revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

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worker and peasant masses of the
region and the whole territory in which
they operate . Guillen differed with Guevara stating :
Today the epicenter of the revolutionary war must be in the
great urban zones, where heavy artillery is not as efficient
as in the countryside for anihilating guerrillas tied to the
land (like the Peruvian guerrillas under the Luis de la Puenta
or the peasant republics in Columbia) . If a city is not
liberated in the course of a mobile revolutionary war, if the
population is on the side of the forces of liberation and space
is symbolically in the hands of the reactionary army in this
situation and until it is both politically and strategically
convenient to liberate the whole city, the enemy cannot employ
its heavy artillery without firing at its own cities . 9
Guillen's critique of Guevara and Castro's emphasis on rural guerrilla
warfare for the America's and the failure of rural guerrilla movements in
Peru, Colubmia, Venezuela and Guatamala caused Latin American revolution-
10
aries to make a reassessment of Cuba's political/military strategy .
Revolutionaries from various Latin American countries visited Guillen
for lessons on urban guerrilla warfare . With more than two thirds of the
population of Argentina,Uruguay, Venezuela and Chile living in cities,
and over 50 percent of the population in Mexico, Brazil and Columbia living
in town, urban guerrilla strategy seemed a feasible tactic .
The first urban guerrilla organization in
Latin America was named the
National Liberation Movement (Tupamaros) formed in Uruguay in 1973 . The
Tupamaros blazed the trail for other urban guerrilla organizations in the
region .
The name Tupamaros came from the name of Caudillo Tupac Armau, an
Inca who in 1780, staged an Agrarian rebellion for the independence of
9Donald C . Hodges, ed . Philosophy of the Urban Guerrilla, The Revolutionary
Writings of Abraham Guillen . (New York : William Morrow and Company,
1973), pp . 233-243 .
10 Moss, Urban Guerrilla Warfare, p . 4 .