Latin American Guerrilla Movements: Origins, Evolution, Outcomes

263 Pages·2020·2.485 MB·English

by  Dirk Kruijt, Alberto Martin Alvarez, Eduardo Rey Tristan

“This volume comes from the hand of three of the best researchers on revolutionary movements
in Latin America. The time elapsed and the partial end of the last guerrilla violence in Colombia
with the accumulated knowledge allow the rigorous research that is reflected in this book.”
Manuel Alcántara, Full Professor, University of Salamanca,
Spain and Director of FLACSO Spain
“A pioneering, comprehensive, analytical book on guerrillas / insurgency in Latin America and the
Caribbean. The Cold War and the guerrillas set the way for political systems in the region and
beyond. Counterinsurgency and guerrilla wars left narrow margins for democratic developments
in Latin America between 1959 and 1990. A profound observation on twelve national cases.
A new and excellent contribution from Dirk Kruijt, Eduardo Rey Tristán and Alberto Martín
Álvarez.”
Francisco Rojas Aravena, Rector of the United Nations
University for Peace, Costa Rica
“The editors have compiled a well written and much needed comprehensive scholarly analy-
sis of the Latin American revolutionary guerrilla movements that played a crucial role in the
political history of the region in the 20th century. It is particularly important that they have
acknowledged the seminal role played by Cuba in this process.”
Gary Prevost, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, College
of St. Benedict and St. John’s University, USA
“This impressive collection of essays improves our understanding of the origins, evolution, and
outcomes of Latin America’s guerrilla movements. The volume brings together a top-notch
group of political scientists, historians, and sociologists from Latin America, the United States,
and Europe, who have dedicated their professional lives to the study of the region’s New Left.
It should be on everyone’s reading list.”
Michael E. Allison, Professor and Chair, Department of
Political Science, The University of Scranton, USA
“Nothing exemplifies the tensions and contradictions of Latin America’s quest for peaceful coex-
istence better than the history of the guerrilla movements that dominated its political life in the
second part of the 20th century. Kruijt, Rey Tristán and Martín Álvarez have brought together
a volume offering the most comprehensive overview so far of a phenomenon that in its origins,
development, demise and aftermath expresses the troubled dynamic between democratization
and violence that in different ways continue to plague Latin America society as it enters a new
millennium.”
Bernardo Arévalo de León, Latin American Director of Interpeace
“We have long been overdue for a volume that updates our understandings of guerrilla move-
ments in Latin America. This work more than fills that gap. Drawing on the unrivaled expertise
of leading scholars with intimate knowledge of the field, Latin American Guerrilla Movements
excels in providing us with deep and probing insights and analyses into the successes and
shortcomings of guerrilla movements. This is a required work to understand the Latin Ameri-
can revolutionary left and how it developed in this way.”
Marc Becker, Professor of Latin American History, Truman State University,
USA, and author of Twentieth-Century Latin American Revolutions
“The book Latin American Guerrilla Movements: Origins, Evolution, Outcomes, edited by Dirk
Kruijt, Eduardo Rey Tristán and Alberto Martín Álvarez, will become a must-have for research-
ers, students and those interested in guerrilla action and revolutionary political violence in Latin
America. Through 18 chapters written by experts, the work analyzes the different guerrilla
waves experienced by Latin America both nationally and from a regional perspective. It is an
essential collective work to get an understanding of the ‘spirit of the political age’ that infected
Latin America since the Cuban Revolution, and which involved more than four decades of
guerrilla activity.”
Salvador Martí i Puig, Political Science Section Director,
University of Girona, Spain
“This book is an essential guide to an extraordinary period of recent history, one in which two
generations of young Latin Americans took up arms as guerrillas in the hopes of seizing power
and building Utopian futures in their countries. For historians, scholars, diplomats, and anyone
else seeking an authoritative analysis of the revolutionary wave that convulsed Latin America
from the 1950s to the 1990s, Latin American Guerrilla Movements is certain to become indispens-
able reading.”
Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
“We are faced with a book that, clearly, was very necessary. Aimed at a plural audience, whether
experts in the field or people interested in the Latin American guerrilla phenomenon, the added
value of this work is twofold. On the one hand, the work proposes the diverse and complex anal-
ysis of the guerrilla phenomenon. The authors observe both the stages through which the armed
struggle takes place in Latin America— from the 1960s to the 1990s—as well as the specifici-
ties shown by the Central American, Andean and Southern Cone scenarios, among others. The
above, without incurring the traditional functionalist bias. Also, the work is markedly pedagogi-
cal. It perfectly integrates a rigor and depth in the analysis with a simple and illustrative language.”
Jerónimo Ríos Sierra, Professor of Political Geography,
Geopolitics, and Latin American Studies,
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
“Unparalleled in scope and depth, this comprehensive volume offers scholars, students, and
broader audiences a authoritative understanding of the cycle of guerrilla movements and leftist
revolutionary projects in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century. The
book brilliantly explores and explains the genesis and dynamics of these movements, speaking
to their enduring relevance for Latin American politics into our present time.”
Kees Koonings, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Development
Studies, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
“In this fine collaboration, the three editors now unite their own formidable writings on revo-
lutionary groups and trajectories in several Latin American nations with the fine contributions
of many other scholars. The result is a book which raises the scholarly bar, to a new tier of both
depth and excellence in studies of the region’s guerrilla activism. Taken as a group, the sheer
region-wide scope is reason enough to celebrate the book. Yet taken as individual offerings,
riches abound in the chapter-by-chapter arguments and evidence laid out by this assemblage of
careful scholars. Many root their arguments in interviews and other primary-source materials
not previously explored, which provide newer and firmer groundings for their national studies.
And each chapter is never less than original and excellent in analysis of the revolutionary case(s)
that it explores.”
Timothy Wickham-Crowley, Georgetown University, USA
“Dirk Kruijt, Eduardo Rey Tristán and Alberto Martín Álvarez gather a group of Latin Amer-
ican, European and American specialists, with the goal of telling the story of guerrilla move-
ments in Latin America, from the 1950s to date. Besides taking a historic walk through the
years of the Cold War in Latin America from the triumph of the Cuban revolution, highlighting
political and social processes, one of the main contributions of this book is that it provides an
analysis on the origins and evolution of political violence in the different regions and countries
of the subcontinent: Central America, the Andean region, the Southern Cone, the Caribbean,
Brazil and Mexico. Its originality stands not only in that it offers a compared perspective from
new views, but it also makes a balance of the achievements and limitations of the guerrilla
movements in Latin America in the second half of the 20th century.”
Mónica Toussaint, Senior Research Professor, Instituto Mora, México City

LATIN AMERICAN GUERRILLA MOVEMENTS
Organized around single country studies embedded in key historical moments, this book
introduces students to the shifting and varied guerrilla history of Latin America from the late
1950s to the present. It brings together academics and those directly involved in aspects of
the guerrilla movement, to understand each country’s experience with guerrilla warfare and
revolutionary activism.
The book is divided in four thematic parts after two opening chapters that analyze the tradition
of military involvement in Latin American politics and the parallel tradition of insurgency and
coup effort against dictatorship. The first two parts examine active guerrilla movements in the
1960s and 1970s with case studies including Brazil, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Bolivia,
Nicaragua, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Part 3 is dedicated to the Central American
Civil Wars of the 1980s and 1990s in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. Part 4 examines
specific guerrilla movements which require special attention. Chapters include Colombia’s
complicated guerrilla scenery; the rivalling Shining Path and Túpac Amaru guerrillas in
Peru; small guerrilla movements in Mexico which were never completely documented; and
transnational guerrilla operations in the Southern Cone. The concluding chapter presents a
balance of the entire Latin American guerrilla at present.
Superbly accessible, while retaining the complexity of Latin American politics, Latin American
Guerrilla Movements represents the best historical account of revolutionary movements in the
region, which students will find of great use owing to its coverage and insights.
Dirk Kruijt is Professor Emeritus of Development Studies at Utrecht University, and currently
is a research fellow at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and at the Centre for Military Studies
at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He has published widely about military governments and
revolutions; insurgency and counterinsurgency; and urban violence and non-state actors. He
has been a visiting scholar at universities and research institutes in Latin America and Europe. In
addition, he has been a policy advisor to the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, assigned
to Latin America on multiple occasions. His most recent monograph is Cuba and Revolutionary
Latin America (2017); E thnography as Risky Business: Field Research in Violent and Sensitive Contexts
(2019) was published in coedition with Kees Koonings and Dennis Rodgers.
Eduardo Rey Tristán is Full Professor of Latin American History at the University of
Santiago de Compostela, Spain. After completing his PhD on the guerrilla movements in
Uruguay, he has specialized in political violence and contemporary Latin American revolutionary
movements. He has carried out long-time field research in the Rio de la Plata region and
Central America. He is cofounder and coordinator of the Revolutionary New Left International
Research Network on Political Violence. He has published monographs, articles and book
chapters in several European and American countries, among them: La Izquierda Revolucionaria
Uruguaya, 1955–1973 (2006), and Revolutionary Violence and The New Left : T ransnational Perspectives
(coedited with Alberto Martín, New York: Routledge, 2016). He is currently working on a
political biography of the Italian left-wing editor and activist Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (expected
in 2020).
Alberto Martín Álvarez holds a PhD on Latin American Studies from the Universidad
Complutense de Madrid. He is currently Distinguished Professor at the Department of Public
Law of the Universitat de Girona (Spain). He has been full professor at the Instituto Mora
(Mexico City) and visiting researcher at several universities and research centers in Europe and
Latin America. He is cofounder and coordinator of the Revolutionary New Left. International
Research Network on Political Violence. He has also undertaken extensive research on the
origins and development of the Salvadoran revolutionary left. Among his main publications
are: Revolutionary Violence and the New Left: Transnational Perspectives (London: Routledge,
2016, with Eduardo Rey, eds.) and the monograph From Revolutionary War to Democratic
Revolution: The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador (2010).
LATIN AMERICAN
GUERRILLA MOVEMENTS
Origins, Evolution, Outcomes
Edited by Dirk Kruijt, Eduardo Rey Tristán
and Alberto Martín Álvarez
First published 2020
by Routledge
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The right of Dirk Kruijt, Eduardo Rey Tristán and Alberto Martín
Álvarez to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the
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ISBN: 978-0-367-19286-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-19359-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-24406-3 (ebk)
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This book is dedicated to the memory of two dear friends
and colleagues:
Edelberto Torres-Rivas, mentor of an entire generation of Central
American social scientists and historians, a critical analyst of the Central
American revolutions and author of the first volume of the Guatemalan
Truth Commission (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico).
Edelberto died on 31 December 2018.
Ralph Sprenkels, a profoundly engaged scholar who after fifteen years
of human rights activism and deep knowledge of the Latin American
guerrilla wrote his brilliant study on post-insurgency politics.
Ralph died on 14 September 2019.