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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 141-1-12
TITLE:             Guerrilla International in the Southern Cone
BY:                
DATE:              1974-3-21
COUNTRY:           (n/a)
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  CAA

--- Begin ---

LATAM -- GUERRILLA INTERNATIONAL IN THE SOUTHERN CONE F-90

MUNICH, 21 March 1974 (CAA

Efforts at cooperation by South American revolutionary movements
appear to owe something to Guevara's strategic thinking. They
also underline the setbacks suffered by individual guerrilla
groups.

Extremist revolutionary movements in four neighboring South American
countries have formed a joint command to promote a continental revolutionary
strategy based on guerrilla warfare. In a communiqué distributed in
Argentina in mid-February, 1974, the Argentine Ejército Revolucionario del
Pueblo (ERP), the Uruguayan "Tupamaros" or Movimiento de Liberatión Nacional
(MLN), the Bolivian Ejército de Liberación. Nacional (ELN) and the Chilean
Movimiento de Izquierda Hevolucionaria (MIR) announced that they were setting
up a "Junta of Revolutionary Coordination ... under the banner and example of
Commander Che Guevara" and urged Latin American workers, peasants, students,
intellectuals and revolutionary Christians to "take up arms decisively" in
the struggle for Socialism.

This initiative may be little more than the formal consolidation of
links already known to exist between the groups, but it: exemplifies the
renewed attempts being made at coordination following the failure in the late
1960s of bodies like the Afro-Asian-Latin American Peoples' Solidarity
Organization (AALAPSO) and the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS),
despite strong Cuban support. The new efforts may be more effective because
of their less ambitious regional basis and the relative cohesiveness of the
organizations involved (whereas OLAS, for example, included several national
Communist Parties opposed in practice to armed struggle). Evidence existed
as early as mid-1970 of contacts between the Tupamaros and the ELN, which once
publicly thanked them for their cooperation in a communiqué published by the
Cuban party organ Granma (August 1, 1970). In 1972, Tupamaro documents seized
by Uruguayan security forces provided new information about MLN links abroad,
particularly in Argentina where a working relationship had been developed with
the ERP. Under the Allende administration, Chile became an important center
for exiles from neighboring countries, several of them former guerrillas who
were able to make contact among themselves and with the Chilean MIR quite
freely. Two ERP leaders told the Chilean extreme left-wing journal Punto Final,
in an interview published on August 29, 1972, that a common front of
revolutionary organizations was essential if "US imperialism" was to be
defeated and that they were trying to "group our forces together in this
continental war of the Latin American peoples".

[page 2]

LATAM (1) -- GUERRILLA INTERNATIONAL IN THE SOUTHERN CONE F-91

The guerrillas' new coordinating body also recalls the strategic
thinking behind Guévara's ill-fated venture in Bolivia in 1966-67. In a new
book, La Guerilla du Che (Editions du Seuil, 1974), the French Marxist
writer Regis Debray, who helped to prepare the campaign and had a front line
view of it until his arrest, reveals that Guevara's intention (though he never
made it explicit) in placing his largely Cuban team in the unpromising and
virtually uninhabited Bolivian jungle had nothing to do with local conditions
but was to create a "Latin American politico-military avant-garde". Detachments
would spread out to neighboring countries to form an "international network ...
composed of politico-military national organizations with a common structure,
that of a guerrilla army, a single military doctrine, Che's, a politically
coherent general staff, and a global political vision". In his enthusiasm
for Guevara's leadership and his faith in eventual revolutionary success,
Debray shows little concern for the disproportion of this grandiose plan to the
disasters that were the guerrillas' lot.

Lack of impact

In following Guevara's recipe, the founders of the new "guerrilla
international" presumably hope for brighter prospects. At present, however,
both the Tupamaros and the ELN, which has been sporadically revived after
Guevara's defeat, are attempting to recover from serious defeats inflicted by
the security forces of their respective countries. They have had little impact
on the national scene for over a year. In Chile, the MIR failed to forestall
and thereafter prevent the rapid completion of the military coup which
overthrew President Allende on September 11, 1973, but almost all of its leaders
escaped arrest and its structure may have survived largely intact. Under
Allende the MIR's role was principally that of an extreme left-wing ginger
group goading the governing coalition on to more drastic measures, but against
the present military junta it is likely to deploy for the first time its full
potential for armed struggle which it has always believed would be as essential
in Chile as elsewhere.

In Argentina, however, the ERP has for over three years waged an urban
terrorist campaign which was maintained and even increased when the military
regime gave way to the democratically-elected Peronist administration in May,
1973. The ERP, which was formally founded in July, 1970, as the armed wing
of the Trotskyite Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT) but which
now favours an eclectic revolutionary activism rather than Trotskyite dogmas,
was probably the main stimulus behind the, "Junta of Revolutionary Coordination",
and is the best placed of its members to provide, support and facilities for
its operation. The ERP's leader is Roberto Santucho, an admirer of Castro
and Guevara who has had several links with the Cubans.

The ERP's continuing violence brought it into head on conflict with
the Peronist government (led by General Perón himself since October, 1973)
which now assigns a high priority to its elimination. After issuing a
statement in April, 1973, on "Why the ERP will not end the struggle"; it has
continued to make business firms, particularly "exploiting" foreign companies,
and the armed forces its main targets. Within 12 hours at the end of
February, the ERP kidnapped a meat-packing company executive and a retired navy
man, raising to five the number of victims said by the guerrillas to be held in
their "people's prisons", an idea devised by the Tupamaros to challenge the
established system of justice. Most of the ERP's kidnap victims have been held
for ransom, the amounts demanded often being spectacularly large. Le Monde
(Paris) of January 9 said that $US3.8 millions had been paid for the life of the

(MORE)

[page 3]

LATAM (2) -- GUERRILLA INTERNATIONAL IN THE SOUTHERN CONE F-92

Swissair manager in Buenos Aires who was released in December, 1973, after over
a month in captivity, while it has been reported that the ERP are demanding
$US1O millions for the release of a US oil company executive kidnapped in
December - partly in the form of food, clothing and construction materials for
the poor. An ERP communiqué claimed that this would help to reimburse the
Argentine people for "copious riches extracted by the company in long years of
imperialist exploitation".

Industrial and military targets

Besides kidnappings and other small-scale actions, the ERP has mounted
guerrilla operations against industrial and military installations, and it was
the raid on a munitions store at the army medical headquarters in Buenos Aires
in September, 19 73, that led the government to ban the organization and brought
the first direct attacks on the guerrillas from Peronist leaders. Their anger
was increased by the discovery that some of the guerrillas captured in this
attack had benefited from the general amnesty granted to all guerrilla detainees
on the inauguration of the first Peronist administration the previous May.
On January 20, the ERP launched a force of 60-70 men against an army tank
regiment garrison at Azul, 150 miles south of Buenos Aires. The guerrillas were
beaten off after a long battle in which the base commander and his wife, among
others, were killed and a number of soldiers and guerrillas wounded. The
attackers captured a colonel and later announced that he was in a "people's
prison"; there, he joined another army colonel kidnapped in November, 1973, to be
put on "trial" for "collaboration" with the United States, according to an ERP
communiqué. (The ERP threatened to kill the hostage from Azul unless it
received news of the fate of two guerrillas allegedly captured during the raid,
but later accepted assurances that the men were not being held.)

The ERP declared the Azul operation to have been a failure, but many
observers, noting its timing just before congressional consideration of a
government Bill reforming the penal code to allow much stiffer penalties for
subversion and terrorism - one of several causes of conflict within the Peronist
movement between the official leadership and its radical left wing-attributed
a broader strategic objective to the assault. The ERP's principal aim may have
been to provoke a drastic reaction from President Peron which would accelerate
the alienation of the Peronist revolutionary Left and bring it closer to and
alliance with the ERP.

After the Azul raid, President Perón accused the guerrillas of trying
to create chaos. The raid did, however, have immediate repercussions within
the Peronist movement, where it lent impetus to the campaign for a purge of
alleged Marxist infiltrators and direct confrontation with the extreme left wing.
Eight left-wing Peronist Deputies were expelled from the movement when they
resigned their seats in Congress rather than vote for amendments to the penal
code to counter terrorism. The President's criticisms of the local
administration in Buenos Aires province, where Azul is located, for negligence
in security matters, forced the resignation of the left-wing governor. Pressures
increased against other provincial governments, especially in Córdoba, the scene
of several conflicts, where the local administration was toppled by a police
revolt at the end of February. There was a. wave of violence and harassment
against radical Peronist leaders offices and publications, and an accentuation
of the internal Peronist conflicts which have characterized Argentine politics
since Perón's return to Argentina in June, 1973.

(PTO)

[page 4]

LATAM (3) -- GUERRILLA INTERNATIONAL IN THE SOUTHERN CONE F-93

The radical Peronists on the extreme Left have become increasingly
disillusioned as leaders they backed have been edged out of positions of
importance, and the government has adopted policies they oppose in such
matters as internal security, the reform of trade union and university laws and
the reorganization of the Peronist movement itself. Official efforts to give
this amorphous body an institutional framework and disciplined structure include
a purge of "Marxist infiltration", a policy authorized by Perón himself after
the assassination in September, 1973, of the Peronist labour leader José Rucci.

The Peronist revolutionaries

The principal organizations of revolutionary Peronists are the Juventud
Peronista (JP) and its numerous ancillary groups, and the Montoneros guerrillas,
a body which now includes the ideologically similar Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias (FAR) following a merger in October, 1973. In their common
opposition to the military régime the Peronist guerrillas cooperated with the
ERP, but unlike the latter they largely suspended violence after the Peronist
electoral victory, while remaining active in internal Peronist conflicts.
Although they object to many aspects of government policy, the Montoneros continue
to profess loyalty to President Perón himself. The organization attempted to
clarify its position on the latest events in a statement (reported by the Cuban
agency Prensa Latina on January 22) which quoted the Argentine leader's old
maxim that "violence from above engenders violence from below". The allegation
that "violence from above" no longer existed under a democratically-elected
government was only a half-truth, it claimed, "because there are contradictory
elements within the popular government". The statement condemned both the
proposed toughening of the penal code and the Azul raid, which "shows how the
ultra-Left as well as the ultra-Right seek to provoke repression".

These comments suggest that the Montoneros, and possibly other extremist
Peronist groups, may see the ERP's attempts to act as a catalyst in deepening
Peronist divisions as a cynical manoeuvre designed to put them under pressure
and strain their loyalties still further. The success of ERP policies is still
in the balance. The Montoneros' leader, Mario Firmenich, and certain JP
leaders, later boycotted youth leaders' meetings with President Perén, who
denounced "extremists" and appealed for order and stability. Another well-known
MontonerOy Roberto Quieto, was reported on February 19 to have been arrested for
forging official documents.

Other guerrilla groups besides the ERP and Montoneros are currently
active in Argentina. The self-styled Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas (FAP), which
split into two factions in 1973, assassinated a US businessman in Córdoba
in November, 1973, threatened violence against Ford executives in Argentina,
and kidnapped an Argentine industrialist for ransom in early January. Another
group, the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación (FAL) claimed responsibility for
kidnapping a gunsmith in December, 1973, releasing him after he had been "tried"
for supplying arms to "Fascist" groups. Finally, an apparently new group, the
Comandos Populares de Liberación (CPL) admitted responsibility for an unsuccessful
attempt to sabotage the railway line to Chile in January. According to a
communiqué sent to the Press, the group was trying to block the supply of arms.
from Argentina to Chile.

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