Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

create a guerrilla movement which would become later a popular army and a political
party. 109 This was the birth of the Partido de los Pobres (PDLP). 110
The government sent the army into Guerrero in order to stop the guerrilla
movements, but they also organised various development programmes. The authorities
modernised the area, bringing telecommunications, energy, and credit. It also built new
roads, which in fact helped the army penetrate the mountain communities. All this was
part of ‘una estrategia de combate y se proponían un objetivo: la desaparición, el
exterminio de los movimientos armados. Cuando ese objetivo se alcanzó, los programas
de desarrollo desaparecieron’. 111
Genaro and Lucio remained in the mountains organising their groups, although
they never worked together. In the early 1970, Genaro’s group was more visible in its
activities. During the following year, the government increased the number of soldiers
in Guerrero to 24,000, fully one-third of the total Mexican army. 112 The ACNR
organised kidnappings of public figures, including politicians and businessmen, and
demanded money to support their fight and to support families that had suffered
repression, as well as demanding the release of some of their fellow partisans. 113
Genaro died unexpectedly in a car accident with other members of the ACNR on
2 February 1972. That was the beginning of the end for the group. 114 After his death,
Lucio and the PDLP increased their struggle, but the army was all over Guerrero. It
placed check points in the roads, entered communities it believed supported the
109
Carlos Montemayor researched Lucio Cabañas’ guerrilla movement for years, writing a novel about it
which combined fact and fiction. It was called Guerra en el paraíso and was first published in 1991.
110
Castellanos, México armado… p. 120.
111
Montemayor, La Guerrilla Recurrente (México: Debate, 2007)... p. 23.
112
Castellanos, México armado… p. 126.
113
Abel Barrera Hernández, Sergio Sarmiento, ‘De la montaña roja a la policía comunitaria. Violencia y
militarización en la Montaña de Guerrero’ in Movimientos armados en México, Siglo XX, ed. by Verónica
Oikión Solano, Marta Eugenia García Ugarte, 3 vols (Mexico: El Colegio de Michoacán, Centro de
Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 2006), 3, p. 666.
114
Castellanos, México armado… p. 135-136.
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