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February 11, 2015<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/11/guerrilla-warfare-in-cuba/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/11/guerrilla-warfare-in-cuba/</a><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big><big>Defeating
Terrorism</big></big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Guerrilla Warfare in Cuba</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by MATEO PIMENTEL</div>
<div class="main-text">
<blockquote>
<p>“We have found, then, that we wish for the end, and
deliberate and decide about what promotes it; hence the
actions concerned with what promotes the end will express a
decision and will be voluntary.” – Aristotle</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Guerrilla warfare may be categorically different from
terrorism, but definition alone does not make the two mutually
exclusive. This is vital to acknowledge, as actors may use
guerrilla tactics and terrorism in tandem to determine their
desired political outcome. For the Cuban Revolution, however,
such was not the case. This revolutionary struggle for
liberation, which ousted Cuba’s unconstitutional Batista
dictatorship of the 1950s, did not resort to the terrorism
that the illegal dictatorship deployed against innocent Cubans
for political sway. No. By engaging in guerrilla warfare, the
Cuban people and their revolutionary vanguard did much more
than simply refusing to succumb to the terrorism that
repressed the island under Batista. By way of guerrilla
warfare and tactics, Cuba’s 1959 Revolution, and its Marxist
revolutionaries, defeated terrorism in Cuba.</p>
<p><strong>Momentum, Size, and Legitimacy</strong></p>
<p>The prospect of legitimacy is key to understanding how the
Cuban Revolution defeated state-sponsored terrorism in the
late 1950s. Additionally, it is important to distinguish the
desired end of the revolutionary guerrillas in their
asymmetrical war with Batista’s army of conventional size.
Simon Reid-Henry notes in his book Fidel and Che: A
Revolutionary Friendship that Fidel Castro specifically wanted
to reinstate the Constitution of 1940. That is, he sought to
reestablish constitutional authority in Cuba. But terrorism
(and torture) had no place in the praxis of Castro’s or Cuba’s
guerrilla vanguard.</p>
<p>Guerrilla tactics, in fact, are the response to an army that
insurgents do not yet outmatch, or even rival in size. These
tactics correspond to a desired momentum, and, as Ernesto
“Che” Guevara disseminates in his book Guerrilla Warfare, this
momentum was necessary to develop an army of conventional
size. Such size would allow Cuba’s revolutionary guerrillas to
wage a complete war, one in which their effectiveness would no
longer be determined by an unwavering prudence when dealing
with Batista forces.</p>
<p>Momentum and legitimacy – two elemental aspects of the Cuban
Revolution’s guerrilla warfare – also come up in Merle Kling’s
article entitled “Cuba: A Case Study of a Successful Attempt
to Seize Political Power by the Application of Unconventional
Warfare”. Kling observes,</p>
<p>“The form of violence resorted to by Fidel Castro and his
followers was guerrilla warfare. In contrast with the
traditional coup d’état of Latin-American politics, the Cuban
revolution led by Castro involved protracted military warfare
and sweeping social, economic, and political changes.”</p>
<p>Deeming the success of the Cuban Revolution an “attempt”
propelled by “unconventional warfare,” Kling proposes a
definition of war not specifically embodied or heeded by a
conventional army, or a military of conventional size. Che
adds that a conventional army (like Batista’s) is also one of
certain technological, sizeable, and formidable prowess
substantiated specifically in arms. Furthermore, Batista’s
army was not on the side of “sweeping social economic, and
political changes” in Cuba, but rather, anathema to it all.</p>
<p><strong>Grass-Roots Insurrection</strong></p>
<p>Other episodes of guerrilla warfare age Cuba’s 1959
Revolution quite a bit. For instance, Ramón M. Barquín, in his
book Las Luchas Guerrilleras En Cuba: De La Colonia a La
Sierra Maestra, treats guerrilla warfare during the Spanish
Civil War. In his book entitled Insurgency & Terrorism:
Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, Bard E. O’Neill recounts
how terrorism accompanied guerrilla tactics to reach
revolutionary ends in China’s Maoist revolution. In all,
guerrilla tactics and strategies differ as much as their
political underpinnings do.</p>
<p>Although guerrilla warfare facilitated the demise of
Batista’s terrorism, it is nonetheless important to recall
that Cuban revolutionaries did not fight for terrorism but
against it all along. And the success of the Cuban Revolution
rested in large part on the guerrilla vanguard’s successful
development of a protracted military campaign. Che himself
observes that, so long as the end guides the means in
guerrilla warfare, then fomenting a larger army captures the
essence of guerrilla warfare. This was certainly the case in
the Cuban Revolution, when the popular forces grew large
enough to fight en masse against the Batista regime’s
conventional military powers.</p>
<p>John Pustay further contextualizes the guerrillas’ approach
to fomenting a successful protracted military in Cuba to reach
their political end. He observes, “Castro, Guevara…were forced
to form guerrilla insurgency units by drawing upon recruitment
resources at the grass-roots level. They had to start
essentially from nothing and build a revolutionary force to
achieve victory…” Cuba’s guerrilla forces depended on the
growth of a “grass-roots” military recruitment to wage
increasingly efficient guerrilla warfare against a US-backed
Batista and his army. Electing to use terrorism for the sake
of gaining political power would only work against the
guerrillas and their objectives.</p>
<p><strong>Batista, US-Backed Terrorism</strong></p>
<p>Australian philosopher Jenny Teichman defines terrorism in
her book Pacifism and the Just War: A Study in Applied
Philosophy. She says it is “both a method of governing, or of
fighting, and a means to a specific kind of end, namely, some
political end or other.” To qualify terrorism further,
Teichman considers other definitive qualities of terrorism,
such as “the use of force or threats as a means of enforcing a
political policy,” and “the use of terror-inspiring threats as
a means of governing or as a way of coercing a government or
community.” Notwithstanding an apt definition, Batista and his
underlings were unequivocally guilty of terrorism during their
unconstitutional rule. The Batista regime employed terrorism
to squelch the insurrectionary efforts of the guerrillas, and
terrorism was Batista’s “method of governing,” which he
liberally circulated to maintain political rule.</p>
<p>Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr., a former inspector general and
executive director America’s Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), writes,</p>
<p>“As the terrorism of the opposition increased, the brutality
of the police and military intelligence people became more
horrible. I was told that the Bohemia, then one of the most
popular picture-news weeklies in Cuba and widely circulated in
Latin America, had been trying secretly to keep a tally of
those tortured to death or executed by the police, and now
estimated that as many as ten a week were killed in Havana
alone.”</p>
<p>Kirkpatrick also admits in his book The Real CIA that the
Batista government worked closely with the CIA, and that it
received assistance from the US to help carry out its goals.
Throughout this dictatorial and terroristic process of
despotic oppression, Batista not only terrorized and tortured
Cubans, but he also incarcerated his opponents and amassed a
fortune for his cronies and himself.</p>
<p>Oddly enough, some observe that faulting Batista incurs
problems, especially because of his unconstitutional
illegitimacy as dictator. Does Batista’s questionable
legitimacy mystify his historic role as an occupying enemy
force in Cuba? As Robert Whitney agrees in his article “The
Architect of the Cuban State: Fulgencio Batista and Populism
in Cuba, 1937-1940”, Batista was indeed emboldened by both the
suspension of Cuba’s 1940 Constitution and his military
control. He had Uncle Sam in his corner for a time. But
despite issues of constitutionality, the dictatorship assumed
a governmental status, and it is nonetheless culpable for the
numerous acts of torture, terrorism, and murder that it
committed.</p>
<p><strong>Winning the War on Terror</strong></p>
<p>In two articles – “Terror and Guerrilla Warfare in Latin
America, 1956-1970” and “Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin
America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes since
1956” – Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley proffers that much of the
Batista government’s terrorism “took place as the torture of
urban…innocent victims, and peasants,” and that survivors “who
lived to tell such tales can relate grisly stories.” Haydée
Santamaría, a Cuban heroine, guerrilla and politician, was
shown her brother’s plucked eyeball in an effort to make her
inform. Whereas the Batista regime tortured for information,
or terrorized for popular control, revolutionary guerrilla
forces barred such despicable actions.</p>
<p>In his article “Che Guevara and Contemporary Revolutionary
Movements”, James Petras notes, “[Che] forbade his comrades to
use torture to secure information. He argued that the use of
torture would defeat the purpose of the revolution, which was
to abolish inhumane treatment, and would corrupt the
revolutionaries practicing it…” Indeed, obviating terrorism in
the war against Batista was as much an ethical choice as a
practical one. Revolutionary forces sought to topple the
terrorist regime, not to fashion a new one.</p>
<p>Che writes that a fundamental character of guerrilla warfare
“is the treatment of the people in the zone.” He instructs
that guerrilla conduct “toward the civil population should be
governed by great respect for all the customs and traditions
of the people of the zone, in order to demonstrate
effectively, through deeds, the moral superiority of the
guerrilla fighter over the oppressing soldier.” On a similar
note, the “treatment of the enemy is similarly important,” and
guerrillas must extend “the greatest clemency possible toward
the enemy soldiers who go into battle performing…their
military duty.” Not only abstention from terrorism and
torture, it turns out, but also magnanimity would prove
elemental to the revolutionary victory over terrorism in 1950s
Cuba.</p>
<p><strong>A Guerrilla Victory</strong></p>
<p>Michael L. Gross states in his book Moral Dilemmas of Modern
War: Torture Assassination and Blackmail in an Age of
Asymmetrical Conflict, that “no justification of guerrilla
warfare allows guerrillas to unnecessarily harm enemy
combatants or intentionally harm innocent civilians.” For this
reason, there are policies in place that protect the rights of
guerrilla organizations, even as they engage in combat under
international law. Terrorists, or terrorist regimes like
Batista’s, do not enjoy this protection or legal recognition.
Furthermore, Teichman claims that “it must be possible to draw
lines in practice between different kinds of violence…” Thus,
distinguishing the guerrilla warfare and tactics of Cuba’s
revolutionaries from the state-sponsored (and US-backed)
terrorism of the Batista regime proves something more.
Wickham-Crowley agrees, the guerrillas’ military victory over
Batista forces also shone light on the moral victory they
achieved against terrorism on the island. The revolutionaries
of Cuba utilized guerrilla warfare, rejected terrorism, fought
against it, and the Cuban people emerged victorious.</p>
<p><b><i>Mateo Pimentel </i></b><i>lives on the Mexican-US
border. You can follow him on Twitter @mateo_pimentel. </i></p>
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