Guerrilla Warfare: The Functionality Of Che Guevara's Foco Theory (case Studies)

Emery Coxe Professor Haynes History 6 February 23, 2009 The Functionality of the Foco Theory The key ideological figure of Latin American revolutionary movements in the second-half of the 20th century, Che Guevara burst into the international limelight in 1956 as an integral member of the hard core of revolutionaries – the foco – invading Cuba to overthrow the Batista regime. And it was during this formative stint in Cuba that Che, a Marxist advocate for worldwide struggle against imperialism, expounded the first manifestation of his theory of guerrilla warfare, one that would be amended over the years, reducing the qualifications for revolutionary struggle while preserving the fundamental tenets of his theory. Central to Che’s theory was his belief in the foco – that a “small band of men, the armed vanguard” could, when certain base conditions existed, induce the subjective conditions for revolution, and thus foment an uprising and achieve social justice (Guevara, 55). Though he later placed less emphasis on the necessity of these core conditions for revolution, a revision that has generated much criticism of his theory and arguably precipitated his demise, Guevara was resolute in his conviction that a small group of ideologically committed individuals could disseminate the message of their movement and sow the seeds of revolution among the populace. Although Guevara’s theory perhaps romanticized the critical importance of the foco to the revolution’s success, it was accurate in stressing the necessity of a committed organization – not necessarily a political party – central to the revolution that would spread the political message and unify popular support. By analyzing the revolutionary movements that occurred in the 1960s and 70s in Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and Bolivia,

parts of Guevara’s foco theory are validated – namely, his faith in the ability of a foco to create the subjective conditions for revolution and instigate the masses through political effort – while others are discredited – his conviction that the foco alone can overcome a dictatorship without external help. Before examining the foco theory through the lens of the aforementioned revolutionary struggles, the principles of Guevara’s theory must first be delineated. While much of Guevara’s seminal Guerrilla Warfare and other writings reiterate tenets of guerrilla warfare established in Mao Tse-tung’s On Guerrilla Warfare and other texts, he did offer several unique thoughts on the matter. First, he asserted that when “forces of oppression…maintain themselves in power against established law” and “people…see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate” – significantly, this excludes governments operating under the guise of constitutional legality – then guerrilla fighters themselves, without the backing of a separate political organization, could create the subjective conditions for war through propaganda and appeal efforts aimed towards the peasantry (Guevara, 51). In the words of Che, “as a product of the interaction between the guerrilla fighter and his people, a progressive radicalization appears which further accentuates the revolutionary characteristics of the movement and gives it a national scope” (Guevara, 74). This conjecture was a break from previous guerrilla texts in that it rejected the necessity of a vanguard party that would propagate the ideology of the revolutionaries and engender public support. Additionally, Guevara developed the concept of a foco – a group of between 30 and 50 men of similar social background as the peasantry – as the “vanguard of a popular army” and the “political and military center of [a] revolution” that endeavors

to “minimalize, neutralize, and exterminate the ability of the government to curb and opposition and maintain stability”, thus acting as a “catalyst of revolution” by converting the small-scale actions of the foco into a mass uprising (Moreno, 116-119). Later, Che expanded the scope of his belief in the ability of the foco to foster revolution, stating that oligarchic dictatorships operating under the pretense of democracy can be felled by “[obliging] the dictatorship to resort to violence, thereby unmasking its true nature as the dictatorship of the reactionary social classes” (Guevara, 154). Once the government has been pushed to violence, “the development of the struggle will bring about the general strategy”, and “as vanguard of the people…[the foco will] create the necessary political conditions for the establishment of a revolutionary power based on the masses’ support” (Guevara, 157,159). Lastly, Che emphasized the international nature of the struggle against imperialism, calling for a “world confrontation…to eliminate the foundations of imperialism” and achieve the “liberation of all people” (Guevara, 172). Implicit in this declaration is the belief that the revolutionaries need not be citizens of the country in which they are fighting, and that international revolutionaries can galvanize the national spirit of a country to rebel against an unjust government. The success of the Cuban revolution – fundamental to Che’s development of the foco theory – substantiates the notion that a hard core of guerrillas can, through politicization of the peasantry, induce the subjective conditions for revolution to uproot an oppressive government. Cuba in the 1950s was ripe for revolution, exhibiting many of the requisite objective conditions: the majority of its economy relied on a single crop – sugar production, an economic endeavor controlled by and benefitting US interests that resulted in seasonal unemployment; corrupt political practices allowed dictators to

manipulate and consolidate power in the government, furthering their own and US interests through political strong-arming; and tensions arose from the strong US influence in Cuba, particularly due to the corruption that characterized the US-Cuban relationship (Skidmore, 300-5). After a botched landing in Cuba that decimated the majority of the 26th of July Movement’s forces, the remaining revolutionaries – about twenty guerrillas, including Fidel and Raúl Castro, and Che Guevara – fled to the Sierra Maestra mountains, where they rebuilt their troops and began fostering the subjective conditions for war in Cuba, mainly through politicization efforts that legitimized the guerrillas and weakened the Batista government (Skidmore, 306). Following two months of relative inactivity, the guerrillas – who recognized that the erosion of Batista’s foreign support was critical to toppling his regime – achieved their first major success at propagandizing their movement with the help of Herbert Matthews, a journalist for the New York Times who wrote a series of articles on the rebels that gave them “international status overnight” and put Batista “on the defensive in world public opinion” (Skidmore, 307). This publicity brought the rebels new recruits: 58 men, mainly of middle-class origin, who had joined to combat the “brutality, corruption, and antinationalism of the politicians” (Skidmore, 307). Aside from seeking international support, guerrillas in the mountains “took a strong interest in [the] people’s fate because they needed peasant support to survive in the mountains” (Skidmore, 307). Months of political work among the peasantry eventually bore fruits: “peasants and landowners began to recognize rebel forces as the government of the region by paying taxes to and obtaining protection from the rebel forces” (Moreno, 125). In addition to political endeavors, the foco coordinated military strikes, first at La

Plata and El Uvero, two military bases, and their successes lent credibility to the movement and precipitated new fronts against the Batista government – student movements and anti-government uprisings – that spread a “generalized belief of dissatisfaction” and “[gave] credit to the foco as the only credible challenge to the forces of the government” (Moreno, 124-5). As guerrilla warfare intensified from 1957 to 1958, Batista was pushed to adopt increasingly repressive tactics, such as torture and execution, actions that produced “new rebel adherents” (Skidmore, 308). Further civil unrest developed, prompting Cuban bishops to appeal for a “government of national unity”, and moreover, the United States, whose support of Batista was crucial to his rule, began withdrawing their interests from Cuba, beginning with an arms embargo placed on the Batista government (Skidmore, 309). As the revolution continued through 1958 and into 1959, the foco reinforced their position at the forefront of the movement and solidified their role as vanguard of the movement: the rebels made it clear that the llano leaders – political leaders in the cities – would not “impose their will upon the [revolutionaries]”, and by January 1959, “everybody accepted [the foco’s] leadership” (Moreno, 128). This sequestration of popular support assured Castro’s succession to power when Batista fled the country on New Year’s Day, 1959 because the foco had “[remained] the key political institution thereafter” (Skidmore, 309). An application of Che’s foco theory to Cuba vindicates his assertion that the foco can develop the subjective conditions for revolution. Upon establishing camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains, guerrilla soldiers faced a Cuba that objectively satisfied the conditions for revolution – due largely to the corruption of the Batista regime – yet was not on the brink of disaster. The aforementioned actions of the guerrillas – which align

extensively with the guerrilla tactics outlined in Che’s Guerrilla Warfare – had “[accelerated] and spread the process of social disintegration of the old structure to the whole system…[and] made people aware of such a situation” (Moreno, 129). Moreover, “when the masses decided to act, they followed the lead of those who had been effectively active…the leaders of the foco were now to become the leaders of a mass struggle” (Moreno, 129). To put it another way, the actions of the foco had indeed created the subjective conditions for revolution, and instigated an uprising in which they were the primary player. In the Nicaraguan case, once more is Che’s conviction that a foco can induce the necessary conditions to precipitate a full-blown insurgency affirmed. However, the success of the FSLN was due largely to political workings that developed as a result of FSLN activities, and the support of external nations, and thus, the notion that the foco will resultantly win the induced uprising of its own accord cannot be maintained without qualification. As in Cuba, Nicaragua displayed a preponderance of objective conditions critical to the development of revolutionary struggle: the Somoza dynasty “epitomized the Caribbean-type dictatorship described by Che Guevara as the ideal target of the guerrilla foco”; furthermore, Nicaragua’s economy relied heavily on the export of a small number of crops, which in turn promoted inequality in land distribution, sowing discontent among rural peoples (Loveman, 345-7). In July 1961, the FSLN – the foco in Nicaragua – was founded following an “upsurge of anti-Somoza activity” since 1959 that entailed, among other conflicts, violent clashes between the repressive National Guard and student organizations (Loveman, 350). Rooted in the tradition of the Nicaraguan war hero Augusto Sandino, the FSLN set out on a course of revolution that would last nearly

20 years. The FSLN propagandized and recruited for their cause through student movements such as the FER, which disseminated the social ideals of the revolution through protest and by “organizing study circles, which were then organized into teams, teams that later became cells of the Frente Sandinista” (Cabezas, 32). Additionally, the FSLN “worked to incorporate local peasants and workers into a network of sympathizers and intelligence gatherers” (Loveman, 353). Oftentimes, this entailed personal contact between peasants and FSLN guerrillas, centered on principles such as land reform and class struggle. In the words of Cabezas, “we invited [the peasants] to struggle and to fight for agrarian reform” (211). This political work was accompanied by small-scale guerrilla operations and several major successes for the FSLN, such as the capture of Somoza’s brother-in-law in 1974 in an attack that earned massive publicity for the movement. As the FSLN continued spreading their message and organizing resistance to Somoza’s government, they “[created] a heroic, even mythic, image of the valiant muchachos who, against impossible odds, continued to fight the Somoza dictatorship” that garnered increasing peasant support (Loveman, 354). Nevertheless, the brutal repression of the Somoza regime, which failed to deter the foco, hacked away at the leadership of the movement – “most FSLN leaders of the 1960’s were dead, in prison, or in exile” by 1970 – and at times brought the FSLN to the brink of extermination (Loveman, 354). Though the FSLN had followed Che’s school of guerrilla warfare to create subjective conditions for revolution and had succeeded in establishing a large rural support base, their efforts came to fruition largely due to a combination of political opposition, social discontent induced by non-FSLN sources, and foreign support (or lack thereof). Drought from 1970-72, economic turmoil, and “modernization of

agribusiness… disrupted rural Nicaraguan society, and served as a prelude to the crisis of the late 1970s” (Loveman, 357). Furthermore, a massive earthquake in Managua in 1972 that left the city crippled and devastated exacerbated tensions between Nicaraguans and the government because Somoza and his cronies ruthlessly exploited the situation to make ludicrous profits. The FSLN capitalized on the public’s growing dissatisfaction: “in the period 1970-74 with greater political organization work among the masses, and with a considerable development of the vanguard’s internal structures…the Sandinist war took great leaps forward in the accumulation of political, organizational, material, and military force” (Loveman, 359). As encounters increased between the FSLN and the National Guard, Somoza’s forces became increasingly brutal and repressive, “[creating] more and more enemies of the dynasty and a growing tide of unfavorable publicity in the US” (Loveman, 360). The country was finally pushed to insurrection following Somoza’s assassination of Pedro Chamorro, whose murder galvanized anti-Somoza opposition throughout the country and throughout organizations, leading to a general strike that paralyzed the country for a month (Loveman, 362). Soon, the country was in the grips of a civil war led by the FSLN that lasted until July 1979, when revolutionary forces finally ousted Somoza. Veritably, the FSLN had succeeded in creating a revolution and uprooting an unjust government using the foco theory; however, their success cannot be viewed as a complete validation of Che’s theory because it succeeded due to substantial external help, which contradicts Che’s belief that the foco alone is sufficient to overthrow a dictatorship. First, throughout the period of struggle, Somoza faced opposition from many different aspects of society, from agrarian to bourgeois, encompassing students groups, such as the FER, Christian groups (MCR), and many others. In fact, “the

bourgeois opposition itself opened up the crisis of the Somoza regime and actually led the first phase of the revolution. It was only at the end of the process, with the help of Somoza’s intransigence, that the FSLN captured the leadership of the struggle” (Loveman, 357). Additionally, the political work of the FSLN, far from relying strictly on popular appeals made by the foco, “required the incorporation of entrepreneurs, clerics, workers, and…political elites” (Loveman, 366). Loveman and Davies go one step further, charging that the FSLN would have failed even with political aid from outside sources had the FSLN not received “extensive assistance from…Costa Rica, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, and Cuba” (366). Lastly, the increasing disapproval from the US for Somoza, particularly over his human rights abuses, ultimately led to the withdrawal of US political support for the Somoza regime, which allowed the masses to unite in rebellion against the National Guard. While these events were crucial to the FSLN’s ultimate success, they are unaccounted for in Che’s theory, and thus cast doubt not on the ability of the foco to create conditions, but rather on its ability to succeed of its own volition without external support. Though the Vietnam War was guided by General Vo Nguyen Giap’s application of Mao’s strategy of guerrilla warfare, it nevertheless offers demonstrates the ability of guerrilla forces to generate support for revolution among the masses, and to unite them for revolution against a common foe. Vietnam possessed the objective conditions for war in that there was substantial hatred for Diem’s repressive tactics and rigged elections; furthermore, the agrarian policy set up by French colonialists created tensions between landowners and peasants, who desired land reform. Originating in South Vietnam, the revolutionary movement was spearheaded by the National Liberation Front, “the symbol

of Vietnamese national aspirations and the vehicle for mobilizing support”, and for the intents and purposes of this analysis, the Vietnamese incarnation of a foco (Duiker, 143). Notably, the NLF and the entire revolutionary movement was backed by the DRV, the government and political organization of North Vietnam; this external support from a political organization, though a break from Che’s theory and the aforementioned cases, does not exclude Vietnam from an application of Che’s theory wholly. Much like the FSLN in Nicaragua, the NLF utilized personal contact between members and the populace to pull on nationalist aspirations and gain sympathy and support for the movement: as Truong Nhu Tang described, “I would make my approaches gently, talking over current happenings with my friends and associates, sounding out their political leanings and the intensity of their convictions” (85). Throughout the war in Vietnam, the NLF’s “religious preaching of nationalism and radical social change” – in particular, agrarian reform – was crucial to mobilizing mass support and creating the subjective conditions for revolution (Harrison, 147). The NLF additionally pursued small-scale guerrilla operations to complement their political front to increasingly spur revolutionary zeal among the rural populace in South Vietnam, but as the war dragged on, NLF fighting relied more heavily on North Vietnamese forces to “take over the brunt of heavy fighting”, and likewise, relied increasingly on conventional assaults (Elliot, 1116). Moreover, the revolutionary fighters received increasing “uninterrupted support” in terms of war materials and supplies from China and Russia to combat their enemies, and coupled with the withdrawal of US forces and tactical support from South Vietnam, this assistance allowed the NLF to overrun RVN in 1975 (Sorley, 382). Once again, the fact that the revolutionary forces in Vietnam succeeded due to external support – from North

Vietnam, China, Russia, Cambodia, and Laos – and the withdrawal of US interests in the conflict offers strong evidence negating Che’s assertion that the foco alone can lead a guerrilla movement to victory. Similarly, the external political influence of the DRV on the NLF again detracts from Che’s theory because it was critical to the development of ties with the aforementioned countries. Nevertheless, the war testifies to the ability of a guerrilla movement to generate a revolution by developing subjective conditions that motivate the populace to take up arms and struggle for freedom: the actions of the NLF in the South Vietnamese countryside to earn peasant support by championing nationalism and land reform changed the war from a conflict between small cadres of hard core opponents of Diem to one in which “275,000 [South Vietnamese] were killed in action” (Sorley, 383). The massive amount of military casualties alone evidences the support for the revolution that the ideological indoctrinations of the NLF instilled in the peasantry, and affirms that the military can indeed bring the people around to revolution by creating subjective conditions that compel them to rebel. Finally, by applying Che’s theory to the Bolivian case, where Che was caught and executed in 1967, the expansion of his theory – namely, that subjective conditions could be induced in countries that had, at least nominally, a democratic alternative – is disproved, and moreover, through the failure of the foco in this case, Che’s original assessment, that objective conditions for revolution must be met before subjective conditions can be induced, is reaffirmed. To begin, though Bolivia in the 1950s exhibited objective conditions for revolution – a weak mono-product economy, extreme disparities in landownership, and an “archaic, manorial social system” that exploited the Indian population – Che arrived in 1966 to a Bolivia that had “experienced fundamental

changes” due to a national revolution by the MNR in 1952 (Loveman, 314). Among other improvements from the MNR, “destruction of the Bolivian latifundia system” and a functional party system that held regular elections created a population that generally favored the Bolivian government (Loveman, 316, 318). Thus, because agrarian reform and political discontent were not viable ideals to gain popular support, Che’s foco had “no hope of creating the necessary subjective conditions among the peasantry” (Loveman, 322). The foco further damaged their chances of inciting a revolution by precipitating an irreparable rift with the PCB, eliminating a large portion of their potential support base in Bolivia and severing their political resources. This break occurred, in part, because the internationality of the foco – 21 of the 50 guerrillas were not Bolivian – troubled the PCB, who wanted Bolivian leaders to head the revolution; their internationality further attributed to their failure because they suffered from a “woeful lack of knowledge of the Bolivian geography”, a terrain that was already barely compatible with the desirable terrain described in Che’s theory (Loveman, 319-20). The foco’s unfamiliarity with the Bolivian countryside accelerated their ultimate demise by causing a separation of the their forces, one of which led by the Cuban, Joaquín, was wiped out in August, 1967 by Bolivian forces, thus destroying the majority of the foco and yielding the “seizure of all their supplies of food, medicine, and munitions” (Loveman, 323). A little over one month later, the Bolivian army, having recently increased the military prowess of their army with the addition of 600 US trained Bolivian Rangers, captured Che and the remainder of the foco, marking its end and the end of any “significant guerrilla activity in Bolivia” (Loveman, 325). The failure of Che and his foco to succeed at instigating a revolution provides historical evidence that simultaneously

rejects Che’s assertions that a foco can create a revolutionary movement where viable, or at least seemingly viable, political outlets exist and that international revolutionaries can foment a national rebellion, while upholds the validity of Che’s belief that prerequisite objective conditions must exist for a foco to achieve its aims, for clearly, his efforts collapsed in a country lacking these requirements. Though Che’s foco theory overestimates the capabilities of a dedicated group of individuals to create and win revolution, and though Che later amended his theories to further romanticize that revolution could be instigated without certain objective conditions for rebellion, particular concepts of his theory withstood the trials of history. However, when comparing the central tenet of Che’s theory – that of the foco – to its counterpart in Mao’s theory, the foco parallels, at least in part, the role political parties play in other schools of guerrilla warfare. In that regard, it becomes necessary to ask: if a foco is to espouse political ideology, and is to unite a population towards one common goal, and is to control governmental power once that goal has been achieved, what real differences – other than the resolve to fight – exist between a foco and a political party? And furthermore, if the foco resembles a political party in functionality, how much of a break does Che’s theory of guerrilla warfare represent from that of Mao?

Works Cited

Cabezas, Omar. Fire from the Mountain. New York: Crown, 1985. Duiker, William J. Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages, 1994. Elliott, David. The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930-1975. Chicago: East Gate Book, 2003. Guevara, Ernesto Che, Brian Loveman, and Thomas Davies. Guerrilla Warfare. Danbury: Scholarly Resources, Incorporated, 2002. Moreno, Jose. "Che Guevara on Guerrilla Warfare: Doctrine, Practice and Evaluation." Comparative Studies in Society and History. 2nd ed. Vol. 12. London: Cambridge UP, 1970. 114-33. Skidmore, Thomas E., and Peter H. Smith. Modern Latin America. London: Oxford UP, Incorporated, 2004. Sorley, Lewis. A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and the Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. New York: Harcourt Trade, 2007. Tang, Troung Nhu. A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath. New York: Vintage, 1986.