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Foco

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Raúl Castro(left) andChe Guevara(right) in their Sierra de Cristal Mountain stronghold south of Havana, in 1958. It was during this time as a guerilla commander in theCuban Revolution,that Guevara would base his theory of a foco centered revolution.

A guerillafocois a small cadre ofrevolutionariesoperating in a nation's countryside. This guerilla organization was popularized by Che Guevara in his bookGuerilla Warfare,which was based on his experiences in theCuban Revolution.Guevara would go on to argue that a foco was politically necessary for the success of a socialist revolution. Originally Guevara theorized that a foco was only useful in overthrowing personalistic military dictatorships and not liberal democratic capitalism where a peaceful overthrow was believed possible. Years later Guevara would revise his thesis and argue all nations in Latin America, includingliberal democracies,could be overthrown by a guerilla foco. Eventually the foco thesis would be that political conditions would not even need to be ripe for revolutions to be successful, since the sheer existence of a guerilla foco would create ripe conditions by itself. Guevara's theory of foco, known asfoquismo(Spanish:[foˈkismo]), was self-described as the application ofMarxism-Leninismto Latin American conditions, and would later be further popularized by authorRégis Debray.The proposed necessity of a guerilla foco proved influential in Latin America, but was also heavily criticized by other socialists.[1][2]

This theory of foco proved heavily influential among armed militants around the world. Che Guevara's success in theCuban Revolutionwas seen as proof of his thesis and thus popularized foco theory. Some of the famous militant groups to adopt foco theory included theRed Army Faction,Irish Republican Army,andWeather Underground.The theory became especially popular in theNew Leftfor its breaking with the strategy of incremental political change supported by theSoviet Union,while also encouraging the possibility of immediate revolution.[3]

Background[edit]

Cuban Revolution[edit]

Main article:Cuban Revolution
Fidel Castroand his small band of rebels in 1956. This small rebel army would eventually win theCuban Revolution.

Foco theory was originally based on Che Guevara's experiences in the Cuban Revolution. In which he was party of a guerilla army of 82 members who landed in Cuba on board of theGranmain December 1956 and initiated a guerrilla war in theSierra Maestra.During two years, the poorly armedescopeteros,at times fewer than 200 men, won victories againstFulgencio Batista's army and police force, which numbered between 30,000 and 40,000 in strength.[4]The26th of July Movementitself had a rural guerilla army as well as an urban underground that participated in the revolution. Che Guevara often accused the urban section of the movement as being without proper radicalism, which stirred internal controversy.[5]The urban wing was responsible for arming the rural guerillas and engaged in its own urban warfare campaign. During the final months of the revolution an alliance of theDirectorio Revolucionario Estudiantil,Popular Socialist Party,Authentic Partyand26th of July Movementwas able to overthrow the Batista government. In their new provisional government the M-26-7 rebel army garnered the most popularity and influence.[6]

Consolidation of the Cuban Revolution[edit]

Main article:Consolidation of the Cuban Revolution

Che Guevara played an integral role as one of the first historians of the Cuban Revolution. After the revolutionaries' victory, Guevara published various articles in Cuba of his experiences in the revolution. These articles helped formalize his foco theory and a history of the Cuban Revolution that stressed the role of the rural guerillas as the main revolutionary force.[5]This idea of the lone rural guerrillas deciding the revolution became immediately popular among the rebel army while consolidating their new government, and became a driving force in Cuban politics as a nation-building myth. Many early proponents saw the potential of repeating the model of the Cuban Revolution throughout Latin America, and often encouraged it.[7]

Theory[edit]

Rural guerilla strategy[edit]

While foco theory drew from previousMarxist–Leninistideas and theMaoiststrategy of "protracted people's war",it simultaneously broke with many of the mid-Cold Warera's establishedcommunist parties.DespiteNikita Khrushchev's eager support for "wars of national liberation"and the foco's own enthusiasm forSoviet Unionpatronage,Cuba's ownPopular Socialist Partyhad retreated from active confrontation with theFulgencio Batistaregime andCastroism/Guevarismsubstituted the focomilitiafor the more traditionalvanguard party.

Like other communist and socialist theorists of his era (such asMao ZedongandHo Chi Minh),Che Guevarabelieved that people living in countries still ruled bycolonial powers,or living in countries subject tonewer forms of economic exploitation,could best defeatcolonial powersby taking up arms. Guevara also believed in fostering armed resistance not by concentrating one's forces in urban centers, but rather through the accumulation of strength in mountainous and rural regions where the enemy had less presence.[8]

InGuerrilla Warfare(La Guerra de Guerrillas), Guevara did not count on aLeninistinsurrection led by theproletariatas had happened during the 1917October Revolution,but on popular uprisings which would gain strength in rural areas and would overthrow the regime. The vanguard guerrilla was supposed to bolster the population's morale, not to take control of thestate apparatusitself and this overthrow would occur without any external or foreign help. According to him, guerrillas were to be supported byconventional armed forces:

It is well established that guerrilla warfare constitutes one of the phases of war; this phase can not, on its own, lead to victory.[9]

Guevara added that this theory was formulated fordeveloping countriesand that the guerrilleros had to look for support among both the workers and thepeasants.[10]

Guerilla "new man"[edit]

The guerilla foco will be able to draw the support of the rural peasantry by demonstrating impeccable moral character and self-sacrifice. In the armed struggle the guerillas themselves would be shaped by hardship into individuals who had an affinity for solidarity and justice. Once the guerillas overthrow the existing government and come into power, the moral spirit of the guerillas would become the national ethos of the new government.[11]

Legacy[edit]

Authoritarian reaction[edit]

Many who opposed the formation of leftist guerillas took a focused approach to extinguish rural rebel groups from forming who were inspired byfoquismo.These measures were often supported by the United States and involved torturing and "disappearing" political enemies.[12]The development of guerrilla focos in various Latin American countries has been a factor proposed by historians, that legitimized military takeovers of their respective nations in order to defend against guerillas.[13]

Argentina's People's Revolutionary Army[edit]

InArgentina,thePeople's Revolutionary Army(ERP), led by Roberto Santucho, attempted to create afocoin theTucumán Province.The attempt failed after the government ofIsabel Perónsigned in February 1975 the secret presidential decree 261, which ordered the army to neutralize and/or annihilate the ERP. Destined to collapse without any external pressure, ERP was not supported by a foreign power and lacked support of the working class.Operativo Independenciagave power to theArgentine Armed Forcesto "execute all military operations necessary for the effects of neutralizing or annihilating the action of subversive elements acting in the Province of Tucumán."[14]

Criticism[edit]

Urban guerilla strategists[edit]

See also:Abraham GuillénandTupamaros

Abraham Guillénwas a writer who frequently made studies of urban warfare in European revolutions, and noted critic of foco theory. While he agreed with Guevara in their shared criticism of American imperialism, Guillén argued that the foco strategy was unideal compared to a strategy of urban warfare. Guillén regarded the foco as petit-bourgeois in origin. He regarded that very few peasants and workers actually joined these guerilla armies. He also argued that these rural guerillas only supplied for easy victories by the reigning state power who could easily defeat isolated rebels in the countryside who lacked connections to military resources. Guillén instead argued revolution was possible during dire political crisis, with a mass workers alliance, and taking place in urban centers where most modernized nations populations resided.[15]

TheTupamarosguerillas of Uruguay are also noted critics of foco theory. While the Tupamaros agreed with much of Guevara's theory of revolution, they argued that the rural theatre was inefficient for a rebel army. The urban setting houses a greater population which means more sympathizers to rely on. A rural setting is also open to military attack while a city is more populated and delicate which discourages open combat by the state.[15]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^Guevara, Che (1997).Guerrilla Warfare.SR Books. pp. 9–17.ISBN9780842026789.
  2. ^Women and Revolution Global Expressions.Springer Netherlands. 1998. p. 286.ISBN9780792351825.
  3. ^Katsiaficas, George (1987).The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968.South End Press. pp. 35–37.ISBN9780896082274.
  4. ^"Bockman",Chapter 2.
  5. ^abSweig, Julia (2009).Inside the Cuban Revolution.Harvard University Press. pp. 1–5.ISBN9780674044197.
  6. ^Kapcia, Antoni (2020).A Short History of Revolutionary Cuba Revolution, Power, Authority and the State from 1959 to the Present Day.Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 15–20.ISBN9781786736475.
  7. ^Swing, Julia (2009).Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know.Oxford University Press, USA. p. 104.ISBN9780199740819.
  8. ^ "The Legacy of Che Guevara: Internationalism Today"by Dr. Peter Custers,Sri Lanka Guardian,24 February 2010.
  9. ^Ernesto Che Guevara French ed.:OeuvresI,Petite collectionMaspero,34, 1968, p. 32.
  10. ^Guevara, Che. Guerrilla War: A Method.
  11. ^Bustos, Ciro (2013).Che Wants to See You: The Untold Story of Che Guevara.Verso.ISBN9781781684801.
  12. ^Doctrine, Practice, and Advocacy in the Inter-American Human Rights System.Oxford University Press. 2019. p. 230.ISBN9780190900861.
  13. ^Fowler, Will (2013).Latin America Since 1780.Taylor and Francis. p. 139.ISBN9781134631759.
  14. ^Decree No. 261/75.Archived15 November 2006 at theWayback Machine.NuncaMas.org,Decretos de aniquilamiento.
  15. ^abWright, Thomas (2018).Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution and Beyond, 3rd Edition.ABC-CLIO. pp. 102–105.ISBN9781440857683.

References[edit]

External links[edit]

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