member ofthe Argentine Communist party wrote: Along with re-jection of the international importance of Marxism-Lenin-ism, petty bourgeois nationalists are creating the conceptof local or continental exception in order to justify devia-tions from Marxist-Leninist t each ing . . . . Maoism andrelated currents advertise extreme adventurism, adaptingoffensive theory to any situation regardless of the presenceof objective conditions. They propose that a revolutioncan be initiated from the outside and artificially stimulatedacross the borders, considering the nature of revolutionisolated from the process of class struggle in the countriesinvolved. A few days later, a relatively unimportant Cubanfunctionary, Minister of Health Jose Ramon MachadoVentura, replaced President Osvaldo Dorticos as head of the

Cuban delegation to the 50th anniversary of the BolshevikRevolution.

forces. At that moment the guerrilla fightershould act to make himself the standard-bearerof the people's cause, punishing every betrayalwith justice. Private property should acquire inthe war zones its social function. For example,excess land and livestock not essential for themaintenance of a wealthy family should passinto the hands of the people and be distributedequitably and justly.

One of the cardinal tenets of what may be calledthe Castroite theory of guerrilla warfare, insistedupon by Castro and Guevara alike, is the impos-sibility of exporting revolution. This point wasbrought home by Castro in a talk he had on June13, 1964 with a small group of foreign reporters(myself included): "You cannot export revolu-tion, he remarked, just as you cannot exportcounterrevolution. The same idea was expressedprivately by Guevara to Marcos Antonio Yon Sosa,a young guerrilla leader whom I interviewed twoyears later in the dry,. hungry, hillbilly country

of the Guatemalan Oriente:Before we really organized our movement, fiveof us went to Havana in September 1962, andstayed through the October missile crisis. It wasarranged after a lawyer in Guatemala City calledus and said Che Guevara wanted to see us. Wemet with Che four or five times and talked withFidel once from 3 P.M. until 2 A.M. the nextmorning. The first time we met Che was whenhe walked into our house unannounced. Wedidn't know who he was until one of his aidesfinally told us. He had just come in without anyfanfare or pretensions and just started chatting.We asked him later about how to organize ourguerrilla movement and what would be the bestpart of Guatemala to start guerrilla operationsin. Che told us very modestly that he couldn'tanswer these questions, that the Guatemalanshave to make their own revolution and decidethese things for themselves.

All guerrilla strategy in Latin America over thepast nine years has been founded on Guevara'scontention that "a nucleus of thirty to fifty men. . . is sufficient to initiate an armed struggle inany country of the Americas with their conditionsof favorable territory for operations, [peasant]land hunger, repeated injustices, etc." This as-sumption has been further developed, by RegisDebray and others, into a full-fledged Leninisttheory of the insurrectional foco (a Spanish wordused to describe the unitary focus or base of guer-rilla operations). The foco theory was formulatedby Debray in his 1965 article, Castroism: TheLong March in Latin America :

Although at the start it is a tiny group (ten tothirty persons, professional revolutionaries en-tirely dedicated to the cause and seeking the con-quest of power), the foco does not intend toconquer power by itself, through an audaciousstrike. Nor would it seek power through war or

a military defeat of the enemy. It seeks only toprepare the masses to overthrow established


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38 COMMENTARY/DECEMBER 1967

power by themselves. [It is] a minority which,embedded in the most vulnerable part of the na-tional territory, will extend slowly, like an oilstain, propagating concentric waves in the peas-ant masses, then in the cities, and finally overthe capital.... The first contact with the peas-ants that inhabit the wilderness where theguerrillas install themselves for reasons ofsecurity and natural protection is the hard-est to establish and consolidate. These iso-lated peasants, small owners of dry parcels... are also the most closed to politicalconsciousness, the most difficult to guide andorganize, because of their dispersion, illiteracy,and initial suspicion toward these strangerswhom they believe will bring bombardment,looting, and blind repression. But later, whenthis sector is conquered, the guerrilla foco-al-ready consolidated in provisions, intelligence,and recruits-will enter into contact with agri-cultural workers in the lowlands (sugar cane cut-ters, etc.), a social levelmuch more receptive andprepared because of its concentration, chronic

unemployment, vulnerability to market fluctua-tion, etc. And in neighboring cities, contact willfinally be made with small concentrations of in-dustrial workers who are already interested inpolitics, without the need of the slow work ofapproach so indispensable in the wilderness....The foco installs itself as a detonator in the least-watched point of the explosive charge and in themost favorable moment for the explosion. By it-self, the foco will not change a given social situa-tion, nor even-in a single action-a politicalsituation. It cannot have an active part if it doesnot find a point of insertion within the contra-dictions in development. In space: where classcontradictions are the most violent and less evi-dent politically, in the core area of agrarianfeudalism, far from the repressive apparatus ofthe cities. In time: there is the quid. It is surethat a guerrilla foco cannot be born in tranquiltimes, but should be instead the culmination ofa political crisis.

The long-term cost and political implicationsfor a Latin American government in com-bating a guerrilla insurrection is an integral partof this strategy. A 1964 clandestine guerrilla hand-book of the Venezuelan FALN (Fuerzas Armadasde Liberacion Nacional) put it this way: Theuncontrolled increase in the armed forces wouldbreak the equilibrium of forces guaranteeing thestability of the government. In other words, acivil government cannot sustain itself in a Spar-tan Venezuela. When revolutionary operationsconstantly strike the reactionary military van-guard, it is probable that the military will insiston certain political controls for 'pacification' andfinally will decide on a coup d'etat. *

ND YET, despite the tactical validity of such anal-Ayses the Castroite insurgencies in LatinAmerica are not succeeding. Quite apart fromthe stiffer and more intelligent resistance whichthey have been encountering from the U.S. and

from Latin American military establishments,they have also violated some of the fundamentalstrategic precepts of their own revolutionarytheory. Che himself wrote that guerrilla insurgen-cies cannot be successful against governments ableto make a pretense of democratic legitimacy, butthe Cubans have in fact spurred Castroite Na-tional Liberation movements against govern-

ments of precisely this kind in Peru, Venezuela,and Colombia. Castro himself voiced the fearprivately to foreigners this summer that when theUnited States frees itself from its Vietnam com-mitment, it will turn full-force on Cuba, and thatCuba's only defense in that case will be tofoment as many new Vietnams as possible, tocommit American power elsewhere as well as torecoup the faltering prestige of her strategy ofrevolutionary armed struggle in the hemisphere.

Earlier this year, a few American officials pri-vately expressed the belief that Cuba was makingan all-out effort, after many defeats, to prove the

efficacy of its guerrilla warfare theory by sendingits own men to join insurgents in South America.This view was supported by the Cubans them-selves; both Castro and the Cuban Vice Ministerof Defense, Juan Almeida (who substituted forCastro as speaker at Havana's May Day parade),hinted broadly at Cuban participation in theBolivian and Venezuelan guerrilla movements.(On May 8, Venezuelan authorities captured twoCuban military men in a guerrilla landing opera-tion; a third was caught in a Caracas penthouseon August 24, after having participated in a terror-ist bank robbery.) When Rgis Debray was ar-rested with two other foreigners after leavingChe's guerrilla camp, he claimed that he hadentered Bolivia on his own French passport andhad obtained press accreditation from the Boliv-ian Foreign Ministry as a correspondent for theMexican magazine Sucesos, a pictorial bi-weeklywhich is widely believed to enjoy a Castro subsidyand which has won special fame in Latin Ameri-can journalism for its glamorous photo-interviewswith Castroite guerrilla leaders.t The photosshowing Che and the Cubans in the guerrillacamp-exhibited by the Bolivians at the OAS min-isterial conference on September 22-are verymuch in the style of these pictorial reports.

It appears, then, that a desperate hunger forpublicity severely prejudiced the security of theguerrilla operation while it still should have beenin the secret stages of gestation. It seems too

* Yoboso, Las FALN Venceran: Notas Para una TacticaMilitar Revolucionaria, 1964

t These Sucesos specials usually appear in series withcolor photos and a text that gives a very flattering estimateof the guerrillas' political and military strength. Just beforeDebray's arrest, the editor of Sucesos, Mario MenendezRodriguez, was jailed for several days in Bogota after aguerrilla band staged a train robbery and a raid on a policepost (leaving thirteen dead) for him to photograph anddescribe. By tracing Menendez's travels, police were able todismantle the guerrillas' urban support organization. Men-endez gave police additional details after his arrest.


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that a deficient recruitment procedure led to sev-eral early defections, which gave the Bolivianarmy enough information to seek out the guerril-las when they were not yet prepared for action.Most important, the presence of a largeproportion of foreigners (including formerCuban sub-cabinet officers and at least three for-mer members of the Central Committee of theCuban Communist party, according to photo-graphic identification offered by the Bolivians)severely burdened the political thrust of Bolivia's War of National Liberation. What is worse, thisforeign presence flew in the face of Che's adviceto younger guerrilla leaders that such wars mustbe fought by indigenous patriots and, preferably,by peasants from the guerrilla zone itself.

UT IN assessing the full significance of the failure of the Bolivian guerrilla insurrection,one is lured beyond the errors of the guerrillasthemselves to view the spectacular ecologicalchanges that have been occurring recently at thefringes of the Amazon basin. Many of the basicconditions of life have been changed by the intro-duction into the area of new roads, cheap airplanetravel, small electric generators, outboard motors,canned food, radio transmitters, and-most impor-tant-malaria control. The impact of these innova-tions has been felt most strongly over the past dec-ade. Along the eastern Andean slopes of Boliviaand Peru, many thousands of Quechua-speaking In-dian families from the highlands are descendingto build spontaneous settlements alongside thenew but still primitive dirt roads which penetratetrackless and unsurveyed areas. These Indianswill go wherever there is a road; their tenacity ismaking a mockery of the small and shoddy gov-ernment colonization schemes that have so farbeen tried.

Perhaps the most significant factor of all, how-ever, in the recent history of the jungle fron-tier, has been the pervasive American presence insome of those areas where the national govern-ments are unable to finance and execute develop-ment programs. This American presence is articu-lated in many ways. Since the closing of China in1949, Latin America has become the main field ofAmerican missionary work. There are now rela-tively few aboriginal peoples that have not beenreached by missionaries, many of whom have spe-cialized in building schools and recording primi-tive languages. In jungle towns nowadays it is notunusual to. see an American missionary fly inalone in a single-engine plane (with perhaps threeor four aborigines in need of medical treatment)to buy supplies and then fly back into the junglean hour or two later.*

In some areas the new tropical economies havebeen growing so fast that they have literallyleapt out of their isolation. For example, the

tiny jungle airstrip serving the Peruvian town ofTarapoto is the country's busiest air terminal

outside of Lima, shipping out the foodstuffs pro-duced in the nearby tropical valleys that areheavily settled by highland peasant migrants.To reach Tarapoto with a road (a project fittinginto President Fernando Belaunde's grandiosescheme for a $300 million Marginal Jungle High-way running north-south along the eastern slopesof the Andes through four nations), Peruvianarmy engineers in 1965 had to appeal to the U.S.air force to airlift in five hundred tons of heavyconstruction equipment, too heavy for Peruvianmilitary planes to carry. An American engineer-ing firm solved the same problem by bringing itsequipment into Peru on barges over more thantwo thousand miles from the Atlantic Coast ofBrazil along the Amazon River and its minor trib-utaries. (In recent years the Brazilian air forcehas been dropping paratroops into Amazon jungleclearings to build small airstrips, which can laterbe expanded to accommodate C-47's for scheduledairline service.)

The revolutionary thrust of the United States increating new conditions of life has been most ap-parent in the Santa Cruz area of Bolivia-lessthan one hundred miles from where Che waskilled. Here the U.S. government has investedclose to $100 million since 1956, in what is nowone of the few notable successes of the Alliancefor Progress in regional development. This invest-ment has financed the construction of all-weatherroads, three sugar mills, and numerous schools;the clearing of twenty-five thousand acres of vir-gin land between 1955 and 1959 alone; and theproviding of cattle, poultry, and supervised farm

credit and loans for purchase of industrial andfarm machinery-all this as part of the $400 mil-lion in U.S. aid to Bolivia since the 1952 revolu-tion. The investment was sufficient to consolidatethe currency (at a time of wild inflation) tothe point where the country's Indian peasantswere able to retain enough purchasing power toacquire, over the past fifteen years, a wide range ofimported goods: shoes, bicycles, trucks, transistorradios, etc. In the Bolivian Oriente, the invest-

*Two years ago, a Castroite guerrilla insurrection oc-curred in the Peruvian jungle area of the semi-aboriginalCampa Indians, who had wiped out several Franciscanmissions in the 17th and 18th centuries. The leader of theinsurrection was Guillermo Lobaton, who reportedly hadbeen to China and Vietnam before returning to Peruand was apparently attempting to work with the warlikeCampas the way General Vo Nguyen Giap worked withthe mountain tribes of northeastern Vietnam during WorldWar II. The difference, however, is that Giap workedpolitically with his tribesmen for two years before enteringinto combat; the Peruvian guerrillas worked with theCampas for less than six months in a very desultory fashionbefore ambushing a rural police patrol (killing seven), andprovoking a repression by the Peruvian army that wipedout the guerrillas in six months and led to the death ofhundreds of Campas. American missonaries working inthe zone reported that the Peruvian air force had bombeda number of Campa villages. While the guerrilla insur-gency was still alive, however, a special school was set upunder AID auspices in the area to train the Peruvianrural police in counter-insurgency operations.


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ment has laid important economic foundations,reinforced by the discovery ofoil and natural gasin the area after Gulf Oil obtained an export con-cession in 1956. Both rice and sugar productionhave doubled between 1960 and 1964, convertingBolivia from an importer of these tropical prod-ucts to a hard-pressed searcher for export markets.At the time Che's guerrilla operation was discov-ered last March, there were Peace Corps volun-teers working in the guerrilla zone itself. Debraypaid this American presence a rather stirringtribute earlier this year:*

The armed guerrilla unit and the people's van-guard are not dealing with a foreign expedition-ary force, with limited manpower, but with awell-established system of local domination. They[the guerrillas] themselves are the foreigners,lacking status, who at the beginning can offerthe populace nothing but bloodshed and pain.Furthermore, channels of communication are in-creasing; airports and landing fields are being

built in the most remote areas, heretofore inac-cessible by land routes. On the other side of theAndes, for example, between the mountains andthe Amazon basin, there is a famous highwaythat is meant to skirt the jungle and link up thetropical zones of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru,and Bolivia, as well as join each with its respec-tive capital. As for North American imperialism,it has increased its forces in the field and is mak-ing every effort to present itself, not in repressiveguise but in the shape of social and technicalassistance: we are familiar with all the sociolog-ical projects now under way, staffed with inter-national personnel. .... Thousands of PeaceCorpsmen have succeeded in integrating them-selves in rural areas-some of them by dint ofhard work, patience, and at times real sacrifices-where they profit by the lack of political workby left-wing organizations (my italics-N.G.).Even the most remote regions are today teemingwith Catholic, Evangelical, Methodist, andSeventh Day Adventist missionaries. In a word,all of these close-knit networks of controlstrengthen the national machinery of domina-tion. Without exaggerating the depth or scopeof their penetration, we can say that they haveindeed changed the scene.

IV

HE LAST YEARS of Ernesto Guevara'slife were identified with two bitter

causes: the creation of two, three, many Viet-nams to pin down North American imperialismin long and debilitating struggles in as many placesas possible in Latin America and elsewhere, andthe parallel economic struggle between the richnations and poor nations. In his last public speech,at an Afro-Asian economic conference in Algiersjust before he returned to Cuba and dropped outof sight, he made a modest proposal concerningthe burdens of progress within the socialistcamp: t

The development of the countries that nowbegin the road of liberation should cost thesocialist countries. We say it thus, without theleast spirit of blackmail or theatricality, nor fora facile appeal for greater closeness to the group-ing of Afro-Asiatic countries; it is a profoundconviction. Socialism cannot exist if a new col-lective and individual attitude is not provokedby a change in conscience of a worldwide char-acter toward the peoples that suffer imperialistoppression.... How can mutual benefit meanselling at world market prices the primary mate-rials that cost limitless sweat and suffering forthe backward countries, and buying at worldmarket prices the machines produced in modernautomated factories? If we establish this type ofrelationship between the two groups of nations,we should agree that the socialist countries are,in a certain way, accomplices of imperial ex-ploitation... . The truths of socialism, andmore so the crude truth of imperialism, haveshaped the Cuban people and showed them theroad toward Communism that later was takenvoluntarily. The peoples of Asia and Africa pro-ceeding toward their final liberation should beginthe same route; they will take this road sooner orlater. Although their socialism today takes oneor another descriptive adjective, there is no oth-er valid definition of socialism for us than theabolition of exploitation of man by m a n . . . .Our reasoning is that investments of socialiststates in their own territories weigh directly onthe state budget and are not recovered savethrough use at the end of the long manufactur-ing process. Our proposition is that investmentsof this type should be made in the underdevel-oped countries. An immense force should be put

in motion in our miserably exploited continents. . to begin a new stage of the authentic inter-national division of labor, based not in the his-tory of what has been done until now, but in thefuture history of what can be done. The statesin whose territories the new investments will beplaced would have all the inherent rights ofsovereign property over them (without any pay-ment or credit attached), remaining obligatedas possessors to supply [goods for] a determinednumber of years at determined prices.

The Russians must have been delighted withthis proposal, having spent $1 million daily overthe past six years just to keep the Cuban economyafloat, and having learned many lessons from theCubans just by watching the marvels of their man-ufacturing processes The East European People'sRepublics have largely begged off from divertingsignificant amounts of their resources to the goalof Cuba's survival, save for straight cash andbarter deals and for Czech and Bulgarian tech-nical aid programs. And the shrinking foreign aidbudgets of Western governments also reflect anincreasing disbelief in the revolutionary rhetoricof the Third World ; Westerners are becoming

* Rgis Debray, "Revolutionin the Revolution?"MonthlyReview, July-August 1967 pp. 52-53.

t Politica (Mexico) March 1, 1965.


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peeved and bored at the incapacity of aid recipi-ents to improvise for their own survival, and at theextraordinary variety of bastard socialisms thatalways seem to be stuck in the mud. The failureup to now of planned (as opposed to spontaneous)guerrilla insurrections in Latin America can onlyreenforce the impression left by the Chinese fiascoin Indonesia and the disarray created by the Cul-tural Revolution inside China itself. On thelatter event, the Economist editorialized:*

What has been happening in China since thesummer is the end of the road that started inParis in 1789. We are seeing the last stages of therevolutionary cycle that began in France, waschecked in central Europe in 1848, and pickedup impetus again in Russia in 1917. It continuedits eastward march in 1949, when it reachedChina, and it is in China that it finally seems tobe working itself out. The ideas behind thesocial revolutions of the past two hundred yearshave changed their shape as the center of thestorm has moved steadily eastward. The revolu-tionary doctrine first picked up Marxism, andnow Mao Tse-tung's reinterpretation of Marx-ism. But the assumption shared by all revolu-tionaries throughout the whole period has beentheir belief that a radical act of violence willburst open the door to a better society: that theway to a juster form of government necessarilylies over the exploded ruins of the old order. Itis this belief that Chairman Mao has now finallyand perhaps decisively put in doubt.

I THIS editorial is any sort of guide to emergent Western attitudes, what we seem to be heading

toward in the very near future is an exchange ofthe social evangelism of the first half of this cen-tury for a perversion of the old Calvinist doctrineof the Elect. This "social Calvinism representsthe belief that a large portion of humanity-aclear majority-is naturally and irremediably con-demned to the lower depths of poverty andmisery, and that the more powerful elect of man-kind can and must keep the condemned in placeby force of arms. In the elect societies there is ahigh coincidence between social justice and in-dividual human rights, which are anchored inprivate property. The poorer societies are strug-

gling with the seemingly intractable problems of ascarcity of capital and natural resources and ofcultural poverty; these problems have impededthe development of better economic organizationto deal with the pressures of proliferating marginalpopulations. Under these conditions, individualliberties are less prized, private property is covetedby the disenfranchised, and Western traditionsof liberty and property tend to conflict with col-lective pressures for social justice. The Westernresponse, understandably, is that what we havemust be preserved in good condition and, for therest, there just isn't enough to go around.

Recent developments in Latin America, in-deed, have led many to believe that revolu-

tionary pressures of the type generated in poorsocieties can be easily contained. It is probable, forinstance, that the guerrilla forces in several coun-tries, despite their own weaknesses, would havescored a much wider success if the Latin Americanregular armies opposing them had not been back-stopped by large-amounts of U.S. military aid andadvice. Since 1950, the U.S. has provided roughly$1.5 billion in military aid to Latin Americanarmies, mostly in arms donations; in one placealone-Fort Gulick, Panama-the U.S. has trainedmore than eighteen thousand Latin Americanmilitary men in counter-insurgency techniques.On April 6, 1966, General Robert W. Porter, chiefof the U.S. Army Southern Command in Panama,explained the value of the military aid programbefore the Foreign Affairs Committee of theHouse of Representatives. He said the programwas austere in the light of U.S. objectives, LatinAmerican military needs, and the total U.S. effortin Latin America. The cost is only 3.9 per cent of

the total U.S. effort, and I believe that 3.9 per centis a low premium rate for the insurance received.In Guatemala, to take but one example, the

presence of U.S. military advisers in the guerrillazone has been reported by foreign missionarypriests and by guerrillas themselves. U.S. officers,some of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent, werereported accompanying Guatemalan army patrols.General Porter revealed in his testimony that U.S.army engineers were engaged in the guerrilla zonein a "civic-action" program of public works, andwere being helped in their work by U.S. armySpecial Forces officers with Vietnam experience.

In [neighboring] Honduras the [U.S.] engineerbattalion is also working up in the high countryalong the Guatemalan border, Porter said. Thisis a part where you don't know where the borderis." Earlier this year, a correspondent for theEconomist described how the Guatemalan counter-insurgency drive subsequently developed: *

The clean-up of the guerrilla zone has been car-ried out in military style by a proliferating num-ber of right-wing terrorist groups. Some of theseare phantom organizations under whose namesoldiers in civilian dress carry out their moregrisly operations. The principal terrorist organi-zation, the White Hand, is a creature of theMovimiento de Liberacion Nacional. In 1954,the MLN spearheaded the CIA-organized inva-sion from Honduras which, with the connivanceof the Guatemalan military high command, over-threw the pro-Communist regime of Col. JacoboArbenz. Since last July the MLN leaders in theOriente and many of their followers have beendisappearing into Honduras. A new low-rangeradio station, Radio America, based in Hon-duras, has been warning peasants of a new inva-sion with massive American support. The Amer-icans have made no visible move, but the White

The Last Revolution," January 14, 1967.t "Guatemala: Death in the Hills," June 10, 1967.


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Hand's anti-Communist vigilantes in the Orientehave received roughly two-thousand rifles andmachine guns which were given to the Guate-malan army under the American military aidprogram. These weapons have been used in theslaughter of guerrilla collaborators and sym-pathizers in the towns and villages along theAtlantic Highway, where guerrillas used to harasstrucking and troop movements with near im-punity. Since the army began its offensive, be-tween forty and fifty of the estimated two hun-dred to three hundred hard-core guerrilla fightershave been killed. Army sources have put thedeath toll at roughly two thousand in the easterndepartments of Zacapa and Izabal, the centralarea of rebel activity. The surviving rebels havewithdrawn into a deeper portion of the thicket,or into Guatemala City. Captured guerrillas inblack hoods are now accompanying army patrolsin order to point out those who have collabo-rated with the insurgents, as well as guerrillacampsites and buried arms deposits. As a result,rebel activity has dropped to almost nothing inrecent weeks, and the leaders of the MLN havebegun to talk of a definitive solution. . . . Theviolence of recent months is believed to haveclaimed more lives than all the insurgent ac-tivity of the past five years.*

V

M ST REVOLUTIONS are born of war, and othersAM of foreign intervention. "When the enemycomes we fight, when he goes we plough, wrotethe great North Vietnamese strategist TruongChinh in 1947 at the beginning of the Vietminh

war with the French.t The fusion of nationalismand social vindication in the scramble of globalwar produced the wave of revolutions issuingfrom World War II (China, Vietnam, Egypt,India, Burma, Indonesia, Malaya, the Philippines,Algeria, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Kenya), nearlyall in countries tha, were hosts to the greater con-flict, with foreign troops fighting on their soil andthe democratic propaganda of the Allies vyingfor the support of colonial and semicolonial pop-ulations. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia andthe Nazi revolution in Germany issued fromnational defeats in World War I, with Lenin and

Hitler both using returning war veterans and treason propaganda in what have become classictechniques of agitation. Similarly in Bolivia, itwas returning veterans from the disastrous ChacoWar (1932-35) with Paraguay who started themajor events in motion. Like the Russians at thefront in World War I, the Bolivian veterans in-cluded intellectuals as well as illiterate peasants(mostly Indians who had left Andean villages andhaciendas for the first time to fight a dimly under-stood war, in an inhospitable lowland desert, undera military leadership whose corruption and incom-petence dissipated the Bolivian advantage innumbers). The mobilization of 250,000 Boliviansfor war (56,000 died, 10,000 deserted, and 17,000

were taken prisoner) gave many their first senseof nationhood; Bolivia's humiliating territorialloss to Paraguay provoked widespread reflectionson national destiny and sent thousands of veteranshome to organize peasant and miners' sindicatosas well as radical political movements that werethe engines of the social revolutions of 1946 and1952.

The rural slaughter this year in Guatemalais somewhat reminiscent of the World War IIanti-Communist extermination campaigns car-ried out in China and Yugoslavia by the Japaneseand Nazi armies, which drove thousands of peas-ants to seek refuge in the ranks of Mao's andTito's partisans.** It also recalls the incrediblecampaign in Colombia-led by Conservative Presi-dent Laureano Gomez, a starchy oligarch im-pressed by the Fascist success in Spain-to elimi-nate the Liberal party by sending the police to kill,burn, and destroy crops (especially coffee trees)in rural Liberal areas. This in turn led to what

has become known as the violencia, the savagetribal warfare between Liberals and Conservativeswhich in ten years (1948-58) cost some two hun-dred thousand lives and sent many more peasantsfor refuge in the proliferating slums of Colombia'scities, the five largest of which doubled in popu-lation between 1950 and 1965.

Not long ago, in a wildly-vegetated ravine ofthe Cordillera de los Cobardes in the mountainsof eastern Colombia, I met a peasant named JuanPrada, a lean man in his late fifties with narrow,ironic eyes, taut lips, and a hairless face. Prada hadbeen a Liberal soldier in the violencia, and hadfollowed a former Liberal police chief namedRafael Rangel Gomez who was subsequentlyelected to Congress. Since 1958, he had beenorganizing peasant "self-defense committees incollaboration with some Communist labor leadersfrom nearby oilfields. He still walked with theexaggerated swagger common in those mountains.Above a boxwood table in his unfinished strawhut was an old photo of a group of armed men,including himself, in khaki peasant clothes andcheap Panama hats, with ammunition belts andblankets draped over one shoulder and old riflesof many kinds posed in their hands for the photo-grapher. I saw the police carry their dead inburlap bags down from the hills to the town of

* On May 9, Guatemala's Catholic Bishops' Council issueda statement which said: "We cannot remain indifferent,while entire populations are decimated, while each dayleaves new widows and orphans who are victims of mys-terious struggles and vendettas, while men are seized intheir houses by unknown kidnappers and are detained inunknown places or are vilely assassinated, their bodies ap-pearing later horribly mutilated. Grafica (Guatemala)May 10, 1967.

t The Resistance Will Win, in Truong Chinh, Primerfor Revolt, Praeger, 1963.

0* An excellent comparative account of these wartimemovements is given in Chalmers A. Johnson, PeasantNationalism and Communist Power, Stanford, 1962.


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San Vicente de Chucuri, Juan Prada told me. They came into the hills-uniformed policemen,detectives, revenue agents, and peasant bandsfrom Conservative villages-to take Liberal peas-ants from-their houses in the middle of the night.They were marched to the edge of a ravine andeither beheaded or shot. On many farms thecattle were led away by these bands. Entire harv-ests were stolen and entire plots of coffee trees,which take so many years to bring into cultivation,were burned. Many peasants were frightened ofsuch a death. They had no way to live but to go tothe hills. I had a small piece of land in Rio Suciowhen the violencia began in Santander. Mywoman had gone away and my two little boys haddied before, but I took my little girl calledYolanda-who was seven years old-into themountains with me when the violencia began. Icarried my little girl with me through the forestswith the Liberal guerrillas for two years. All thatwe took with us was rifles and cartridges, and we

slept on the ground. Very little food was grownin the country.

T IS HARD under these circumstances to talk of a definitive solution. But we should, for a start,

consider the spontaneous character of most revolu-tionary developments in Latin America, where Marxism evidently has come with too little, toolate, and has extended itself far beyond its basesof intellectual and material supply. Throughoutthe world, these major social conflicts are activated,if not by war itself, then by some other jolt. Inthis connection it might also be opportune to citeLin Piao's prophecy* that "U.S. imperialism,

likea mad bull dashing from place to place, will finallybe burned to ashes in the blazing fires of thepeople's wars it has provoked by its own actions.

If we were to take this remark seriously, andadjust our sights accordingly to the spontaneousrather than to the ideological aspects of socialrevolution, we would, I believe, be in a betterposition to reap the advantages of revolutionaryaspirations in underdeveloped societies. Let meoffer but one example. All Castroite guerrillainsurgencies in Latin America, including Castro'sown rising in Cuba's Sierra Maestra, have occurredin or very near coffee-growing areast with dis-persed hillbilly populations living on minifundia(tiny subsistence plots) where endemic conflictsbetween landlord and peasant have been aggravat-ed by declining world coffee prices. Colombia Presi-dent Carlos Lleras Restrepo said last year in anintervew: I believe minifundia are far moredangerous politically than latifundia [greatestates]. These increasingly smaller propertiescannot maintain a family, and the minifundiaproblem is constantly aggravated by the divisionsimposed by inheritance laws and by the powerfuldemographic explosion [doubling Colombia's pop-ulation every twenty-five years], creating a class

of 'proletarian proprietors' with even lower in-

comes than the miserable sugar cane cutters.Lleras claimed that the fall in world coffee priceshas cut Colombia's per capita export income from$53 in 1964 to $32 in 1966. A 1965 survey ofLatin America by the Economist said the regionhas never recovered from the world depression ofthe late 1920's: between 1928 and 1932, LatinAmerica's exports dropped by nearly 60 per cent,and the real per capita value of its exports (ex-cluding those of oil-rich Venezuela) are now only32 per cent of what they were in 1928. Food pro-duction, moreover, has been declining in relationto population growth. Under these circumstances,it may be wiser to devote more energy towarddeveloping a substitute for this moribund coffeeeconomy than to try to convert counter-insur-gency" into a viable political doctrine.

In the meantime, while guerrilla movements inLatin America so far have failed to demonstrate,in Lin Piao's words, that the countryside, andthe countryside alone, can provide the revolu-

tionary bases from which the revolutionaries cango forward to final victory, the region's citiesare developing a revolutionary profile striking-ly similar to that of the European urban con-centrations at the time of the popular revolts of1848 and 1871. Professor William L. Langer haswritten on the subject:**

In the years from 1800 to 1850 the growth of theEuropean capitals was stupendous, with the re-sult that at the end of the period a large propor-tion of the population was not native-born. Itconsisted largely of immigrants, permanent ortemporary, coming either from nearby areas or

abroad. In the 18

40's alone about 250,000 per-sons came into London, 46,000 of whom wereIrishmen, who were particularly disliked andfeared by the English workers because of theirincredibly low standard of living. As for Paris,the number of inhabitants just about doubledbetween 1800 and 1850, due very largely to im-migration.... Most of the newcomers were fromthe neighboring departments, but there weremany foreigners as well . . . . The situation inVienna and Berlin was much the same. Overallconditions in the crowded cities of the early ormid-19th century were such as to create chronicsocial tension... .

Following the 1848 revolutions, Marx wrotethat Europe has taken on a form that makesevery fresh proletarian upheaval in France direct-ly coincide with a world war. tt In Latin America,the two world wars have generated or coincidedwith major upheavals in Mexico, Guatemala,Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Argen-tina. The effect of the great agrarian revolutions

Long Live the Victory of the People's Warl PekingReview, September 3, 1965.

t The only exception was Che's Bolivia experiment.** William L. Langer, The Pattern of Urban Revolution

in 1848," in French Society and Culture Since the OldRegime, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966.

Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1850.


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(and land reform programs) has been a prolifera-tion of tiny and (eventually) dessicated peasantsubsistence plots which, even in their uneconomicform, have failed to keep pace with the growth ofthe rural population. Studies by Mexicans predicta rural population including five million landlesspeasants in the not-too-distant future;* 27 millionMexicans of a total population of 45 million have

a monthly family income of less than $10-this ata time of spectacular economic growth with percapita income having doubled since 1940 (despitea doubling of the population during the sameperiod). The great Mexican land reform of the1930's and 1940's drew the peasant back intoprimeval village life (the basic unit of land dis-tribution was the communal ejido) while indus-trialization with depressed wages permitted largecapital accumulations in the postwar years, afterMexico had served as an international moneyhaven in World War II. Yet Mexico seems to beapproaching a Malthusian bottleneck, not so

much because of population growth as because ofa lack of sufficient land and water to keep the pro-liferating peasant population in agriculture. Thusthe complex and expensive land reclamation proj-ects in Mexico's northwest desert-states of Sonoraand Sinaloa have been imperiled in recent years bya decline in the underground water table as aconsequence of the use of deep-draft mechanicalpumps for agriculture. The scarcity of arable land,and the rising urban living standards, have sentthe peasants scurrying for the cities-which nowdouble in population roughly every seventeenyears-and for the border towns along the U.S.

frontier, which have increased fivefold in popula-tion over the past generation. If Mexico is an in-dicator, within a relatively few years Latin Amer-ica will have developed such heavy urban slumconcentrations, and disposable land for agrarianreform will have become so scarce, that for thefirst time in our century land reform will cease tobe a meaningful revolutionary banner.

HE LONG MARCH of Latin America's rural population is one of the great social epics of the

postwar years, and one to which both Marxistand Western political thought have givenvery scant attention. According to the Inter-American Economic and Social Council, 37 percent of the region's urban population (130 mil-lion) live in squatter slums, and this figure willrise to 43 per cent (216 million) by 1980. Thepopulation of Santo Domingo doubled during the1950's alone, and is expected to have doubledagain by 1968; a full-scale inundation has oc-

curred since the 1961 assassination of Rafael Tru-jillo. In the crowded warrens of wood-and-card-board shacks beneath the Duarte Bridge, wherethe slumdwellers of Santo Domingo defeated cracktank and infantry units of the Dominican armedforces in the April 1965 revolution, unemploy-ment has reached 90 per cent among adult males insome barrios, and the people talk constantly of

resuming their revolution as if the fight againstthe Americans had been their finest hour. TheAmerican anti-Communist intervention in 1965to save the Dominican army attempted to stop therevolutionary effervescence uncorked when theCIA supplied the arms for the Trujillo assassina-tion four years before.t The whole episode re-called the words of Ho Chi Minh when he wasan obscure Indochinese exile in Moscow in 1923: They began hunting down Communists amongthe Annamese peasantry at a time when therewasn't a trace of a Communist. And that way theyspread the propaganda. **

Other capitals in the hemisphere offer the sameperspective. Lima has tripled in population since1940, with hordes of cholos (Indians converting toHispanic culture) subverting the old Viceregalsocial structure which had stayed intact for fourcenturies. Since 1936, Venezuela's demographicpattern has shifted from 70 per cent rural to morethan 70 per cent urban (Caracas having doubledin population since 1950), and virtually everymajor city in the region is growing by at least 5per cent yearly. In rural areas, feudalism has beenabolished and for the first time peasants are ac-quiring radios,tt schools, roads, store-boughtclothes, bicycles, shoes, trucks, and buses; afteracquiring these things they move even faster intothe cities. In Latin America one must distinguishbetween informal and formal revolution; that is,between spectacular social change and the seizureof political power by a Marxist revolutionaryorganization. In view of this distinction, the legacyof Ernesto Guevara may turn out to be other thanit at first appears. While the guerrillas have sofar failed, the revolution is in full career; what islacking today is the leadership of a revolutionaryparty.

*"Mexico: South of the Border," by Mary Goldring.The

Economist, May 13 1967.t See my "How Trujillo Died," the New Republic, April

13 1961.** "An Interview with Ho Chi Minh-1923," by Osip

Mandelstam. COMMENTARY, August 1967.tt The USIA has estimated that there are 38.6 million

radio sets in Latin America-a ratio of almost one to afamily.

Documents

The Legacy of Che Guevara