The Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla
by Carlos Marighella
Editor's Note: Carlos Marighella was the former Communist Party chief in Sao Paulo, one of Brazil's largest industrial cities. He broke with the Party in 1967 and took up the call of creating "two, three, many Vietnams" which issued from the Organization of Latin American States conference in Havana. His organization, Action for National Liberation, created the theories of urban guerrilla warfare, which quickly gained widespread acceptance with militant groups around the world. Extreme care has been taken in the translation from Spanish to English to retain the author’s original sentence structure and meaning. Some changes had to be made in order to understand the material more clearly.
CONTENTS
By Way of Introduction
A Definition of the Urban Guerrilla
Personal Qualities of the Urban Guerrilla
How the Urban Guerrilla Lives and Subsists
Technical Preparation of the Urban Guerrilla
The Urban Guerrilla's Arms
The Shot: the Urban Guerrilla's Reason for Existence
The Firing Group
The Logistics of the Urban Guerrilla
The Technique of the Urban Guerrilla
Characteristics of the Urban Guerrilla's Technique
The Initial Advantages of the Urban Guerrilla
Surprise
Knowledge of the Terrain
Mobility and Speed
Information
Decision
Objectives of the Urban Guerrilla's Actions
On the Types and Nature of Action Models for the Urban Guerrilla
Assaults
The Bank Assault as Popular Model
Raids and Penetration
Occupations
Ambush
Street Tactics
Strikes and Work Interruptions
Desertions, Diversions, Seizures, Expropriations of Arms, Ammunition,
and Explosives
Liberation of Prisoners
Execution
Kidnapping
Sabotage
Terrorism
Armed Propaganda
The War of Nerves
How to Carry Out the Action
Some Observations on the Method
Rescue of the Wounded
Guerrilla Security
The Seven Sins of the Urban Guerrilla
Popular Support
Urban Guerrilla Warfare, School for Selecting the Guerrilla
"You must not forget we can also build... it is we the workers who built these palaces and cities. We can build others to take their place. The ruling rich might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here in our hearts."
Buenaventura Durruti, the
only libertarian commander in the Spanish Revolution.
Second, to the brave comrades — men and women —
imprisoned in the medieval dungeons of the Brazilian government and subjected
to tortures that even surpass the horrendous crimes practiced by the Nazis.
Like those comrades whose memories we revere, as well as
those taken in battle, what we must do is fight.
Each comrade who opposes the military dictatorship and
wants to fight it can do something, however insignificant the task may seem.
I urge all who read this minimanual and reach the conclusion
that they cannot remain inactive, to follow its instructions and join the fight
now. I do so because, under whatever hypothesis and in whatever circumstances,
the duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution.
Another important problem is not merely to read the minimanual
here and now, but to circulate its contents. The circulation will be possible
if those who agree with its ideas make mimeographed copies or print it in a
pamphlet, though in this latter case, armed struggle itself will be necessary.
Finally, the reason that the present minimanual bears my
signature, is that the ideas expressed or systematized here reflect the personal
experience of a group of men engaged in armed struggle in Brazil, among whom
I have the honor to be included. So that certain individuals will have no doubt
about what this minimanual proclaims and can no longer deny the facts or continue
to state that the conditions for the struggle do not exist, it is necessary
to assume responsibility for what is said and done. Hence anonymity becomes
a problem in a work such as this. The important fact is that there are patriots
prepared to fight like ordinary soldiers, and the more there are the better.
The accusation of assault or terrorism no longer has the
pejorative meaning it used to have. It has acquired new clothing, a new coloration.
It does not factionalize, it does not
Today to be an assailant or a terrorist is a quality that
ennobles any honorable man because it is an act worthy of a revolutionary engaged
in armed struggle against the shameful military dictatorship and its monstrosities.
A Definition of the Urban Guerrilla
The chronic structural crisis characteristic of Brazil
today, and its resultant political instability, is what has brought about the
upsurge of revolutionary war in the country. The revolutionary war manifests
itself in the form of urban guerrilla warfare, psychological warfare, or rural
guerrilla warfare. Urban guerrilla warfare or psychological warfare in the city
depends on the urban guerrilla
The urban guerrilla is a man who fights the military dictatorship
with arms, using unconventional methods. A political revolutionary and an ardent
patriot, he is a fighter for his country's liberation, a friend of the people
and of freedom. The area in which the urban guerrilla acts is in the large Brazilian
cities. There are also bandits, commonly known as outlaws, who work in the big
cities. Many times, assaults by outlaws are mistaken as actions by urban guerrillas
The urban guerrilla, however, differs radically from the
outlaw. The outlaw benefits personally from the action, and attacks indiscriminately
without distinguishing between the exploited and the exploiters, which is why
there are so many ordinary men and women among his victims. The urban guerrilla
follows a political goal and only attacks the government, the big capitalists,
and the foreign imperialists, particularly North Americans.
Another element just as prejudicial as the outlaw and also
operating in the urban area is the right-wing counter-revolutionary who creates
confusion, assaults banks, hurls bombs, kidnaps, assassinates, and commits the
worst imaginable crimes against urban guerrillas, revolutionary priests, students,
and citizens who oppose fascism and seek liberty.
The urban guerrilla is an implacable enemy of the government
and systematically inflicts damage on the authorities and on the men who dominate
the country and exercise power.
The principle task of the urban guerrilla is to distract,
to wear out, to demoralize the militarists, the military dictatorship and its
repressive forces, and also to attack and destroy the wealth and property of
the North Americans, the foreign managers, and the Brazilian upper class.
The urban guerrilla is not afraid of dismantling and destroying
the present Brazilian economic, political, and social system, for his aim is
to help the rural guerrilla and to collaborate in the creation of a totally
new and revolutionary social and political structure, with the armed people
in power.
The urban guerrilla must have a certain minimal political
understanding. To gain that he must read certain printed or mimeographed works
such as:
Guerrilla
Warfare by Che Guevara
Memories of a Terrorist
Some Questions about the Brazilian
Guerrilla Operations and Tactics
On Strategic Problems and Principles
Certain Tactical Principles for Comrades Undertaking Guerrilla Operations
Organizational Questions
O Guerriheiro newspaper of the Brazilian revolutionary groups
Personal Qualities of the Urban Guerrilla
The urban guerrilla is characterized by his bravery and
decisive nature. He must be a good tactician and a good shot. The urban guerrilla
must be a person of great astuteness to compensate for the fact that he is not
sufficiently strong in arms, ammunition, and equipment.
The career militarists or the government police have modern
arms and transport, and can go about anywhere freely, using the force of their
power. The urban guerrilla does not have such resources at his disposal and
leads a clandestine existence. Sometimes he is a convicted person or is out
on parole, and is obliged to use false documents.
Nevertheless, the urban guerrilla has a certain advantage
over the conventional military or the police. It is that, while the military
and the police act on behalf of the enemy, whom the people hate, the urban guerrilla
defends a just cause, which is the people's cause.
The urban guerrilla's arms are inferior to the enemy's,
but from a moral point of view, the urban guerrilla has an undeniable superiority.
This moral superiority is what sustains the urban guerrilla.
Thanks to it, the urban guerrilla can accomplish his principle duty, which is
to attack and to survive.
The urban guerrilla has to capture or divert arms from
the enemy to be able to fight. Because his arms are not uniform, since what
he has are expropriated or have fallen into his hands in different ways, the
urban guerrilla faces the problem of a variety of arms and a shortage of ammunition.
Moreover, he has no place to practice shooting and marksmanship.
These difficulties have to be surmounted, forcing the urban
guerrilla to be imaginative and creative, qualities without which it would be
impossible for him to carry out his role as a revolutionary.
The urban guerrilla must possess initiative, mobility,
and flexibility, as well as versatility and a command of any situation. Initiative
especially is an indispensable quality. It is not always possible to foresee
everything, and the urban guerrilla cannot let himself become confused, or wait
for orders. His duty is to act, to find adequate solutions for each problem
he faces, and not to retreat. It is better to err acting than to do nothing
for fear of erring. Without initiative there is no urban guerrilla warfare.
Other important qualities in the urban guerrilla are the
following: to be a good walker, to be able to stand up against fatigue, hunger,
rain, heat. To know how to hide and to be vigilant. To conquer the art of dissembling.
Never to fear danger. To behave the same by day as by night. Not to act impetuously.
To have unlimited patience. To remain calm and cool in the worst conditions
and situations. Never to leave a track or trail. Not to get discouraged.
In the face of the almost insurmountable difficulties of
urban warfare, sometimes comrades weaken, leave, and give up the work.
The urban guerrilla is not a businessman in a commercial
firm nor is he a character in a play. Urban guerrilla warfare, like rural guerrilla
warfare, is a pledge the guerrilla makes to himself. When he cannot face the
difficulties, or knows that he lacks the patience to wait, then it is better
to relinquish his role before he betrays his pledge, for he clearly lacks the
basic qualities necessary to be a guerrilla.
How the Urban Guerrilla Lives and
Subsists
The urban guerrilla must know how to live among the people
and must be careful not to appear strange and separated from ordinary city life.
He should not wear clothes that are different from those
that other people wear. Elaborate and high fashion clothing for men or women
may often be a handicap if the urban guerrilla's mission takes him into working
class neighborhoods or sections where such dress is uncommon. The same care
has to be taken if the urban guerrilla moves from the South to the North or
vice versa.
The urban guerrilla must live by his work or professional
activity. If he is known and sought by the police, if he is convicted or on
parole, he must go underground and sometimes must live hidden. Under such circumstances,
the urban guerrilla cannot reveal his activity to anyone, since that is always
and only the responsibility of the revolutionary organization in which he is
participating.
The urban guerrilla must have a great capacity for observation,
must be well informed about everything, principally about the enemy's movements,
and must be very searching and knowledgeable about the area in which he lives,
operates, or through which he moves.
But the fundamental and decisive characteristic of the
urban guerrilla is that he is a man who fights with arms; given this condition,
there is very little likelihood that he will be able to follow his normal profession
for long without being identified. The role of expropriation thus looms as clear
as high noon. It is impossible for the urban guerrilla to exist and survive
without fighting to expropriate.
Thus, within the framework of the class struggle, as it
inevitably and necessarily sharpens, the armed struggle of the urban guerrilla
points toward two essential objectives:
A.
The physical liquidation of the chiefs and assistants of the armed forces and
of the police;
B.
The expropriation of government resources and those belonging to the big capitalists,
latifundists, and imperialists, with small expropriations used for the maintenance
of individual urban guerrillas and large ones for the sustenance of the revolution
itself.
It is clear that the armed struggle of the urban guerrilla
also has other objectives. But here we are referring to the two basic objectives,
above all expropriation. It is necessary for every urban guerrilla to keep in
mind always that he can only maintain his existence if he is disposed to kill
the police and those dedicated to repression, and if he is determined —
truly determined — to expropriate the wealth of the big capitalists, the
latifundists, and the imperialists.
One of the fundamental characteristics of the Brazilian
revolution is that from the beginning it developed around the expropriation
of the wealth of the major bourgeois, imperialist, and latifundist interests,
without excluding the richest and most powerful commercial elements engaged
in the import-export business.
And by expropriating the wealth of the principle enemies
of the people the Brazilian revolution was able to hit them at their vital center,
with preferential and systematic attacks on the banking network — that
is to say, the most telling blows were leveled against capitalism's nerve system.
The bank robberies carried out by the Brazilian urban guerrillas
hurt such big capitalists as Moreira Salles and others, the foreign firms which
insure and reinsure the banking capital, the imperialist companies, the federal
and state governments — all of them systematically expropriated as of now.
The fruit of these expropriations has been devoted to the
work of learning and perfecting urban guerrilla techniques, the purchase, the
production, and the transportation of arms and ammunition for the rural areas,
the security apparatus of the revolutionaries, the daily maintenance of the
fighters, of those who have been liberated from prison by armed force and those
who are wounded or persecuted by the police, or to any kind of problem concerning
comrades liberated from jail, or assassinated by the police and the military
dictatorship.
The tremendous costs of the revolutionary war must fall
on the big capitalists, on imperialism and the latifundists and on the government
too, both federal and state, since they are all exploiters and oppressors of
the people.
Men of the government, agents of the dictatorship and of
North American imperialism principally, must pay with their lives for the crimes
committed against the Brazilian people.
In Brazil, the number of violent actions carried out by
urban guerrillas, including deaths, explosions, seizures of arms, ammunition,
and explosives, assaults on banks and prisons, etc., is significant enough to
leave no room for doubt as to the actual aims of the revolutionaries. The execution
of the CIA spy Charles Chandler, a member of the US Army who came from the war
in Vietnam to infiltrate the Brazilian student movement, the military henchmen
killed in bloody encounters with urban guerrillas, all are witness to the fact
that we are in full revolutionary war and that the war can be waged only by
violent means.
This is the reason why the urban guerrilla uses armed struggle
and why he continues to concentrate his activity on the physical extermination
of the agents of repression, and to dedicate twenty-four hours a day to expropriation
from the people's exploiters.
Technical Preparation of the Urban
Guerrilla
No one can become an urban guerrilla without paying special
attention to technical preparation.
The technical preparation of the urban guerrilla runs from
the concern for his physical preparedness, to knowledge of and apprenticeship
in professions and skills of all kinds, particularly manual skills.
The urban guerrilla can have strong physical resistance
only if he trains systematically. He cannot be a good fighter if he has not
learnt the art of fighting. For that reason the urban guerrilla must learn and
practice various kinds of fighting, of attack, and personal defense.
Other useful forms of physical preparation are hiking,
camping, and practice in survival in the woods, mountain climbing, rowing, swimming,
skin diving, training as a frogman, fishing, harpooning, and the hunting of
birds, small and big game.
It is very important to learn how to drive, pilot a plane,
handle a motor boat and a sail boat, understand mechanics, radio, telephone,
electricity, and have some knowledge of electronic techniques.
It is also important to have a knowledge of topographical
information, to be able to locate one's position by instruments or other available
resources, to calculate distances, make maps and plans, draw to scale, make
timings, work with an angle protractor, a compass, etc.
A knowledge of chemistry and of color combination, of stamp
making, the domination of the technique of calligraphy and the copying of letters
and other skills are part of the technical preparation of the urban guerrilla,
who is obliged to falsify documents in order to live within a society that he
seeks to destroy.
In the area of auxiliary medicine, nursing, pharmacology,
drugs, elemental surgery, and emergency first aid.
The basic question in the technical preparation of the urban guerrilla is nevertheless to know how to handle arms such as the machine gun, revolver, automatic, FAL, various types of shotguns, carbines, mortars, bazookas, etc.
A knowledge of various types of ammunition and explosives
is another aspect to consider. Among the explosives, dynamite must be well understood.
The use of incendiary bombs, of smoke bombs, and other types of indispensable
prior knowledge.
To know how to make and repair arms, prepare Molotov cocktails,
grenades, mines, homemade destructive devices, how to blow up bridges, tear
up and put out of service rails and sleepers, these are requisites in the technical
preparation of the urban guerrilla that can never be considered unimportant.
The Urban Guerrilla's Arms
The urban guerrilla's arms are light arms, easily exchanged,
usually captured from the enemy, purchased, or made on the spot.
Light arms have the advantage of fast handling and quick
transport. In general, light arms are characterized as short barreled. This
includes many automatic arms.
Automatic and semi-automatic arms considerably increase
the fighting power of the urban guerrilla. The disadvantage of this type of
arm for us is the difficulty in controlling it, resulting in wasted rounds or
in a prodigious use of ammunition, compensated for only by optimal aim and firing
precision. Men who are poorly trained convert automatic weapons into an ammunition
drain.
Experience has shown that the basic arm of the urban guerrilla
is the light machine gun. This arm, in addition to being efficient and easy
to shoot in an urban area, has the advantage of being greatly respected by the
enemy. The guerrilla must know thoroughly how to handle the machine gun, now
so popular and indispensable to the Brazilian urban guerrilla.
The ideal machine gun for the urban guerrilla is the Thompson
submachinegun in .45 caliber. Other types of machine guns of different caliber
can be used - understanding, of course, the problem of ammunition. Thus it is
preferable that the gun-making shops of the urban guerrilla produce a single
caliber of machine gun so that the ammunition used can be standardized.
Each firing group of urban guerrillas must have a machine
gun managed by a good marksman. The other components of the group must be armed
with .38 revolvers, our standard arm. The .32 is also useful for those who want
to participate. But the .38 is preferable since its impact usually puts the
enemy out of action.
Hand grenades and conventional smoke bombs can be considered light arms, with
defensive power for cover and withdrawal.
Long barrel arms are more difficult for the urban guerrilla
to transport and attract much attention because of their size. Among the long
barrel are the FAL, the Mauser guns or rifles, hunting guns such as the Winchester,
and others.
Shotguns can be useful if used at close range and point
blank. They are useful even for a poor shot, especially at night when precision
isn't much help. A pressure air gun can be useful for training in marksmanship.
Bazookas and mortars can also be used in action but the conditions for using
them have to be prepared and the people who use them must be trained.
The urban guerrilla should not try to base his actions
on the use of heavy arms, which have major drawbacks in a type of fighting that
demands lightweight weapons to insure mobility and speed.
Homemade weapons are often as efficient as the best arms
produced in conventional factories, and even a cut-off shotgun is a good arm
for the urban guerrilla.
The urban guerrilla's role as gunsmith has a fundamental
importance. As gunsmith he takes care of the arms, knows how to repair them,
and in many cases can set up a small
Work in metallurgy and on the mechanical lathe are basic
skills the urban guerrilla should incorporate into his industrial planning,
which is the construction of homemade weapons.
This construction and courses in explosives and sabotage
must be organized. The primary materials for practice in these courses must
be obtained ahead of time to prevent an incomplete apprenticeship — that
is to say, so as to leave no room for experimentation.
The urban guerrilla will be careful not to keep explosives
and materials that can cause accidents around for very long, but will try always
to use them immediately on their destined targets.
The urban guerrilla's arms and his ability to maintain
them constitute his fire power. By taking advantage of modern arms and introducing
innovations in his fire power and in the use of certain arms, the urban guerrilla
can change many of the tactics of city warfare. An example of this was the innovation
made by the urban guerrillas in Brazil when they introduced the machine gun
in their attacks on banks.
When the massive use of uniform machine guns becomes possible,
there will be new changes in urban guerrilla warfare tactics. The firing group
that utilizes uniform weapons and corresponding ammunition, with reasonable
support for their maintenance, will reach a considerable level of efficiency.
The urban guerrilla increases his efficiency as he improves his firing potential.
The Shot: The Urban Guerrilla's Reason
for Existence
The urban guerrilla's reason for existence, the basic condition
in which he acts and survives, is to shoot. The urban guerrilla must know how
to shoot well because it is required in this type of combat.
In conventional warfare, combat is generally at a distance
with long-range arms. In unconventional warfare, in which urban guerrilla warfare
is included, the combat is at close range, often very close. To prevent his
own extinction, the urban guerrilla has to shoot first and he cannot err in
his shot. He cannot waste his ammunition because he doesn't have large amounts,
so he is part of a small group in which each guerrilla has to take care of himself.
The urban guerrilla can lose no time and must be able to shoot at once.
One fundamental fact, which we want to emphasize fully
and whose particular importance cannot be overestimated, is that the urban guerrilla
must not fire continuously, using up his ammunition. It may be that the enemy
is not responding to the fire precisely because he is waiting until the guerrilla's
ammunition is used up. At such a moment, without having time to replace his
ammunition, the urban guerrilla faces a rain of enemy fire and can be taken
prisoner or be killed.
In spite of the value of the surprise factor which many
times makes it unnecessary for the urban guerrilla to use his arms, he cannot
be allowed the luxury of entering combat without knowing how to shoot. And face
to face with the enemy, he must always be moving from one position to another,
because to stay in one position makes him a fixed target and, as such, very
vulnerable.
The urban guerrilla's life depends on shooting, on his
ability to handle his arms well and to avoid being hit. When we speak of shooting,
we speak of marksmanship as well.
Shooting must be learned until it becomes a reflex action
on the part of the urban guerrilla.
To learn how to shoot and to have good aim, the urban guerrilla
must train himself systematically, utilizing every apprenticeship methods, shooting
at targets, even at amusement parks and at home.
Shooting and marksmanship are the urban guerrilla's water
and air. His perfection of the art of shooting makes him a special type of urban
guerrilla - that is, a sniper, a category of solitary combatant at close range
and at long range, and his arms are appropriate for either type of shooting.
The Firing Group
In order to function, the urban guerrillas must be organized
in small groups. A group of no more than four or five is called the firing group.
A minimum of two firing groups, separated and sealed off
from other firing groups, directed and coordinated by one or two persons, this
is what makes a firing team.
Within the firing group there must be complete confidence
among the comrades. The best shot and the one who knows how to manage the machine
gun is the person in charge of operations.
The firing group plans and executes urban guerrilla actions,
obtains and guards arms, studies and corrects its own tactics.
When there are tasks planned by the strategic command,
these tasks take preference. But there is no such thing as a firing group without
its own initiative. For this reason it is essential to avoid any rigidity in
the organization in order to permit the greatest possible initiative on the
part of the firing group. The old-type hierarchy, the style of the traditional
left doesn't exist in our organization.
This means that, except for the priority of objectives
set by the strategic command, any firing group can decide to assault a bank,
to kidnap or to execute an agent of the dictatorship, a figure identified with
the reaction, or a North American spy, and can carry out any kind of propaganda
or war of nerves against the enemy without the need to consult the general command.
No firing group can remain inactive waiting for orders
from above. Its obligation is to act. Any single urban guerrilla who wants to
establish a firing group and begin actions can do so and thus become a part
of the organization.
This method of action eliminates the need for knowing who
is carrying out which actions, since there is free initiative and the only important
point is to increase substantially the volume of urban guerrilla activity in
order to wear out the government and force it onto the defensive.
The firing group is the instrument of organized action.
Within it, guerrilla operations and tactics are planned, launched, and carried
through to success.
The general command counts on the firing groups to carry
out objectives of a strategic nature, and to do so in any part of the country.
For its part, it helps the firing groups with their difficulties and their needs.
The organization is an indestructible network of firing
groups, and of coordination among them, that functions simply and practically
with a general command that also participates in the attacks; an organization
which exists for no purpose other than pure and simple revolutionary action.
The Logistics of the Urban Guerrilla
Conventional logistics can be expressed by the formula
FFEA:
F - food
F - fuel
E - equipment
A - ammunition
Conventional logistics refer to the maintenance problems
for an army or a regular armed force, transported in vehicles with fixed bases
and supply lines.
Urban guerrillas, on the contrary,
are not an army but small, armed groups, intentionally fragmented. They
have no vehicles or fixed bases. Their supply lines are precarious and insufficient,
and have no established base except in the rudimentary sense of an arms factory
within a house.
While the goal of conventional logistics is to supply the
war needs of the guerrillas to be used to be repress urban and rural rebellion,
urban guerrilla logistics aim at sustaining operations and tactics which have
nothing in common with a conventional war and are directed against the military
dictatorship and North American domination of the country.
For the urban guerrilla, who starts from nothing and has
no support at the beginning, logistics are expressed by the formula MMAAE:
M – mechanization (cars,
trucks, etc.)
M - money
A - arms
A - ammunition
E - Explosives
Revolutionary logistics takes mechanization as one of its
bases. Nevertheless, mechanization is inseparable from the driver. The urban
guerrilla driver is as important as the urban guerrilla machine gunner. Without
either, the machines do not work, and as such the automobile like the machine
gun becomes a dead thing. An experienced driver is not made in one day and the
apprenticeship must begin early. Every good urban guerrilla must be a good driver.
As to the vehicle, the urban guerrilla must expropriate what he needs.
When he already has resources, the urban guerrilla can
combine the expropriation of vehicles with other methods of acquisition.
Money, arms, ammunition and explosives, and automobiles
as well, must be expropriated. And the urban guerrilla must rob banks and armories
and seize explosives and ammunition wherever he finds them.
None of these operations is undertaken for just one purpose.
Even when the assault is for money, the arms that the guards bear must also
be taken.
Expropriation is the first step in the organization of
our logistics, which itself assumes an armed and permanently mobile character.
The second step is to reinforce and extend logistics, resorting
to ambushes and traps in which the enemy will be surprised and his arms, ammunition,
vehicles, and other resources can be captured.
Once he has the arms, ammunition, and explosives, one of
the most serious logistic problems the urban guerrilla faces at any time and
in any situation, is a hiding place in which to leave the material and appropriate
means for transporting it and assembling it where it is needed. This has to
be accomplished even when the enemy is on the lookout and has the roads blocked.
The knowledge that the urban guerrilla has of the terrain,
and the devices he uses or is capable of using, such as guides especially prepared
and recruited for this mission, are the basic elements in the solution of the
eternal logistics problem the revolutionary faces.
The Technique of the Urban Guerrilla
In its most general sense, technique is the combination
of methods man uses to carry out any activity. The activity of the urban guerrilla
consists in waging guerrilla warfare and psychological warfare.
The urban guerrilla technique has five basic components:
A. One part is related to the specific characteristics
of the situation;
B. One part is related to the requisites that match these
characteristics, requisites represented by a series of initial advantages without
which the urban guerrilla cannot achieve his objectives;
C. One part concerns certain and definite objectives in
the actions initiated by the urban guerrilla;
D. One part is related to the types and characteristic
modes of action for the urban guerrilla;
E. One part is concerned with the guerrilla's method of
carrying out his specific actions.
Characteristics of the Urban Guerrilla's
Technique
The technique of the urban guerrilla has the following
characteristics:
A. It is an aggressive technique, or in other words, it
has an offensive character. As is well known, defensive action means death for
us. Since we are inferior to the enemy in firepower and have neither his resources
nor his power force, we cannot defend ourselves against an offensive or a concentrated
attack by the guerrillas. And that is the reason why our urban technique can
never be permanent, can never defend a fixed base nor remain in any one spot
waiting to repel the circle of reaction;
B. It is a technique of attack and retreat by which we
preserve our forces;
C. It is a technique that aims at the development of urban
guerrilla warfare, whose function will be to wear out, demoralize, and distract
enemy forces, permitting the emergence and survival of rural guerrilla warfare,
which is destined to play the decisive role in the revolutionary war.
The Initial Advantages of the Urban
Guerrilla
The dynamics of urban guerrilla warfare lie in the urban
guerrilla's violent clash with the military and police forces of the dictatorship.
In this clash, the police have the superiority.
The urban guerrilla has inferior forces. The paradox is
that the urban guerrilla, although weaker, is nevertheless the attacker.
The military and police forces, for their part, respond
to the attack by mobilizing and concentrating infinitely superior forces in
the persecution and destruction of the urban guerrilla. He can only avoid defeat
if he counts on the initial advantages he has and knows how to exploit them
to the end to compensate for his weaknesses and lack of material.
The initial advantages are:
1.He must take the enemy by surprise;
2. He must know the terrain of the encounter
better than the enemy;
3. He must have greater mobility and speed
than the police and the other repressive forces;
4. His information service must be better
than the enemy's;
5. He must be in command of the situation
and demonstrate a decisiveness so great that everyone on our side is inspired
and never thinks of hesitating, while on the other side the enemy is stunned
and incapable of responding.
Surprise
To compensate for his general weakness and shortage of
arms compared to the enemy, the urban guerrilla uses surprise. The enemy has
no way to fight surprise and becomes confused or is destroyed.
When urban guerrilla warfare broke out in Brazil, experience
proved that surprise was essential to the success of any urban guerrilla operation.
The technique of surprise is based on four essential requisites:
A. We know the situation of the enemy we are going to attack,
usually by means of precise information and meticulous observation, while the
enemy does not know he is going to be attacked and knows nothing about the attacker;
B. Nothing about our force (strength, weapons, etc.);
C. Attacking by surprise, we save and conserve our forces,
while the enemy is unable to do the same and is left at the mercy of events;
D. We determine the hour and the place of the attack, fix
its duration and establish its objective. The enemy remains ignorant of all
this.
Knowledge of the Terrain
The urban guerrilla's best ally is the terrain and because
this is so he must know it like the palm of his hand.
To have the terrain as an ally means to know how to use
with intelligence its unevenness, its high and low points, its turns, its irregularities,
its regular and its secret passages, abandoned areas, its thickets, etc., taking
maximum advantage of all this for the success of armed actions, escapes, retreats,
cover and hiding places.
Its impasses and narrow spots, its gorges, its streets
under repair, police control points, military zones and closed off streets,
the entrances and exits of tunnels and those that the enemy can close off, viaducts
to be crossed, corners controlled by the police or watched, its lights and signals,
all this must be thoroughly known and studied in order to avoid fatal errors.
Our problem is to get through and to know where and how
to hide, leaving the enemy bewildered in areas he doesn't know.
Familiar with avenues, streets, alleys, ins and outs, and
corners of the urban centers, its paths and shortcuts, its empty lots, its underground
passages, its pipes and sewer system, the urban guerrilla safely crosses through
the irregular and difficult terrain unfamiliar to the police, where they can
be surprised in a fatal ambush or trapped at any moment.
Because he knows the terrain the guerrilla can go through
it on foot, on bicycle, in automobile, jeep, truck, and never be trapped. Acting
in small groups with only a few people, the guerrillas can reunite at an hour
and place determined beforehand, following up the attack with new guerrilla
operations, or evading the police circle and disorientating the enemy with their
unprecedented audacity.
It is an insoluble problem for the police in the labyrinthian
terrain of the urban guerrilla, to get someone they can't see, to repress someone
they can't catch, to close in on someone they can't find.
Our experience is that the ideal urban guerrilla is one
who operates in his own city and knows thoroughly its streets, its neighborhoods,
its transit problems, and other peculiarities.
The guerrilla outsider, who comes to a city whose corners
are unfamiliar to him, is a weak spot and if he is assigned certain operations,
can endanger them. To avoid grave errors, it is necessary for him to get to
know well the layout of the streets.
Mobility and Speed
To insure mobility and speed that the police cannot match,
the urban guerrilla needs the following prerequisites:
A. Mechanization;
B. Knowledge of the terrain;
C. A rupture of suspension of enemy communications
and transport;
D. Light arms.
By carefully carrying through the operations that last
only a few moments, and leaving the site in mechanized vehicles, the urban beats
a rapid retreat, escaping prosecution.
The urban guerrilla must know the way in detail and, in
this sense, must go through the schedule ahead of time as a training to avoid
entering alleyways that have no exit, or running into traffic jams, or becoming
paralyzed by the Transit Department's traffic signals.
The police pursue the urban guerrilla blindly without knowing
which road he is using for his escape.
While the urban guerrilla quickly flees because he knows
the terrain, the police lose the trail and give up the chase.
The urban guerrilla must launch his operations far from
the logistics base of the police. An initial advantage of this method of operation
is that it places us at a reasonable distance from the possibility of prosecution,
which facilitates the evasion.
In addition to this necessary precaution, the urban guerrilla
must be concerned with the enemy's communication system. The telephone is the
primary target in preventing the enemy from access to information by knocking
out his communication system.
Even if he knows about the guerrilla operation, the enemy
depends on modern transport for his logistics support, and his vehicles necessarily
lose time carrying him through the heavy traffic of the large cities.
It is clear that the tangled and treacherous traffic is
a disadvantage for the enemy, as it would be for us if we were not ahead of
him.
If we want to have a safe margin of security and be certain
to leave no tracks for the future, we can adopt the following methods:
A. Purposely intercept the police with other
vehicles or by apparently casual inconveniences and damages; but in this case
the vehicles in question should not be legal nor should they have real license
numbers;
B. Obstruct the road with fallen trees, rocks,
ditches, false traffic signs, dead ends or detours, and other ingenious methods;
C. Place homemade mines in the way of the
police, use gasoline, or throw Molotov cocktails to set their vehicle on fire;
D. Set off a burst of machinegun fire or arms
such as the FAL aimed at the motor and the tires of the car engaged in pursuit.
With the arrogance typical of the police and the military
fascist authorities, the enemy will come to fight us with heavy guns and equipment
and with elaborate maneuvers by men armed to the teeth. The urban guerrilla
must respond to this with light weapons easily transported, so he can always
escape with maximum speed, without ever accepting open fighting. The urban guerrilla
has no mission other than to attack and retreat.
We would leave ourselves open to the most stunning defeats
if we burdened ourselves with heavy arms and with the tremendous weight of the
ammunition necessary to fire them, at the same time losing our precious gift
of mobility.
When the enemy fights against us with cavalry we are at
no disadvantage as long as we are mechanized. The automobile goes faster than
the horse. From within the car we also the target of the mounted police, knocking
him down with machinegun and revolver fire or with Molotov cocktails and grenades.
On the other hand, it is not difficult for an urban guerrilla
on foot to make a target of a policeman on horseback. Moreover, ropes across
the street, marbles, cork stoppers are very efficient methods of making them
both fall. The great disadvantage of the mounted police is that he presents
the urban guerrilla with two excellent targets: the horse and its rider.
Apart from being faster than the horseman, the helicopter
has no better chance in persecution. If the horse is too slow compared to the
urban guerrilla's automobile, the helicopter is too fast. Moving at 200 kilometers
an hour it will never succeed in hitting from above a target lost among the
crowds and the street vehicles, nor can it land in public streets in order to
catch someone. At the same time, whenever it tries to fly too low, it will be
excessively vulnerable to the fire of the urban guerrilla.
Information Warfare
The possibilities that the government has for discovering
and destroying the urban guerrilla lessen as the potential of the dictatorship's
enemies becomes greater and more concentrated among the popular masses.
This concentration of opponents of the dictatorship plays
a very important role in providing information as to moves on the part of the
police and men in government, as well as hiding our activities. The
enemy can also be thrown off by false information, which is worse for him because
it is a tremendous waste.
By whatever means, the sources of information at the disposal
of the urban guerrilla are potentially better than those of the police. The
enemy is observed by the people, but does not know who among them transmits
information to the urban guerrilla. The military and the police are hated for
the injustices and violence they commit against the people, and this facilitates
obtaining information prejudicial to the activities of government agents.
The information, which is only a small area of popular
support, represents an extraordinary potential in the hands of the urban guerrilla.
The creation of an intelligence service with an organized structure is a basic
need for us. The urban guerrilla has to have essential information about the
plans and movements of the enemy, where they are, and how they move, the resources
of the banking network, the means of communication, and the secret moves the
enemy makes.
The trustworthy information passed along to the urban guerrilla represents a well-aimed blow at the dictatorship. It has no way to defend itself in the face of an important leak that jeopardizes its interests and facilitates our destructive attack.
The enemy also wants to know what steps we are taking so
he can destroy us or prevent us from acting. In this sense the danger of betrayal
is present and the enemy encourages betrayal or infiltrates spies into the organization.
The urban guerrilla's technique against the enemy tactic is to denounce publicly
the traitors, spies, informers, and provocateurs.
For their part the urban guerrilla must not evade the duty
— once he knows whom the spy or informer is — of wiping him or her
out physically. This is the correct method, approved by the people, and it minimizes
considerably the incidence of infiltration or enemy spying.
The urban guerrilla, living in the midst of the people
and moving among them, must be attentive to all types of conversations and human
relations, learning how to disguise his interest with great skill and judgment.
In places where people work, study, live, it is easy to
collect all kinds of information on payments, business, plans of all types,
points of view, opinions, people's state of mind, interiors of buildings, offices
and rooms, operation centers, etc.
Observation, investigation, reconnaissance, and exploration
of the terrain are also excellent sources of information. The urban guerrilla
never goes anywhere absentmindedly and without revolutionary precaution, always
on the lookout lest something occur. Eyes and ears open, senses alert, his memory
engraved with everything necessary, now or in the future, to the uninterrupted
activity of the fighter.
Careful reading of the press with particular attention
to the organs of mass communication, the investigation of accumulated data,
the transmission of news and everything of note, a persistence in being informed
and informing others, all this makes up the intricate and immensely complicated
question of information which gives the urban guerrilla a decisive advantage.
Decision
It is not enough for the urban guerrilla to have in his
favor surprise, speed, knowledge of the terrain, and information. He must also
demonstrate his command of any situation and a capacity for decision without
which all other advantages will prove useless.
It is impossible to carry out any action, however well
planned, if the urban guerrilla turns out to be indecisive, uncertain, and irresolute.
Even an action successfully begun can end in defeat if
the command of the situation and the capacity for the decision falter in the
middle of the actual execution of the plan. When this command of the situation
and a capacity for decision are absent, the void is filled with vacillation
and terror. The enemy takes advantage of this failure and is able to liquidate
us.
The secret for the success of any operation, simple or
complicated, easy or difficult, is to rely on determined men. Strictly speaking,
there are no easy operations. All must be carried out with the same care exercised
in the case of the most difficult, beginning with the choice of the human element,
which means relying on leadership and capacity for decision in every test.
One can see ahead of time whether an action will be successful
or not by the way its participants act during the preparatory period. Those
who are behind, who fail to make designated contacts, are easily confused, forget
things, fail to complete the basic elements of the work, possibly are indecisive
men and can be a danger. It is better not to include them.
Decision means to put into practice the plan that has devised
with determination, with audacity, and with an absolute firmness. It takes only
one person who vacillates to lose all.
Objectives of the Urban Guerrilla's
Actions
With his technique established, the urban guerrilla bases
himself on models of action leading to attack and, in Brazil, with the following
objectives:
A. To threaten the triangle in which the Brazilian
state system and North American domination are maintained in Brazil, a triangle
whose points are Rio, Sau Paulo and Belo Horizonte and whose base is the axle
Rio-Sao Paulo, where the giant industrial-financial-economic-political-cultural-military-police
complex that holds the entire decisive power of the country is located;
B. To weaken the local guards or the security
system of the dictatorship, given the fact that we are attacking and the guerrillas
defending, which means catching the government in a defensive position with
its troops immobilized in defense of the entire complex of national maintenance,
with its ever-present fears of attack on its strategic nerve centers, and without
ever knowing where, how, and when that attack will come;
C. To attack on every side with many different
armed groups, few in number, each self-contained and operating separately, to
disperse the government forces in their pursuit of a thoroughly fragmented organization
instead of offering the dictatorship the opportunity to concentrate its forces
of repression on the destruction of one tightly organized system operating throughout
the country;
D. To give proof of its combativeness, decision,
firmness, determination, and persistence in the attack on the military dictatorship
in order to permit all malcontents to follow our example and fight with urban
guerrilla tactics. Meanwhile, the government, with all its problems, incapable
of halting guerrilla operations in the city, will lose time and suffer endless
attrition and will finally be forced to pull back its repressive troops in order
to mount guard over the banks, industries, armories, military barracks, prisons,
public offices, radio and television stations, North American firms, gas storage
tanks, oil refineries, ships, airplanes, ports, airports, hospitals, health
centers, blood banks, stores, garages, embassies, residencies of outstanding
members of the regime, such as ministers and generals, police stations, and
official organizations, etc;
E. To increase urban guerrilla disturbances
gradually in endless ascendancy of unforeseen actions such that the government
troops cannot leave the urban area to pursue the guerrillas in the interior
without running the risk of abandoning the cities and permitting rebellion to
increase on the coast as well as in the interior of the country;
F. To oblige the army and the police, with
the commanders and their assistants, to change the relative comfort and tranquility
of their barracks and their usual rest, for a state of alarm and growing tension
in the expectation of attack or in search for tracks that vanish without trace;
G. To avoid open battle and decisive combat
with the government, limiting the struggle to brief and rapid attacks with lightning
results;
H. To assure for the urban guerrilla a maximum
freedom of maneuvers and of action without ever relinquishing the use of armed
violence remaining firmly oriented toward helping the beginning of rural guerrilla
warfare and supporting the construction of the revolutionary army for national
liberation.
On the Types and Nature of Action-Models
of the Urban Guerrilla
In order to achieve the objectives previously enumerated,
the urban guerrilla is obliged, in his technique, to follow an action whose
nature is as different and as diversified as possible. The urban guerrilla does
not arbitrarily choose this or that action model. Some actions are simple, others
are complicated. The urban guerrilla without experience must be incorporated
gradually into actions and operations that run from the simple to the complex.
He begins with small missions and tasks until he becomes a completely experienced
urban guerrilla.
Before any action, the urban guerrilla must think of the
methods and the personnel at his disposal to carry out the action. Operations
and actions that demand the urban guerrilla's
technical preparation cannot be carried out by someone
who lacks that technical skill. With these cautions, the action-models by which
the urban guerrilla can carry out are the following:
A. Assaults;
B. Raids and penetrations;
C. Occupations;
D. Ambush;
E. Street tactics;
F. Strikers and work interruptions;
G. Desertions, diversions, seizures, expropriations
of arms, ammunition, explosives;
H. Liberation of prisoners;
I. Executions;
J. Kidnappings;
K. Sabotage;
L. Terrorism;
M. Armed propaganda;
N. War of nerves.
Assaults
Assault is the armed attack which we make to expropriate
funds, liberate prisoners, capture explosives, machine guns, and other types
of arms and ammunition.
Assaults can take place in broad daylight or at night.
Daytime assaults are made when the objective cannot be
achieved at any other hour, as for example, the transport of money by the banks,
which is not done at night.
Night assault is usually the most advantageous to the urban
guerrilla. The ideal is for all assaults to take place at night when conditions
for a surprise attack are most favorable and the darkness facilitates flight
and hides the identity of the participants. The urban
guerrilla must prepare himself, nevertheless, to act under all conditions, daytime
as well as nighttime.
The most vulnerable targets for assault are the following:
A.Credit establishments;
B. Commercial and industrial enterprises,
including the production of arms and explosives;
C. Military establishments;
D. Commissaries and police stations;
E. Jails;
F. Government property;
G. Mass communication media;
H. North American firms and properties;
I. Government vehicles, including military
and police vehicles, trucks, armored vehicles, money carriers, trains, ships,
and planes.
The assaults on establishments are of the same nature because
in every case the property and the buildings represent a fixed target.
Assaults on buildings are conceived as guerrilla operations,
varied according to whether they are against banks, a commercial enterprise,
industries, military camps, commissaries, prisons, radio stations, warehouses
for imperialist firms, etc.
The assaults on vehicles — money-carriers, armored
cars, trains, ships, and airplanes — are of another nature since they are
moving targets. The nature of the operations varies according to the situation
and the possibility — that is, whether the target is stationary or moving.
Armored cars, including military cars, are not immune to
mines. Obstructed roads, traps, ruses, interception of other vehicles, Molotov
cocktails, shooting with heavy arms, are efficient methods of assaulting vehicles.
Heavy vehicles, grounded planes, anchored ships can be
seized and their crews and guards overcome. Airplanes in flight can be diverted
from their course by guerrilla actions or by one person.
Ships and trains in movement can be assaulted or taken
by guerrilla operations in order to capture the arms and munitions or to prevent
troop displacement.
The Bank Assault as Popular Model
The most popular assault model is the bank assault. In
Brazil, the urban guerrilla has begun a type of organized assault on the banks
as a guerrilla operation. Today this type of assault is widely used and has
served as a sort of preliminary examination for the urban guerrilla in his apprenticeship
for the techniques of revolutionary warfare.
Important innovations in the technique of assaulting banks
have developed, guaranteeing flight, the withdrawal of money, and the anonymity
of those involved. Among these innovations we cite shooting the tires of cars
to prevent pursuit; locking people in the bank bathroom making them sit on the
floor; immobilizing the bank guards and removing their arms, forcing someone
to open the coffer or strongbox; using disguises.
Attempts to install bank alarms, to use guards or electronic
detection devices of US origin, prove fruitless when the assault is political
and is carried out according to urban guerrilla warfare technique. This technique
tries to utilize new resources to meet the enemy's tactical changes, has access
to a firepower that is growing every day, becomes increasingly astute and audacious,
and uses a larger number of revolutionaries every time; all to guarantee the
success of operations planned down to the last detail.
The bank assault is a typical expropriation. But, as is
true in any kind of armed expropriatory action, the revolutionary is handicapped
by a two-fold competition:
A. Competition from the outlaw;
B. Competition from the counterrevolutionary.
This competition produces confusion, which is reflected
in the people's uncertainty. It is up to the urban guerrilla to prevent this
from happening, and to accomplish this he must use two methods:
A. He must avoid the outlaw's technique, which
is one of unnecessary violence and appropriation of goods and possessions belonging
to the people;
B. He must use the assault for propaganda
purposes, at the very moment it is taking place, and later distribute material,
leaflets, every possible means of explaining the objectives and the principles
of the urban guerrilla as expropriator of the government, the ruling classes,
and imperialism.
Raids and Penetration
Raids and penetrations are quick attacks on establishments
located in neighborhoods or even in the center of the city, such as small military
units, commissaries, hospitals, to cause trouble, seize arms, punish and terrorize
the enemy, take reprisal, or rescue wounded prisoners, or those hospitalized
under police vigilance.
Raids and penetrations are also made on garages and depots
to destroy vehicles and damage installations, especially if they are North American
firms and property.
When they take place on certain stretches of the highway
or in certain distant neighborhoods, the raids can serve to force the enemy
to move great numbers of troops, a totally useless effort since he will find
nobody there to fight.
When they are carried out in certain houses, offices, archives,
or public offices, their purpose is to capture or search for secret papers and
documents with which to denounce involvements, compromises, and the corruption
of men in government, their dirty deals and criminal transactions with the North
Americans.
Raids and penetrations are most effective
if they are carried out at night.
Occupations
Occupations are a type of attack carried out when the urban
guerrilla stations himself in specific establishments and locations for a temporary
resistance against the enemy or for some propaganda purpose.
The occupation of factories and schools during strikes
or at other times is a method of protest or of distracting the enemy's attention.
The occupation of radio stations
is for propaganda purposes.
Occupation is a highly effective model for action but,
in order to prevent losses and material damage to our ranks, it is always a
good idea to count on the possibility of withdrawal. It must always be meticulously
planned and carried out at the opportune moment.
Occupation always has a time limit and the faster it is
completed, the better.
Ambush
Ambushes are attacks typified by surprise when the enemy
is trapped across a road or when he makes a police net surrounding a house or
an estate. A false message can bring the enemy to the spot where he falls into
the trap.
The principal object of the ambush tactic is to capture
enemy arms and punish him with death.
Ambushes to halt passenger trains are for propaganda purposes
and, when they are troop trains, the object is to annihilate the enemy and seize
his arms.
The urban guerrilla sniper is the kind of fighter especially
suited for ambush because he can hide easily in the irregularities of the terrain,
on the roofs and the tops of buildings and apartments under construction. From
windows and dark places, he can aim at his chosen target.
Street Tactics
Street tactics are used to fight the enemy in the streets,
utilizing the participation of the masses against him.
In 1968 the Brazilian students used excellent street tactics
against police troops, such as marching down streets against traffic, utilizing
slings and marbles as arms against the mounted police.
Other street tactics consist in constructing barricades;
pulling up paving blocks and hurling them at the police; throwing bottles, bricks,
paperweights, and other projectiles from the top of apartment and office buildings
against the police; using buildings under construction for flight, for hiding,
and for supporting surprise attacks.
It is equally necessary to know how to respond to enemy
attacks. When the police troops come protected with helmets to defend themselves
against flying objects, we have to divide ourselves into two teams: one to attack
the enemy from the front, the other to attack him in the rear, withdrawing one
as the other goes into action to prevent the first from becoming a target for
projectiles hurled by the second.
By the same token it is important to know how to respond
to the police net. When the police designate certain of
their men to go into the masses to arrest a demonstrator, a larger group of
urban guerrillas must surround the police group, disarming and beating
them and at the same time letting the prisoner escape. This urban guerrilla
operation is called “the net within the net.”
When the police net is formed at a school building, a factory,
a place where the masses assemble, or some other point, the urban guerrilla
must not give up or allow himself to be taken by surprise. To make his net work
the enemy is obliged to transport the police in vehicles and special cars to
occupy strategic points in the streets in order to invade the building or chosen
locale. The urban guerrilla, for his part, must never clear a building or an
area and meet in it without first knowing its exits, the way to break the circle,
the strategic points that the police might occupy, and the roads that inevitably
lead into the net, and he must hold other strategic points from which to strike
at the enemy.
The roads followed by the police vehicles must be mined
at key points along the way and at forced stopping points. When the mines explode,
the vehicles will fly into the air. The police will be caught in the trap and
will suffer losses or will be victims of ambush. The net must be broken by using
escape routes unknown to the police. The rigorous planning of the retreat is
the best way of frustrating any encircling effort on the part of the enemy.
When there is no possibility of a flight plan, the urban
guerrilla must not hold meetings, assemblies, or do anything else since to do
so will prevent him from breaking through the net the enemy will surely try
to throw around him.
Street tactics have revealed a new
type of urban guerrilla, the urban guerrilla who participates in mass demonstrations.
This is the type we designate as the urban guerrilla demonstrator, who joins
the ranks and participates in popular marches with specific and definite aims.
These aims consist in hurling stones and projectiles of
every type, using gasoline to start fires, using the police as a target for
their firearms, capture police arms, kidnapping agents of the enemy and provocateurs,
shooting with careful aim at the henchmen torturers and the police chiefs who
come in special cars with false plates in order not to attract attention.
The urban guerrilla demonstrator shows groups in the mass
demonstration the flight route if that is necessary. He plants mines, throws
Molotov cocktails, prepares ambushes and explosives.
The urban guerrilla demonstrator
must also initiate the net within the net, going through government vehicles,
official cars, and police vehicles before turning them over or setting them
on fire, to see if any of them have money or arms.
Snipers are very good for mass demonstrations and, along
with the urban guerrilla demonstrators, can play a valuable role.
Hidden at strategic points, the snipers have complete success,
using shotguns, machine guns, etc. whose fire and recoil easily causes losses
among the enemy.
Strikes and Work Interruptions
The strike is a model of action employed by the urban guerrilla
in work centers and schools to damage the enemy by stopping work and study activities.
Because it is one of the weapons most feared by the exploiters and oppressors,
the enemy uses tremendous fighting power and incredible violence against it.
The strikers are taken to prison, suffer beatings, and many of them wind up
assassinated.
The urban guerrilla must prepare the strike in such a way
as to leave no tracks or clues that identify the leaders of the action. A strike
is successful when it is organized through the action of a small group, if it
carefully prepared in secret and by the most clandestine methods.
Arms, ammunition, Molotovs, homemade weapons of destruction
and attack, all this must be supplied beforehand in order to meet the enemy.
So that it can do the greatest possible damage, it is a good idea to study and
put into effect a sabotage plan.
Work and study interruptions, although they are of brief
duration, cause severe damage to the enemy. It is enough for them to crop up
at in different points and in different sections of the same area, disrupting
daily life, occurring endlessly one after the other, in authentic guerrilla
fashion.
In strikes or simple work interruptions, the urban guerrilla
has recourse to occupation or penetration of the locale or can simply make a
raid. In that case his objective is to take hostages, to capture prisoners or
to kidnap enemy agents and propose an exchange for the arrested strikers.
In certain cases, strikes and brief work interruptions
can offer an excellent opportunity for preparing ambushes or traps whose aim
is physical liquidation of the cruel bloody police.
The basic fact is that the enemy suffers losses and material
and moral damage, and is weakened by the action.
Desertions, Diversions, Seizures,
Expropriations of Arms, Ammunition, Explosives
Desertion and the diversion of arms are actions effected
in military camps, ships, military hospitals, etc. The urban guerrilla soldier,
chief, sergeant, sub-official and official must desert at the most opportune
moment with modern arms and ammunition to hand them over for the use of the
Brazilian revolution.
One of the opportune moments is when the military urban
guerrilla is called upon to pursue and to fight his guerrilla comrades outside
the military quarters. Instead of following the orders of the guerrillas, the
military urban guerrilla must join the revolutionaries by handing over the arms
and ammunition he carries, or the military plane he pilots.
The advantage of this method is that the revolutionaries
receive arms and ammunition from the army, the navy, and the air force, the
military police, the civilian guard, or the firemen without any great work,
since it reaches their hands by government transport.
Other opportunities may occur in the barracks, and the
military urban guerrilla must always be alert to this. In case of carelessness
on the part of the commanders or in other favorable conditions, such as bureaucratic
attitudes and behavior or relaxation of discipline on the part of sub-lieutenants
and other internal personnel, the military urban guerrilla must no longer wait
but must try to advise the organizations and desert alone or accompanied, but
with as large a supply of arms as possible.
With information from and participation of the military
urban guerrilla, raids on barracks and other military establishments for the
purpose of capturing arms can be organized.
When there is no possibility of deserting and taking arms
and ammunition, the military urban guerrilla must engage in sabotage, starting
explosions and fires in munitions and gunpowder.
This technique of deserting with arms and ammunition, of
raiding and sabotaging the military centers, is the best way of wearing out
and demoralizing the guerrillas and of leaving them confused.
The urban guerrilla's purpose in disarming an individual
enemy is to capture his arms. These arms are usually in the hands of sentinels
or others whose task is guard duty or repression.
The capture of arms may be accomplished by violent means
or by astuteness and by tricks or traps. When the enemy is disarmed, he must
be searched for arms other than those already taken from him. If we are careless,
he can use the arms that were not seized to shoot the urban guerrilla.
The seizure of arms is an efficient method of acquiring
machine guns, the urban guerrilla's most important arms.
When we carry out small operations or actions to seize
arms and ammunitions, the material captured may be for personal use or for armaments
and supplies for the firing groups.
The necessity to provide firing power for the urban guerrilla
is so great that, in order to take off from zero point, we often have to purchase
a weapon, or divert or capture a single arm. The basic point is to begin, and
to begin with a great spirit of decisiveness and of boldness. The
possession of even a single arm multiplies our forces.
In a bank assault, we must be careful to seize the arm
or arms of the bank guard. The remainder of the arms we find with the treasurer,
the bank teller, or the manager must also be seized ahead of time.
The other method we can use to capture arms is the preparation
of ambushes against the police and the cars they use to move around in.
Quite often we succeed in capturing arms in the police
commissaries as a result of raids from outside.
The expropriation of arms, ammunition, and explosives is
the urban guerrilla's goal in assaulting commercial houses, industries, and
quarries.
Liberation of Prisoners
The liberation of prisoners is an armed operation designed
to free the jailed urban guerrilla. In daily struggle against the enemy, the
urban guerrilla is subject to arrest and can be sentenced to unlimited years
in jail. This does not mean that the revolutionary battle stops here. For the
guerrilla, his experience is deepened by prison and continues even in the dungeons
where he is held.
The imprisoned urban guerrilla views jail as a terrain
he must dominate and understand in order to free himself by a guerrilla operation.
There is no prison, either on an island, in a city penitentiary, or on a farm,
that is impregnable to the slyness, the cleverness, and the firing potential
of the revolutionaries.
The urban guerrilla who is free views the penal establishments
of the enemy as the inevitable site of guerrilla action designed to liberate
his ideological brothers from prison.
It is this combination of the urban guerrilla in freedom
and the urban guerrilla in jail that results in the armed operations we refer
to as the liberation of prisoners.
The guerrilla operations that can be used in liberating
prisoners are the following:
A. Riots in penal establishments, in correctional
colonies and islands, or on transport or prison ships;
B. Assaults on urban or rural penitentiaries,
houses of detention, commissaries, prisoner depots, or any other permanent,
occasional, or temporary place where prisoners are held;
C. Assaults on prisoner transport trains or
cars;
D. Raids and penetrations of prisons;
E. Ambushing of guards who are moving prisoners.
Execution
Execution is the killing of a North American spy, or an
agent of the dictatorship, of a police torturer, of a fascist personality in
the government involved in crimes and persecutions against patriots, of a stool
pigeon, informer, police agent, or police provocateur.
Those who go to the police of their
own free will to make denunciations and accusations, who supply clues and information
and finger people, must also be executed when they are caught by the urban guerrilla.
Execution is a secret action in which the least possible
number of urban guerrillas are involved. In many cases, the execution can be
carried out by one sniper, patiently, alone and unknown, and operating in absolute
secrecy and in cold blood.
Kidnapping
Kidnapping is capturing and holding in a secret spot a
police agent, a North American spy, a political personality, or a notorious
and dangerous enemy of the revolutionary movement.
Kidnapping is used to exchange or liberate imprisoned revolutionary
comrades, or to force suspension of torture in the jail cells of the military
dictatorship.
The kidnapping of personalities who are known artists,
sports figures, or are outstanding in some other field, but who have evidenced
no political interest, can be a useful form of propaganda for the revolutionary
and patriotic principles of the urban guerrilla provides it occurs under special
circumstances, and the kidnapping is handled so that the public sympathizes
with it and accepts it.
The kidnapping of North American residents or visitors
in Brazil constitutes a form of protest against the penetration and domination
of United States imperialism in our country.
Sabotage
Sabotage is a highly destructive type of attack using very
few persons and sometimes requiring only one to accomplish the desired result.
When the urban guerrilla uses sabotage the first phase is isolated sabotage.
Then comes the phase of dispersed and generalized sabotage, carried out by the
people.
Well-executed sabotage demands study, planning, and careful
execution. A characteristic form of sabotage is explosion using dynamite, fire,
and the placing of mines.
A little sand, a trickle of any kind of combustible, a
poor lubrication, a screw removed, a short circuit, pieces of wood or of iron,
can cause irreparable damage.
The objective of sabotage is to hurt, to damage, to make
useless and to destroy vital enemy points such as the following:
A. The economy of the country;
B. Agricultural or industrial production;
C. Transport and communication systems;
D. The military and police systems and their
establishments and depots;
E. The repressive military-police system;
F. The firms and properties of North Americans
in the country.
The urban guerrilla should endanger the economy of the
country, particularly its economic and financial aspects, such as its domestic
and foreign commercial network, its exchange and banking systems, its tax collection
system, and others.
Public offices, centers of government services, government
warehouses, are easy targets for sabotage.
Nor will it be easy to prevent the sabotage of agricultural
and industrial production by the urban guerrilla, with his thorough knowledge
of the local situation.
Industrial workers acting as urban guerrillas are excellent
industrial saboteurs since they, better than anyone, understand the industry,
the factory, the machine, or the part most likely to destroy an entire operation,
doing far more damage than a poorly informed layman could do.
With respect to the enemy's transport and communication
systems, beginning with railway traffic, it is necessary to attack them systematically
with sabotage arms.
The only caution is against causing death or fatal injury
to passengers, especially regular commuters on suburban and long-distance trains.
Attacks on freight trains, rolling or stationary stock,
stoppage of military transport and communication systems; these are the major
sabotage objectives in this area.
Sleepers can be damaged and pulled up, as can rails. A
tunnel blocked by a barrier after an explosion, or an obstruction by a derailed
car, cause tremendous harm.
The derailment of a cargo train carrying fuel is of major
damage to the enemy. So is dynamiting railway bridges. In a system where the
weight and the size of the rolling equipment is enormous, it takes months for
workers to repair or rebuild the destruction and damage.
As for highways, they can be obstructed by trees, stationary
vehicles, ditches, dislocations of barriers by dynamite and bridges blown up
by explosion.
Ships can be damaged at anchor in seaports and river ports
or in the shipyards. Airplanes can be destroyed or sabotaged on the ground.
Telephonic and telegraph lines can be systematically damaged,
their towers blown up, and their lines made useless.
Transport and communications must be sabotaged at once
because the revolutionary war has begun in Brazil and it is essential to impede
the enemy's movement of troops and munitions.
Oil lines, fuel plants, depots for bombs and ammunition,
powder magazines and arsenals, military camps, commissaries must become targets
par excellence in sabotage operations, while vehicles, army trucks, and other
military and police cars must be destroyed wherever they are found.
The military and police repression centers and their specific
and specialized organs, must also claim the attention of the urban guerrilla
saboteur.
North American firms and properties in the country, for
their part, must become such frequent targets of sabotage that the volume of
actions directed against them surpasses the total of all other actions against
vital enemy points.
Terrorism
Terrorism is an action, usually involving the placement
of a bomb or fire explosion of great destructive power, which is capable of
effecting irreparable loss against the enemy.
Terrorism requires that the urban guerrilla should have
an adequate theoretical and practical knowledge of how to make explosives.
The terrorist act, apart from the apparent facility with
which it can be carried out, is no different from other urban guerrilla acts
and actions whose success depends on the planning and determination of the revolutionary
organization. It is an action the urban guerrilla must execute with the greatest
cold bloodedness, calmness, and decision.
Although terrorism generally involves an explosion, there
are cases in which it may also be carried out by execution and the systematic
burning of installations, properties, and North American depots, plantations,
etc. It is essential to point out the importance of fires and the construction
of incendiary bombs such as gasoline bombs in the technique of revolutionary
terrorism. Another thing is the importance of the material the urban guerrilla
can persuade the people to expropriate in moments of hunger and scarcity resulting
from the greed of the big commercial interests.
Terrorism is an arm the revolutionary can never relinquish.
Armed Propaganda
The coordination of urban guerrilla actions, including
each armed action, is the principal way of making armed propaganda.
These actions, carried out with specific and determined
objectives, inevitably become propaganda material for mass communications system.
Bank assaults, ambushes, desertions and diverting of arms,
the rescue of prisoners, executions, kidnappings, sabotage, terrorism, and the
war of nerves, are all cases in point.
Airplanes diverted in flight by revolutionary action, moving
ships and trains assaulted and seized by guerrillas, can also be solely for
propaganda effects.
But the urban guerrilla must never fail to install a clandestine
press and must be able to turn out mimeographed copies using alcohol or electric
plates and other duplicating apparatus, expropriating what he cannot buy in
order to produce small clandestine newspapers, pamphlets, flyers, and stamps
for propaganda and agitation against the dictatorship.
The urban guerrilla engaged in clandestine printing facilitates
enormously the incorporation of large numbers of people into the revolutionary
struggle, by opening a permanent work front for those willing to carry on revolutionary
propaganda, even when to do so means acting alone and risking their lives as
revolutionaries.
With the existence of clandestine propaganda and agitational
material, the inventive spirit of the urban guerrilla expands and creates catapults,
artifacts, mortars, and other instruments with which to distribute the antigovernment
pamphlets at a distance.
Tape recordings, and the occupation of radio stations,
and the use of loudspeakers, drawings on walls and in other inaccessible places
are other forms of propaganda.
A consistent propaganda by letters sent to specific addresses,
explaining the meaning of the urban guerrillas' armed actions, produces considerable
results and is one method of influencing certain segments of the population.
Even this influence exercised in the heart of the people
by every possible propaganda device revolving around the activity of the urban
guerrilla does not indicate that our forces have everyone's support.
It is enough to win the support of a part of the people
and this can be done by popularizing the following slogan: “Let he who
does not wish to do anything for the revolutionaries, do nothing against them.”
The War of Nerves
The war of nerves or psychological warfare is an aggressive
technique, based on the direct or indirect use of mass means of communication
and news transmitted orally in order to demoralize the government.
In psychological warfare, the government is always at a
disadvantage since it imposes censorship on the mass media and winds up in a
defensive position by not allowing anything against it to filter through.
At this point it becomes desperate, is involved in greater
contradictions and loss of prestige, and loses time and energy in an exhausting
effort at control which is subject to being broken at any moment.
The object of the war of nerves is
to misinform, spreading lies among the authorities, in which everyone can participate,
thus creating an air of nervousness, discredit, insecurity, uncertainty, and
concern on the part of the government.
The best methods used by the urban
guerrilla in the war of nerves are the following:
A. Using the telephone and the mail to announce
false clues to the police and government, including information on the planting
of bombs and any other act of terrorism in public offices and other places,
kidnapping and assassination plans, etc., to oblige the authorities to wear
themselves out, following up the information fed them;
B. Letting false plans fall into the hands
of the police to divert their attention;
C. Planting rumors to make the government
uneasy;
D. Exploiting by every means possible the
corruption, the errors, and the failures of government and its representatives,
forcing them into demoralizing explanations and justifications in the very mass
communication media they maintain under censorship;
E. Presenting denunciations to foreign embassies,
the United Nations, the papal nunciature, and the international judicial commissions
defending human rights or freedom of the press, exposing each concrete violation
and use of violence by the military dictatorship and making it known that the
revolutionary war will continue its course with serious danger for the enemies
of the people.
How to Carry Out the Action
The urban guerrilla who correctly carries through his apprenticeship
and training must give the greatest importance to his method of carrying out
action, for in this he cannot commit the slightest error.
Any carelessness in the assimilation of the method and
its use invites certain disaster, as experience teaches every day.
The outlaws commit errors frequently
because of their methods, and this is one of the reasons why the urban guerrilla
must be so insistently preoccupied with following the revolutionary technique
and not the technique of the bandits.
There is no urban guerrilla worthy of the name who ignores
the revolutionary method of action and fails to practice it rigorously in the
planning and execution of his activity.
“The giant is known by his toe.” The same can
be said of the urban guerrilla who is known from afar for his correct methods
and his absolute fidelity to principles.
The revolutionary method of carrying out action is strongly
and forcefully based on the knowledge and use of the following elements:
A. Investigation of information;
B. Observation;
C. Reconnaissance or exploration of the terrain;
D. Study and timing of routes;
E. Mapping;
F. Mechanization;
G. Selection of personnel and relief;
H. Selection of firing capacity;
I. Study and practice in completion;
J. Completion;
K. Cover;
L. Retreat;
M. Dispersal;
N. Liberation or transfer of prisoners;
O. Elimination of clues;
P. Rescue of wounded.
Some Observations on the Method
When there is no information, the point of departure for
the planning of the action must be investigation and observation. This method
also has good results.
In any event, including when there is information, it is
essential to take observations and analysis to see that the information is not
at odds with observation or vice versa.
Reconnaissance or exploration of the terrain, study and
timing of routes are so important that to omit them is to make a stab in the
dark.
Mechanization, in general, is an underestimated factor
in the method of conducting the action. Frequently mechanization is left to
the end, to the eve of the action, before anything is done about it. This is
an error. Mechanization must be considered seriously, must be undertaken with
considerable foresight and according to careful planning. Based on information,
observation mechanization must be carried out with rigorous care and precision.
The care, conservation, maintenance, and camouflaging
of the vehicles appropriated are very important details of mechanization.
When transport fails, the principle action fails with serious
moral and material consequences for the urban guerrilla activity.
The selection of personnel requires great care to avoid
the inclusion of indecisive or vacillating personnel with the danger of contaminating
the other participants, a difficulty that must be avoided.
The withdrawal is equally or more important than the operation
itself, to the point that it must be rigorously planned, including the possibility
of failure.
One must avoid rescue or transfer of prisoners with children
present, or anything to attract the attention of people in casual transit through
the area. The best thing is to make the rescue as natural as possible, always
winding through, or using different routes or narrow streets that scarcely permit
passage on foot, to avoid an encounter of two cars. The elimination of tracks
is obligatory and demands the greatest caution in hiding fingerprints and any
other sign that could give the enemy information. Lack of care in the elimination
of tracks and clues is a factor that increases nervousness in our ranks and
which the enemy often exploits.
Rescue of the Wounded
The problem of the wounded in urban guerrilla warfare merits
special attention. During guerrilla operations in the urban area it may happen
that some comrade is accidentally wounded or shot by the police. When a guerrilla
in the firing group has knowledge of first aid he can do something for the wounded
comrade on the spot. In no circumstances can the wounded urban guerrilla be
abandoned at the site of the battle or left to the enemy's hands.
One of the precautions we must take is to set up nursing
courses for men and women, courses in which the urban guerrilla can matriculate
and learn the elementary techniques of first aid.
The urban guerrilla doctor, student of medicine, nurse,
pharmacist, or simply the person trained in first aid, is a necessity in modern
revolutionary struggle.
A small manual of first aid for the urban guerrilla, printed
on mimeographed sheets, can also be undertaken by anyone who has enough knowledge.
In planning and completing an armed action, the urban guerrilla
cannot forget the organization of medical logistics. This will be accomplished
by means of a mobile or motorized clinic. You can also set up a mobile first
aid station. Another solution is to utilize the skills of a nursing comrade
who waits with his bag of equipment in a designated house to which the wounded
are brought.
The ideal would be to have our own well-equipped clinic,
but this is very costly unless we use expropriated materials.
When all else fails, it is often
necessary to resort to legal clinics, using armed force if necessary to demand
that the doctors attend to our wounded.
In the eventuality that we fall back on blood banks to
buy blood or whole plasma, we must not use legal addresses and certainly not
addresses where the wounded can really be found, since they are under our care
and protection. Nor should we supply addresses of those involved in the organization's
clandestine work to the hospitals and health centers where we take them. Such
concerns are indispensable to cover any track or clue.
The houses in which the wounded stay cannot be known to
anybody with the unique and exclusive exception of the small group of comrades
responsible for their treatment and transport.
Sheets, bloody clothing, medicine, and any other indication
of treatment of the comrades wounded in combat with the police, must be completely
eliminated from any place they visit to receive medical treatment.
Guerrilla Security
The urban guerrilla lives in constant danger of the possibility
of being discovered or denounced. The chief security problem is to make certain
that we are well hidden and well guarded, and that there are secure methods
to keep the police from locating us or our whereabouts.
The worst enemy of the urban guerrilla
and the major danger we run is infiltration into our organization by a spy or
an informer.
The spy trapped within the organization will be punished
with death. The same goes for those who desert and inform to the police or military.
A good security is the certainty that the enemy has no
spies and agents infiltrated in our midst and can receive no information about
us even by indirect or distant means. The fundamental way to insure this is
to be cautious and strict in recruiting.
Nor is it permissible for everyone to know everyone and
everything else. Each person should know only what relates to his work. This
rule is a fundamental point in the abc's of urban guerrilla security.
The battle that we are waging against the enemy is arduous
and difficult because it is a class struggle. Every class struggle is a battle
of life or death when the classes are antagonistic.
The enemy wants to annihilate us. He works relentlessly
to find and destroy us. Our great weapon consists in hiding from him and attacking
him by surprise.
The danger to the urban guerrilla is that he may reveal
himself through imprudence or allow himself to be discovered through lack of
class vigilance. It is inadmissible for the urban guerrilla to give out his
own or any other clandestine address to the enemy or to talk too much. Annotations
in the margins of newspapers, lost documents, calling cards, letters or notes,
all these are clues that the police never underestimate.
Address and telephone books must be destroyed and one must
not write or hold papers; it is necessary to avoid keeping archives of legal
or illegal names, biographical information, maps, and plans. The points of contact
should not be written down but simply committed to memory.
The urban guerrilla who violates these rules must be warned
by the first one who notes his infraction. If he repeats it, we must avoid working
with him.
The need of the urban guerrilla to move about constantly
and the relative proximity of the police, given the circumstances of the strategic
police net which surrounds the city, forces him to adopt variable security methods
depending on the enemy's movements.
For this reason it is necessary to maintain a service of
daily news about what the enemy appears to be doing, where his police net is
operating and what gorges and points of strangulation are being watched. The
daily reading of police news in the newspapers is a great foundation of information
in these cases.
The most important lesson for guerrilla security is never,
under any circumstances, to permit the slightest sign of laxity in the maintenance
of security measures and regulations within the organization.
Guerrilla security must be maintained also and principally
in cases of arrest. The arrested guerrilla can reveal nothing to the police
that will jeopardize the organization. He can say nothing that may lead, as
a consequence, to the arrest of other comrades, the discovery of addresses and
hiding places, the loss of arms and ammunition.
The Seven Sins of the Urban Guerrilla
Even when the urban guerrilla applies his revolutionary
technique with precision and rigorously abides by security rules, he can still
be vulnerable to error. There is no perfect urban guerrilla. The most he can
do is to make every effort to diminish the margin of error since he cannot be
perfect.
One of the methods we should use
to diminish the margin of error is to know thoroughly the seven sins of the
urban guerrilla and try to fight them.
The first sin of the urban guerrilla is inexperience. The
urban guerrilla, blinded by this sin, thinks the enemy is stupid, underestimates
his intelligence, believes everything is easy and, as a result, leaves clues
that can lead to his disaster.
Because of his inexperience, the urban guerrilla can also
overestimate the forces of the enemy, believing them to be stronger than they
actually are. Allowing himself to be fooled by this presumption, the urban guerrilla
becomes intimidated, and remains insecure and indecisive, paralyzed and lacking
in audacity.
The second sin of the urban guerrilla is to boast about
the actions he has completed and broadcast them to the four winds.
The third sin of the urban guerrilla is vanity. The urban
guerrilla who suffers from this sin tries to solve the problems of the revolution
by actions erupting in the city, but without bothering about the beginnings
and the survival of the guerrilla in rural areas. Blinded by success, he winds
up organizing an action that he considers decisive and that puts into play all
the forces and resources of the organization. Since the city is the area of
the strategic circle, which we cannot avoid, or break while rural guerrilla
warfare has not yet erupted and is not at the point of triumph, we always run
the fatal error of permitting the enemy to attack us with decisive blows.
The fourth sin of the urban guerrilla is to exaggerate
his strength and to undertake projects for which he lacks forces and, as yet,
does not have the required infrastructure.
The fifth sin of the urban guerrilla is precipitous action.
The urban guerrilla who commits this sin loses patience, suffers an attack of
nerves, does not wait for anything, and immediately throws himself into action,
suffering untold reverses.
The sixth sin of the urban guerrilla is to attack the enemy
when he is most angry.
The seventh sin of the urban guerrilla is to fail to plan
things, and to act out of improvisation.
Popular Support
One of the permanent concerns of the urban guerrilla is
his identification with popular causes to win public support.
Where government actions become inept and corrupt, the
urban guerrilla should not hesitate to step in to show that he opposes the government
and to gain mass sympathy. The present government, for example, imposes heavy
financial burdens and excessively high taxes on the people. It is up to the
urban guerrilla to attack the dictatorship's tax collection system and to obstruct
its financial activity, throwing all the weight of violent revolution against
it.
The urban guerrilla fights not only to upset the tax and
collection system; the arms of revolutionary violence must also be directed
against those government organ that raise prices and those who direct them,
as well as against the wealthiest of the national and foreign profiteers and
the important property owners: in short, against all those who accumulate huge
fortunes out of the high cost of living, the wages of hunger, excessive prices
and rents.
The urban guerrilla must systematically attack foreign
trusts, such as refrigeration and other North American plants that monopolize
the market and the manufacture of general food supplies.
The rebellion of the urban guerrilla and his persistence
in intervening in public questions is the best way of insuring public support
of the cause we defend. We repeat and insist on repeating: it is the best way
of insuring public support. As soon as a reasonable section of the population
begins to take seriously the action of the urban guerrilla, his success is guaranteed.
The government has no alternative except to intensify repression.
The police networks, house searches, arrests of innocent people and of suspects,
closing off streets, make life in the city unbearable. The military dictatorship
embarks on massive political persecution. Political assassinations and police
terror become routine.
In spite of all this, the police systematically fail. The
armed forces, the navy, and the air force are mobilized and undertake routine
police functions. Even so they find no way to halt guerrilla operations, or
to wipe out the revolutionary organization with its fragmented groups that move
around and operate throughout the national territory persistently and contagiously.
The people refuse to collaborate with the authorities,
and the general sentiment is that the government is unjust, incapable of solving
problems, and resorts purely and simply to the physical liquidation of its opponents.
The political situation in the country is transformed into
a military situation in which the guerrillas appear more and more to be the
ones responsible for errors and violence, while the problems in the lives of
the people become truly catastrophic.
When they see the militarists and the dictatorship on the
brink of the abyss, and fearing the consequences of a revolutionary war which
is already at a fairly advanced and irreversible level, the pacifiers, always
to be found within the ruling classes, and the right-wing opportunists, partisans
of nonviolent struggle, join hands and circulate rumors behind the scenes, begging
the hangmen for elections, “redemocratization,” constitutional reforms,
and other tripe designed to fool the masses and make them stop the revolutionary
rebellion in the cities and the rural areas of the country.
But, watching the revolutionaries, the people now understand
that it is a farce to vote in elections, which have as their sole objective,
guaranteeing the continuation of the military dictatorship and covering up its
crimes.
Attacking wholeheartedly this election farce and the so-called
“political solution” so appealing to the opportunists, the urban guerrilla
must become more aggressive and violent, resorting without letup to sabotage,
terrorism, expropriations, assaults, kidnappings, executions, etc.
This any attempt to fool the masses with the opening of
Congress and the reorganization of political parties — parties of the government
and of the opposition it allows — when all the time the parliament and
the so-called parties function thanks to the license of the military dictatorship
in a true spectacle of marionettes and dogs on a leash.
The role of the urban guerrilla, in order to win the support
of the people, is to continue fighting, keeping in mind the interests of the
masses and heightening the disastrous situation in which the government must
act. These are the circumstances, disastrous for the dictatorship, which permit
the revolutionaries to open rural guerrilla warfare in the midst of the uncontrollable
expansion of urban rebellion.
The urban guerrilla is engaged in revolutionary action
in favor of the people and with it seeks the participation of the masses in
the struggle against the military dictatorship and for the liberation of the
country from the yoke of the United States. Beginning with the city and with
the support of the people, the rural guerrilla war develops rapidly, establishing
its infrastructure carefully while the urban area continues the rebellion.
Urban Guerrilla Warfare, School for
Selecting the Guerrilla
Revolution is a social phenomenon that depends on men,
arms, and resources. Arms and resources exist in the country and can be taken
and used, but to do this it is necessary to count on men. Without them, the
arms and the resources have no use and no value. For their part, the men must
have two basic and indispensable obligatory qualities:
A. They must have a politico-revolutionary
motivation;
B. They must have the necessary technical-revolutionary
preparation.
Men with a politico-revolutionary motivation are found
among the vast and clearheaded contingents of enemies of the military dictatorship
and of the domination of US imperialism.
Almost daily such men gravitate to urban guerrilla warfare,
and it is for this reason that the reaction no longer announces that it has
thwarted the revolutionaries and goes through the unpleasantness of seeing them
rise up again out of their own ashes.
The men who are best trained, most experienced, and dedicated
to urban guerrilla warfare and at the same time to rural guerrilla warfare,
constitute the backbone of the revolutionary war and, therefore, of the Brazilian
revolution. From this backbone will come the marrow of the revolutionary army
of national liberation, rising out of guerrilla warfare.
This is the central nucleus, not the bureaucrats and opportunists
hidden in the organizational structure, not the empty conferees, the clichéd
writers of resolutions that remain on paper, but rather the men who fight. Revolutionaries
who from the very beginning have been determined to win and ready for anything.
Who personally participate in revolutionary actions, and who do not waver or
deceive.
This is the nucleus indoctrinated and disciplined with
a long-range strategic and tactical vision consistent with the application of
the Marxist theory, of Leninism and of
From it will come men and women with politico-military
development, one and indivisible, whose task will be that of future leaders
after the triumph of the revolution, in the construction of the new Brazilian
society.
As of now, the men and women chosen for guerrilla warfare
are workers; peasants whom the city has attracted as a market for man power
and who return to the countryside indoctrinated and politically and technically
prepared students, intellectuals, priests. This is the material with which we
are building - starting with urban guerrilla warfare – the armed alliance
of workers and peasants, with students, intellectuals, and priests.
Workers have infinite knowledge in the industrial sphere
and are best for urban revolutionary tasks. The urban guerrilla worker participates
in the struggle by constructing arms, sabotaging and preparing saboteurs and
dynamiters, and personally participating in actions involving hand arms, or
organizing strikes and partial paralysis with the characteristics of mass violence
in factories, workshops, and other work centers.
The peasants have an extraordinary intuition for knowledge
of the land, judgment in confronting the enemy, and the indispensable ability
to communicate with the humble masses. The peasant guerrilla is already participating
in our struggle and it is he who reaches the guerrilla core, establishes support
points in the countryside, finds hiding places for individuals, arms, munitions,
supplies, organizes the sowing and harvesting of grain for use in the guerrilla
war, chooses the points of transport, cattle raising posts, and sources of meat
supplies, trains the guides that show the rural guerrillas the road, and creates
an information service in the countryside.
Students are noted for being politically crude and coarse
and thus they break all the taboos. When they are integrated into urban guerrilla
warfare, as is now occurring on a wide scale, they show a special talent for
revolutionary violence and soon acquire a high level of political-technical-military
skill. Students have plenty of free time on their hands because they are systematically
separated, suspended, and expelled from school by the dictatorship and so they
begin to spend their time advantageously, in behalf of the revolution.
The intellectuals constitute the vanguard of resistance
to arbitrary acts, social injustice, and the terrible inhumanity of the dictatorship
of the guerrillas. They spread the revolutionary call and they have great influence
on the people. The urban guerrilla intellectual or artist is the most modern
of the Brazilian revolution's adherents.
Churchmen - that is to say, those ministers or priests
and religious men of various hierarchies and persuasions - represent a sector
that has special ability to communicate with the people, particularly with workers,
peasants, and the Brazilian woman. The priest who is an urban guerrilla is an
active ingredient in the ongoing Brazilian revolutionary war, and constitutes
a powerful arm in the struggle against military power and North American imperialism.
As for the Brazilian woman, her participation in the revolutionary
war, and particularly in urban guerrilla warfare, has been marked by an unmatched
fighting spirit and tenacity, and it is not by chance that so many women have
been accused of participation in guerrilla actions against banks, quarries,
military centers, etc., and that so many are in prison while others are sought
by the police.
As a school for choosing the guerrilla, urban guerrilla
warfare prepares and places at the same level of responsibility and efficiency
the men and women who share the same dangers of fighting, rounding up supplies,
serving as messengers or runners, as drivers, sailors, or airplane pilots, obtaining
secret information, and helping with propaganda and the task of indoctrination.
END
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