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Che Guevara Archive
Guerrilla Warfare: A Method
Guevara's name is indissolubly linked with guerrilla warfare
— in practice as well as theory. In Mexico he had been the outstanding
student in the training that preceded embarkation on the Granma. In
the Sierra Maestra he had risen to the rank of comandante (major),
the highest conferred in the Rebel Army. His most celebrated book
was Guerrilla Warfare. And, of course, he met his death in the course
of the guerrilla fighting in Bolivia. The following is the complete
text of his article, 'Guerrilla Warfare: A Method' in Cuba Socialista
of September, 1963.
Guerrilla warfare has been employed on innumerable occasions throughout
history in different circumstances, to achieve different aims. Of
late it has been used in various people's wars of liberation when
the vanguard of the people chose the path of irregular armed struggle
against enemies of greater military power. Asia, Africa and America
have been the scene of such actions when trying to attain power in
the struggle against feudal, neo-colonial or colonial exploitation.
In Europe, guerrilla warfare was used as supplementary to their own
or allied regular armies.
 Guerrilla
warfare has been waged many times in America. As a case in point closer
to home the experience of Augusto César Sandino fighting against
the Yankee expeditionary force on the banks of the Segovia in Nicaragua
can be noted, and recently Cuba's revolutionary war. Since then in
America the problems of guerrilla warfare have become a question for
theoretical discussions for the continent's progressive parties, and
whether it is possible or expedient to use it, has become the subject
of head-on controversial discussions.
This article will try to present our views on guerrilla warfare and
how to use it correctly.
Above all, it must be made clear that this form of struggle is a means
— means to an end. That end, essential and inevitable for all
revolutionaries, is the winning of political power. Therefore, in
analysing specific situations in different countries in America one
must use the concept of guerrilla warfare in the limited sense of
a method of struggle in order to gain that end.
Almost immediately the question arises: Is guerrilla warfare the only
formula for seizing power in the whole of America? Or at least will
it be the predominant form? Or will it simply be one of many forms
used in the struggle? And in the final analysis it may be asked: Will
the example of Cuba be applicable to the actual situation of other
parts of the continent? In the course of polemics those who advocate
guerrilla warfare are often accused of forgetting mass struggle, almost
as if guerrilla warfare and mass struggle were opposed to each other.
We reject this implication. Guerrilla warfare is a people's war, a
mass struggle. To try to carry out this type of war without the support
of the population is to court inevitable disaster. The guerrillas
are the fighting vanguard of the people, stationed in a specified
place in a certain area, armed and prepared to carry out a series
of warlike actions for the one possible strategic end — the
seizure of power. They have the support of the worker and peasant
masses of the region and of the whole territory in which they operate.
Without these prerequisites no guerrilla warfare is possible.
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We consider that the Cuban Revolution made three fundamental contributions
to the laws of the revolutionary movement in the current situation
in America. They are: Firstly, people's forces can win a war against
the army. Secondly, we need not always wait for all the revolutionary
conditions to be present; the insurrection itself can create them.
Thirdly, in the underdeveloped parts of America the battleground for
armed struggle should in the main be the countryside. (Guerrilla Warfare)
Such are the contributions to the development of the revolutionary
struggle in America, and they can be applied to any of the countries
on our continent where guerrilla warfare may be developed.
The Second Declaration of Havana points out:
In our countries two circumstances are joined: underdeveloped industry
and an agrarian regime of a feudal character. That is why no matter
how hard the living conditions of the urban workers are, the rural
population lives under even more horrible conditions of oppression
and exploitation. But, with few exceptions, it also constitutes the
absolute majority, sometimes more than 70 per cent of Latin American
populations.
Not counting the landlords who often live in the cities, the rest
of this great mass earns its livelihood by Working as peons on the
plantations for the most miserable wages, or they work the soil under
conditions of exploitation indistinguishable from those of the Middle
Ages.
These are the circumstances which determine that the poor population
of the countryside constitutes a tremendous potential revolutionary
force. The armies are set up and equipped for conventional warfare.
They are the force whereby the power of the exploiting classes is
maintained. When they are confronted with the irregular warfare of
peasants based on their own home grounds, they become absolutely powerless;
they lose ten men for every revolutionary fighter who falls. Demoralisation
among them mounts rapidly when they are beset by an invisible and
invincible army which provides them no chance to display their military-academy
tactics and their fanfare of war, of which they boast so much to repress
the city workers and students.
The initial struggle of small fighting units is constantly nurtured
by new forces; the mass movement begins to grow bold, the old order
bit by bit breaks up into a thousand pieces and that is when the working
class and the urban masses decide the battle.
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What is it that from the very beginning of the fight makes those units
invincible, regardless of the number, strength and resources of their
enemies? It is the people's support, and they can count on an ever-increasing
mass support. But the peasantry is a class which, because of the ignorance
in which it has been kept and the isolation in which it lives, requires
the revolutionary and political leadership of the working class and
the revolutionary intellectuals. Without that it cannot alone launch
the struggle and achieve victory.
In the present historical conditions of Latin America the national
bourgeoisie cannot lead the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle.
Experience demonstrates that in our nations this class — even
when its interests clash with those of Yankee imperialism —
has been incapable of confronting imperialism, paralysed by fear of
social revolution and frightened by the clamour of the exploited masses.
 Supplementing
these statements, which constitute the essence of the revolutionary
declaration of America, the Second Declaration of Havana in other
paragraphs states the following:
The subjective conditions in each country, the factors of consciousness,
of organisation, of leadership, can accelerate or delay revolution,
depending on the state of their development. Sooner or later, in each
historic epoch, as objective conditions ripen, consciousness is acquired,
organisation is achieved, leadership arises. and revolution is produced.
Whether this takes place peacefully or comes to the world after painful
labour, does not depend on the revolutionaries; it depends on the
reactionary forces of the old society; it depends on their resistance
against allowing the new society to be born, a society produced by
the contradictions of the old society. Revolution, in history, is
like the doctor who assists at the birth of a new life: it does not
use forceps unless it is necessary, but it will unhesitatingly use
them every time labour requires them. A labour brings the hope of
a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses. Revolution is
inevitable in many countries of Latin America. Nobody's will determines
this fact. It is determined by the frightful conditions of exploitation
which afflict mankind in America. It is determined by the development
of the revolutionary consciousness of the masses, by the world crisis
of imperialism and by the universal movement of struggle of the world's
subjugated peoples.
We shall start from this basis to analyse the whole question of guerrilla
warfare in America.
We have asserted that it is a means of struggle to achieve an end.
Our first concern is to analyse the end and to see whether the winning
of power here in America can be attained in any other way than by
armed struggle.
Peaceful struggle can be carried out through mass movements and can
— in special situations of crisis — compel governments
to yield, so that the popular forces eventually take power and establish
a proletarian dictatorship. Theoretically this is correct. When analysing
this on the American scene we must arrive at the following conclusions:
Generally speaking, on this continent there exist objective conditions
which impel the masses to violent actions against the bourgeois and
landlord governments; in many other countries there exist crises of
power and some subjective conditions too. Obviously, in the countries
where all these conditions are given, it would be criminal not to
act to seize power. In others where this situation does not occur,
it is right that different alternatives should emerge and that the
decision applicable to each country should come out of theoretical
discussion. The only thing history does not permit is that the analysts
and executors of proletarian policy should blunder. No one can claim
the role of vanguard party as if it were a university diploma. To
be a vanguard party means to stand in the forefront of the working
class in the struggle for the seizure of power, to know how to guide
this struggle to success by short cuts. That is the mission of our
revolutionary parties, and the analysis should be profound and exhaustive
in order that there will be no mistakes.
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At present there is in America a state of unstable balance between
oligarchic dictatorship and popular pressure. By "oligarchic"
we mean the reactionary alliance between the bourgeoisie and the landlord
class of each country with a greater or lesser preponderance of feudalism.
These dictatorships continue within certain frameworks of legality,
which they set up for themselves to facilitate their work during the
whole unrestricted period of their class domination, while we are
undergoing a stage in which the pressure of the people is very strong
and is knocking at the doors of bourgeois legality which its own authors
have to violate in order to cheek the impetus of the masses. The barefaced
violations of all established legislation — or of legislation
especially instituted to sanction their deeds — only heighten
the tension of the people's forces. The oligarchic dictatorship, therefore,
endeavours to use the old legal order to change constitutionality
and further suppress the proletariat without a head-on clash. Nevertheless,
this is just where a contradiction arises. The people now do not tolerate
the old, still less the new, coercive measures adopted by the dictatorship,
and try to smash them.
We must never forget the authoritarian and restrictive class character
of the bourgeois state.
Lenin refers to it thus:
The state is the product and the manifestation of the irreconcilability
of class antagonisms. The state arises when, where, and to the extent
that class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely,
the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.
(State and Revolution)
In other words, we must not allow the word democracy, used in an apologetic
manner to represent the dictatorship of the exploiting classes, to
lose its deeper meaning and acquire the meaning of giving the people
certain liberties, more or less good. To struggle only to restore
a certain degree of bourgeois legality, without at the same time raising
the question of revolutionary power, is to struggle for the return
of a certain dictatorial order established by the dominant social
classes; it is only a struggle for a lighter ball to be fixed to the
convict's chains.
In these conditions of conflict, the oligarchy breaks its own contracts,
its own mask of "democracy," and attacks the people, although
it always tries to make use of the superstructure it has formed for
oppression. At that moment, the question again arises: What is to
be done? Our answer is: Violence is not only for the use of the exploiters;
the exploited can use it too, and what is more, ought to use it at
the opportune moment. Martí said: "He who wages war in
a country that can avoid it is a criminal; so is he who fails to wage
a war that cannot be avoided."
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And Lenin said:
Social-Democracy has never taken a sentimental view of war. It unreservedly
condemns war as a bestial means of settling conflicts in human society.
But Social-Democracy knows that so long as society is divided into
classes, so long as there is exploitation of man by man, wars are
inevitable. This exploitation cannot be destroyed without war, and
war is always and everywhere begun by the exploiters, by the ruling
and oppressing classes.
He said this in 1905. Later, in "The War Program of the Proletarian
Revolution", in a profound analysis of the nature of class struggle,
he affirmed:
Whoever recognises the class struggle cannot fail to recognise civil
wars, which in every class society are the natural, and under certain
conditions, inevitable continuation, development and intensification
of the class struggle. All the great revolutions prove this. To repudiate
civil war, or to forget about it, would mean sinking into extreme
opportunism and renouncing the socialist revolution.
That is to say, we should not be afraid of violence, the midwife of
new societies; only such violence should be unleashed precisely at
the moment when the people's leaders find circumstances most favourable.
What will these be? Subjectively, they depend upon two factors that
are complementary and that in turn deepen in the course of the struggle:
the consciousness of the necessity of change and the certainty of
the possibility of this revolutionary change. These two factors, coupled
with the objective conditions — which in nearly all of America
are highly favourable for the development of struggle with the firm
will to attain it as well as the new correlation of forces in the
world, determine the form of action.
However far away the socialist countries may be, their favourable
influence will make itself felt among the fighting peoples who will
be given more strength by their enlightening example. On the 26th
of July this year (1963), Fidel Castro said:
And the duty of the revolutionaries, especially at this moment, is
to know how to recognise and how to take advantage of the changes
in the correlation of forces which have taken place in the world,
and to understand that these changes facilitate the struggle of the
peoples. The duty of revolutionaries, of Latin American revolutionaries,
is not to wait for the change in the correlation of forces to produce
a miracle of social revolutions in Latin America, but to take full
advantage of everything in it that is favourable to the revolutionary
movement — and to make revolution!
There are people who say: 'We admit that in certain specific cases
revolutionary war is the proper way to attain political power; but
where can we find those great leaders, the Fidel Castros who will
lead us to victory?" Fidel Castro, like every human being, is
a product of history. The military and political leaders, merged if
possible into one man, who may lead risings in America, will learn
the art of war in the exercise of war itself. There is no job or profession
which can be learned from textbooks alone. In this case, struggle
is the great teacher.
Naturally the task is not simple, nor is it exempt from serious threats
all the way along.
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During the development of the armed struggle there appear two moments
of extreme danger for the future of the revolution. The first of these
arises in the preparatory stage and the way it is dealt with gives
the measure of the determination for struggle and clarity of purpose
of the people's forces. When the bourgeois state advances against
the positions of the people, obviously there must emerge a process
of defence against the enemy who attacks in this moment of superiority.
If the minimum subjective and objective conditions have already been
developed, the defence must be armed but not in such a way that the
people's forces become mere recipients of the enemy's blows; nor should
the stage of armed defence be transformed into nothing but a last
refuge for the pursued. Guerrilla fighting, though at a given moment
it may be a defensive movement of the people, carries within itself
the capacity to attack the enemy and must constantly develop it. This
capacity is what determines, as time goes on, the catalytic character
of the people's forces. That is to say, guerrilla fighting is not
passive self-defence; it is defence with attack, and from the moment
it is recognised as such, it has as a final perspective the winning
of political power.
This moment is important. In social processes the difference between
violence and non-violence cannot be measured by the number of shots
exchanged; it depends on concrete and fluctuating situations. And
one must know how to recognise the exact moment when the people's
forces, conscious of their relative weakness but at the same time
of their strategic strength, should take the initiative so that the
situation does not worsen. The balance between the oligarchic dictatorship
and the pressure of the people must be upset. The dictatorship constantly
tries to function without resorting to force. Being obliged to appear
without disguise, that is to say, in its true aspect as a violent
dictatorship of the reactionary classes, will contribute to its unmasking,
and this will deepen the struggle to such an extent that it will not
be able to turn back. The resolute beginning of long-range armed action
depends on how the people's forces fulfil their function, which amounts
to the task of forcing a decision on the dictatorship — to draw
back or to unleash the struggle.
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The skilful avoidance of the other moment of danger depends on the
ability to develop the growth of the people's forces. Marx always
advised that once the revolutionary process has begun, the proletariat
must strike and strike without rest. A revolution that does not constantly
deepen is a revolution that goes back. The combatants, once wearied,
begin to lose faith, and then some of the bourgeois manoeuvres to
which we have been so accustomed may bear fruit. These can be the
holding of elections to hand over the government to some other gentleman
with a more honeyed voice and a more angelic face than the outgoing
dictator, or the staging of a coup by reactionaries, generally headed
by the army and supported, directly or indirectly, by progressive
forces. There are others as well, but it is not our intention to analyse
such tactical stratagems.
Let us focus our main attention on the operation of the military coup
mentioned above. What can militarists contribute to true democracy?
What kind of loyalty can be asked of them, if they are mere instruments
of domination by the reactionary classes and imperialist monopolies
and, as a caste whose worth rests only on the weapons in their hands,
they aspire only to maintain their prerogatives?
When, in situations difficult for the oppressors, the military men
conspire to overthrow a dictator who in fact is finished, it can be
taken for granted that they do so because they are unable to preserve
their class prerogatives without extreme violence, a procedure which
generally does not coincide with the interests of the oligarchies
at that moment.
This statement certainly does not mean rejecting the services of military
men as individual fighters who, separated from the society they have
served, have, in fact, rebelled against it. And they should be made
use of in accordance with the revolutionary line they adopt as fighters
and not as representatives of a caste.
Long ago, Engels, in the preface to the third edition of The Civil
War in France, remarked:
The workers were armed after every revolution; . . therefore the disarming
of the workers was the first commandment for the bourgeois at the
helm of the state. Hence after every revolution won by the workers,
a new struggle, ending with the defeat of the workers." (Quoted
by Lenin in State and Revolution)
This play of continuous struggles in which some formal change is brought
about and then strategically withdrawn, has been repeated for decades
in the capitalist world. But the continuous deception of the proletariat
along these lines has been practised periodically for more than a
century.
There is also a danger that the leaders of the progressive parties,
desiring to prolong conditions more favourable for revolutionary action
by using certain aspects of bourgeois legality, lose sight of the
goal, something that is very common in the course of action, and forget
the definite strategic objective: the seizure of power.
These two difficult moments of the revolution which we have briefly
analysed can be surmounted when the Marxist-Leninist party leaders
are capable of clearly seeing the implications of the moment and of
mobilising the masses to the maximum, leading them onto the correct
path of resolving fundamental contradictions.
In elaborating the thesis, we have assumed that eventually the idea
of armed struggle as well as the formula of guerrilla warfare as a
method of fighting will be accepted. Why do we think that guerrilla
warfare is the correct way in the present situation in America? There
are fundamental arguments which in our opinion determine the necessity
of guerrilla action as the central axis of the struggle in America.
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First, accepting as true that the enemy will struggle to maintain
itself in power, it is necessary to consider destroying the oppressor-army.
To do this, it is necessary to confront it with a people's army. This
army is not born spontaneously; it must be armed from the enemy's
arsenal and this demands a long hard struggle in which the people's
forces and their leaders will always be exposed to attack by superior
forces and be without adequate conditions of defence and manoeuvrability.
On the other hand, the guerrilla nucleus, established in areas suitable
for fighting, ensures the security and continuity of the revolutionary
command. The urban forces commanded by the general staff of the people's
army can perform actions of the utmost importance. But the eventual
destruction of these groups would not kill the soul of the revolution,
its leadership. This would continue to spark the revolutionary spirit
of the masses from its rural stronghold, organising new forces for
other battles.
Moreover, in this area begins the construction of the future state
apparatus entrusted with leading the class dictatorship efficiently
during the whole period of transition. The longer the struggle, the
greater and more complicated the administrative problems, and to solve
them cadres will be trained for the difficult task of consolidating
power and economic development at a later stage.
Secondly, the general situation of the Latin American peasantry and
the increasingly explosive character of its struggle against feudal
rule in the framework of an alliance between local and foreign exploiters.
Returning to the Second Declaration of Havana:
At the outset of the past century, the peoples of America freed themselves
from Spanish colonialism, but they did not free themselves from exploitation.
The feudal landlords assumed the authority of the governing Spaniards,
the Indians continued in their painful serfdom, the Latin American
man remained a slave one way or another, and the minimum hopes of
the peoples died under the power of the oligarchies and the tyranny
of foreign capital. This is the truth of America, to one or another
degree of variation. Latin America today is under a more ferocious
imperialism, more powerful and ruthless than the Spanish colonial
empire.
What is Yankee imperialism's attitude confronting the objective and
historically inexorable reality of the Latin American revolution?
To prepare to fight a colonial war against the peoples of Latin America;
to create an apparatus of force to establish the political pretexts
and the pseudo-legal instruments underwritten by the representatives
of the reactionary oligarchies, in order to curb, by blood and by
iron, the struggle of the Latin American peoples.
This objective situation demonstrates the latent, unused strength
in our peasants and the necessity to utilise it for the liberation
of America.
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Thirdly, the continental character of the struggle.
Could this new stage of the emancipation of America be conceived as
a confrontation of two local forces struggling for power in a given
territory? Hardly. The struggle between all the forces of the people
and all the forces of repression will be a struggle to the death.
This too is forecast by the passages quoted above.
The Yankees will intervene because of solidarity of interests and
because the struggle in America is decisive. In fact, they are already
intervening in the preparation of repressive forces and the organisation
of a continental apparatus of struggle. But from now on they will
do so with all their energy; they will strike the people's forces
with all the destructive weapons at their disposal. They will try
to prevent the consolidation of revolutionary power; and if it should
be successful anywhere, they will renew their attack. They will not
recognise it. They will try to divide the revolutionary forces. They
will introduce all types of saboteurs, create frontier problems, engage
other reactionary states to oppose it, and will try to strangle the
new state economically — in a word, to annihilate it.
This being the picture in America, it is difficult to achieve and
consolidate victory in a country that is isolated. The unity of the
repressive forces must encounter the unity of the people's forces.
In all the countries in which oppression becomes unbearable, the banner
of rebellion must be raised, and this banner of historical necessity
will have a continental character. As Fidel said, the Andes will be
the Sierra Maestra of America, and all the immense territories that
make up this Continent will become the scene of a life-and-death struggle
against the power of imperialism.
We cannot tell when this struggle will acquire a continental character
nor how long it will last; but we can predict its advent and its triumph,
because it is the inevitable result of historical, economic and political
conditions and its direction cannot be changed. It is the task of
the revolutionary force in each country to initiate it when the conditions
are present, regardless of the situation in other countries. The general
strategy will emerge as the struggle develops. The prediction of the
continental character of the struggle is borne out by analysis of
the strength of each contender, but this does not in the least exclude
independent outbreaks. Just as the beginning of the struggle in one
part of a country is bound to develop it throughout its area, the
beginning of a revolutionary war contributes to the development of
new conditions in the neighbouring countries.
The development of revolution has normally produced high and low tides
in inverse proportion: to the revolutionary high tide corresponds
the counter-revolutionary low tide; and conversely at moments of revolutionary
decline, there is a counter-revolutionary ascendancy. At such moments
the situation of the people's forces becomes difficult, and they should
resort to the best defence measures in order to suffer the least loss.
The enemy is extremely powerful, continental in stature. Therefore
the relative weaknesses of the local bourgeoisie cannot be analysed
with a view to making decisions within restricted limits. Still less
can one think of an eventual alliance of these oligarchies with an
armed people. The Cuban Revolution has sounded the alarm. The polarisation
of forces is becoming complete: exploiters on one side and exploited
on the other. The mass of the petty bourgeoisie will lean to one side
or the other according to their interests and the political skill
with which it is handled; neutrality will be an exception. This is
how revolutionary war will be.
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Let us consider the way a guerrilla centre can start.
Nuclei of relatively few persons choose places favourable for guerrilla
warfare, sometimes with the intention of launching a counter-attack
or to weather a storm, and there they begin to take action. But the
following must be made clear: At the beginning, the relative weakness
of the guerrilla fighters is such that they should only endeavour
to pay attention to the terrain in order to become acquainted with
the surroundings, establish connections with the population and fortify
the places which eventually will be converted into bases.
A guerrilla unit can survive only if it starts by basing its development
on the three following conditions: constant mobility, constant vigilance,
constant wariness. Without the adequate use of these elements of military
tactics, the unit will find it hard to survive. It must be remembered
that the heroism of the guerrilla fighter at such times consists in
the scope of the planned objective and the long series of sacrifices
that must be made in order to attain it.
These sacrifices will not mean daily combat or face-to-face struggle
with the enemy; they will assume forms more subtle and difficult for
the individual guerrilla fighter to endure physically and mentally.
The guerrillas will perhaps suffer heavily from the attacks of enemy
armies, at times be split up while those taken prisoner will be martyred.
They will be pursued like hunted animals in the areas they have chosen
to operate in, with the constant anxiety of having the enemy on their
track, and on top of all this with the constant doubt that in some
cases the terrorised peasants will give them away to the repressive
troops in order to save their own skins. They have no alternative
but death or victory at times when death is a concept a thousand times
present, and victory a myth only a revolutionary can dream of.
That is the heroism of the guerrilla. That is why it is said that
to be on the march is also a form of fighting, and to avoid combat
at a given moment is another form. Faced with the general superiority
of the enemy, the way to act is to find a form of tactics with which
to gain a relative superiority at a chosen point, either by being
able to concentrate more troops than the enemy or by making the best
use of the terrain to secure advantages that upset the correlation
of forces. In these conditions tactical victory is assured; if relative
superiority is not clear, it is preferable not to take action. As
long as one is in a position to choose the "how" and the
"when," no battle should be fought which will not end in
victory.
Guerrilla forces will grow and be consolidated within the framework
of the great politico-military action of which they are a part. And
within this framework they will go on forming the bases, which are
essential for their success. These bases are points which the enemy
can penetrate only at the cost of heavy losses; they are bastions
of the revolution, both shelters and starting points for bolder and
more distant raids.
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Such a time will come if the difficulties of both tactical and political
discipline have been overcome. The guerrillas must never forget their
function as vanguard of the people, the mandate entrusted to their
care, and therefore they should create the necessary political conditions
for the establishment of a revolutionary power based on the full support
of the masses. The main demands of the peasantry should be met to
the degree and in the form which circumstances permit, so as to bring
about the unity and solidarity of the whole population. If the military
situation is difficult from the first moments, the political situation
will be no less delicate; and if a single military error can wipe
out the guerrillas, a political error can check their development
for a long period.
The struggle is politico-military; so it must develop, and so it must
be understood.
In the course of its growth guerrilla fighting reaches a point at
which its capacity for action covers a given region, for which there
are too many men and too great a concentration. Then begins the beehive
action, in which one of the commanding officers, a distinguished guerrilla,
hops to another region and repeats the chain development of guerrilla
warfare, but still subject to a central command.
Now, it is necessary to point out that one cannot hope for victory
without the formation of a people's army. The guerrilla forces can
be expanded to a certain size; the people's forces, in the cities
and in other enemy-occupied zones, can inflict losses, but the military
potential of the reactionaries would remain intact. It must always
be remembered that the final outcome should be the annihilation of
the enemy. Therefore all these new zones that have been created, as
well as the penetrated zones behind the enemy lines and the forces
operating in the principal cities, should be under a unified command.
It cannot be claimed that there exists among guerrilla forces the
closely linked chain of command that characterises an army, but there
is a strategic command. Within certain conditions of freedom of action,
the guerrillas should carry out all the strategic orders of the central
command, which is set up in one of the safest and strongest areas,
preparing conditions for the union of the forces at a given moment.
The guerrilla war or war of liberation will generally have three stages:
First, the strategic defensive when a small force nibbles at the enemy
and makes off, not to shelter in passive defence within a small circumference,
but rather to defend itself by limited attacks which it can carry
out successfully. After this, comes a state of equilibrium, during
which the possibilities of action on the part of both the enemy and
the guerrillas are established; then comes the final stage of overrunning
the repressive army, ending in the capture of the big cities, large-scale
decisive encounters and the total annihilation of the enemy.
After reaching a state of equilibrium, when both sides are on guard
against each other, in the ensuing development guerrilla war acquires
new characteristics. The concept of manoeuvre is introduced: big columns
attack strong points; and mobile warfare with the shifting of forces
and of considerable means of attack. But owing to the capacity of
resistance and counter-attack that the enemy still retains, this war
of manoeuvre does not entirely replace guerrilla fighting; it is only
one form of action taken by the larger guerrilla forces until finally
they crystallise into a people's army with army corps. Even at this
time, the guerrillas will play their "original" guerrilla
role, moving ahead of the actions of the main forces, destroying communications
and sabotaging the whole defensive apparatus of the enemy.
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We have predicted that the war will be continental. This means it
will be protracted; it will have many fronts, and will cost much blood
and countless lives over a long period. But besides this, the phenomena
of polarisation of forces that are occurring in America, the clear
division between exploiters and exploited that will exist in future
revolutionary war, mean that when the armed vanguard of the people
seizes power, the country or countries that attain it will, at one
and the same time, liquidate both their imperialist and national exploiting
class oppressor. The first stage of the socialist revolution will
have crystallised; the people will be ready to staunch their wounds
and begin to build socialism.
Will there be other possibilities less bloody?
Some time ago, there took place the last dividing up of the world,
in which the United States took the lion's share of our continent;
today the imperialists of the Old World are developing anew, and the
might of the European Common Market is threatening the United States
itself. All this might lead to the belief that it will be possible
to watch as spectators the inter-imperialist struggle in order to
attain further advances, perhaps in alliance with the stronger national
bourgeoisie. Apart from the consideration that in class struggle a
passive policy never brings good results and that alliances with the
bourgeoisie, however revolutionary they may appear at a given moment,
have only a transitory character, the time factor will induce us to
take another path. The sharpening of the fundamental contradiction
in America appears to be so rapid that it upsets the "normal"
development of the contradictions within the imperialist camp in its
struggle for markets.
 The
national bourgeoisie is for the most part united with United States
imperialism and has to throw in its lot with the latter in each country.
Even cases of agreements or coincidences of contradictions between
the U. S. and the national bourgeoisie and other imperialists happen
within the framework of a fundamental struggle that in the course
of its development inevitably embraces all the exploited and all the
exploiters. The polarisation of antagonistic forces among class enemies
is so far more rapid than the development of the contradictions among
exploiters over the division of the spoils. There are two camps: the
alternative becomes clearer for every individual and for every particular
stratum of the population.
The Alliance for Progress is a design to check what cannot be checked.
But if the advance of the European Common Market, or any other imperialist
group on the American market, were more rapid than the development
of the fundamental contradiction, the people's forces would only have
to be introduced as a wedge into the open breach, carrying on this
whole struggle and utilising the new intruders with a clear consciousness
of their final intentions. Not a single position, not a single weapon,
not a single secret, should be given up to the class enemy, under
penalty of losing all.
The eruption of the struggle in America has actually begun. Will its
storm centre be in Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador?
Are these present skirmishes only a manifestation of a restlessness
that has not come to fruition? It does not matter what will be the
result of today's struggles. It does not matter, so far as the final
result is concerned, whether one or another movement is temporarily
defeated. What is certain is the determination to struggle which ripens
day by day, the consciousness of the necessity for revolutionary change,
the certainty that it is possible.
This is a prediction. We make it with the conviction that history
will prove us right. An analysis of the subjective and objective factors
in America and in the imperialist world points to us the accuracy
of these assertions based on the Second Declaration of Havana.
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