por Jan Lust
It is a well-known fact that Ernesto “Che” Guevara wanted to contribute to the generalization of revolutionary processes all over the world, especially in countries considered to pertain to what is called the Third World. His participation in guerrilla fighting in the Congo (currently named the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Bolivia demonstrates his intentions. In this paper we discuss the contribution of the Cuban Revolution, and especially of Ernesto Guevara, to guerrilla struggle in South America. It was exactly the example of the first socialist revolution in the Americas and the ideas of Guevara regarding the development of the possibilities and positive effects of revolutionary armed struggle that stimulated the emergence of guerrilla organizations in South America.
The ideas of Guevara on the necessity of continental revolutionary processes were developed in the context of the answer of North American imperialism to the Cuban Revolution and the possibilities of survival for a socialist development path of the revolutionary process initiated by the Cuban Movimiento 26 de Julio, led by Fidel Castro. Guevara’s participation and planned participation in guerrilla struggle outside Cuba departed from the consideration that for local socialist revolutions to survive, such as the Cuban Revolution, the multiplication of revolutionary processes throughout Latin America or the creation of “many Vietnams” was essential.
This article is organized in seven sections. In section one we describe the effects of the Cuban Revolution on the Latin American Left. This section includes parts of Guevara’s ideas on the positive contribution of guerrilla struggle on revolutionary processes. Section two delves briefly into the answer of the United States to the Cuban Revolution. In the third section we present the ideas of Ernesto Guevara on the internationalization of revolutionary processes. Section four describes Guevara’s involvement in guerrilla preparations and in section five we examine Che’s continental guerrilla strategy. In section six we discuss the role of Bolivia, Peru and, supposedly, Argentina, in a supposed continental revolutionary guerrilla process. Section seven presents our conclusions.
1. The Cuban Revolution and the Latin American Left
The Cuban Revolution has contributed significantly to the formation and development of various guerrilla organizations in Latin America. However, it was not the cause of the rise of revolutionary movements in the 1960s.
At the end of the 1950s a wave of resistance ‘swept’ Latin America, provoked by the strangulation of the new forces of production in a system that was not only designed for the interests of the urban bourgeoisie but was also based on a substructure of an archaic agrarian economy. The rise of social movements, produced by an intense process of industrialization in a backward region and the need to replace antiquated government mechanisms with those that would express changes in the economic field at the political level, was fertile ground for revolutionary practice (DoCom, 2004, pp. 21-28; Bambirra, 1971, pp. 27-31)
The absence of a strong revolutionary vanguard made the seizure of power by the working classes and the peasantry and their allies in Latin America impossible. The communist parties, for example, displayed a disastrous lack of political imagination and staggering ignorance regarding their supposed role in leading the working masses. In 1965, the CIA (1965, p. 9) wrote in its “Survey of communism in Latin America” that in the short term no Latin American communist party was a real threat to existing governments.
The success of the Cuban Revolution inspired individuals and political organizations throughout Latin America, communist, socialist, or progressive forces in general, to step up the struggle against the ruling classes. It provided many lessons that were quickly taken up and sparked revolutions within the left. In the period 1959-1962 there was a rapid increase in guerrilla movements in a large number of countries. In November 1959, Paraguayan guerrillas from the Movimiento 14 de Mayotried to start revolutionary war, which, however, failed. Most of the guerrillas died. In December of the same year began, in Argentina, the Uturuncos, a guerrilla of Peronist origin. In the summer of 1960, the DominicanMovimiento 14 de Juliofailed to bring its cadres safe and sound in the country. More than a hundred revolutionaries died on the north coast of the country (Debray, 1968, p. 64). In 1960, two former soldiers, Marco Antonio Yon Sosa, and Luis Augusto Turcios, founded the Movimiento Revolucionario 13 de Noviembre(MR-13) in Guatemala. In April 1962, a group of students created the Movimiento 12 de Abriland later, in the same year, the Movimiento 20 de Octubreof the Guatemalan Labor Party (PGT), communist party, appeared. In December 1962, all these movements were united in the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes(FAR) (Rostíca, 2006, p. 41). In 1959, the Juventud Patriótica(JP) was formed in Nicaragua, which was clearly directed towards the development of the armed struggle. The group split and later some former members created the Movimiento Nueva Izquierda JP(MNI). On July 23, 1961, the Frente de Liberación Nacional(FLN) was founded, which in 1962 changed its name to FSLN (Martí i Puig, 2002, p. 5). In March 1962, the guerrilla attempts of the youth of the Unión Revolucionaria de Juventudes del Ecuador (URJE) was thwarted at the start (Debray, 1968, p. 65). In the same month, the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria(MIR) was founded in Peru and in September the Peruvian Ejército de Liberación Nacional(ELN) was created in Cuba.
The Cuban Revolution brought with it a new political force in Latin America that was called Castroism. This force was the opinion that it was not necessary to wait until all the conditions were present to start the armed struggle because the very beginning of the guerrilla focus would contribute to creating them. The CIA (1962, p. 4) writes that the “most dangerous aspect of Castroism has been its broad appeal as a symbol of revolutionary change and nationalist assertiveness in Latin America”.
2. The Cuban Revolution and the United States
The effect of the Cuban Revolution on the politicians and military of the United States was, as in the case of the Latin American revolutionary left, shocking and, possibly, even stronger. Régis Debray (1968, pp. 203-204), French philosopher and in the 1960s a declared supporter of the guerrilla struggle, pointed out: “Cuba has raised the level of material and ideological preparation of the imperialist reaction in less time than that of the revolutionary vanguards. If today, and in a shorter period of time, imperialism has taken more advantage of the Cuban Revolution than the revolutionary forces, this is not due -we doubt it very much- to the fact that it has superior intelligence. Imperialism is in a better position to put quicker into practice the lessons it has learned from the Cuban Revolution, because it has all the material means of organized violence, plus the nervous influence that its instinct for self-preservation lends it.”[1]
The US policy aimed at avoiding ‘a second Cuba’ had a socioeconomic and a military side. The socioeconomic policy towards Latin America was reflected in the Alliance for Progress treaty that tried to raise the economic and social development of the Latin American countries. The military component was reflected in the extension of military aid, the creation of counter-guerrilla units and the intervention in the internal affairs of the Latin American countries. Both sides of US Latin American policy were two sides of the same coin (Morray, 1973, p. 119). In the years 1958-1961, military aid to Latin America increased from 48 to 91 million US dollars (Villanueva, 1971, p. 147).
Apart from concrete military support, the development of Civic Action activities by the armed forces was also encouraged. Grants were provided to Latin American countries to enable Civic Action projects such as building schools and roads in impoverished and remote rural communities (Lieuwen, 1965, p. 184).
Washington’s foreign policy reached a new climax in 1965, after Guatemala in 1954[2]. In April 1965, the United States decided to invade the Dominican Republic. President Juan Bosch’s economic proposals were starting to harm US interests.
The support of the Organization of American States of the intervention in the Dominican Republic showed, as Fidel Castro formulated it in 1962, that this organization had really become “a ministry of Yankee colonies, a military alliance, a repressive apparatus against the liberation movements of the Latin American peoples” (Castro, 1971, p. 149).[3]It also made it clear that Latin American governments preached non-intervention when the problems in a country were controversies between factions of the ruling class. However, if the power structures were at stake and the class struggle intensified, no government had a problem with an intervention.
3. The ideas of Che Guevara on continental revolution
Guevara’s ideas on the need of continental revolutionary guerrilla struggle were not elaborated because the Argentinian revolutionary wanted to ‘theoretically and strategically’ justify his participation in armed struggle in Latin America and even in Africa. Already in May 1962 in his speech on the occasion of Argentina’s 152nd Independence Day he was arguing in favor continental revolution (Guevara, 1962, n.p).
In his work Guerra de guerrillas: un método (1963), Che was very clear on the need, even the “historical necessity” of armed battles against imperialism. He was sure that the life and death struggle against imperialism would have continental dimensions. In order to be able to defeat it, it was key that the revolutionary forces in each country would start fighting, no matter what the conditions were in other countries. During the battles, in a variety of countries, a general strategy against imperialism would emerge.
The parallels between what Guevara in this small essay wrote, already in 1963, and the strategy that was foreseen when he began organizing the guerrilla in Bolivia (see below) are striking. In the mentioned work he also writes: “The prediction of the continental character of the struggle is the outcome of the analysis of the strength of each contender but this does not exclude independent outbreaks. The beginning of the struggle in one area of a country is bound to cause its development throughout the region; the beginning of a revolutionary war contributes to the development of new conditions in the neighboring countries.” (Guevara, 1977d, p. 217)[4]
Continental revolutionary processes were important to support national revolutions. They were also necessary because imperialism was organizing itself on a continental scale, he wrote in Táctica y estrategia de la revolución latinoamericana(1962)[5]and explained in 1964 in an interview with JosieFanonthat was publishedin Revolution Africaine.[6]
The fight against imperialism could only be successful, wrote Che Guevara (1977c, p. 367), when it was carried out in the whole world because “we must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism, and that it must be defeated in a great world confrontation. This question of world revolution, it must be underlined, definitively contrasts with the strategy and politics of the former Soviet-Union regarding socialism in one country. This issue has surely been one of the fundamental points of critique of Che on the former Soviet Union and even a political breaking point. It is one of the arguments of Guevara against Stalinism. The necessity of a global fight and even the intent to organize this battle, might make Che a kind of “visionary”, as we state in the conclusions in relation to the globalizations of capital.
The strategic goal of that struggle must be the destruction of imperialism”.[7]Creating “many Vietnams” could divide the enemy forces (Guevara, 1977c, p. 371). As a tactical step in the revolutionary struggle, Che proposed “the gradual liberation of the peoples, one by one or by groups, leading the enemy to a difficult fight outside his terrain; liquidating its support bases, which are its dependent territories” (Guevara, 1977c, p. 371).[8]
The process of gradual liberation, according to Manuel Piñeiro, a former head of the Latin America Department of the Ministry of Interior of Cuba, had to be executed in the following way: “His conception, rooted in the Cuban liberation war, consisted in founding a mother column made up of revolutionaries from various Latin American countries, which, once the survival stage had been overcome, with the combatants trained, the leadership cadres formed, in its development and growth phase it would create the conditions for the detachment of other columns and thus expand the combat to other countries of the continent; especially towards those who joined imperialism in the attempt to defeat the popular cause” (Suárez, Zuazo y Pellón, 2006, pp. 25-26).[9]
The guerrilla movement that was built in Bolivia and led by Che Guevara not only had to function as a kind of guerrilla school (see below), but it also served as a spark for new guerrilla movements to be organized and as a stimulus for already existing and/or fighting organizations in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Brazil, among others. The coordination of all these organizations had the objective to be able to effectively confront the military reaction of North American imperialism that was to be expected. The continental aspect of Guevara’s proposal for continental revolution was exactly this coordination. This coordination was definitively possible because of the more than fraternal relations between the Cuban leadership and revolutionary organizations all over the world as evidenced in the Tricontinental Conference in January 1966 attended by hundreds of delegates. Furthermore, it might be expected that because many Latin American guerrilla organizations had been supported by the Cuban leadership, militarily and financially, and these organizations considered Cuba, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara in particular, as their examples, the coordination of the guerrilla struggle might not be, politically at least, a difficult question.
The continental revolutionary struggle had to be seen in the light of a general struggle of humanity for its liberation. Therefore, the guerrilla units could consist of revolutionaries who came from different countries and continents. The continental battle did not have the objective to build another socialist country, but it pointed to create a continental socialist society as it was believed that socialism in one country was not politically, economically, and militarily feasible.
Guevara’s strategic conception was backed by the Cuban government. The continental guerrilla struggle was a project resulting from the dynamic developments that the Cuban Revolution had initiated and the specific circumstances in which it found itself.
4. Che Guevara’s involvement in guerrilla preparations
The Cuban Government, and in particular Che Guevara, has provided support to various Latin American guerrilla groups. This was organized by a special department of the Ministry of the Interior, which was called the Special Operations Section (MOE for its acronym in Spanish). The activities of this department not only had to be kept absolutely secret for the imperialist camp but also for the Latin American communist parties and the former socialist countries (Estrada, 2005, p. 20).
The activities of the MOE were directed by Orlando Pantoja (Estrada, 2006), a Cuban internationalist who died during the guerrilla struggle in Bolivia. Ulises Estrada points out that “this department began to create training schools and carry out operational work. Che often directed our work. Everything related to the guerrilla movements and the clandestine movements had to be submitted to him, and discussed with him, despite the fact that Fidel was the highest-ranking leader” (Gálvez, 1999, pp. 25-26). In the case of, for example, the Peruvian ELN, the MOE’s task was to ensure that the guerrillas, in 1963, could safely enter Bolivia and from there to be able to march into Peru (Gálvez, 1999, p. 21).
The support that the Latin American revolutionaries received from the Cuban authorities and the intense cooperation that existed between the Cubans and the Peruvian ELN, led Héctor Béjar (Interview, 31/03/2003), former commander of this organization, to the conclusion that the ELN guerrillas “in practice were involved in the Cuban strategy for Latin America”. Julio Dagnino (Interview, 26/01/2004), a historical cadre of the Peruvian ELN, had another opinion on this matter: “I don’t think it’s so mathematical. Putting it that way, it seems to me as if it was being digitized: group here, group here, group here. But by putting it this way, it is presented as if it was fundamentally directed by the Cubans. So, there is the difference that I tell you. Why? Because there were internal reasons for the groups. Masetti’s group, our group and the MIR group obeyed to internal reasons, that is, their actions. For example, the MIR did not immediately develop the guerrillas, at the time of Masetti’s guerrilla in Argentina, or at the time we were in Bolivia”.
The support of the MOE, and of Che in particular, to the Peruvian ELN in 1963, draws a lot of attention because it seems that it was related to Guevara’s intention to develop a guerrilla front in Argentina. The support to what was called the Ejército Guerrillero del Pueblo(EGP) was known as Operation Shadow. According to Estrada (2005, p. 12), already in 1961 Guevara began to make plans that should allow him to unleash the revolutionary armed struggle in other countries, particularly in Argentina. For example, in 1963, the Argentine Jorge Ricardo Masetti received from Che, said the former head of the Latin American department of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior Manuel Piñeiro, “the task of organizing a guerrilla column whose main mission was to settle in an Argentine border territory with Bolivia, specifically Salta, with the idea of joining -Che- as soon as a minimum of conditions is achieved, to direct from there the beginning of the armed struggle in Argentina. He paid special attention to the preparation of this detachment, named the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, where the Cuban Hermes Peña (killed in combat) and Alberto Castellanos, who was taken prisoner and remained four years in prison, Argentine prisons, without being able to identify their true nationality, would go along with Masetti.” (Suárez, Zuazo and Pellón, 2006, pp. 25-26)
Ulises Estrada says that Guevara “was determined not to rest for a minute to support the national liberation struggle, and even more so, to spare no effort to seek the real possibility of going to fight in Argentina, even if he were to die with a little foot within the borders of his homeland, as he told me during our stay in Prague. To that end, in 1963, on Che’s instructions, we organized Operation Shadow (taken from a character in the literature, Don Segundo Sombra), commanded by the journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti (Second Commander) and a small group of his compatriots, including Federico Méndez, the painter Ciro Bustos (who later had a traitorous attitude in the guerrilla in Bolivia) and the doctor Leonardo Werthein. For the creation of a logistical support network in Bolivia, Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, “Furry”, today Army Corps General, Minister of the Interior and Hero of the Republic of Cuba, whom I received in La Paz, supported by a cell of the Communist Party of that country made up of Inti Peredo and Rodolfo Saldaña, was appointed. In addition, we were at that time providing operational and logistical support to the Peruvian guerrilla of Héctor Béjar. [...] Che also paid great attention to the preparations of the guerrilla of Héctor Béjar, who would operate in Peru (Operation Matraca) and the one commanded by Dr. Luis de la Puente Uceda, in the same country. His idea was to extend the armed struggle in Latin America and from Argentina to organize a mother guerrilla in which combatants from other countries in South America would participate, who once forged in the struggle would take the liberating war to their own countries” (Estrada, 2006).[10]
The guerrilla intentions in Argentina were a failure. On September 21, 1963, the group arrived in the province of Salta in northwestern Argentina. On April 21, 1964, Masetti was death. His body was never found. With the death of Masetti the guerrilla attempt ended (Estrada, 2005, pp. 285, 295).
It seems that the efforts to develop a guerrilla in Argentina was known to the Bolivian Government. According to Arnaldo Piñera, an Argentine who in the 1960s was responsible for the international relations of the Argentine Communist Party and a member of its Central Committee, the weapons of the EGP were transferred, with the knowledge of the Bolivian Government, to the border with Argentina. This would have been an agreement between the Bolivian Communist Party (PCB for its acronym in Spanish), José María Martínez (Papi) -representing the Cubans- and the Bolivian authorities. The Government of Bolivia would turn a blind eye on the condition that a guerrilla-force would not be built in Bolivia (Piñera, 1997, p. 52-53). Not only the Argentine guerrilla but also the Peruvian armed organizations were ‘supported’ by the Bolivian Government in order to avoid that a Bolivian guerrilla organization would be erected (Piñera, 1997, p. 53; Rodríguez, 2005).
5. Continental guerrilla warfare: the strategy
Between July 31 and August 10, 1967, the first and last conference of the Organización de Latinoamericana de Solidaridad(OLAS) was held in Havana. The immediate objective of the meeting was to broaden the support base for the guerrilla struggle in Bolivia led by Guevara. It had to make sure that Che was equipped with a political, military, and psychological support apparatus, that would break his political isolation and that a rearguard would be built in neighboring countries that would indirectly try to create, wherever, the conditions for the propagation of the armed struggle, starting from the Bolivian guerrilla focus (Debray, 1975, pp. 12-13).In one of the resolutions of the Conference, revolutionaries in America, North, Central and South America, were called upon to organize the armed struggle in their home countries. It was believed that this was the only way to divide and beat North American imperialism. The struggle against the common enemy and under the flag of a common objective would “create deep bonds of solidarity” (OLAS, 1967, p. 116).
Bolivia’s role in Che’s continental revolutionary project was of strategic value. It was there where the mother column, mentioned by Manuel Piñeiro, should be built, or as Fidel Castro wrote: “the guerrilla in Bolivia would be a school for revolutionaries who would do their apprenticeship in combat” (Castro, 1977, pp. 11-12).[11]Manuel Piñeiro also writes: “From his perspective, the guerrilla should result in a training school for Latin American cadres, especially from the Southern Cone -among them Argentines-, which would lead to extending the armed struggle to other border countries. At the same time, it would allow him to accumulate political and military forces and wait for the most opportune moment to continue towards his native country. This would depend on the development and growth of the mother column settled in Bolivia. Without it, it was not possible to continue to Argentina, where a bloodthirsty military dictatorship had also been installed, supported by the United States, and repudiated by the most combative sectors of the Argentine people. In a realistic manner, Che analyzed that if other guerrilla columns arose and evolved from Bolivia, made up of combatants from various nations of the Southern Cone, this would provoke an alliance between the governments and the armies of the bordering countries, supported by imperialism. This would contribute to the spread of the revolutionary armed struggle in the region, which would become a scene of bloody, long, and difficult battles that would sooner or later lead to Yankee intervention. That would be, therefore, another of the Vietnams that he summoned in his historic Message to the peoples of the world through the Tricontinental.” (Suárez, Zuaco & Pellón, 2006, pp. 29-30)[12] According to Harry Villegas (Pombo), a close companion of Guevara’ who survived the Bolivian guerrilla attempt, one of Guevara’s goals was to coordinate the revolutionary movement in the southern part of Latin America (Waters & Madrid, 1997, p. 21). Régis Debray, who in Bolivia was investigating where exactly the mother column of the Latin American guerrilla could be successfully built, writes that Che’s strategy did not have Bolivia as its objective (Debray, 1978, p. 69).
The creation of a series of guerrilla units throughout Latin America seems to have been a planned activity. In Cuba, Guevara would have already made plans about this goal. Regarding the concrete construction of the guerrilla in Bolivia, Régis Debray (1978, p. 74) writesthatthe idea was to develop guerrilla fronts in Ñancahuazú, Chapare (north of Cochabamba) and in Alto Beni (north of La Paz). The whole of these three articulated fronts would constitute the central Bolivian focus. From there various columns would have to leave for neighboring countries. The Mexican author Jorge Castañeda has a more detailed version regarding the creation of the guerrilla columns. “By December 20 -1966- all selected Cubans would have arrived, as well as sixty Bolivians. With this initial nucleus, more than a guerrilla focus, a kind of school for Latin American guerrilla cadres would be created. […] At the beginning of 1967, a call would be launched to the Latin American revolutionary leaderships, so that they would send their best cadres, through the access routes facilitated by the PCB and Mario Monje, -the leader of the PCB. Various national columns would depart from the initial camp in the direction of their own countries, on training and reconnaissance excursions rather than combat. After several rehearsals, they would enter their respective countries. Che would lead the Argentine column” (Castañeda, 1997, p. 419).[13]
We should underline that the continental revolutionary project of Guevara was considered to be a long process and depended on the successful development of local guerrilla organizations, although the narratives of Piñeiro, Debray and Castañeda might suggest differently. It was believed that these organizations would be inspired and nurtured (political and militarily) by the Bolivian example, but had to be based on local political, economic, and social conditions. South America should be turned into a hotbed of locally organized fighting guerrilla organizations, politically coordinated by Guevara.
The local guerrilla organizations should have political and social bases that would enable them to survive, especially at the beginning of the armed struggle. Without a certain political support of rural and urban social mass organizations, the battle would be lost very quickly.[14]In Guerra de guerrillas: un método,Guevara wrote that guerrilla warfare is a people’s warfare. Without the support of the population this type of war was deemed to fail. He supposed that the guerrilla was supported by “the peasant and worker masses of the region and of the whole territory in which it acts. Without these prerequisites, guerrilla warfare is not possible” (Guevara, 1977d: p. 204).[15]In his article “¿Qué es un ‘guerrillero’”, Guevara (1977f: p. 193) even argued that guerrilla warfare is a mass struggle, a battle of the “entire people”. And although the guerrilla is the armed vanguard of the people, it is intimately connected to the people. The strength of the armed force of the people is exactly that it is “made up of all the inhabitants of a region or a country.” As the base of the guerrilla is the people, in the long or short run it will triumph. [16]
The guerrilla organizations that would have to be created in Argentina and Peru, in relation to the mother column in Bolivia, were to be the first armed groups organized and coordinated in the context of continental resistance. Only after the beginning of their actions, would it start in other countries. Debray (1978, p. 75) explains that the “Bolivian focus would then function as a military training and political coordination center for the various national revolutionary organizations in Latin America. The most advanced elements of each country would be removed from their base of origin, incorporated for a moment into the Bolivian focus commanded by Che, and then returned to their national base as already trained political-military cadres. Thus, by natural reproduction, the original guerrilla would multiply in various parts of the continent”.
6. The role of Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina in the continental guerrilla project
The choice for Bolivia as a point of departure for turning South America in a hotbed of guerrilla fronts not only came as a surprise to the PCB, but also to the Peruvian ELN. Apparently there existed an agreement between the leader of the Peruvian guerrilla movement Juan Pablo Chang and Guevara, that Che would join the Peruvian ELN that was fighting in the department of Ayacucho in Peru. The quick defeat of the guerrilla movement made Guevara change his plans (Lust, 2013, pp. 408-413).[17]According to Harry Villegas, when Guevara left the Congo at the of 1965 the idea was to go to Peru (Kohan, 2003).
Guevara’s planned participation in the Peruvian guerrilla struggle, apart from the declaration of Villegas, has been mentioned by various Peruvian guerrillas (Lust, 2016, p. 230). According to Emiliano Vargas Quispe (Felipe), a Peruvian guerrilla of the ELN who worked on the building of a guerrilla front near the border of Bolivia, in the Peruvian department of Puno, he was assigned the task of bodyguard of Che Guevara when the Argentine-Cuban guerrilla leader would arrive in Peru to join the fight in Ayacucho (Vargas Quispe, Testimony, 12/04/2022).
When it was not possible to join the guerrilla struggle in Peru, Guevara changed plans and went to Bolivia in order to organize in more detail what became known as the continental guerrilla struggle. Peru, however, maintained a primordial place in Che’s strategy. From Bolivia he would be able to incorporate himself in a possible resurrection of the Peruvian ELN or to go to Argentina. According to Chang (2004, p. 473), Bolivian guerrilla units would join the guerrilla front that was beginning to be built near the border of Bolivia, in the department of Puno (see below). Debray (1978, p. 69) explains that Bolivia was not part of the strategy of Guevara, i.e., “[…] Che did not have as an immediate objective the seizure of power, but the prior construction of a popular power materialized by its instrument of action, of an autonomous and mobile military force.In his conception, the construction of popular power came before the seizure of power in Bolivia, derived in time and secondary in importance” (Debray, 1978, p. 70).
The turn to Bolivia was easy to make as the Cubans had created, some years before, a support base for revolutionary activities. In the period 1962-1963, the Peruvian ELN, for instance, but also the guerrillas of Masetti (see above), were supported by young communists, often members of the PCB (Lust, 2013, pp. 177-178). The support base was being led by Mario Monje, secretary general of the PCB (Béjar, Interview, 09/06/2003; Elías, Interview, 20/01/004; Dagnino, Interview, 26/01/2004; Castañeda, 1997, pp. 407-408).
On July 25, 1966, Villegas (1997, p. 33) wrote in his Bolivian diary: “El Negro -Mario Monje- had offered four men to prepare things in Argentina or Peru and promised to give us another six.”[18]In a message from Fidel Castro to Che, sent on December 14, 1966, it reads: “You will decide what is best according to the analysis in the field. This interview with you -of Mario Monje with Ernesto Guevara, on December 31, 1966- I proposed it on the basis that you were the strategic chief of this operation and that it could not be determined exactly where it would begin, since unforeseen incidents could arise that would force it to be carried out in the land of Stanislao -Mario Monje and Bolivia- before going to the South.” (Soria, 2005, p. 237)[19]On March 21, 1967, Che Guevara wrote in his diary: “El Pelao -Ciro Bustos-, of course, is willing to put himself under my orders and I proposed him to be a kind of coordinator, relating for now only to the groups of Jozamy, Gelman and Stamponi and sending me 5 men to start training. […] If they accept, they must start the exploratory action in northern Argentina and send me a report.” (Guevara, 1977e, p. 85)[20]
From what Villegas wrote in his diary and the message from Castro to Guevara, it can be concluded that there existed no concrete plans to fight in Bolivia. The objectives were Peru and Argentina. The election of Peru as one of the first guerrilla offspring of the guerrilla movement in Bolivia is easy to understand. As we mentioned above, Guevara’s first intention was to reenforce the guerrilla struggle in Peru, already for some years there existed a relationship of cooperation between the Peruvian ELN and Guevara (and the Cuban leadership in general), and the Peruvian guerrillas were rebuilding its organization, after the defeat in 1965 in Ayacucho.
At the border of Bolivia, the Peruvians were starting to create a new guerrilla front. Its organization, however, got stuck in the development of logistical operations (the creation of weapon and food depots) and the reconnaissance of the area. Only a few individuals were involved in this work as the majority of the guerrilla movement stayed in the capital city of Lima, after the debacle in 1965, although some twenty Peruvians were being trained in Cuba. One of the principal reasons for the lack of development of the guerrilla front was the fact that its leader, Juan Pablo Chang, had not been able to return from his visit to Guevara in Bolivia. The death of Che Guevara ended the intentions to erect a fighting guerrilla group in Puno (Lust, 2016, pp. 225-239).
Argentina’s part in Che’s guerrilla plans seems not to have responded, in the first instance and in the short run, to strategical and tactical questions. Personal motives might have led Guevara to include Argentina. It appears that only just in the first months of 1967 an ELN was founded in Argentina to support the guerrillas in Bolivia. With the same plan, the Armed Forces of Liberation (FAL for its acronym in Spanish) were created. The organizations did not start military actions (Lust, 2013, pp. 404-405).[21]
7. Conclusions
Che Guevara did not anxiously search for a place to fight or to put his guerrilla concepts, elaborated on the basis of his experiences in Cuba, in practice. He considered a continental revolutionary process crucial for the survival of national socialist revolutions. He also believed that to turn South America in multiples guerrilla fronts would be a necessary strategy to confront and beat North American imperialism that would definitively intervene in revolutionary processes in the Americas.
Guevara considered the continental revolution a strategic objective or the continental revolutionary process a strategic process. It was not something that could be achieved with one blow, but the revolutionary forces should point to achieve this goal. It might be seen as something like the creation of an International of Revolutionary Guerrilla Forces that would fight for common interests, but in particular political, economic, social, cultural, and geographical circumstances. Given the already active guerrilla organizations in South America, a continental revolutionary process based on autonomous but coordinated activities of nationally organized guerrilla movements was definitively feasible. However, if the guerilla struggle would end in revolution not only depended on the strength of the armed forces of the people, but also on the political and military strength of imperialism.
The continentalization of the revolutionary struggle could only become a reality when it was locally organized, not necessarily united in one front, but surely with some degree of coordination. It could never be established by Che alone. Guevara was the principal stimulator of this process and the principal organizer, but he relied on local groups for its materialization. Of course, the defeat of these guerrilla forces would impede a South American revolutionary process or a continental revolution as the strategy pointed to the creation of fighting guerrilla groups in different countries, based on the mother column in Bolivia.
When Che tried to put his ideas in practice, most of the South American guerrilla groups were just starting, were relatively weak or had already been defeated. In not all South American countries existed active guerrilla forces before the publication and dissemination of Che’s proposal to work on a continental-wide guerrilla process. It was exactly the figure of Guevara fighting in one of the South American countries, although he might have underestimated this effect, that could initiate, reinitiate, or strengthen these processes. Hence, when in October 1967 Che was murdered, the development of a continental guerrilla process or even an International of Revolutionary Guerrilla Forces came to a halt.
Guevara’s ideas on the necessity for a global struggle against imperialism or a global battle for a development based on the economic, social, and cultural necessities of humankind in accordance with nature, i.e., for a communist society, or a global fight against economic, social, ecological, and cultural inequality, might be considered fully understandable in the actual era of globalization. However, at the beginning of the 1960s these ideas were not common and not largely shared within the progressive forces. That is, a global struggle against imperialism sounded as world revolution in the Trotskyist tradition. The idea that socialism could be established in one country was the ruling ideology within the revolutionary forces, although the ‘communist split’ between the Soviet-Union and China, and China’s support of revolutionary guerrilla forces, started to cause flaws in this ideological building.
It might be argued that Che was a kind of visionary of the global development of capitalism. He understood that capitalism could only be defeated in a worldwide struggle against imperialism. The use of imperialist political and military practices by the dominant classes of the capitalist countries in the center was needed for the survival of capitalism in the center and the periphery. Also, to stop revolutionary forces trying to tumble capitalist regimes, imperialism, embodied by United States capitalism, would intervene.
References
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Interviews
Héctor Béjar, ex-guerrilla leader of the Peruvian ELN, Lima (Peru), 31 March 2003; 9 June 2003.
Julio Dagnino, ex-cadre of the Peruvian ELN, Lima (Peru), 26 January 2004.
Alaín Elías, ex-cadre of the Peruvian ELN, Lima (Peru), 20 January 2004.
Testimony
Emiliano Vargas Quispe, Testimony, 12 April 2022.
[1]Translation from Spanish by author.
[2]In 1954 the democratic government of Jacóbo Árbenz was tumbled by rebels that had been supported by the CIA. Árbenz had intended to implement an agrarian reform that affected the interests of the United Fruit Company.
[3]Translation from Spanish by author.
[4]Translation by https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1963/09/guerrilla-warfare.htm(consulted 03/04/2022).
[5]See Guevara(1977a, pp. 237-238).
[6]See Guevara(1977b, pp. 337).
[7]Translation from Spanish by author.
[8]Translation from Spanish by author.
[9]Translation from Spanish by author.
[10]Translation from Spanish by author.
[11]Translation from Spanish by author.
[12]See also Furiati (2006, p. 50).
[13]Translation from Spanish by author.
[14]The guerrilla movement in Bolivia led by Guevara lacked political support of urban and rural mass organizations. The premature discovery of the movement made it very difficult to develop these bases, especially when the PCB decided not to support the guerrilla. The lack of these bases is one of the reasons of the defeat in Bolivia.
[15]Translation by https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1963/09/guerrilla-warfare.htm(consulted 12/06/2022).
[16]Translation from Spanish by author.
[17]Chang became leader of the Peruvian ELN after the defeat in Ayacucho in 1965 and the imprisonment of Héctor Béjar. Chang was assassinated on October 9, 1967, together with Guevara. The premature start of the guerrilla struggle in Bolivia impeded his return to Peru when he visited Guevara to coordinate guerrilla activities in Peru and Bolivia. Chang became a friend of Guevara in Mexico, already before Guevara’s departure to Cuba, when he was exiled to this country.
[18]Translation from Spanish by author.
[19]Translation from Spanish by author.
[20]Translation from Spanish by author.
[21]We do not have more information about this issue. The most authorized person on this question was the Bolivian Gustavo Rodriguez Ostría who passed away in 2020. He researched this part but was not able to finish it.
