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Guerrilla Warfare

1) Che Guevara argues that guerrilla forces composed of peasants, workers and intellectuals can defeat regular armies, as shown by the Cuban Revolution. 2) Theorists like Marx are outside of history, but practical revolutionaries like Che fulfill Marxist theories by taking up arms within history to transform it. 3) Che outlines three fundamental lessons of the Cuban Revolution: popular forces can win wars, revolutions do not need to wait for perfect conditions, and rural areas are key for armed struggle in Latin America.

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Mohd Hafiz Zulkifli
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33 views

Guerrilla Warfare

1) Che Guevara argues that guerrilla forces composed of peasants, workers and intellectuals can defeat regular armies, as shown by the Cuban Revolution. 2) Theorists like Marx are outside of history, but practical revolutionaries like Che fulfill Marxist theories by taking up arms within history to transform it. 3) Che outlines three fundamental lessons of the Cuban Revolution: popular forces can win wars, revolutions do not need to wait for perfect conditions, and rural areas are key for armed struggle in Latin America.

Uploaded by

Mohd Hafiz Zulkifli
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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“The most obvious lesson is that one can battle regular forces with troops composed of peasants, workers,

and
intellectuals. This is a vital experience in the fight against other dictatorships. -Che-

Guerrilla Warfare,
Theorists only interpret history and anticipate the future; they do not change them, according to
Guevara. Theorists like the communists whom Che often criticized, remain outside history and therefore remain
slaves. The Cuban Revolution, he argued, demonstrated the importance of stepping into history precisely to
transform it. The Cuban revolutionaries had taken up Marx where he had left off, picking up a rifle to fight within
history. “We, practical revolutionaries when initiating our struggle, simply fulfilled laws foreseen by Marx the
scientist,”-Che-

Three fundamental Cuban Revolution to revolutionary strategy in the Americas:

1. “Popular forces can win a war against the army.”


2. “It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.”
3. “In underdeveloped America the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.

To avoid destruction, the guerrilla band

-could not defend territory.


-had to be prepared to evacuate an area of operations if and when the enemy army threatened it.
-They had to remain in constant motion, offering the enemy no fixed target, allowing the enemy -no time to monitor
their movements.
-When moving, the guerrillas should march at night.
-when attacking, they must attack by surprise.
-The numerical inferiority of the guerrilla band made it very important to avoid fighting at times and terrain chosen
by the enemy.
“No battle, combat, or skirmish is to be fought unless it will be won,” Che stated emphatically

The ultimate objective of the guerrilla band, however, remained the same as that of a conventional army. The
guerrilla army, in its infancy and even in its more advanced stage, might avoid battle, but it still intended to defeat
the enemy army in battle, not through a war of attrition.
“The general strategy of guerrilla warfare . . . is the same in its ultimate end as is any warfare: to win, to annihilate
the enemy”
.
Che’s conception of a three-stage revolutionary campaign is similar to the Maoist perspective of a protracted war in
that the campaign evolves through three distinct stages. Without using Maoist terminology, Che formulated a three-
phase struggle similar to Mao’s:

A strategic defensive  strategic stalemate (tie),  End with a strategic offensive.

But Mao Start with massive drove out of Japanese invader not strategic defensive.

The Chinese Revolution did not begin with an armed nucleus of thirty fighters in the countryside. It began as a
conventional war between regular armies in southern China. Mao subsequently adopted the strategy of protracted
revolutionary war, in which he deployed guerrilla units to harass the Japanese invader during the first phase.

In a clear break with Mao, Guevara advocated a guerrilla band as the sole fighting force and guerrilla warfare as the
main tactic.

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