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Abstract
This paper re-evaluates the role and significance of Che Guevara and focismo in the strategic debate on insurgent warfare. It argues that Guevara’s approach to making revolution in Latin America and the Third World emerged out of his own earlier escapades as a restless tourist travelling through South and Central America in the early 1950s. Guevara’s life was one marked by a struggle to define an identity in a continent that he saw as dominated by the informal imperial power of the US. Focismo crystallised in the years after the Cuban Revolution in 1959 into an ideological concept supportive of the Castro regime’s claims to provide a distinctive new model of Third World revolution in opposition to those of the Soviet Union and China. Focismo has survived in the contemporary era as an approach that partly describes some modern terrorist and Jihadist movements in the Middle East.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to Tom Marks for commenting on an earlier version of this paper.
Notes
1. A term used by Peter Paret, Guerrillas in the 1960’s. New York and London: Praeger, 1962, 31 and passim.
2. Beatrice Heuser’s recent study of strategic thought, for instance, attaches little importance to Guevara’s ideas, certainly compared to those of Mao. See Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 412–6. Heuser sees his writings being of interest for the way he dispenses advice on winning the confidence of peasants in the development of revolutionary struggle. Lawrence Freedman also notes that Guevara’s approach to guerrilla war was a “romantic model … based on a misreading of the Cuban revolution.” Lawrence Freedman, Strategy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 400.
3. Robert Jay Lifton, Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968; James Chieh Hsiung, Ideology and Practice: The Evolution of Chinese Communism. New York: Praeger, 1970, 103–5.
4. The song has been sung in several versions across the world. One recent video by the French actress and singer Natalie Cardone sees it as one that empowers women, as she walks across a sugar cane field holding a baby with an AK47 strapped to her back. See Alvaro Vargas Llosa, “The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand,” The New Republic July 11 2005; Michael Casey, Che’s Afterlife. New York: Vintage Books, 2009.
5. See Lucy Hughes Hallett, Heroes: Saviors, Traitors and Supermen. London: Knopf, 2004.
6. One of the activists from that period, Bill Ayers, recalled, “Our metaphors were constructed on other barricades: the metaphor of world revolution, for example, imperialism in decline, of the US as an ultimately doomed and helpless but temporarily deeply destructive giant.” Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days: Memoirs or an Antiwar Activist. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001, 151. Arthur Schlesinger recalled a visit to the Cambridge (Boston) headquarters of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in May 1967 and seeing a photograph of Che Guevara “hung in the hall of a studiously bare and dreary apartment.” Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Journals, 1952–2000. London: Atlantic Books, 2008, 260. Freedman has pointed out that Guevara was important for providing “a theory for the defeat of US imperialism that did not depend on the efforts of those living in its midst.” Freedman op.cit. 402.
7. See for instance Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, 28.
8. Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Bantam Books, 1997, 196.
9. David Atlee Philips, The Night Watch: 25 Years in the CIA. London: Robert Hale, 1977, 81.
10. See for instance Donald Denoon, Settler Capitalism The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983; Caroline Elkins and Susan Pederson (eds, Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century. New York and London: Routledge 2005.
11. Jorge Castaneda, Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara. London; Bloomsbury, 1997, 47.
12. Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity. London: Vintage, 1998, 43–51.
13. Motorcycle Diaries, 43.
14. Ibid., 92–3.
15. Marisol de la Cadena, “From Race to Class: Insurgent Intellectuals de provincia in Peru, 1910–1970” in Steve J. Stern (ed) Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995. Durham (NC) and London: Duke University Press, 1998, 22–55. In April 1954 Guevara wrote to his mother that he was trying to persuade Gadea to “leave that dump of a party.” Back on the Road, 43.
16. Back on the Road, 101–8. For Griswold see Jason S. Shapiro, “Sylvanus Griswold Morley: A Life in Archaeology and Elsewhere”. www.elpalacio.org. Accessed 21 January 2017.
17. Ricardo D. Salvatore, “The Enterprise of Knowledge: Representational Machines and Informal Empire” in Fernando Coronill (ed) Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of US-Latin American Relations. Durham (NC) and London: University Press, 1998, 93.
18. Guevara to mother April 1954 in Back on the Road, 59.
19. Guevara to mother n.d (1955) in ibid., 91.
20. Anderson, 80.
21. Albert Memmi, The Coloniser and the Colonised. New York: Orion Press, 1965, 26.
22. Mike Gonzalez, Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution. London and Sydney: Bookmarks, 2004, 28–33. Philipps op. cit , 54.
23. Richard Gott, Rural Guerrillas in Latin America. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 61.
24. Quoted in Ibid., 126.
25. Though Cuba was by no means the only possible context in which to pursue this, since Guevara also found that he had much in common with some of the radicals from Puerto Rico residing in Guatemala City.
26. Letter to mother October 1956 in Back on the Road, 114.
27. Simon Reid-Henry, Fidel & Che: A Revolutionary Friendship. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2009, 144.
28. Ibid., 148.
29. K.S Karel, Guerrillas in Power: The Course of the Cuban Revolution. New York: Hill & Wang, 1970, 164–5. Interestingly, the Granma is on show behind a large glass case in a museum in down-town Havana. It has been immaculately renovated and looks as though it has just come from the 1956 Boat Show at Earls Court, raising interesting questions about why the protectors of the revolutionary myth would want to show it in such a clean and pristine condition.
30. Llano or plains groups – as opposed to the guerrillas in the mountains or sierra – were mostly urban cells in the cities, where they could find security. They did carry out sabotage elsewhere in the ‘plains,’ though, for instance against sugar mills and other targets.
31. Letter to mother (probably late November 1956) in Back on the Road, 112.
32. Anderson, 193–5.
33. Back On the Road, 49.
34. Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1968, 21 n.
35. Max Boot, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present. New York and London: Norton, 2013, 441.
36. Walter Lacquer, Guerrilla: A Historical and Critical Study. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977, 331.
37. Mao Tse Tung, “Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War” in Selected Works of Mao Tse Tung, Volume II. Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1967, 94.
38. Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. London: Faber and Faber, 1971, 265–6.
39. Hugh Thomas, Cuba: A History. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2001, 751.
40. Ibid., 268–9, 273; James Joll, The Anarchists, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964, 139.
41. Lillian Guerra, “Beyond Paradox: Counterrevolution and the Origins of Political Culture in the Cuban Revolution, 1959–2009” in Grandin and Joseph, op. cit. 199–230.
42. Anthony De Palma, The Man Who Invented Fidel: Castro, Cuba and Herbert L. Matthews of the ‘New York Times’. New York: Public Affairs, 2007.
43. See for example Robert Moss, Urban Guerrillas. London: Temple Smith, 1971, 141.
44. Walter Lacquer, Terrorism. London: Sphere Books, 1978, 217.
45. Paret, op.cit.
46. Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969, 46.
47. Ibid., 83.
48. Thomas Perry Thornton, “Terror as a Weapon” in Harry Eckstein, Internal War: Problems and Approaches. London: Collier-Macmillan, 1964, 87. Roland Gaucher, The Terrorists. London: Secker & Warburg, 1965, 305; Gerard Chaliand, Revolution in the Third World. Harmondsworh: Penguin Books, 1978, 43.
49. J.L.S Girling, Peoples War: The Conditions and the Consequences in China and South East Asia. London: Allen and Unwin, 1969, 49–109. Missing from Girling’s list, of course, is the regularization of the guerrillas that was integral to the Maoist approach; that is, the gradual turning of most guerrilla formations into regular formations capable of challenging their military opposites in the war of movement (or mobile warfare).
50. Thomas A. Marks, Maoist People’s War in Post-Vietnam Asia. Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2007, 41.
51. Michael Chanan, The Cuban Image. London: BFI Pub, 1985, 89.
52. See my discussion of this film in Paul B Rich, ‘Rossellini, Pontecorvo and the neorealist cinema of insurgency,’ Small Wars and Insurgencies 26, no. 4, March 2015, 640–64.
53. Che Guevara, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War. London and New York: Harper Perennial, 2006, 210.
54. J. Bowyer Bell, The Myth of the Guerrilla. New York: Knopf, 1971, 42.
55. Che Guevara, “We Are Practical Revolutionaries”, Verde Olivo October 8 1960 in John Gerasi (ed), Vencemeros: The Speeches and Writings of Che Guevara. London: Granada Books, 1969,182.
56. Matt D. Childs, “An Historical Critique of the Emergence and Evolution of Che Guevara’s Foco Theory,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 27, 1995, 196–8.
57. Che Guevara, “On Solidarity with Vietnam” speech delivered at the Ministry of Industry, November 20 1963 in Gerasi, 405.
58. Che Guevara, “Cuba – Exception or Vanguard?”, Verde Olivo April 9 1961 in Gerasi, op. cit, 203–4.
59. Harold G. Moore et at, We Were Soldiers Once and Young. New York: Random House 1992.
60. Che Guevara, ‘We Are Practical Revolutionaries,’ Verde Olivo October 8 1960 in Gerasi, 188.
61. Pablo Neruda, Memoirs. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978, 323.
62. Gott, op. cit, 469–71; Castaneda, op. cit., 247.
63. Anderson, 543.
64. For an account of the failed foco operation see Ciro Bustos, Che Wants to See You. London and New York: Verso 2013.
65. Bustos, 185.
66. Ibid., 176.
67. For a brief survey of the focos see Thomas C. Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution. Westport (CT) and London: Praeger, 2001, 76–80.
68. Castaneda, 43.
69. Che Guevara, ‘On Our Common Aspiration – The Death of Imperialism and the Birth of a Moral World’ Speech delivered in Algiers February 26th 1965 in Gerasi, 530.
70. Castaneda., 282.
71. Ibid., 287–8.
72. Cited in ibid., 284.
73. Georges Nzongola-Ntalala, The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila. London and New York: Zed Books, 2007, 128–9.
74. Childs, 606.
75. Penguin Books, 1968.
76. Annie Cohen-Sodal, Jean Paul Sartre. New York and London: The New Press, 1985, 450–1.
77. Praised Be Our Lords, 14.
78. Ibid., 18.
79. Ibid., 19.
80. Ibid., 31.
81. Ibid., 39.
82. Ibid., 40–1. For the MR 13 see Gott, op cit, 106–7.
83. Ibid., 28.
84. Ibid., 51.
85. Andre Gunder Frank, ‘Class, Politics and Debray’ in Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy (eds), Regis Debray and the Latin American Revolution. New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1968. 16.
86. Stuart Schram, Mao Tse Tung. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966, 212; Dick Wilson, China’s Revolutionary War. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991, 83–101.
87. Greg Grandin, ‘Living in Revolutionary Time: Coming to Terms with the Violence of Latin America’s Long Cold War’ in Greg Grandin & Gilbert M. Joseph (eds), Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence During Latin America’s Long Cold War. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010, 20.
88. Che Guevara, “Message to the Tricontinental: ‘Create two three…many Vietnams’” April 16 1967 In Gerasi op cit 579.
89. Che Guevara, ‘On the Alliance for Progress’ Speech delivered at the Punta del Este Conference of the OAS August 16 1961 in Gerasi, 264–74.
90. Immanuel Wallerstein, Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing World System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
91. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010, 323–4.
92. Eric R. Rittinger, ‘Exporting Professionalism: US efforts to Reform the Armed Forces in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, 1916–1933,“ Small Wars and Insurgencies 26, 1 February 2015, 136–51.
93. Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991, 255–6.
94. Arno Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002, 50.
95. Lillian Guerra, ‘Beyond Paradox: Counterrevolution and the Origins of Political Culture in the Cuban Revolution, 1959–2009’ in Grandin and Joseph, 201.
96. As late as 1969, the Trotskyite ‘revisionist’ analyst of the Cold War, David Horowitz, argued that Cuba continued to serve as a ‘third revolutionary dentre’ for the third world and the Latin American left in particular after the Soviet Union and China. David Horowitz, Imperialism and Revolution, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971 (1 ed 1969), 226.
97. Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004, 73–4.
98. Perry Anderson, American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers. London: Verso, 2017, 103 n. 8.
99. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life., 246.
100. Salman Abbu Sitta, “Che Guevara in Gaza: Palestine becomes a Global Cause,” Middle East Monitor, August 2015, 3–12.
101. Ivan Hinojosa, “On Poor Relations and the Nouveau Riche: Shining Path and the Radical Peruvian Left” in Stern, op. cit., 60–78.
102. Kenneth Payne, “Building the Base: Al Qaeda’s Focoist Strategy.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 34, 2, 2011, 124–43.