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Guevarism is a theory ofcommunist revolution and amilitary strategy ofguerrilla warfare associated with Marxist–Leninist revolutionaryErnesto "Che" Guevara, a leading figure of theCuban Revolution who believed in the idea ofMarxism–Leninism and embraced its principles.[1]
After the 1959 triumph of theCuban Revolution led by a militantfoco underFidel Castro, his Argentine-born, internationalist and Marxist colleague, Guevara parlayed his ideology and experiences into a model for emulation (and at times, direct military intervention) around the globe. While exporting one such "focalist" revolution toBolivia, leading an armedvanguard party there in October 1967, Guevara was captured and executed, becoming a martyr to both theworld communist movement andsocialism in general.
His ideology promotes exporting revolution to any country whose leader is supported by the empire (United States) and has fallen out of favor with its citizens. Guevara talks about how constantguerrilla warfare taking place in non-urban areas can overcome leaders. He introduces three points that are representative of his ideology as a whole, namely that the people can win with proper organization against a nation's army; that the conditions that make a revolution possible can be put in place by the popular forces; and that the popular forces always have an advantage in a non-urban setting.[2]
Guevara had a particularly keen interest in guerrilla warfare, with a dedication to foco techniques, also known as focalism (orfoquismo in Spanish), which is vanguardism by small armed units, frequently in place of establishedcommunist parties, initially launching attacks from rural areas to mobilize unrest into apopular front against a sitting regime. Despite differences in approach—emphasizing guerrilla leadership and audacious raids that engender general uprising, rather than consolidating political power in military strongholds before expanding to new ones—Guevara took great inspiration from theMaoist notion of a "protracted people's war" and sympathized withMao Zedong'sPeople's Republic of China in theSino-Soviet split. This controversy may partly explain his departure from Castro's pro-SovietCuba in the mid-1960s. Guevara also drew direct parallels with his contemporary communist comrades in theViet Cong, exhorting a multi-front guerrilla strategy to create "two, three, manyVietnams".[3]
In Guevara's final years, after leaving Cuba he advised communistparamilitary movements inAfrica andLatin America, including a youngLaurent-Désiré Kabila, future ruler ofZaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo. Finally, while leading a smallfocalist band of guerrillacadres in Bolivia, Guevara was captured and killed. His death and the short-term failure of his Guevarist tactics may have interrupted the component guerrilla wars within the largerCold War for a time and even temporarily discouraged Soviet and Cuban sponsorship for focalism.
The emerging communist movements and otherfellow traveler radicalism of the time either switched tourban guerrilla warfare before the end of the 1960s and/or soon revived the rural-based strategies of both Maoism and Guevarism, tendencies that escalated worldwide throughout the 1970s, by and large with the support from thecommunist states and theSoviet Union in general, as well as Castro's Cuba in particular.
Another proponent of Guevarism was the French intellectualRégis Debray, who could be seen as attempting to establish a coherent, unitary theoretical framework on these grounds. Debray has since broken with this.
Che Guevara developed a series of ideas and concepts that has become known as "Guevarism". His thinking tookMarxism–Leninism andanti-imperialism as a basic element, adding reflections on how to carry out a revolution and create asocialist society that gave him its own identity.
Che Guevara gave a fundamental role to the armed struggle. From his own experience he developed a whole theory about theguerrilla warfare which has been defined asfoco. For him, when there were "objective conditions" for arevolution in a country, a small "focus" guerrilla as a vanguard could create the "subjective conditions" and unleash a general population uprising.[4]
He argued that there was a close link between theguerrillas, thepeasants and theland reform. This position differentiated his thinking from purely labor-industrial socialism and brought him closer to Maoist ideas.
His bookGuerilla Warfare is a manual where tactics and strategies used in Cuban guerrilla warfare are discussed.
However, Che claimed that in certain contexts the armed struggle had no place so it was necessary to use peaceful mechanisms such as participation withinrepresentative democracy. Although Che stated that this line should be peaceful but "very combative, very brave" and that it could only be abandoned if its orientation in favor of representative democracy was undermined within the population.[5]
The fundamental axis on which he guided his political-theoretical-military action was the beginning of Marxist humanism. In other words, Che suggests that it is essential to distinguish betweenMarx's humanism and bourgeois humanism, traditional Christian,philanthropic, etc. Against all abstract humanism that claims to be "above class" (and which is, in the last analysis,bourgeois), Che's, like the liberation of the man of Marx's, is explicitly engaged in aproletarian class perspective. Thus radically opposing "bad humanism" he declares that: and the realization of their potentialities can only be realized by the revolution of the workers, peasants and other exploited classes that eliminates the exploitation of man by man and establishes rational domination and collective of men (proletarians) on their process of social life.[citation needed]
Guevarism has been criticized from arevolutionaryanarchist perspective byAbraham Guillén, one of the leading tacticians of urban guerrilla warfare inUruguay andBrazil. Guillen claimed that cities are a better ground for the guerrilla than the countryside (Guillen was a veteran of theSpanish Civil War). He criticized Guevaristmovements of national liberation (like the UruguayanTupamaros, one of the many groups that he helped as a military advisor).[6]
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