Revolution: 20th century phenomenon; #2 (Reel 1)

Nine days before his death in the Bolivian town of Uganda us. Doctor I now still give outa. Wrote in his diary. A summary statement of his guerrilla activities in the month of September 1967. Monthly analysis. It should have been a month of recuperation. It was on the point of being still when the ambush into which me gal Coco Julio fell spoil everything. That was Dr. Paul Hadley professor of international relations at the University of Southern California speaking at the twenty sixth annual Institute on world affairs conducted as a special feature of the instructional program at San Diego State College the institute is dedicated to the use of the free academic forum for the presentation and discussion of current and continuing issues of international significance. The institute consists of a three week series of public lectures and panel discussions by eminent authorities in the field of world affairs. The main theme of this year's

Institute is expressed in one word revolution. Our speaker on this program served in the Department of State as written extensively and is currently the director of the Institute on world affairs at the University of Southern California. And now Dr. Paul Hadley addresses the Institute with his topic for discussion. The new revolutionary left in Latin America. Dr. Hadley thank. You. The topic as you know of them is the new revolutionary left. In Latin America. Before I'm through I shall probably quarrel with that title as I guess it's my privilege. Nine days before his death in the Bolivian town of. You get a US. Doctor and asked Oh give outta. Wrote in his diary. A summary statement of his guerrilla activities in the month of September. 1067.

Monthly analysis. It should have been a month of recuperation. It was on the point of being Saul when the ambush into which Miguel Julio fell spoil everything. And put us in a dangerous position. We had small clashes in which we killed a horse. Killed and wounded a soldier. And were by no exchanged shots with a patrol. We left the mules behind. And I believe that for a long time we shall not have any more animals of that type. Unless I should relapse into an asthmatic condition. The characteristics are the same as those of last month. Except that now of the Bolivian army is showing more effectiveness in action and the mass of peasants doesn't help us evolve. And have become informers. The most important tasks are to escape. And look for more propitious zones. And to re-establish contact.

Despite the fact that the whole apparatus. Is badly disjointed in the past. Where they have also given us hard blows. The long quotation is almost my speech. Because it tells I think in so summary a way. The problem is that I give Ana and his guerrillas. And the problems of many of the communist guerrillas in other countries lack of manpower. For health. Inadequacy of conditions and supplies. Suspicions on the part of the peasants increased quality on the part of the armies. Cleavage between the guerrillas and the Communist Party headquarters in the main city bus came to an ignominious and frustrating. 11 month expelled venture. During which died to give outer and an irregular score of Cuban and Bolivians scrambled

pitifully throughout a remote section of the Bolivian Andes. Where cold and hungry. Rarely enjoying anything but negative success. And eventually being tracked down by several hundred army regulars. This was the boasted transformation of the Andes into an international scene out of my Astra. Most noncommunist writers seem to accept the give out a defeat. As a sign that. Cuban export of revolution. Was at its lowest ebb just a year ago. The eminent Colombian statesman Alberto you had just come out to go. Write. The gorilla as Thierry. Died With give out. There will be many incidents in the vast Latin American world. But the penetration of the concept of armed struggle in the faith in the form of peasant guerillas. Has been stopped. And the Praxis has suffered a decisive stroke.

Fidel Castro a judgment of course is much different. In his funeral oration for his departed friend. Castro said. The enemies believe that they have defeated his guerrilla concepts. That they have defeated his viewpoints on the armed revolutionary struggle. He wrote in his message to the Latin American solidarity organization that if death surprised him at any place. It would be welcome. Provided that his battle cry had reached a receptive year and another hand were stretched out to grasp a weapon. It will not reach one receptive ear but millions of receptive ears. Says Castro. Inspired by his example. New commanders will arise from the rank and file of the people. Just as commanders have arisen. You know all Revolution. Shay was not thinking about a swift victory against the forces of the oligarchy. And of imperialism. He has experienced a guerrilla mind was trained for a long struggle of

five 10 15 or 20 years if necessary. And in July one thousand sixty eight. Cuban sources announced the renewal of guerrilla warfare even in Bolivia. Under the leadership of that as Chief Bolivian follower one entity they give our episode. For the futile end of a romantic adventure. Or the harbinger of a vast new Vietnam. Provides an excellent form for an examination. Of contemporary communist revolutionary theory. Specifically applied to Latin America. We shall want to consider Cuban our feet at least doctrine. As well as Trotskyite. Chinese. And the orthodox Russian concept. The Cuban revolution of course has always been for export. Depending upon internal conditions as well as into American defenses. And the amount of communist foreign aid

Castro's island has been a fountain of revolutionary activity since the earliest days of January 959. During all of these years. Cubans. Aided by Russian Chinese Eastern European and Viet Cong trainers. And principally by Russian material help. Have trained Latin Americans in guerrilla tactics. They have accompanied their graduates on forays into every country of the hemisphere including our own. And to the extent of their power have formatted and supplied subversive violence in a dozen states. Perhaps most actively in Venezuela Colombia and the Dominican Republic. Jake about his writings. Have expounded Cuban ideas. And Fidel Castro speeches. Have alternately threatened boasted and prophesied victory over the United States and its dependent ally. And since January of

1065. The various writings of the young French philosopher Regius de brézé have provided for millions of readers its philosophical exposition. Of violent revolutionary tactics. A primer. For Marxist insurrection in Latin America. Efforts by the Organization of American States to limit the expansion of the Cuban revolution have produced a defiant counter challenges. The first declaration of Havana 960 responded to the Organization of American States Declaration of San Jose. And called for the oppressed people of the hemisphere to struggle for their own liberation. Two months earlier. And asked to give out a had published rela warfare. Outlining his Cuban experience and stating three fundamental conclusions about armed revolution in the America's. Quote. Popular forces can

win a war against an army. One does not have ordinarily to wait for a revolutionary situation to arise. It can be created. In the underdeveloped countries of the Americas rural areas are the best battlefields for our revolution. Unquote. In December of the same year Speaking in Moscow. Give out I declare. Cuba stands ready to fulfill her communist designated goal as a model for armed revolution in Latin America. And when 18 months later they are allies excluded Cuba from the Organization of American States. Castro replied with the second declaration of Havana. A blueprint for a popular irregular revolutionary action the Latin American armies he writes. Are a set up and equipped for conventional warfare. When they are confronted with the irregular warfare of the passes. They become absolutely powerless. They lose ten men for every

revolutionary demoralization mounts rapidly when they are be set by an invisible and invincible army which provides them no chance to display their academy tactics. Hilbert was selected as the host of the first solidarity conference of the peoples of Africa Asia and Latin America. The tri Continental conference which was held in Havana. In January of 1066. With about 100 participating foreign delegations. Although the conference saw acrimonious infighting between the Chinese and Soviet representatives there was final agreement on the concept of supporting. National liberation movements. I vowed I was to be the base for fighting colonialism and neocolonialism. And the tri Continental committee was appointed to direct the program following the conference. The twenty seven Latin American delegations announced the formation of a Latin American

solidarity organization. To. Unite. Coordinate and impel the struggle against United States imperialism a country specifically designated for our assistance to the freedom fighters or to be Venezuela the white Amala conduit us Colombia Paraguayan and hate. The new alliance. Alas the Spanish letters for are going to be on like you know any kind of a sub solidarity that is spell in Spanish. The last are waves. The new organization made no secret of its plan to promote armed insurrection in Latin America. By August in 1957 when the first or last conclave was held in Havana. There was abundant evidence of increased Cuban support of revolutionary movements throughout the continent. Cuban president also vowed of course presided at the meeting stating that the only revolutionary strategy for Latin America.

Is the use of priority targets by revolutionary strategy. The country's first to be attacked by this kind of insurgent action would be then a sweller. White Amala. And Colombia. A long absent Che Guevara was named honorary president of the organization. And his phantom exploits see him as the leader of guerrilla forces in Bolivia. Where pray. And give out his message sent to the tri Continental Congress set forth the Cuban line. Our mission at first is to survive. Later we will demonstrate the perennial role of the gorilla. Carrying out armed propaganda in the enemy's connotation of the term. That is propaganda of gunshots. A battle is won and lost but still carried on against the enemy. A great example of the Invincible guerrilla. Firing up the masses of the dispossessed.

The galvanizing of the national spirit. Preparing for harder tasks. Resisting more violent repression. Hatred as a factor of the struggle. The intransigent hatred of the enemy that carries man beyond the limitations of his humanity. And turns him into an effective violent cold calculating machine that kills. Our soldiers must be thus people without hatred cannot triumph over a brutal enemy. During OJ's absence regimes to break came to Cuba. Spent long hours with Castro. Studied give out his writings. And served as a sometime courier between Fidel and his comrades in Bolivia. The published writings of these two men give out a hand and the brave. Provide the necessary documentation. For an understanding of the Cuban theory of revolution. Theories perhaps too scholarly a term. The essence of the Castro

give out a strategy is highly pragmatic. Responding to a Lenin statement. Without a revolutionary theory. There is no revolutionary movement. Give out a road. Revolutionary theory. As the expression of a social truth. Which surpasses any declaration of it. That is to say even if the theory is not known the revolution can succeed if historical reality is interpreted correctly. And if the forces. Are utilized correctly. And not only is Cuban revolutionary thought more pragmatic. It is more aggressive. Than its contemporary Russian counterpart which is ridiculed as the philosophy of tired old man. Most of the leaders as a matter of fact of the Latin American communist bureaucracy are between 60 and 70 years of age. And arthritis is playing havoc among them by jihadists and to

bray observers. There is a close tie between biology. And ideology. The Cuban approach does not be talked in the end of ideology. But its subordination to action. That's the concept of self defense. Is passe to the Cuban the founder of arms self-defense of the masses. Corresponds on the military level. To the failure of reformism. On the political level. Self-defense implies partial limited war revolutionary guerrilla warfare is total aggressive war. It's futile to establish a passive self defense zone as the Colombian Communists tried to do in market Talia. Until a substantial military victory has been won. The first stage of guerrilla revolutionary warfare is to set up a clandestine force. Completely independent of the civilian population. The objective of this force is the progressive destruction of the

enemy's military potential until military security is achieved. The rules are. Constant vigilance. Constant mistrust. Constant mobility. It establishes close contact with the passengers at a later stage at the earlier stage this would imperil both the gorilla. Who might be betrayed by the peasant. And the peasant. Who may reap the vengeance of the army. The role of the passages. Is a controversial aspect of this whole picture and there are Atari. They feed at least does. Have like to pretend that their victory in the Sierra Maestra in Cuba. Was an achievement of the peasant masses. And methe. First promulgated perhaps by John Paul Sartre in his book of Sartre on Cuba. Later Huber new Superman Swayze the American publishers of the socialist Journal Monthly Review. Wrote

in Cuba anatomy of a revolution. That Fidel Castro appeared to be the embodiment of the revolutionary will and energy of the peasantry. Now the only forces in the Sierra Maestra included very few persons. Even in the latter stages of the guerrilla war. By far the largest number of the recruits for Anti by Tista volunteers from the city's. Cuban peasants tended to remain suspicious. And even hostile. At the end of 958 just before the triumph in Cuba. Perhaps five hundred persons out of 50000 in the Sierra Maestra actually joined the rebel army give out a genocide the first peasant guerrillas. AS. Those who were residents of the Sierra Maestra and who had migrated from the lowlands. In search of a plot of land to own. And thus already

demonstrated in the most aggressive way. A love for the land. And it is wired to possess it. A group that displayed what might be called and I'm still quoting give outta. The spirit of the petty bourgeoisie. Of course this is orthodox Leninism. To incorporate the national borders Y Z elements into the early stages of revolution. As long as their participation can be absorbed. Into the main revolutionary stream. In the Andes. The cooperation of peasants in to going to give out is guerilla force never even began. The peasants were suspicious of Cuban Airlie and the fact that their own land reform program had been implemented. That an incipient national awareness was developing among the remote. Bolivian people. And that the army officers themselves. Were ethnically. Bolivian revolutionary leaders. Remove most

of the incentive. To follow their ragged foreign white man. Debray in an interview recently given in his prison. To the Chicago Daily News writer Georgy and Geir admitted that he was surprised. At the Bolivian army officers. They were Indians. They were people who were a part of the Bolivian revolution. And the people trusted them more than they did the Cuban foreigners. The city Fidel Castro says is a cemetery of revolutionaries. And resources. It now seems clear however that to give out a fellow into a romantic trap. Dung dug by Castro and buy himself. The glorious record of their Sierra Maestra campaign. Led them to exaggerate their autarky in the mountains and to minimize the constant flow of men and materiel from Havana to the Orient to minimize the regular landings of supplies by sea.

And the decadence of the regime. Debray is only partly correct. When he insists that it was not a Rousseau ist love of nature which took them to the mouth. But he says. An understanding of the need to build a rural base of strength. The strategy was successful in Cuba. But when in the isolated fastnesses of the Andes. Give out a quarrel with the Bolivian communist leader Mario. One day. He severed his own lifeline. Castro had declared that the supreme leadership must remain in the country. But leadership without power can be no more than a romantic symbol. As a corollary to this rural fout fallacy it's appropriate to emphasize again the biological aspect. Of the Castro give out a position. Remember give out I had said that there is a relationship between biology and ideology. The fighters of the Sierra Maestra were a young athlete trained in Mexico. Toughened by the

rugged life of the mountains when on June 14 one thousand sixty seven eight and a half years after his Cuban triumph given how to reach the age of 39. And was suffering from asthma he wrote in his diary. Inexorably the age is approaching. Which forces me to think of my future as a guerrilla fighter. And so I was inspired to write. In addition to the moral factor conviction. Physical Fitness. Is the most basic of all the skills needed for waging guerrilla war. A perfect Marxist education is not at the outset an imperative condition. I'm reminded of Fidel Castro's speech about the middle of his first year in office. Sometime I'm going to find an opportunity to read does copy tough going on physical aptitude is the prerequisite for all other app to. A minor point of limited theoretical appeal. But the armed struggle appears to have a rationale which theory knows nothing.

Physical leadership my cheez among the Latin American phrase much of. The reality is certainly a factor in the charisma of the girlie. How do you know. Where the revolutionary left is had any measure of success at all. One can usually find an impressive personal leader. The training now being given to counterinsurgency units in the Latin American armed forces. Is tending to offset this factor. And when the guerrilla leader is separated from his sources of supply. He loses not only his tactical advantage. But his political effectiveness as well. Another aspect of the Cuban program is the insistence that guerrilla warfare is essentially political. This I might say is one of the chief characteristics of the Cuban new left revolutionary philosophy. Girl warfare is essentially political. For this

reason the political cannot be counter posed to the military. Again. The personal cult of the Cuban revolutionaries eschews any kind of subordination to party bureaucracy. Which they insist will simply stall defy their enterprise. The entire political and military command. Should be placed in the hands of the guerrillas. They say. The true effective than gaiety of the revolution. Conversely the guerrilla movement itself cannot possibly develop as a military force. If it does not possess political. Domination military action which is not directed towards a consummate political goal. Is effort wasted. The guerrilla force is the party in embryo. And you will recall it was two or three years after Castro and his people established control in Cuba before they got around the organization of a party. Eventually after a

military victory has been won. The fighters will gradually convert him to political leaders and statesmen hopefully. And the country as the country is pacified. From this characteristically Latin American line of thinking. It follows that institutional development. Must wait. Until circumstances are suitable. In the meantime. The machinery of party democracy will remain undeveloped. And even the principles of communist democratic centralism. Must be put aside. The fetishes of political behavior. Heel actions political bargaining the balancing of interests and powers. All these things must be considered as the dubious advantages of peace. Peace itself is not really a desert or a Tim. But the man of action. The Barbuda of. Who sits in idle frustration in an office or on a stoop street corner muttering to himself. Say I couple and I strike get out I

mean that our beautiful little war is gone. The final characteristic of this social phenomenon. The political leadership of the guerrilla is its implication for the class struggle. The peasant is drawn into the movement because of his petty bourgeois yearning for his own land. And some vague awareness perhaps of national drives against the foreign capital interests which he is led to believe are responsible for his misery. They present as an proletarian ised. As he submerges his personal desires. To the welfare of the guerrilla force. This disciplined peasant can unless he is disillusioned. Form an integral part of the revolutionary Qadri. Along with his urban worker comrades. And the previously proletarian ies presence of the great capitalist semi mechanized farms. All under the autocratic leadership. Of the charismatic. Intellectual

cum athlete. The beginning of armed struggle. With the establishment of a guerrilla force in the rural sectors represents the highest point. The class struggle can reach says give out. In other words as soon as a person is conscious of the fact that he is a representative of a class. Then this is as far as you. Could hope to go. A decade of something like success in Cuba. Supported by Soviet funds supplies and personnel. And tolerated by the United States. In accordance with the Khrushchev Kennedy detente. Has confirmed the Cuban hierarchy and the wisdom of their logic. While guerilla movement supplied and encouraged via Cuba have had much greater success. Than did give out it was for law are now banned in Bolivia. There is as yet little evidence that the Cuban model per se. Is adaptable to

other countries. Paradoxically enough writes a Guatemalan communist. After Cuba. The revolution in Latin America is becoming more difficult. And also more imperative. Since Cuba became communist. The United States has become increasingly active. In both directing military action. I was in the Dominican Republic. And in assistance to manifest non communist regimes for example and wipe them out. They wanted Mala where the threat of communist success has been the greatest of any country. Local conditions have nevertheless made the guerrillas task relatively easy. The legacy of the our bents regime. Where hundreds of people were indoctrinated. The continued leadership supplied by Colonel Arbonne seems self who is in Nevada and who broadcast regularly to his people. And incidentally that is a violation of Castro's

principle of leadership in the field.