The Carrera Revolt and 'Hybrid Warfare' in Nineteenth-Century Central America

110 Pages·2017·1.286 MB·English

by  Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo (auth.)

THE CARRERA
REVOLT AND ‘HYBRID
WARFARE’ IN
NINETEENTH-CENTURY
CENTRAL AMERICA
Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo
The Carrera Revolt and ‘Hybrid Warfare’
in Nineteenth-Century Central America
Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo
The Carrera Revolt
and ‘Hybrid Warfare’
in Nineteenth-
Century Central
America
Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo
City University of New York
Bayside, NY, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-58340-2 ISBN 978-3-319-58341-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58341-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940827
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C
ontents
1 Introduction 1
2 Defining Guerrilla Warfare 11
3 Background to the Carrera Uprising 47
4 From Popular Insurrection to Full-Scale War 77
5 Conclusion 99
Index 105
v
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Abstract Rafael Carrera was a pivotal figure in the political development
of Guatemala and Central American republics during their formative
period following independence from Spain in 1821. In 1837 he led a
revolt that in the long run led to the dissolution of the Central American
Federation. While traditional historiography portrays Carrera as a guer-
rilla leader, analysis of the actions of his forces during the insurrection
points towards a form of hybrid warfare, a type of combat that combines
classical guerrilla recruiting tactics and rural insurgency logistics with
mostly conventional combat tactics and operations.
Keywords Rafael carrera · Guerrilla war · Hybrid warfare
The history of Central America in the aftermath of its independence
from Spain is a history of incessant political and armed conflict. While
the social, economic, cultural, and political aspects of these conflicts have
been amply studied, the nature of warfare during this critical period is
vaguely understood.1 In the specific case of Guatemala, the insurrection
led by Rafael Carrera (1851–1865) from 1837 to 1840, a turning point
in the history of Central America, has been the object of significant histo-
riographical research.2 However, inquiry into the nature of tactics, opera-
tions and strategies of the conflict is quite superficial, despite the fact that
there are a number of detailed accounts of specific actions that took place
© The Author(s) 2017 1
G. Visoni-Alonzo, The Carrera Revolt and ‘Hybrid
Warfare’ in Nineteenth-Century Central America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58341-9_1
2 G. VISONI-ALONZO
during the conflict. The “Rebelión de Mita,” as its contemporaries called
it,3 is often portrayed as a popular uprising where a mass of undisciplined
peasants, led by untrained commanders, achieved victory through the use
of guerrilla tactics.4 An alternative analysis of the memoires of General
Rafael Carrera (as well as other contemporary accounts and documents)
provides a different view of the campaign that led to the establishment
of this caudillo as the dominant figure of Central American politics for
25 years. The purpose of this work is not to revisit or reassess the political,
social, economic, cultural, or structural causes of the revolt but rather to
examine the purely military framework of the insurrection; the approach
of the present study is not causal but rather phenomenological. It is our
aim to show that while the uprising began as a spontaneous and poorly
organized peasant revolt, the struggle soon evolved into a full-scale insur-
rection in which the rebel armies adopted a malleable, hybrid approach
to warfare. The account of the conflict written by Rafael Carrera5 and the
official dispatches from the authorities and officers in the field allow us to
trace the genesis and development of a peculiar approach to war, a type
of warfare that combined guerrilla recruiting tactics and rural insurgency
logistics with conventional combat tactics and operations. It was this stra-
tegic paradigm, a type of hybrid approach to war and insurgency, that
enabled Carrera to raise a fighting force, repel repeated attacks, survive
devastating defeats, elude pursuing columns, reconstitute his forces, and,
ultimately, overpower his enemies on the battlefield and bring down the
Guatemalan Liberal government in what can be qualified as a vertiginous
campaign rather than a long war of attrition typical of most insurgencies.
A re-examination of the 1837–1840 campaigns also offers us the oppor-
tunity to reassess the nature of internal warfare across the Americas during
the formative period of the new nation states.
The concept of “hybrid warfare” is one that enjoys popularity in
military and intelligence circles these days. According to Marine officer
Frank Hoffman the concept first appeared in Marine Corps circles in the
mid 2000s in reference to what they envisioned as the multi-modal mil-
itary threats of the future.6 The actual term appears in Department of
Defense documents in 2006, and is subsequently used in strategic plan-
ning documents from the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army, and the Marine
Corps.7 From Hoffman’s perspective the term “hybrid warfare” refers
to war fought on multiple levels of engagement being applied simul-
taneously; a concept that, as he acknowledges, builds upon the notion
of “compound warfare,” an earlier theoretical model formulated by
1 INTRODUCTION 3
Thomas Huber in 1996. Huber defines “compound warfare” as “the
simultaneous use of a regular or main force and an irregular or guerrilla
force against an enemy. In other words, the compound warfare (CW)
operator increases his military leverage by applying both conventional
and unconventional force at the same time.”8 Huber cites the American
War of Independence, the War of Spanish Independence, Mao Zedong’s
campaigns, and the Vietnam War as examples of this type of warfare.9
Compound warfare is utilized by a lesser power when most of its terri-
tory is controlled by the enemy, and one of its main advantages is that
it forces “the enemy to both mass and disperse at the same time.”10 The
irregular element in a “compound war” keeps the enemy off balance by
cutting off communications, attacking supply lines, and forcing its forces
to spread its resources; the regular element, on the other hand, can draw
attention away from the irregular forces, can provide training, funds,
and supplies to them, and can provide strategic stability to the struggle.
Huber’s concept presupposes the existence of two different forces united
by a common strategy but acting differently at the operational and tac-
tical level. Under this model, guerrilla forces are complementary to an
overall strategic objective that can only be achieved with the employ-
ment of conventional forces. According to Robert Baumann, the con-
cept of “compound warfare” can function both as a strategic approach
in the form of prescriptive analysis (a Jominian view) and as a theoreti-
cal construct that explains historical instances of war (a Clausewitzian
view).11 However, given all the variables of the historical process,
Baumann warns of the dangers of using “compound warfare” as a pre-
dictive model.12 The model simply adds a dimension of understanding
to a “flexible framework” of analysis that incorporates many variables.
While the concept of “compound warfare” views combat as a dichoto-
mous action (involving regular and irregular forces acting concurrently
and synchronously), Hoffman’s concept of “hybrid warfare” is far more
complex since it looks at war as a multilayered phenomenon. This is how
he defines the concept:
Hybrid threats incorporate a full range of different modes of warfare
including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terror-
ist acts including discriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder.
Hybrid Wars can be conducted by both states and a variety of non-state
actors. These multi-modal activities can be conducted by separate units,
or even by the same unit, but are generally operationally and tactically
4 G. VISONI-ALONZO
directed and coordinated within the main psychological dimensions of
conflict. The effects can be gained at all levels of war.
At the strategic level, many wars have had regular and irregular compo-
nents. However, in most conflicts, these components occurred in differ-
ent theaters or in distinctly different formations. In Hybrid Wars, these
forces become blurred into the same battlespace. While they are opera-
tionally integrated and tactically fused, the irregular component of the
force attempts to become operationally decisive rather than just protract
the conflict, provoke overreactions or extend the costs of security for the
defender.13
Hoffman’s definition is constructed based on his observation of recent
conflicts, in particular the 2006 confrontation between Hezbollah and
Israel.14 While keeping a historical perspective in mind, he is trying to
provide a model that can help understand the military trends that are
emerging in the twenty first century. His aim is not merely academic
but it is rather geared towards the formulation of political doctrine.
His concept of hybrid warfare seeks to provide a theoretical framework
that enables us to understand contemporary conflicts like the Sunni
insurrection against U.S. forces in Iraq, the secessionist movements in
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and, more recently, the Russian annexa-
tion of the Crimea,15 and the “current conflict in the Ukraine between
the pro-Western nationalist government and the pro-Russian seces-
sionist rebels.”16 The Carrera revolt of 1837 is very much a nineteenth
century phenomenon, and it is in many ways typical of other popular
revolts of the pre-industrial period.17 However, some elements of the
“hybrid warfare” paradigm inform our understanding of the dynamics
behind Carrera’s success during his relatively short insurgent campaign,
Hoffman’s distinction between “compound wars,” conflicts where
regular forces coordinate with irregular forces, and “Hybrid Wars.” The
insurrection of Rafael Carrera does not fit perfectly into the contempo-
rary conception of “Hybrid Wars,” but it is a hybrid form of combat; it is
a form of military conflict that adopts different modalities of engagement
and varied degrees of intensity according to the circumstances. A close
examination of the 1837 Rebellion of Mita shows that while the initial
uprising was spontaneous, aimless, and disorganized, the conflict soon
adopted a pattern where Carrera’s army acted alternately (and some-
times synchronously) as conventional forces and as guerrillas. By force
1 INTRODUCTION 5
of necessity Carrera adopted a strategy that sought to defeat the enemy
(the Liberal government of Guatemala and later the Federal forces of
President Francisco Morazán) on the open battlefield whenever possi-
ble, but also relied on guerrilla tactics of harassment, ambush, sabotage,
hit-and-run attacks, and popular agitation when facing superior forces,
lack of resources, a vulnerable strategic position, or an uncertain politi-
cal environment. Carrera was able to engage in conventional and uncon-
ventional tactics, to conduct large scale conventional campaigns designed
to force political outcomes, and to mount small scale actions aimed at
achieving a localized operational advantage. He was able to sustain a
struggle that lasted 3 years with an extremely limited amount of eco-
nomic resources by taking advantage of local popular support and by tar-
geting those whom he considered his ideological enemies. Carrera made
a masterful use of religion as a psychological component to his strategy
and a source of moral strength for his troops, but at the same time used
intimidation and brutal violence to eliminate dissent and insure the sta-
bility of his base of support. He fought in rugged torrid mountains, in
temperate forests, in cold highlands, and in labyrinthine urban environ-
ments. From a military perspective, the vertiginous and successful war
waged by Rafael Carrera between 1837 and 1838 cannot be explained
solely as a guerrilla conflict, as a mass peasant revolt, as a rural insurgent
movement, or even as a “compound war.” One of the aims of this work
is to show that, given Carrera’s use of different modalities of combat, the
transmutation of his forces from regular to irregular, and his modulation
of combat intensity, the conflict can be categorized as a form of hybrid
warfare even if it does not exactly fit the current definitions of the term.
Another aim of the present work is to show that while Carrera’s
rise and eventual political success was the product of complex politi-
cal, social-economic, cultural, and geographic circumstances, the deci-
sive factor for his victory was a military one, and it was anchored on his
ability to conduct a different form of warfare from that of his enemies.
Without the use of a very malleable form of warfare that amalgamated
elements of guerrilla and conventional combat, Carrera’s victory seems
quite improbable. The celerity of political change and the fluidity of
the military situation in Central America during the post-independence
period meant that a rebel like Carrera could not afford to wage a pro-
tracted war of attrition, a long and debilitating guerrilla war. Conversely,
he and his ragamuffin followers could not (at least initially) fight a full-
scale conventional conflict. It was Carrera’s ability to alternate and blend