While I enjoyed this week’s reading of Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare, I still think it was somewhat held back by its aim of extracting general teachings from the Cuban revolution. If anything, it is very interesting as a historical account of the military strategies and techniques of Fidel’s revolutionary forces, and also provides detail on the conditions and needs of the individual guerrilla fighter. However, I am less convinced about its use as a handbook for successfully waging guerrilla warfare in order to topple one’s own oppressive regime. Marc Becker’s introduction writes that “it has become a historical document rather than a manual or blueprint” (vi), and considering how Che’s two attempts at guerrilla warfare following Cuba failed – in Congo and Bolivia respectively – it isn’t too difficult to understand why.
Even disregarding modern advances in current military technology, Che’s recommendations seem very specific to the case of the Cuban revolutionary struggle in the late 50s. This is completely understandable, and he himself recognises this, directing his advice to “Underdeveloped America”. This leads Che to focus on the countryside as the central point of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. He also emphasises how the support of the local peasant population is key to the guerrilla military apparatus, be it for gathering information, setting up infrastructure, or building the basis for the future revolutionary state. While popular support does seem like a necessary element to any revolution, Che’s description of how to obtain it either omits or takes for granted several factors that were somewhat specific to Batista’s Cuba.
Firstly, there is the case of the Cuban peasantry, which Marc Becker contrasts with that of the Bolivian rural workers when listing some of the criticism directed at Che’s Bolivian campaign. Then, there is Batista himself. While Cuba was in no way unique in terms of its dictatorial regime, Fulgencio Batista was far from competent in keeping a grip on power. He was unable to maintain loyalty within the upper ranks of his army – culminating in an attempted coup – and the Cuban national army was therefore hampered effective in its campaign against the revolutionary guerrilla forces. Batista was also responsible for brutal acts of repression against his opponents, and he ordered multiple cases of torture and arbitrary executions. This served to make him extremely unpopular among almost all of the Cuban population, and as a result Castro was commonly seen as a welcome alternative. In a sense, Batista was a significant contributor to his own overthrow.
Even though they weren’t required reading for this week, the two essays at the end of the Bison Books edition of Guerrilla Warfare were perhaps more useful for considering revolution in a more general case. “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method” takes a more theoretical approach to the question of revolution, while the “Message to the Tricontinental” focuses on the struggle against colonialism and the more recent case of United States imperialism. While these weren’t as historically instructive as the main text of Guerrilla Warfare, they did provide more insight into Che’s own ideas and conceptions about revolution.