Guerrilla Intervention into Space:

Case Studies in Cuba and Uruguay

An honors thesis for the Department of History

Spencer Beswick

Tufts University, 2015

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to my thesis committee for helping me through this process. Foremost, I

would like to thank my committee chair, Professor Peter Winn, for his invaluable insight into the

subject material and for all of his help throughout the project. He inspired my love of Latin

American history and has been a guiding academic and political influence throughout my time at

Tufts. Thank you as well to my two other committee members, Professors Kris Manjapra and

Alexander Blanchette, for teaching theory in a way that makes me love it and for their help and

support on this project. Professor Manjapra deserves special mention as my incredibly

supportive, patient, and caring academic advisor.

Romina Green and Josh Savala’s friendship and guidance are why I pursued History in

the first place, and they first introduced the concept and importance of space to me in the context

of anarchist politics and Occupy Boston.

Finally, thank you to my family and friends for all their support.

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Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Theoretical Framework 7

Chapter 1: Production of Space in Pre-Revolutionary Cuba 12

Chapter 2: Guerrilla Intervention into Cuban Space 34

Chapter 3: Urban Space, Urban Guerrillas: Uruguay’s Tupamaros 51

Conclusion and Epilogue 71

Works Cited 76

Introduction

As for the class struggle, its role in the production of space is a cardinal one in that this production is performed solely by classes, fractions of classes and groups representative of classes. Today more than ever, the class struggle is inscribed in space.

-Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space1

On June 2nd, 1959, less than six months after his entry into Havana at the head of the

Rebel Army, Fidel Castro announced a sweeping agrarian reform that would change the course

of the Cuban Revolution. The reform challenged the logic of capital and absentee private

ownership and set into motion a radicalization of the revolution. Notably, Castro did not

announce it from La Plaza de la Revolución, nor from the presidential palace. Instead, he

traveled back to the site of guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra mountain range to proclaim

the reform from the Rebel Army’s headquarters in the liberated territory of La Plata, a bold

action with enormous symbolism. La Plata was the location of the first proto-revolutionary

government and the birthplace of agrarian reform during the guerrilla struggle. Castro’s choice of

location firmly established the link between the proto-revolutionary measures carried out in the

liberated territory — including agrarian reform, socialization of production, and rudimentary

social services — with the revolutionary socialist measures of the new state. His announcement

was in many ways the culmination of the Cuban guerrilla experience and demonstrated the

importance of the liberated territory to the revolution.

The triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1st, 1959 was immediately heralded

across Latin America as the beginning of a new era of armed struggle against imperialism and

capitalism, yet most young revolutionaries who took up arms across Latin America suffered

crushing defeats. The two decades between 1959 and the successful 1979 Sandinista revolution

1 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 55. 2 As will be explained in the theoretical framework, this thesis adopts the view that social space does not simply exist, but rather is produced by collective human action.

2

in Nicaragua were filled with brutal defeats for young Leftists following the banner of Fidel

Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara. One of the most daring attempts to repeat their success came

in Uruguay, where a generation of young revolutionaries experimented with an urban guerrilla

strategy in the late 1960s and early ‘70s that flew against the teachings of the rural foquista

Cuban model. These guerrillas, who called themselves the Tupamaros, successfully waged urban

guerrilla war for years before facing utter destruction at the hands of the Uruguayan army, which

soon turned the small South American model democracy into a military dictatorship.

This thesis will argue that the victory of the Cuban Revolution and the defeat of the

Uruguayan Tupamaros ultimately depended on questions of spatial production. 2 In doing so, it

must revive the old debate about rural versus urban guerrilla war, but with a new twist.

Advocates of rural guerrilla warfare along the Cuban foquista model were right to dismiss urban

guerrilla warfare as the method of revolution. But not because, as Régis Debray would argue, the

city is a bourgeois space or even necessarily because it was too dangerous. Rather, the key

element of revolutionary strategy is the ability to control and produce space in the form of

liberated territory. In Cuba, the liberated territory of La Plata became the base for revolution, and

the agrarian reform the guerrillas carried out in the mountains was the motor that drove the

revolution forward. In contrast, the urban strategy pursued by the Uruguayan Tupamaros

precluded any possibility of establishing liberated territory due to the impossibility of rebel

forces controlling and defending urban space to the degree necessary to carry out governmental

programs and produce revolutionary space.

In order to turn the corner towards revolution, rebels must make the leap from simply

contesting space to controlling and producing their own space in liberated territory. Liberated

2 As will be explained in the theoretical framework, this thesis adopts the view that social space does not simply exist, but rather is produced by collective human action.

3

territory is used first as a military base for the guerrilla struggle. It is a defensible area from

which attacks can be launched and to which the guerrillas can retreat and defend against

repression. More importantly, guerrillas can begin to implement revolutionary measures in

liberated territory; indeed, they can begin to make the actual social revolution. Guerrilla control

of territory sets in motion a new production of space grounded in new forces and relations of

production,3 institutions such as free hospitals and education, and new forms of interpersonal

relations based on revolutionary values. While some small steps towards spatial production can

be taken in uncontrolled territory, they are easily reversible through state repression. As we will

see, spatial production is grounded in the forces and relations of production, which guerrillas

control in liberated territory.

Liberated territory forms the social base and motor of social revolution. In Cuba, the

liberated territory of La Plata was the first site of agrarian reform, the progressive lever that

drove the revolution forward. After the seizure of state power, it is widely acknowledged that

agrarian reform set in motion — or at the very least was one of the major contributors to — a

process that progressively deepened the revolution. By its very nature, it contested capitalist

logic of private ownership. Once agrarian reform was set in motion in La Plata, the revolution

inevitably moved towards socialism.4 On the other hand, the Tupamaros were never able to

establish liberated territory in Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital. The result was an inability to carry

forward the revolution. When they reached the point beyond which further armed propaganda

was insufficient and they began to seriously attempt to contest state power, they descended into

militarism that was disconnected from the people and from any sort of revolutionary base.

3 Guerrilla industries are set up as soon as possible. In the early stages, the most important industries produce goods the guerrilla fighters need — especially shoes, clothing, and ammunition. 4 Michael Lowy, The Marxism of Che Guevara, 74.

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Without liberated territory, without an actual revolutionary process upon which they could build,

they lost their revolutionary character and became hardly more than an armed force which could

be destroyed through violent repression.

Through examining case studies in Cuba and Uruguay, this thesis will attempt to

illuminate not only the differences between the two countries’ production of space, and the

corresponding rural versus urban guerrilla tactics of the Cuban rebels and the Tupamaros, but

also shed some light on why the Cuban guerrillas were victorious while the Tupamaros were not.

This is not to say that urban revolution is impossible; rather, that urban guerrilla warfare as the

sole revolutionary strategy cannot hope to succeed.

A Brief Engagement with Guerrilla Warfare

War is fundamentally concerned with political control over the production of social

space; as Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously said, war is politics through

other means. Militarily, armies fight to control a space to carry out strategic objectives.

Politically, wars are fought to determine who will be able to exercise ultimate control over the

space itself. Armies attempt to control the “center of gravity” in order to affect all aspects of a

country.5 Revolutionary wars take this further: rather than dispute control over the current

system, they seek to overthrow the existing political-economic configuration and replace it with

something new. One of the preeminent analysts of guerrilla warfare, twentieth century German

philosopher Carl Schmitt, argues in Theory of the Partisan that “the partisan, who displaced the

technical-military consciousness of the 19th century, suddenly reappeared as the focus of a new

type of war, whose meaning and goal was destruction of the existing social order.”6 Unlike other

5 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, 587-88. 6 Carl Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan, 72.

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types of warfare, partisan warfare — that is to say, political, irregular warfare — fundamentally

challenges the existing social structure and attempts to replace it with a new production of space.

The essence of guerrilla warfare lies in its unique interaction with and approach to space.

Guerrilla war is defined against that which it is not: conventional or “regular” warfare.

Conventional military theory deals with a clash between two major armies, each attempting to

defeat and impose its will upon the other. Guerrilla warfare wages an asymmetrical struggle. It is

an answer to a simple question: how can a small, ill-equipped group of people hope to defeat a

large army? Its entire strategy and tactics are conceived in line with the strengths and weaknesses

of small groups of mobile fighters. The partisan creates what Schmitt deems an “irregular space,”

which is defined by the partisans’ “flexibility, speed, and the ability to switch from attack to

retreat, i.e., increased mobility” that collapse the lines of traditional military engagement.7

Guerrilla warfare is fundamentally the military strategy of the oppressed and the weapon

of the weak. Although Schmitt famously argues that modern guerrilla warfare was born in the

Iberian revolt against Napoleon 200 years ago, the use of guerrilla tactics and strategy goes back

thousands of years.8 Indeed, historian Lewis Gann argues in Guerrillas in History that guerrilla

warfare is “as old as human conflict,” but has been largely ignored in part because it “lack[s] the

glamour of set battle pieces.”9 Two major pre-Napoleonic examples of the use of guerrilla tactics

in Latin America, which continue to inspire revolutionary struggle to this day, are the Túpac

Amaru II rebellion in Peru (1780-82) and the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). In more recent

history, guerrilla warfare has been associated with Leftist struggles for national liberation in the

Third World as well as militant communist groups like the Black Liberation Army in the United

7 Carl Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan, 71, 16. 8 Ibid., 3. 9 Lewis Gann, Guerrillas in History, 1.

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States and the Red Army Faction in West Germany. Guerrilla icon Che Guevara explains that

although “guerrilla warfare has been employed throughout history on innumerable occasions and

in different circumstances to obtain different objectives [...] Lately it has been employed in

various people’s wars of liberation when the vanguard of a people have chosen the road of

irregular armed struggle against enemies of superior military power.”10

In order to better understand the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare in Cuba and

Uruguay, this thesis will employ a theoretical framework for the production of social space. The

ability to control and produce space is integral to revolutionary success. The next section will

explain how space is produced, which will set the stage for this paper’s discussion of how

revolutionary forces can attempt to navigate and disrupt previously produced space while

attempting to build their own transformative revolutionary space.

10 Che Guevara, “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” Guerrilla Warfare. 182.

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Theoretical Framework: The Production of Space

This thesis is concerned with the production of social space in Cuba and Uruguay, both

pre-revolutionary spatial production as well as by revolutionary guerrilla intervention. Space as a

category of analysis has a long history, ranging from ancient Greek philosophy to modern

mathematical theory. Traditionally, the West has adopted a colonial view of space as simply a

stage on which temporal history plays out. As Latin Americanist historian Raymond Craib

argues in Cartographic Mexico, colonizers tend to perceive space “as a static and neutral

category, a prepolitical object, and little more than a passive stage upon which historical subjects

play assigned roles.”11 This view of space as a stage upon which people act is inherently

connected to a colonial view of the world. The entire world is seen as a static stage upon which

the West acts: “on the stage space, only the settler makes history,” ignoring the complex histories

and experiences of other peoples. “Thus,” Craib says, “an overweening emphasis on history at

the expense of space is, ironically enough, ahistorical.”12 This is not to imply that space should

be considered at the expense of history. Instead of separating history and space, as is often done,

the goal of this thesis is to combine the two into a spatial history.

Framing history in terms of space is part of the larger project of the decolonization of

History as a discipline. Associations with decolonization are especially apt here, as the Latin

American guerrillas that this paper will discuss were fundamentally anti-colonial fighters. From

Cuba to Uruguay, they viewed their struggle in terms of resistance to both capitalism and

imperialism. Even as they fought their own governments, they maintained that the real enemy

was the global system of neocolonial rule led by the United States. Speaking on this, Fidel Castro

proclaimed in the Second Declaration of Havana that “today Latin America lies beneath an

11 Raymond Craib, Cartographic Mexico, 3. 12 Ibid., 5.

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imperialism, much more fierce, much more powerful, and more cruel than the Spanish colonial

empire.” Guerrilla warfare in Latin America is part of the global struggle against imperialism: a

“clash between the world that is being born and the world that is dying.”13 As guerrillas struggle

against colonialism, one cannot hope to understand them through colonial academic methods. In

order to adequately engage with guerrilla theory and practice, this thesis must instead use space

and spatial history as analytical tools.

This thesis will adopt the theory of spatial production provided by its preeminent theorist,

the French Marxist Henri Lefebvre. His most famous and important work, The Production of

Space, is sufficient for the limited foundational knowledge of spatial production required for this

paper’s analysis. In short, Lefebvre argues that social space does not simply exist, but rather is

constantly produced. Like Craib, he situates his argument against a long philosophical history

that holds that space is merely a stage upon which history and human activity take place. Against

this, he argues that space is a living, constantly evolving human production, a product of

collective human action.14 It is always a product of social groups or classes.15 Further, different

modes of production produce different kinds of space, and the dominant form of space is used by

the ruling class to shape the world in its image.16 This thesis will engage with Lefebvre’s theory

of spatial production to write a spatial history of Cuba, Uruguay, and their respective guerrilla

movements. An understanding of the production of social space is integral to understanding the

centrality of liberated territory to the armed revolutionary projects in these countries.

Space is simultaneously a social relationship, a product, and a means of production. As a

Marxist, Lefebvre is fundamentally concerned with an analysis of political economy. The

13 Fidel Castro, “The Second Declaration of Havana.” 14 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 26. 15 Ibid., 115. 16 Ibid., 46, 49.

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production of space is grounded in the forces and relations of production. It is produced by social

and interpersonal relations, the “traditional” realms of production and reproduction, institutions,

buildings, and infrastructure. Lefebvre lays out how space is simultaneously a product and a

means of production:

Is space a social relationship? Certainly — but one which is inherent to property relationships (especially the ownership of the earth, of land) and also closely bound up with the forces of production (which impose a form on that earth or land); here we see the polyvalence of social space, its ‘reality’ at once formal and material. Though a product to be used, to be consumed, it is also a means of production; networks of exchange and flows of raw materials and energy fashion space and are determined by it. Thus this means of production, produced as such, cannot be separated either from the productive forces, including technology and knowledge, or from the social division of labour which shapes it, or from the state and the superstructures of society.17

For Lefebvre, this expansive view of space is the basis of a new political project based on spatial

analysis and grounded in the necessity of producing a new kind of space. This thesis will expand

upon this project by analyzing the spatial production of Cuba and Uruguay, as well as the spatial

consciousness and intervention of the guerrilla forces that fought in each country.

We are concerned in this thesis with what will be termed “spatial history,” which

Lefebvre argues is integral to understanding the production of space. He posits that “if space is

produced, if there is a productive process, then we are dealing with history.”18 As historians, we

are tasked with understanding the history of the production of space. Historical materialism, the

Marxist historical method that focuses on the development of the forces and relations of

production through class struggle, must be stretched “to broaden the concept of production so as

to include the production of space as a process.”19 Further, spatial history “must account for both

representational spaces and representations of space, but above all for their interrelationships and

17 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 85. 18 Ibid., 46. 19 Ibid., 128.

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their links with social practice.”20 It must focus on the development of the “networks” of space

produced by particular political economies, geographies, and infrastructures.21 This thesis

attempts to write a spatial history, first of prerevolutionary Cuba and its guerrilla intervention,

and then a shorter discussion of spatial production and urban guerrilla warfare in Uruguay.

The space discussed in this thesis is colonial, capitalist, and “abstract.” Colonial space, as

seen in chapter one, is defined by its complete focus on domination and extraction of labor and

resources.22 Lefebvre argues that the capitalist mode of production has produced a new kind of

“abstract space.” As opposed to “absolute” space, which is anchored in a certain set of symbols

and traditions that are integrated into and built upon natural space, the rise of the capitalist mode

of production has unmoored space from its traditional foundation.23 Capitalism produces abstract

space shaped by the logics and networks of commodity production, capital and markets, nation-

states, and transportation and communication infrastructure.24 Abstract space builds on top of

absolute space and integrates it into its spatial production, but in doing so “smash[es] naturalness

forever” and replaces it with the space of accumulation based on abstract labor and commodity

production.25 An analysis of modern production of space must thus be based in the production of

this abstract capitalist space: the organization of capitalist productive forces, infrastructures,

networks, and logics.

This thesis will detail the production of space in Cuba and Uruguay, spanning pre-

revolutionary spatial production as well as the guerrilla spatial interventions. Chapter one will

provide a spatial history of Cuba, arguing that its geography and dependence on sugar production

20 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 116. 21 Ibid., 116-17. 22 Ibid., 151. 23 Ibid., 48-49. 24 Ibid., 53. 25 Ibid., 49.

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shaped a unique colonial and capitalist space. Chapter two will engage with the theory behind the

guerrilla intervention into Cuban space, explaining how guerrillas were able to contest and

subvert rural space and eventually produce transformative revolutionary space in liberated

territory. Chapter three will shift to Uruguay, providing a brief overview of its spatial history to

frame a discussion of the Tupamaro spatial intervention and use of urban guerrilla tactics.

Finally, I will conclude by discussing the possibilities of socialist spatial production in the

present.

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Chapter 1: Production of Space in Pre-Revolutionary Cuba

Every social space is the outcome of a process with many aspects and many contributing currents, signifying and non-signifying, perceived and directly experienced, practical and theoretical. In short, every social space has a history…

-Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space26

In order to understand the guerrilla intervention into Cuban space, an understanding of

the production of Cuban space prior to the revolution is necessary. This requires a multifaceted

consideration of the unique colonial political economy of the island nation. Production of space

is built upon and incorporates earlier productions; as Lefebvre says, “whenever a society

undergoes a transformation, the materials used in the process derive from another, historically

(or developmentally) anterior social practice.”27 A careful study of Cuba’s political-economic

development and its social consequences is necessary to write a spatial history. Of course, it is

not possible to do justice to a spatial history of Cuba in one short thesis chapter; by necessity,

this discussion will be limited to a relatively surface-level discussion of the general progression

of the development of spatial production. I will touch on many of the major events and time

periods of Cuban history, but only insofar as they were instrumental in producing the space that

the Cuban guerrillas confronted in the 1950s. Some topics that would otherwise seem of great

importance, especially political developments, will thus be left aside or only briefly discussed.

While this chapter will deal with the entirety of pre-revolution Cuba, the main focus will

be on the long century between the end of the 1700s and the abortive 1895-98 revolution during

which the island’s political economy and superstructure were revolutionized. Beginning after the

Haitian Revolution disrupted the sugar market, Cuba was transformed from a backwater Spanish

26 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 110. 27 Ibid., 190.

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colony into one of the centers of global sugar production. Astronomical growth in the forces of

production caused far-reaching changes that produced abstract capitalist space on the island.

New infrastructure, institutions, and social relations were produced, with a corresponding growth

of Cuban national identity and revolutionary anti-colonial thought. Though the first half of the

twentieth century was certainly a time of growth and change for the island, the national space

that the Rebel Army confronted in the 1950s was mostly produced in the nineteenth century.28

Colonial Production of Latin American Space

Before embarking on an analysis of colonial Cuba, it will be helpful to establish some

general spatial trends of the colonization of Latin America. Appropriately for this paper,

Lefebvre uses the Spanish-American colonial town as an example to explain the production of a

unique kind of dominated colonial space. The colonial town employs the “quadrangular form”29

par excellence in order to dominate, subjugate, and produce a distinctly Latin American space

meant solely for resource extraction. Spanish-American colonial towns were built according to

the dictates of a “veritable code of urban space” published in Orders for Discovery and

Settlement.30 The production of urban space was carried out in order to fulfill three specific

goals: discovery, settlement, and pacification. “The very building of the towns thus embodied a

plan which would determine the mode of occupation of the territory and define how it was to be

reorganized under the administrative and political authority of urban power.”31 Towns were laid

out in a hierarchical, segregated grid in which each square had its own designated function. This

“artificial product is also an instrument of production: a superstructure foreign to the original

28 As we will see, one major exception is that modern space in Eastern Cuba was produced in the intense first two decades of the twentieth century in a rapid agro-industrialization which provided the social base and fuel for the revolutionary war of the 1950s. 29 A rectangular area surrounded by buildings that produces a rigid, dominated space. 30 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 151. 31 Ibid., 151.

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space serves as a political means of introducing a social and economic structure in such a way

that it may gain a foothold and indeed establish its ‘base’ in a particular locality.”32 The

imposition of the new social space of the colonial town was thus able to change the underlying

spatial structure of the whole colony.

Colonial space is designed to dominate and control both land and people. Colonial space

is by definition “dominated” space. Lefebvre distinguishes “appropriated” space, which is simply

natural space that is modified to serve human needs, from “dominated” space.33 Dominated

space is different in that it serves the interests of power rather than humanity. Technology is used

to “brutalize the countryside and the land” in order to create and protect political power.34

Domination of physical space is complemented by and helps to produce domination of people.

Space is the realm of control because it affects people both on the level of social organization

and the body; its purpose is to “command bodies” in order to “[realize] a master’s product.”35

Bodies (and their labor power) are disciplined and commanded through surveillance and

incarceration, as well as institutions such as schools, hospitals, and factories, which all

contributed to the production of dominated colonial space.

The entire design and production of the Spanish-American colonial town was meant to

promote wealth and resource extraction. Towns were designed to disrupt existing space in order

to establish dominance and allow production of a new space that would facilitate extraction.

“Geometrical urban space in Latin America was intimately bound up with a process of extortion

and plunder serving the accumulation of wealth in Western Europe; it is almost as though the

32 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 151. 33 Ibid., 165. 34 Ibid., 165. 35 Ibid., 143, 164-65.

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riches produced were riddled out through the gaps in the grid.”36 Latin American space was

intentionally produced in order to funnel wealth out of the country and into the pockets of

European (and later American) capitalists, as well as to impose Spanish domination on a hostile

indigenous landscape. The focus on resource extraction affected everything from urban

development to transportation infrastructure.

Colonial Cuban Space

From its “discovery” in 1492, and the subsequent extermination of the native population,

Cuban space was produced to serve the needs of colonizing European interests. As Marxist

anthropologist Eric Wolf puts it, Cuba was literally “created to answer the needs of the

expanding European commercial system of the modern period.”37 Unlike many other colonies in

Latin America and elsewhere, Cuba was essentially made from whole cloth, a fascinating

example of a space almost completely dedicated to colonial interests from its inception. The

island’s strategic geographic location in the Caribbean lent itself to early use as a base for

Spanish influence in the region. It served primarily as a hub connecting Spanish ports with

nearby Latin American ports. Not until the eighteenth and nineteenth century did Cuba undergo a

complete transformation in purpose and become more of a “traditional” Latin American colony

with vast slave-worked tobacco and sugar plantations.

Cuba’s colonial social space was produced according to its geographic realities as a

tropical island country. Social space is built on top of and incorporates natural space or, as

Lefebvre prefers, “natural rhythms,” which are modified and inscribed “in space by means of

human actions, especially work-related action. [Spatial history] begins, then, with the spatio-

36 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 152. 37 Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, 251.

16

temporal rhythms of nature as transformed by a social practice.”38 Cuba’s location and

geographical features resulted in unique spatial consequences. First, Cuba’s global position in

Latin America meant that it was colonized by Europe, and hence subjected to colonial spatial

production. Second, within the global production of space shaped by networks of trade and

dominance, Cuba’s small size and location next to the United States has seemingly doomed it to

a dependent relationship. Third, because Cuba stretches east to west rather than north to south, it

has a relatively uniform climate that only supports a specific range of tropical crops, and must

therefore import much of its food.39 The east-west divide has also had socio-economic effects.

The western part of the island, around the capital and port of Havana, developed economically at

a much faster pace than the east, which remained “underdeveloped” until its forced agro-

industrialization under US control at the beginning of the twentieth century. The very geography

of the island thus led to distinctive socio-economic spatial features of the island and at the same

time produced a dependent relationship with world powers.

Any analysis of the production of Cuban space must be grounded in the sugar economy,

which shaped all aspects of Cuban life. For centuries, the Cuban economy and national life was

geared almost exclusively to sugar production. Historian Louis A. Pérez summarizes the

determining quality of sugar for Cuba:

The influence of sugar [...] was pervasive and total. It summoned into existence a plantation economy and the attending banes of mono-culture, chattel slavery, and large-scale production for export. The social composition of the Cuban population was permanently changed. Sugar shaped property relations, class structures, land tenure forms, labor systems, the process of capital accumulation, the pattern of investment, the priorities of domestic policies, the course and content of Cuban trade and commerce, and the conduct of Cuban foreign relations. In the end, sugar shaped the national character.40

38 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 117. 39 Louis A. Pérez, Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 5. 40 Ibid., xiv.

17

The question of the sugar economy is thus one of spatial production. Further, in his famous

historical study of Cuban sugar and tobacco, Cuban Counterpoint, Fernando Ortiz argues that

sugar was the crop that destroyed Cuba’s national sovereignty. The sugar economy “has been

under foreign control superimposed on the island’s government. The history of Cuba [...] has

been essentially dominated by foreign controls over sugar. [...] Sugar represents Spanish

absolutism.”41 It is the colonial crop that kept Cuba subservient to the world by dominating its

trade and shaping Cuba’s entire system of production, labor, and development. Our spatial

history of Cuba will by necessity focus heavily on the evolution of the sugar economy.

Cuba was organized along a network with its capital, Havana, in the center and an

infrastructure set up to funnel wealth and resources in one direction from the countryside to the

city. Roads and railroads were built out from Havana, eventually covering the island in the

nineteenth century. The two maps shown below in figures one and two, of western and central

Cuba in 1919, demonstrate that Cuba’s infrastructure was set up to funnel resources and wealth

from the countryside to the capital: all roads and railroads lead to Havana, and fan out in a web

to the rest of the island. Railroads in particular were built to facilitate the colonial export of

sugar. As historians Oscar Zanetti and Alejandro García explain in their masterful work on the

history of Cuban railroads,

unlike the railroads in other countries, those in Cuba were developed to promote links between producers on the island and their foreign markets, rather than to meet the needs of a domestic market and stimulate its growth. Within the framework of Cuba’s single-export economy, the use of railroads was determined by the needs of its main — practically only — export product: sugar.42

41 Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, 70-71. 42 Oscar Zanetti and Alejandro García, Sugar and Railroads, xx.

18

Growth of sugar plantations and transportation infrastructure went hand in hand, each driving the

other forward. The expanding sugar economy necessitated the production of railroads, while

railroad production allowed Eastern Cuba to be penetrated and developed.43 The development of

transportation infrastructure corresponded directly to the development of the productive forces of

sugar plantations.

Figure 1: “Cuba, 1919.”44

43 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World, 124-25. 44 “Cuba, 1919.” Automobile Blue Book.

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Figure 2: “Central Cuba 1919.”45

The colonial layout of Cuba resulted in a developed west around Havana and a

comparatively underdeveloped interior and east. Wealth and resources flowed west along the

transportation infrastructure to reach Havana, the center of international commerce. This had

important consequences for the production of colonial space. The west, and Havana in particular,

experienced much greater wealth and development. The interior and east, on the other hand,

were badly underdeveloped. The lack of official trade encouraged underground activity and led

45 “Central Cuba 1919.” Automobile Blue Book.

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to an economy based on “illicit commerce and contraband,” which often lent itself to political

insubordination and resistance.46 Eastern Cuba could be understood as a “shatter zone,” a term

coined by anarchist anthropologist James C. Scott. The process of state-making produces

peripheral zones inhabited by refugees, criminals, and others looking to escape the confines of a

nation-state.47 These shatter zones are characterized by strong resistance to modern statehood.48

We could read them as anti-space zones, spaces that are dedicated to subverting and challenging

modern production of dominated space. It is thus no coincidence that the nationalist

revolutionaries of the late nineteenth century, as well as the guerrilla Rebel Army led by Castro,

based themselves in the interior and the east.49 In doing so, they situated themselves within a

long history of resistance and rebellion to spatial domination centered in Oriente and Santiago.

Having established some general trends of spatial production in colonial Cuba, the next

section will begin to look closely at the major changes that began in the late eighteenth century.

Late Eighteenth Century: Liberalization of Economy and Ideology

The late eighteenth century was a time of rapid growth and change for Cuba that set the

stage for an explosive nineteenth century. Many of the defining elements of Cuban national

space were born during the late 1700s. Economic liberalization, though limited, led to greatly

increased economic growth, especially in the form of sugar production. From the beginning,

Ortiz says, “the production of sugar was always a capitalistic venture because of its great

territorial and industrial scope and the size of its long-term investments.”50 This growth in

46 Louis A. Pérez, Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 30-31. 47 In Cuba, these shatter zone inhabitants were very often escaped slaves, along with smugglers, pirates, and others seeking to live autonomous lives outside of colonial state control. 48 James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 7-9. 49 For Castro’s guerrillas, the east was a fallback after the failure of urban uprisings in Santiago in 1956 and Havana in 1958 proved that rural warfare was the only viable path forward. They could not escape Cuba’s history and geography. 50 Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, 56.

21

productive forces and trade led to the establishment of new institutions and public works

programs by sugar interests, which helped promote a new sense of Cuban national identity.

While spatial production would become more set in the nineteenth century, the foundations of

modern space emerged in the eighteenth century.

Expanded sugar production began to reshape the island’s production of space. The year-

long British occupation of Havana from 1762-63 ended many Spanish policies that had

hampered development, and Cuba was opened to greater economic liberalization and world

trade. Greater opportunities for trade stimulated economic development as well as the

importation of tens of thousands of African slaves. The sugar economy began to take off, causing

social and economic chain reactions. First, the development of sugar production pushed

economic centralization: sugar “served as a powerful centripetal force in the local economy: it

concentrated capital, consolidated land, consumed labor.”51 The sugar central “is now more than

a mere plantation.” Because of the concentration and economic activity around it, “it is a

complete social organism, as live and complex as a city.”52 Just as important, the growth in sugar

production led to a new sense of Cuban national interests as distinct from Spanish concerns. A

new class of creole sugar planters began to establish Cuban institutions to promote both their

class and national interests.

Colonial Cuban production of space was shaped in the eighteenth century by the growth

of new institutions, including schools, cultural institutions, and public works projects, which

were formed out of both public and private interests. Though institutions are part of society’s

superstructure, they are integral to the production of space. They help produce space aligned with

51 Louis A. Pérez, Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 44-48. 52 Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, 52.

22

the development of the forces and relations of production.53 The establishment of educational

institutions such as the University of Havana responded to a general societal need for education,

but was also used by the creole elite to push liberal ideology. Education was often promoted by

private interests stemming from the sugar industry. For example, in 1791 twenty-seven

prominent landowners in Havana formed the “Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País.” This

organization was primarily economic and existed both to advocate for the interests of rich

planters and exchange information with each other. It also subsidized schools, funded

scholarships, supported Cuban publications, and founded a public library.54 The intimate

connection between education and the sugar economy is telling. The underlying function of

educational institutions was to promote liberal ideology and a nascent Cuban national identity

based in sugar production.

Apart from education, the eighteenth century was defined by the growth of other

infrastructure and institutions, again often due to the influence of sugar interests. In 1793 a

coalition of planters and merchants called the “Real Consulado de Agricultura y Comercio de la

Habana” was founded, which soon merged into the “Junta de Fomento.” This “Junta” engaged in

a “defense of local interests,” primarily by sponsoring public works programs to develop Cuba’s

infrastructure, as well as by funding education. Further, the eighteenth century was shaped by the

arrival of the printing press, theaters, churches, major Cathedrals, public libraries, and various

public works programs including paved streets and the construction of plazas. This was

accompanied by the birth of homegrown Cuban literature.55 These new institutions and

infrastructure helped produce a new Cuban national consciousness.

53 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 85. 54 Louis A. Pérez, Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 51. 55 Ibid., 51-53.

23

The booming economy and accompanying institutional growth resulted in a growing

definition of and identification with Cuban national identity. The aforementioned groups of

industry leaders represented Cuban national interests, which were for the first time recognized as

distinct from Spanish interests. Contradictions between Spanish policy and Cuban interests

caused “nothing less than a change of consciousness, fundamentally a change in the way Cubans

thought about themselves.”56 The creole elites were beginning to rebel against colonial space.

The economic growth of the eighteenth century was butting up against the bounds of the colonial

production of extractive space.

Cubans sought to produce a new sort of national space that was modern/capitalist abstract

space rather than colonial. Nation-building is intrinsically a spatial project. The production of the

nation is the production of “the space of the nation state.”

The nation may be seen to have two moments or conditions. First, nationhood implies the existence of a market gradually built up over a historical period of varying length [which encompasses] a focused space embodying a hierarchy of centres [...] Secondly, nationship implies violence [...] a political power controlling and exploiting the resources of the market or the growth of the productive forces in order to maintain and further its rule. [...] These two ‘moments’ indeed combine forces and produce a space: the space of the nation state.57

In Cuba, a growing national bourgeoisie based in the sugar industry sought to assume some level

of influence over the production of this national space through at least some degree of control

over the market and political power. These economic and cultural changes set the stage for an

explosive nineteenth century.

56 Louis A. Pérez, Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 52. 57 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 112.

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Nineteenth Century: Production of Modern Cuban Space

The nineteenth century was a defining period for Cuban spatial production. Though Cuba

had developed socio-economically to a great extent during the eighteenth century, production

still lagged far behind other Caribbean countries. The Haitian Revolution changed everything: as

global sugar supply dropped precipitously and its price rose accordingly, Cuban sugar production

grew to fill the gap.58 This rapid growth would have far-reaching consequences. Cuba’s

productive forces flourished, with a corresponding change in social relations of class and caste.

Nationalism and a national spatial imagination took root among large sectors of Cubans, though

class and race greatly affected articulations of nationalism. Nationalist sentiments were

articulated in a series of revolts and revolutionary insurrections from 1868 to 1898 that attempted

to remake the politics and economy of Cuba. However, the twentieth century dawned under

United States control of the island’s productive forces and political process. Cuba’s national

space was still outside of its own control.

The expansion of sugar production caused immense changes in spatial production.

Growth in the number and size of sugar plantations shaped natural space into social space

dominated by human production as a large amount of previously untouched wilderness fell to

sugar production. Plantations themselves grew far bigger and used more modern technology,

which required far more capital investment. Ortiz points out that “the machine won a complete

victory in the sugar-manufacturing process. [...] The mechanization has been so thorough that it

has brought about a transformation in the industrial, territorial, judicial, political, and social

structure of the sugar economy.”59 Expansion and modernization occurred along the same

regional differences as development had in the past, with modernization concentrated close to

58 Oscar Zanetti and Alejandro García, Sugar and Railroads, 1. 59 Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, 51.

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Havana in the west. Further, expanded production necessitated massive growth in the

transportation infrastructure. A large network of roads and railroads were constructed to meet the

needs of sugar production, linking the island together.60 The island was physically transformed

by the sugar explosion.

Expanding sugar production also changed the relations of production and general

organization of labor. A growing gulf emerged between the white elites and the working masses,

who were often Afro-Cuban. Ortiz argues that “sugar has created two extremes, slaves and

masters, the proletariat and the rich.”61 The ruling sector was composed of three broad groups —

creole property owners, peninsular bureaucracy, and peninsular merchants62 — which were

united in defense of sugar and slavery but divided by issues of creole liberalism versus colonial

peninsular interests. Outside of the sugar industry, the middle class became bigger, more liberal,

and anti-Spanish, but also began to turn against the Creole elite, accusing them of working with

and defending Spain. They were also generally anti-slavery, and included a fair number of free

people of color. At the bottom of the social hierarchy came African slaves. Slaves were key to

sugar production, but treated absolutely horribly. They resisted in many ways, including violent

slave rebellions.63 Racial slavery was integral to the particular mode of sugar production in Cuba,

which required a vast amount of cheap manual labor. Slavery was thus a key component of

Cuba’s production of dominated colonial space.64 This class and racial caste hierarchy helped to

produce a modern abstract space characteristic of capitalist production in colonial nations.

60 Oscar Zanetti and Alejandro García, Sugar and Railroads, xx. 61 Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, 65. 62 In Spanish colonies, the distinction was made between creoles, ostensibly whites born in the colonies, and peninsulares, whites born in Spain and associated with European interests. 63 Louis A. Pérez, Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 67-73. 64 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World, 124-25.

26

Economic growth began to chafe at the bounds imposed by Spanish control, leading to

growing Cuban nationalist sentiment and spatial imagination. Spanish imposition of heavy taxes

and restrictions limited the profit of Cuban planters, who became increasingly liberal. Economic

development combined with limited political liberalization led by Bourbon liberal political

changes in Spain put in motion intellectual and cultural ideas based in Enlightenment thought,

bringing about a nascent Cuban nationalism.65 People at all levels of Cuban society, from large

planters to artisans and free Afro-Cubans, began to identify socially and politically as Cuban.

This is not to say that there were not major divisions within Cuba. Class, race, and creole versus

peninsular interests mediated Cubans’ approach to nationalism, and many upper class Cubans

still identified strongly with Spanish rule. Notwithstanding these reservations, for the first time a

Cuban national identity strongly emerged. This national identity was fundamentally spatial and

relational: it was produced by the developing political economy of the nation as well as its

bourgeoning institutions and was bounded by the geography of the island.

Out of the changes in sugar production and class relations came the seeds of anti-colonial

rebellion that bloomed first in 1868 and then in 1895. While large planters in the west largely

continued to identify with Spanish interests, the east rose up in rebellion in 1868. The

insurrection was defeated after ten years of heavy fighting, but it changed forever the national

Cuban identity and set the stage for abolition and the larger revolutionary movement of 1895.

Economically, the destruction of the war of 1868-78 created the conditions for American

takeover of the sugar industry. A key rebel tactic was to torch sugar plantations, which crippled

Cuba’s export economy. Reconstruction of the sugar economy depended almost entirely on

foreign credit, especially from the United States, which was used to build large, centralized sugar

65 Louis A. Pérez, Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 47, 50, 63.

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mills that would utilize new technology.66 As could be expected, US control over this process

produced further nationalist and anti-imperialist sentiment.

The revolution of 1895-1898, which became the Spanish-Cuban-American war, was a

war for Cuban independence that ended in United States control of the island. In 1895,

continuing economic depression and growing anti-imperialist sentiment resulted in an eruption

of rebellion. The insurrection grew rapidly to surpass all previous revolts, and by 1896 rebellious

armies were marching westward demanding a Cuba Libre. On the verge of victory after years of

fighting, the Cubans were soon disappointed by the entrance into the war of the United States,

which negotiated a separate peace with Spain that placed Cuba squarely into its sphere of

influence and control.

Post-1898: American Space

Cuba entered the twentieth century under de jure and de facto control by the United

States. The war ended in US control over a counter-revolutionary process that rolled back all the

progressive changes of the 1895-98 revolution. American corporations took near-complete

control of the economy by rebuilding it after the war, in the process centralizing and

industrializing sugar production even further. Eastern Cuba went through a twenty-year process

of intense industrial development that centralized sugar production and dislocated massive

numbers of east Cuban peasants. The space of eastern Cuba that the guerrillas would confront in

the 1950s was essentially produced in these two decades.

The 1895-98 rebellion and subsequent Spanish-Cuban-American war was an abortive,

failed attempt at nationalist revolution that led to a retrenching of colonial rule under the United

States. The revolution attempted to produce nationalist space in which Cuba could determine its

66 Louis A. Pérez, “Toward Dependency and Revolution,” 127, 132.

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destiny. Cuban historian Herminio Portell Vilá discusses the goals and setbacks of the

revolution:

The Cuban revolution of 1868-1898 accomplished its goal of destroying the bases of the political, economic, and social structure of the country, in order to reconstruct them to the national advantage. [Revolutionaries] were preparing the future for a new Cuba when North American intervention re-established and consolidated the economic and social aspects of the destroyed regime, with all their political implications.67

Americans quickly moved in to establish dominance at all levels of the economy and intensify

colonial resource extraction through a process of centralized “agro-industrialization.” US

capitalists took advantage of the post-war chaos and soon owned and controlled around half of

the island’s sugar production while importing the majority of Cuba’s sugar.68 US control of the

Cuban economy led to “a new form of underdevelopment [that] took hold based on capitalist

relations of production [as well as] the spread of wage labor and the introduction of the most

modern form of economic organization.”69 The Platt Amendment, which gave the US final say

on all Cuban policies, complemented and guaranteed direct economic control and de jure denied

Cuba self-determination until 1933. After the Spanish-Cuban-American war, the United States

functionally owned and controlled the island.

While modern space in western Cuba was essentially produced by the end of the

nineteenth century through the development of the productive forces of the sugar industry, the

expansion of infrastructure, and the production of modern institutions and nationalist ideology,

the modern east was only really formed in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Throughout the nineteenth century, eastern Cuba remained comparatively underdeveloped and

67 Herminio Portell Vilá, “The Nationalism of Cuban Intellectuals,” 72-73. 68 Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, 256-57. 69 César J. Ayala, American Sugar Kingdom, 2-3.

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lagged behind the mass industrialization of the sugar industry that occurred in the west. It had a

very large proportion of individual land ownership, often by Afro-Cuban peasants.70 After 1902,

American capital moved into the “new frontier” of Eastern Cuba and remade it entirely. The east

was rapidly modernized and industrialized through a process of intensive primitive accumulation

that produced a “mutated society” shaped by massive dislocation.71 As historian Robert Hoernel

astutely puts it, “western and central Cuba experienced a graduated progression, accelerating

over the course of the nineteenth century, while in the east its assault lasted little more than two

decades. Notwithstanding its speed, penetration in the east was deeper, more painful, and more

thorough.”72 Centralization of production into large corporate sugar mills, which necessitated

kicking peasants off their land and destroying their livelihoods, took place at an enormously

accelerated rate.

Agro-industrialization caused extensive dislocation amongst the peasants who previously

owned their own land. Small plots of land were seized and integrated into large industrial sugar

plantations. This had two major consequences: it produced a rural proletariat to work the

plantations, but also provided the social base of landless peasants for the forthcoming revolution.

The east “became a divided province; old and new, native and immigrant, displaced and

imported, sharing little in common, with half the population attempting to improve and expand

the new, while the remainder tried to preserve the traditional.”73 The peasants in the Sierra

Maestra during the 1950s revolution were descendants of the dislocated peasants of Eastern

Cuba during this time period. Peasant dislocation prompted their desire for land, which led to the

agrarian reform upon which the revolution was based. The production of modern industrial space

70 Robert B. Hoernel, “Sugar and Social Change in Oriente, Cuba, 1898-1946,” 219-220, 230-232. 71 Ibid., 215. 72 Ibid., 217. 73 Ibid., 237.

30

in eastern Cuba led to the social base of Castro’s revolution, explaining its overriding focus on

agrarian reform.

One consequence of industrialized sugar production was that many rural Cubans were

actually rural proletarians or semi-proletarians rather than traditional peasants, a fact that had

large consequences for the Cuban Revolution. Peasants traditionally own and work their own

land. But the unique setup of the Cuban sugar economy, with centralized rural production,

created a “large rural proletariat, severed from any ownership of the land and forced to sell its

labor power in an open labor market. [...] A rural proletariat is not a peasantry.”74 This rural

proletariat had interests similar to traditional workers — higher wages, etc. — rather than

peasants. The brutal seasonal rhythms of the sugar industry defined rural life, and rural

proletarian desire for greater control over their lives led them to support the revolution.75 The

existence of Cuba’s rural proletariat meant that even a revolution based in the countryside must

still have the needs of the working class at its core.

Yet, while agro-industrialization produced a new class of rural proletarians, it also

created a class of traditional petty-bourgeois peasants in search of land. Cuba’s eastern Sierra

Maestra was not inhabited by rural proletarians. There, Che explains, “the peasants who

belonged to our first guerrilla armies came from that section of this social class which most

strongly shows love for the land and the possession of it; that is to say, which most perfectly

demonstrates the petty-bourgeois spirit. The peasants fought because they wanted land for

themselves and their children.”76 The Cuban guerrillas were able to take advantage of both

traditional peasants and rural proletarians, working with them in different ways to gain support

74 Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, 257. 75 Ibid.,. 76 Che Guevara, “Cuba: Historical exception or vanguard in the anti-colonial struggle?”

31

for the revolution. The landless peasants in the east would be integral to the development of

liberated territory because they were proof of the necessity of immediate agrarian reform.

Prelude to Revolution

After the sugar boom in eastern Cuba, the most important event was the near revolution

of 1933. Political and economic developments came together to produce revolutionary anti-

imperialist sentiment. The global economic disaster of 1929 combined with intense popular

protest against dictatorial President Gerardo Machado produced a revolutionary situation. The

government collapsed under the pressure of a general strike, and a group of radical students,

intellectuals, and workers took the opportunity to seize power. In September 1933 this coalition

formed a Provisional Revolutionary Government to carry out a series of progressive reforms,

including labor reform and a commitment to agrarian reform, which directly challenged the

control of American corporations.77 More interesting for our purposes is the occupation of sugar

mills by workers that took place in dozens of locations. Though workers seized mills for a

variety of reasons, the Communist Party gave instructions to turn the mills into soviets run by

workers and peasants.78 This movement challenged private ownership of sugar production and

thus the entire abstract capitalist production of space in Cuba. In some ways it prefigured the

revolutionary struggle for space of the 1950s. However, the provisional government was soon

overthrown by a right wing coalition led by Fulgencio Batista and the worker occupations

collapsed. Yet the experience of 1933 had long-lasting impacts on Cuban society. The influence

of the popular masses could no longer be ignored, and acknowledgement of popular demand for

reforms became institutionalized. Most Cubans concluded that state intervention was necessary

77 Robert Whitney, State and Revolution in Cuba, 2. 78 Barry Carr, “Mill Occupations and Soviets: The Mobilisation of Sugar Workers in Cuba 1917-1933,” 129-30, 141.

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for political and economic modernization.79 The nationalist and anti-imperialist sentiments that

coalesced in the 1933 revolution would never disappear.

The 1940s and ‘50s were shaped by a slide into growing government corruption that

ended in Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship from 1952 to 1959. The 1940s began full of promise,

with a progressive new constitution and the 1944 election of Ramón Grau San Martín, the hero

of 1933. Yet the old generation of idealist reformers who entered into government soon became

cynical and often used their positions to enrich themselves at Cuba’s expense. A postwar

economic boom offered hope, but economic opportunities were squandered courtesy of

corruption and mismanagement.80 In 1952, democracy was lost as Batista seized power at the

head of a military coup, plunging Cuba into years of dictatorship.

After 1952, the space which the Cuban guerrillas would confront had been produced. It

was a modern abstract capitalist space that was indelibly marked by the colonial past and

neocolonial present. Space can never be fully abstract, just as capitalism cannot completely

dominate production and social relations. Cuban space was heavily marked and bounded,

characterized by unevenness and dislocation, marked by race and gender, and shaped by the

continuing extractive relations of town to country. Though revolutionaries would initially target

urban areas in Havana and Santiago, it is no surprise that they ended up basing themselves in

rural eastern Cuba, the historic site of rebellion and the contemporary site of massive

industrialization and dislocation. They took advantage of Cuba’s unevenness and played along

its faultlines.

From here, this thesis shall consider how the guerrillas intervened into Cuban space:

moving through and around it, confronting it, contesting it, subverting it, and, most importantly,

79 Robert Whitney, State and Revolution in Cuba, 3. 80 Louis A. Pérez, Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 216-17.

33

producing their own revolutionary space that was both a response to and an overcoming of the

Cuban space they contested. This revolutionary space would prefigure the production of socialist

space after 1959.

34

Chapter 2: Guerrilla Intervention Into Cuban Space

In this same space there are, however, other forces on the boil, because the rationality of the state, of its techniques, plans and programmes, provokes opposition. The violence of power is answered by the violence of subversion.

-Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space81

The repressive and dominating aspects of 1950s Cuban space provoked reaction. After

exhausting the possibility of electoral change, and under the rule of a repressive dictator since

1952, Cubans took up arms in violent rebellion that produced one of the most famous and

successful guerrilla wars in modern history. Following a failed attack on the Moncada Army

Barracks in 1953, Fidel Castro led a small band of revolutionaries through two years of rural

guerrilla war against the Cuban state from 1956 until victory in late 1958. Through the use of

effective guerrilla tactics and strategy, the Rebel Army grew from a dozen fighters to an army

able to control liberated territory in eastern Cuba and go toe to toe with Batista’s army. This

chapter will examine the theory and practice of this guerrilla intervention into the Cuban space

that was described in chapter one. Drawing primarily from Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare and

Régis Debray’s Revolution in the Revolution?, this chapter will delve into the spatial

consciousness of rural guerrilla warfare and the Cuban guerrillas’ attempt to produce a new kind

of transformative, revolutionary space.82 The chapter will conclude with a discussion of the

importance of liberated territory for driving the Cuban revolution forward.

Guerrilla warfare developed in two main stages in Cuba. In the early nomadic stage of

war the initial focus was on moving through and around space in order to navigate and disrupt

the previous production of space. As the guerrillas grew stronger they moved into a second stage

81 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 23. 82 Che Guevara needs no introduction: he was the famous Argentine guerrilla who was integral to the Cuban Revolution and the development of the foquista guerrilla model. Debray is a French philosopher who spent years in Cuba studying guerrilla warfare, and synthesized the Cuban Model of rural guerrilla warfare in Revolution in the Revolution?

35

in which they were able to occupy and control rural space and produce a new kind of

revolutionary space in liberated territory. Throughout both of these stages, the Cuban guerrillas

attempted to produce transformative space that would lead to the creation of the New Men who

could build a socialist society.

Town and Country

While orthodox Marxist theory and practice is focused on urban struggle, many theorists

in the mid-twentieth century tradition of Third World Marxism shifted focus to the countryside.

A new generation of anti-colonial theorists from Mao Tse-tung and Frantz Fanon to Che and

Debray argued that the locus of struggle must be in the revolutionary space of the countryside, as

opposed to the purportedly reactionary bourgeois space of the city.

In the colonial context, the city is a dangerous site of reaction and relative privilege.

Fanon argues in The Wretched of the Earth that unlike European workers, who truly had nothing

to lose but their chains, workers in the colonial city were a relatively privileged caste who could

often be ideologically reactionary because of their material privilege.83 Debray argues along

similar lines that “the city can bourgeoisify the proletarians” because of the comparatively easy

life it provides.84 Further, cities are simply too dangerous for revolutionaries. They are enemy-

controlled spaces; the police and army are strongest in urban areas and thus it is suicidal to

venture into them. Fidel Castro warned that “the city is a cemetery of revolutionaries and

resources.”85 The danger and conservatism of the colonial city led to Fanon’s dictum that “in an

underdeveloped country, the leading members of the party ought to avoid the capital as if it had

the plague.” Of course, the revolutionary focus on the countryside comes first from Mao, who 83 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 86. 84 Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, 77. For a critique of Debray’s characterization of the Cuban city and its relation to guerrilla forces, as well as other criticisms of his book, see “Debray and the Cuban Experience” by Simon Torres and Julio Aronde. 85 Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, 69.

36

believed that Communists must build a People’s Army composed of peasants who would liberate

the countryside and encircle towns and cities. In this vein of thought, revolutionary struggle must

take place in rural areas, where peasants are predisposed to anti-colonial traditions and thought.

Unlike the city, the countryside is a potential revolutionary space. Che argues that one

major lesson of the Cuban Revolution is that the countryside is the ideal location for guerrilla

warfare.86 This is true not simply because the countryside is far from the repressive armed

apparatuses of the state, but because it has favorable terrain for guerrilla warfare. Favorable

guerrilla terrain consists of what might typically be considered unfavorable terrain: “zones

difficult to reach, either because of dense forests, steep mountains, impassable deserts or

marshes.”87 This kind of terrain is good for guerrillas for two reasons. First, it lends itself well to

guerrilla tactics. Rough terrain is much more easily navigated by small groups of people, who

can take advantage of their mobility to harass and ambush larger forces that are hampered by

mountains and forests. Second, it is much easier to create guerrilla bases in rough terrain because

they can be more easily defended. Che explains that here the guerrilla band will “be able to ‘dig

in,’ that is, to form a base capable of engaging in a war of positions,” in which industry,

education, and other services can be set up.88 Thus, rough terrain in the countryside is crucial to

armed struggle and the establishment of guerrilla space.

Cuba provides a good case study of the revolutionary character of the countryside. As

shown in chapter one, the large difference between the production of space in western and

eastern Cuba made the east much more hospitable to guerrilla warfare. In the colonial Cuban

context, the western urban center of Havana was a location of relative privilege due to wealth

86 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 47. 87 Ibid., 65. 88 Ibid., 66.

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extraction from the countryside, and the west was generally more developed, modernized, and

urban than the east. After the failed 1956 urban uprising in Santiago and the abortive general

strike of 1958, the spatial disparity between east and west led the Rebel Army leaders to abandon

the possibility of urban revolution and instead center their rebellion in rural eastern Cuba. The

rough territory of the east, especially the Sierra Maestra mountains, was a perfect space for the

establishment of guerrilla war.

Guerrilla Tactics: Movement Through and Disruption of Space

Space is produced not only by the construction of buildings and infrastructure, but also

through its everyday use and the movement of people through it. Guerrillas must move through

and construct paths through space. Lefebvre explains that “places are marked, noted, named.

Between them, within the ‘holes in the net,’ are blank or marginal spaces.”89 Guerrillas must find

and exploit these “in between” spaces and use them to subvert the places they bisect. In other

words, guerrillas must perfect the tactic of movement through space.

Guerrillas depend on finding and producing these sorts of transcendent pathways through

space. They must employ an intimate knowledge of terrain in order to move through and around

it. Mobility is key to the guerrilla intervention into space; indeed, Che says that mobility is “the

fundamental characteristic of a guerrilla band.”90 In the nomadic stage of early guerrilla warfare,

all space is controlled to a certain degree by the enemy. All space is dangerous to the guerrillas,

and they have no hope of controlling it. Their only real advantage over the enemy is that, with

their small numbers, they may be ultra-mobile and use hit and run tactics. This approach to space

is the only way for nascent guerrilla forces to survive.

89 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 118. 90 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 58.

38

Guerrilla actions are shaped by and respond to spatial layout and different kinds of

terrain. A perfectly executed guerrilla attack will use the terrain to its advantage, employ the

element of surprise, and hit and run with minimal losses. Guerrilla tactics proceed thus: “Hit and

run, wait, lie in ambush, again hit and run, and thus repeatedly, without giving any rest to the

enemy. There is in all this [...] a negative quality, an attitude of retreat, of avoiding frontal fights.

However, this is consequent upon the general strategy of guerrilla warfare.”91 In this strategy, the

guerrillas must use the terrain wisely. For example, Che explains that the best place to carry out

an ambush is on a steep hill, as this terrain is especially difficult for the enemy army to navigate,

and the guerrillas may escape counter-attack easily.92 Guerrillas must have a spatial awareness of

the rural terrain that allows them to move through it and use it to their advantage.

Cuban guerrillas used armed propaganda to disrupt enemy production and control of

space. Guerrillas must engage in mobile armed propaganda in order to pierce the illusion of

invulnerability that the enemy forces produce. In Cuba and the rest of Latin America, the enemy

was an entrenched power that was considered unassailable by the peasants, immobilizing dissent.

As Debray argues, “unassailability cannot be challenged by words but by showing that a soldier

and a policeman are no more bullet-proof than anyone else.”93 Armed propaganda for Latin

American guerrillas fundamentally consists of attacking the enemy in order to prove that they

can bleed. Throughout the guerrilla war, the Cuban army never made a serious attempt to

establish relations with the peasants, and “most dealt with them brutally.”94 They were seen as an

occupying force that only spoke and performed violence. The violence of the guerrillas disrupted

91 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 53. 92 Ibid., 104. 93 Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, 51. 94 Ramón L. Bonachea and Marta San Martín, The Cuban Insurrection: 1952-1959, 91.

39

the previously uncontested enemy control of space and challenged the brutal violence of the

Cuban army.

Even in their early ultra-mobile nomadic stage, Cuban guerrillas attempted to disrupt

enemy control of space and create an atmosphere of fear and danger for the enemy army. For the

guerrillas, a large part of war is psychological. They attempt to demoralize the enemy army

through various methods. Encircling enemy columns, attacking at night, and always attacking the

vanguard of the enemy army (to discourage enemy soldiers from leading) all serve to inspire fear

and disorder within the enemy army. Further, sabotage is directed at key infrastructure and

communications networks to create chaos and disorder, creating a “fruit [ripe] for plucking at a

precise moment.”95 At this point the production of chaotic, disordered space is the primary goal;

as Mao famously proclaimed, “everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is

excellent.”

Guerrilla Space and The Production of New Men

The guerrilla space produced in camps and on the march transforms guerrilla fighters and

produces new, revolutionary subjects. Bodies are inseparable to a theory of the production of

space, for “it is by means of the body that space is perceived, lived — and produced.”96 Human

bodies are formed by the space in which they exist. “A body so conceived,” Lefebvre says, “as

produced and as the production of a space, is immediately subject to the determinants of that

space [...] the spatial body’s material character derives from space, from the energy that is

deployed and put to use there.”97 Because the body is produced by space, revolutionaries may

seek to change bodies, indeed to change humanity itself, by changing space. This is fundamental

95 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 57. 96 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 162. 97 Ibid., 195.

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to Che and Debray’s ideas that guerrilla space produces a new kind of humanity, what Che

would later deem the “New Man.”

Guerrillas are physically and mentally transformed by their hard lives in the countryside.

Not only is death an ever-present possibility around each corner, life itself is extremely hard for

the guerrilla combatant. The hardship of daily life begins to chip away at any weakness and

bourgeois tendencies. “In the first stages of life in the mountains, in the seclusion of the so-called

virgin forest, life is simply a daily battle in its smallest detail; especially is it a battle within the

guerrillero himself to overcome his old habits, to erase the marks left on his body by the

incubator — his weakness. In the early months the enemy to be conquered is himself.”98 Just as

the city “bourgeoisifies” people, the countryside, mountains, and jungles proletarianize and

revolutionize people. Because of their experience as guerrillas, “the Rebel Army is already

ideologically proletarian and thinks like a dispossessed class.”99 The physical effects of hard

guerrilla life produce a certain kind of internal space that breaks down old ideologies and biases.

More importantly, guerrillas’ interpersonal relationships produce a transformative space

in which they commit class suicide together and transform into “New Men.” Guerrilla bodies and

the relations between them generate a new type of collectively produced transformative

“guerrilla space.” The countryside and mountains are the meeting space for workers, peasants,

and intellectuals who would otherwise remain in their separate milieus. The shared burden of

guerrilla life begins to break down the separations between classes. “Under these conditions class

egoism does not long endure. Petty bourgeois psychology melts like snow under the summer sun,

undermining the ideology of the same stratum.” These conditions produce true revolutionaries:

as Debray puts it, “revolutionaries make revolutionary civil wars; but to an even greater extent it

98 Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, 71. 99 Ibid., 78.

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is revolutionary civil war that makes revolutionaries.”100 Further, though bourgeois leadership is

often necessary in the beginning of struggle, Debray argues that they must “commit suicide as a

class in order to be restored to life as revolutionary workers, totally identified with the deepest

aspirations of their people. Where better than in the guerrilla army could this shedding of skin

and this resurrection take place?”101 Yet this is in many ways an idealist and misinformed view

of the reality of the Cuban guerrillas; as critics point out, the proletariat assumed hegemony

within the revolutionary movement through a combination of military power and the

unquestioned guerrilla trust in the leadership that held together the class coalition, rather than

through a process of collective class suicide.102 However, this does not necessarily detract from

the importance of the guerrillas’ interpersonal relations in breaking down barriers and allowing

the fighters to be reborn into proletarian revolutionaries.103

This revolutionary transformation takes place in the physical space of the guerrilla camp.

Camps are hard, spartan arrangements. The guerrilla’s “house will be the open sky.”104 Guerrillas

carry limited equipment and camps are dedicated to function above all else. Strict discipline must

always be maintained.105 Yet crucially, camps are both military spaces and educational spaces.

Che advises that each man carry a book, which the whole squad will share.106 The camp is filled

with rousing discussion and debate that drive in revolutionary ideals. Here, “the guerrillas

received political indoctrination into the reasons for their struggle [...] By the end of the process

100 Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, 110-11. 101 Ibid., 112. 102 Simon Torres and Julio Aronde, “Debray and the Cuban Experience,” in Regis Debray and the Latin American Revolution, 57. 103 Indeed, I might argue that one’s political position determines where one stands on this issue; that is to say, how far do we believe Che’s insistence that voluntarism can produce revolutionary New Men? 104 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 86-87. 105 Ibid., 86-94. 106 Ibid., 93.

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each guerrilla fighter felt that he was a symbol of the entire movement.”107 The life of a guerrilla

fighter leads them to break with their bourgeois (or peasant) upbringing and accept revolutionary

ideals. The guerrilla camp is a crucial space where this transformation intentionally occurs.

On Gendered Guerrilla Space

It is impossible to adequately discuss the production of transformative guerrilla space in

Cuba without addressing the gendered nature of that space. Revolutions are not genderless, and

guerrilla warfare in Latin America has traditionally been dominated by men.108 While female

participation in guerrilla forces grew in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Chiapas, it was quite low in

Cuba, possibly as small as five percent.109 The guerrilla space produced in Cuba was

fundamentally a masculine one.

Similar to how production of space is classed and raced, it is also gendered. The current

mode of spatial production, defined by domination of nature and space, is intrinsically

masculine. “Its very form stems from the dominance of the male principle, with its violence and

love of warfare; and this principle has in turn been reinforced by the supposedly manly virtues,

as promoted by the norms inherent to a dominated and dominating space. [...] It is inevitable in

these circumstances that feminine revolts should occur, that the female principle should seek

revenge.”110 The dominated colonial and capitalist space of pre-revolutionary Cuba was clearly

very masculine. But what of the revolt against that space — was it a “feminine revolt”? The

answer is complicated. Although Che argues that discrimination against women was a colonial

mentality that must be combated within the revolutionary movement, he still believes that

women should fulfill their traditional gender roles. The revolution helped the position of women

107 Ramón L. Bonachea and Marta San Martín, The Cuban Insurrection: 1952-1959, 103. 108 Karen Kampwirth, Women and Guerrilla Movements, 1. 109 Ibid., 2-3. 110 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 409-410.

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in Cuban society, but it could hardly be considered a “feminine revolt” — much less a feminist

one.

Che’s appraisal of women is more nuanced than one might expect, and he claims that

women can perform equally to men in all aspects of guerrilla warfare. He acknowledges that

colonial mentalities cause discrimination against women, which must be combated within the

revolutionary forces. Women have a large part to play in the revolution; as he says in his section

on “the role of the woman,”

the part that the woman can play in the development of a revolutionary process is of extraordinary importance. It is well to emphasize this, since in all our countries, with their colonial mentality, there is a certain underestimation of the woman which becomes a real discrimination against her. The woman is capable of performing the most difficult tasks, of fighting beside the men [...] She can perform every class of combat task that a man can at a given moment.111

This is a fairly progressive statement to make considering the time period and Cuba’s infamous

machismo culture, and Che should be commended for it.

Che also destabilizes masculinity in his construction of the guerrilla. Guerrillas must not

only be hard, emotionless warriors prepared to kill and die for the cause, but also caring and

emotional. As his cliché and oft-quoted statement goes, “at the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me

say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a

genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”112 Guerrillas must care deeply for the people of their

country: “Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred

causes, and make it one and indivisible.”113 In “Man and Socialism in Cuba,” the source of these

quotes, Che argues for the birth of a “New Man” guided by communist values. While it is

111 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 132. 112 Che Guevara, “Man and Socialism in Cuba.” 113 Ibid.

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certainly possible to argue that the essay reproduces harmful notions of patriarchy and male

dominance, it also attempts to construct a new sense of positive masculinity based on communist

values, which breaks from Latin American machismo culture.114 As we have seen, this New Man

is first created in the guerrilla space of the mountain.

Yet despite all the above, Che’s vision of women’s place in the revolution is still deeply

patriarchal. Although he acknowledges that women can perform equally to men in combat, he

immediately turns around to say that women should still perform their “habitual tasks of

peacetime” for the guerrillas, meaning cooking and other domestic tasks, as they are supposedly

well suited for that.115 Women should also be employed in schools as teachers and as social

workers in liberated areas. Further, they are important medically because of their “gentleness

infinitely superior to that of her rude companion in arms,” and they should sew uniforms because

that is their traditional employment.116 In short: while a woman’s place is in the revolution, they

are nonetheless meant to serve in “traditional” auxiliary roles to men. Their presence within

liberated territory did not “feminize” revolutionary space, as they did not effect any sort of

change at the level of production; they only performed support roles that reinscribed male

domination of space. Guerrilla space is for Che and the Cuban Revolution a fundamentally male

space. Interpersonal relationships must follow traditional gender roles, and guerrillas are

measured against a masculine ideal.

Liberated Territory: The Production of Proto-Revolutionary Space

The turning point in guerrilla warfare comes when the guerrillas grow strong enough to

occupy and control territory. In this liberated territory, they begin to actively produce a new kind

114 Che Guevara, “Man and Socialism in Cuba.” 115 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 133. 116 Ibid., 134.

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of revolutionary space by transforming the forces and relations of production under a proto-

revolutionary government. The key to liberated territory is the transformation of the material

production of space. Ideology itself does not produce space; rather, the forces and relations of

production together produce space. Grounded in the forces of production, new spatial production

expands to encompass “education, administration, politics, military organization, and so on.”117

This is key to understanding liberated territory. The guerrillas do not simply attempt to impose

communist ideology in order to transform space. They effect change at the level of production,

which sets off a chain reaction of deepening revolutionary measures.

Lefebvre hints at the possibility of this kind of deliberately constructed social space in his

discussion of cloisters. Cloisters are an example of a space deliberately set up in which “a

gestural space has succeeded in mooring a mental space — a space of contemplation and

theological abstraction — to the earth, thus allowing it to express itself symbolically and to

become part of a practice, the practice of a well-defined group within a well-defined society.”118

Similarly, the practice of a liberated territory creates a new space through a marriage of the

mental space of an idealist guerrilla to a new set of practices related to the earth — agrarian

reform, social ownership, and a new proto-revolutionary infrastructure and system of production.

The concept of liberated territory comes from the Maoist theory of Protracted People’s

War. The Cuban liberated territory in La Plata was in many ways a mini-Yan’an, which was the

central liberated area and Communist base during the Chinese Civil War. Mao conceived of what

he called liberated zones or liberated areas slightly differently than did Che and Debray.119

117 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 210. 118 Ibid., 217. 119 Indeed, Debray argues that “one may well consider it a stroke of good luck that Fidel had not read the military writings of Mao Tse-tung before disembarking on the coast of Oriente: he could thus invent, on the spot and out of his own experience, principles of a military doctrine in conformity with the terrain. It was only at the end of the war,

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Liberated areas were the base of the revolution that would steadily grow to consume the country.

The liberated areas were meant to be long-term bases within the protracted strategy of People’s

War — Mao directs the Party to “calculate everything on a long-term basis” — as opposed to the

rapid strategy of foquismo, which was meant to achieve victory within a matter of years.120 The

Communist Party would assume complete control over the zones and implement revolutionary

measures. Mao called for communists “in the Liberated Areas to carry through the land reform,

consolidate the foundations of democracy, develop production, practice economy, strengthen the

people's armed forces, eliminate the remaining strongholds of the enemy and support the fighting

at the front.”121 Liberated areas were long-term revolutionary bases meant to slowly build a dual-

power situation through protracted struggle. While Cuban revolutionaries did not adopt the

Maoist strategy of protracted war, their liberated territory in La Plata performed many of the

same functions.

Liberated territory allows guerrillas to begin producing revolutionary social space. Free

from the immediate threat of violent repression and destruction, they attempt to institute a proto-

revolutionary government that acts in the role of a future socialist state that will produce and

shape space in a far-reaching manner. The guerrillas are now “head of a large movement with all

the characteristics of a small government,” that is able to establish laws and a justice system.122

Within a short time of establishing themselves in the Sierra Maestra, “the guerrilla’s code

became the law throughout the area [...] The guerrillas became the real and effective authority to

whom the peasants referred all problems.”123 Debray argues that in Cuba this allowed the

when their tactics were already defined, that the rebels discovered the writings of Mao.” Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, 20. 120 Mao Tse-tung, “Policy for Work in the Liberated Areas for 1946.” 121 Mao Tse-tung, “Manifesto of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.” 122 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 118. 123 Ramón L. Bonachea and Marta San Martín, The Cuban Insurrection: 1952-1959, 91.

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guerrillas to test “tomorrow’s revolutionary measures.”124 They create new forces and relations

of production as well as rudimentary socialist institutions. Basic industries are set up, hospitals

are built, and schools are established.125 Health care and literacy campaigns that began in

liberated territory became staples of the Cuban Revolution. Production and social relations are

socialized and collectivized to a great degree, and the new institutions are used for revolutionary

propaganda.126 These changes at the level of production and institutions begin to produce a new

revolutionary social space that is only possible within liberated territory.

Most importantly, liberated territory is the site of the most fundamental of the guerrillas’

aims: land reform. Land reform is the principal demand of the guerrillas’ peasant base, and thus

“the guerrilla fighter is above all an agrarian revolutionary.”127 As soon as possible, guerrillas

facilitate land reform among the peasants in response to their overriding desire for land

ownership. Agrarian reform transforms rural space from control by the state and capital to a

revolutionary space controlled by the peasants and guerrillas. The peasants’ new relationship

with the land becomes the foundation of the revolutionary process. This is still guerrilla space,

but it is transitioning to something different: genuine socialist space. Che explains that “with the

banner of Agrarian Reform, the execution of which begins in the Sierra Maestra, these men

confront imperialism. They know that the Agrarian Reform is the basis upon which the new

Cuba must build itself.”128

Agrarian reform was the motor that drove forward the Cuban Revolution. It posed the

fundamental question of land ownership and control of production in a manner that other

124 Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, 111. 125 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 66. 126 Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, 111. 127 Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 51. 128 Che Guevara, “Notes for the Study of the Ideology of the Cuban Revolution.”

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revolutionary measures did not. This is why land reform was so integral to the revolutionary

process, and thus was at its heart from the very beginning in the liberated territory. Michael

Lowy argues in The Marxism of Che Guevara that the radicalization of the Cuban Revolution

was carried through first and foremost by the agrarian reform itself, which, according to Che, differed from [land reform in Mexico, Guatemala, and Bolivia] by the unbreakable determination of those concerned to implement it to the very end, without any kind of concession, and subsequently by other revolutionary laws [...] which form a “logical chain that carries us forward step by step, in a progressive and necessary order of concern for the problems of the Cuban people.” This logic [...] leads from democratic tasks to socialist ones (emphasis in original).129

Implementation of agrarian reform thus not only provided the foundation of the revolutionary

process, but also by its very nature inevitably drove the revolution forward and deepened its

socialist aspects. This is precisely why the testing and implementation of agrarian reform in

liberated territory was so integral to the entirety of the Cuban revolution. It was at the heart of

everything the revolution stood for, and acted as a progressive lever that implacably drove the

revolution forward from the production of guerrilla space to the revolutionary production of

socialist space.

Similarly to the experience of guerrilla transformation discussed earlier, Cuban peasants

in liberated territory went through a transformative experience that produced new revolutionary

consciousness. Life in liberated territory is still hard, to be sure; it is not a space of leisure and

relaxation. But “to live in a continual state of war and to adapt to this new phenomenon creates

an attitude of mind in the popular consciousness.”130 While they had initially treated the

guerrillas with suspicion, the peasants became unflagging revolutionaries through their

experience in the liberated territory. Peasants’ lives were transformed within the liberated

129 Michael Lowy, The Marxism of Che Guevara, 74. 130 Che Guevara, “Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War,” 315.

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territory, allowing them to experience the changes that revolution would bring. Fidel Castro was

seen as the “benefactor of the peasants,” who brought revolutionary justice and hope for a better

future.131 These improvements were not only material. Che explains that “there is an even greater

miracle: the rediscovery by the Cuban peasant of his own happiness, within the liberated zones.

[...] That is the reflection of his self-assurance which the awareness of his own strength gave to

the inhabitant of our liberated area.”132 The liberated territory was integral to building a

revolutionary base among the people through the change in consciousness that came with

reshaping their relationship to land and production. The implementation of revolutionary policy

began truly building the social revolution among the people.

Liberated territory formed the concrete link between the revolutionary guerrilla war and

the post-rebellion attempt at producing socialist space in Cuba. During the guerrilla war, it

consolidated the revolutionaries’ base in the rural peasantry and experimented with a proto-

socialist production of space. Debray argues that “the liberated zone becomes the prototype and

the model for the future state, its administrators the models for future leaders of state. Who but a

popular armed force can carry through such socialist ‘rehearsals’?”133 After the rebellion, the

agrarian reform laws were modeled on the revolutionary “rehearsal” of La Plata. Fidel Castro’s

announcement of agrarian reform from the guerrilla headquarters in the Sierra Maestra shows

both the material and symbolic importance of the liberated territory for the entire Cuban

Revolution. The “socialist rehearsals” developed into revolutionary socialist state policy.

131 Ramón L. Bonachea and Marta San Martín, The Cuban Insurrection: 1952-1959, 98-102. 132 Che Guevara, “Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War,” 318. 133 Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, 111.

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Conclusion

The Cuban Revolution was a product of the Rebel Army’s successful subversion and

contestation of Cuban space. They were able to take advantage of weak points in the country’s

uneven spatial history. Displaced landless peasants, the result of the agro-industrialization of

sugar production, formed the base of the guerrillas’ rural strategy. Armed propaganda and

sabotage were used to pierce the illusion of invincible enemy control over space. A uniquely

guerrilla spatial consciousness allowed them to use different types of terrain effectively for

assaults, and a transformative interpersonal guerrilla space was produced which physically and

mentally created New Men guided by revolutionary values. Finally, in the liberated territory of

La Plata the guerrillas were able to control and produce a revolutionary social space by effecting

change at the level of production, institutions, and social relations. The guerrilla intervention into

Cuban space set the stage for the production of socialist space after victory in 1959.

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Chapter 3: Urban Space, Urban Guerrillas: Uruguay’s Tupamaros

Your country lacks the geographic conditions for armed struggle. There are no mountains, no jungles. No guerrilla can be conducted there [...] an armed insurrection, right now, would not last two days in your country.

-Fidel Castro, to an Uruguayan journalist134

The Uruguayan Tupamaros were the most successful urban guerrillas in Latin American

history and thus provide a perfect counterpoint to the Cuban rural guerrilla war. The Tupamaro

strategy was formed in response to Uruguay’s unique spatial production. The country was highly

urban: eighty percent of the population lived in cities, with the majority in the capital city of

Montevideo.135 Without suitable rural terrain in the countryside — which lacks any substantial

mountains, forests, or jungles — the Tupamaro guerrillas based themselves in the “urban jungle”

of Montevideo to fight an urban guerrilla war in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Effective use of

armed propaganda resulted in a large base of popular support. Yet, as time progressed and the

Tupamaros attempted to escalate beyond armed propaganda into a revolutionary guerrilla

offensive, they lost support and became disconnected from their base. Their inability to establish

urban liberated territory prevented them from building a true base and producing revolutionary

space, which caused them to descend into militarism disconnected from the people. Without this

base and possibility of producing revolutionary space the Tupamaros were opened to military

defeat.

The Tupamaros, otherwise known as the Movement for National Liberation (MLN-T),

were a communist politico-military organization inspired by the Cuban Revolution. They were

born out of their leader Raúl Sendic’s efforts to unionize sugar cane workers in northern

Uruguay. Sendic led a cane worker march to Montevideo in 1962, where he became involved

134 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 70. 135 James Kohl and John Litt, Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 172.

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with an organization called the Coordinador, a loose collection of revolutionaries of various

stripes. After years of planning and preparation, along with several botched actions, the

Coordinador was reborn as the Tupamaros in 1966 at the Convención Tupamara.136 From the

beginning, they were dedicated to armed struggle and socialist revolution.

The revolutionary movement was simultaneously socialist, nationalist, and Pan-American

internationalist. They believed that Uruguay would only be freed from the yoke of imperialism

through a nationalist and socialist revolution. In a 1972 interview, leading guerrillas argued that

the Tupamaros define the nation as the people, and therefore to be nationalistic means to undertake the liberation of the people. This will only be possible through the complete destruction of the unjust society in which we live so that we can replace it with one in which all people can realize their full capabilities. That is, a society in which there is no exploitation and no injustice [...] Where the workers are the natural leaders of the entire society. [...] We believe that Latin America is the great nation, the great homeland that will one day find itself on the road to its second and definitive independence.137

Nationalism, socialism, and internationalism were all necessary parts of the revolutionary

struggle. Their iconic slogan proclaimed that “there will be a fatherland for all, or there will be a

fatherland for none.”138 Their slogan would prove true; unfortunately, the second half was

realized as the country descended into a military dictatorship after their 1973 defeat. In order to

understand the rise and fall of the Tupamaros, we must ground ourselves in a brief spatial history

of twentieth century Uruguay.

Uruguayan Production of Space

Uruguay’s impressive urban development serves to conceal its extractive relation

between town and country. Economic production was mostly based in the countryside and

funneled wealth straight to Montevideo. Rural production mainly consisted of animal husbandry

136 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 29-41. 137 “The Tupamaros: An Interview,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 306-307. 138 The Spanish word is patria, which literally means ‘fatherland’ but is sometimes translated as ‘homeland.’

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— cattle and sheep raised in large ranches, or estancias — which were exported and heavily

taxed.139 Wealth from the countryside was used to fund urban development: everything from

state-run utilities to large urban public works programs were subsidized by rural production.140

The capital of Montevideo experienced enormous growth. Uruguay attempted to develop more

domestic industry post-WWII, but it was based in import-substitution and limited to producing

light consumer goods.141 Even these small industries, mostly textile manufacturing, declined

quickly after the 1950s.142 Uruguay thus depended almost entirely on rural production and its

attendant commercial activity to fund its urban development and welfare state.

As opposed to Cuba, where rural sugar wealth was almost exclusively extracted by

foreign capitalists, Uruguayan wealth was mostly used to fund a quasi-European social

democratic “model nation.” During the twentieth century, a succession of center-left

governments carried out numerous progressive programs including robust public education, a

large welfare system, and state control of certain industries. They were able to carry out these

reforms within a liberal republican political framework that protected democratic rights

including freedom of expression and association.143 The numerous public works programs and

strong welfare meant that by the post-WWII era, Uruguay was “one of the most heavily

‘socialized’ democracies in the world,” with at least half of adults working for or dependent on

the state.144 This resulted in a strong current of collective social solidarity that helped to combat

capitalism’s abstract space and alienation of human relations.

139 James Kohl and John Litt, Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 174. 140 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 14-15. 141 James Kohl and John Litt, Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 174. 142 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 283. 143 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 14. 144 Ibid., 14.

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Yet despite a half century of strong development, Uruguay’s economy began to stagnate

and decline during the late 1950s and ‘60s. By the early 1970s, “Uruguay had fallen from the

Switzerland to the Greece of Latin America,” caught in economic crisis and violent political

turmoil.145 The dependence on a monoculture export economy allowed Uruguay to grow quickly,

but resulted in long-term decline. Further, oligarchic corruption and mismanagement led to

stagnation in the realm of production. Exports declined because production was “neither modern

nor dynamic.”146 The economic decline was worsened by “economic subversion” in the form of

smuggling and other corruption by the elites. Economic decline led to inflation and falling

income, with its accompanying social costs: unemployment, poverty, and militant resistance in

the form of incessant strikes and demonstrations.147 The question became: who would pay for the

economic crisis — the elites who caused it, or the people whom it affected most directly? The

Tupamaros would soon answer that question with revolutionary armed struggle.

Tupamaro Analysis and Program

The Tupamaros accused Uruguay of being a stagnant, decaying oligarchy with an unjust

economic system. Although many aspects of state policy were quite progressive, the government

was intimately intertwined with the old oligarchic families and businesses. The Tupamaros

believed that the government had turned into a regime “that serves only a handful of privileged

people.”148 The guerrillas conceded that perhaps their country had once been a “model nation,”

but that idyllic time had passed. Both rural and urban industry declined significantly in the post-

war era, and “the entire process” of attempted industrialization and progressive policies

“deteriorated quite rapidly.” The result, according to Tupamaro leader named Urbano, was that

145 James Kohl and John Litt, Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 174. 146 Ibid., 175. 147 Ibid., 176. 148 Arturo C. Porzecanski, Uruguay’s Tupamaros, 5.

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objective conditions in Uruguay are no longer different from those in the rest of Latin America. There is unemployment; there is a housing shortage; one-third of the country’s arable lands are owned by 600 families; a policy of extensive cattle raising is being followed; and there are vast extensions of unproductive land, large estates with unproductive zones, while, right next door to them are poor settlements with a high child mortality rate.149

Uruguay could no longer claim to be a unique “model nation.” Thus the revolutionary guerrilla

strategy that was being used by Leftists across Latin America could apply to Uruguay as well:

“all that was necessary was to create the fuse that would open the way.”150

The Tupamaros believed that Uruguayan national space was under control of oligarchs

and imperialists who oppressed the masses. The country’s space was Manichean. The rich lived

lives of luxury: “they have comfortable homes, top physicians, vacation houses in the resorts [...]

they are the owners of the country.” But the majority of people lived in wretched misery. The

Tupamaros held that that despite social reforms, “little in this country has changed for the poor

people” in the last hundred years. The masses lived hungry, cold, sick lives, with little work —

“and worse, when the worker rebels and demands something more, the response is the stick,

torture, jail, shooting.”151 The only way to overcome this Manichean divide was for the people to

take control of the national space. The Tupamaros end their passionate 1972 “Proclamation of

Paysandú” thus:

The responsibility for having unleashed this civil war then rests exclusively on [the oligarchs’] shoulders. And in this war they are going to tremble, because the poor have nothing to lose in this battle except a very long hunger, and you, those who have always been rich, will sleep restlessly. Because we are going to enter your mansions, your kitchens, your strong boxes. You have slapped the people on both cheeks. There is nothing left. Now the humble rise up in arms; and be careful, there are many. We are many. We are all. And we want our homeland.

149 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 283-84. 150 Ibid., 284. 151 “Proclamation of Paysandú,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 297-98.

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There will be a homeland for all or there will be a homeland for no one. Liberty or Death.152

The Tupamaros were prepared to carry the revolution to the doorstep of the elite, challenge the

Manichean order, and produce a fatherland for all.

The Tupamaro political program was meant to address Uruguay’s objective conditions. In

a 1971 statement of their “Program for Revolutionary Government,” the Tupamaros

acknowledged that Uruguay’s wealth came from the countryside and proposed massive agrarian

reform that would expropriate all large ranches, plantations, and dairies and place them in the

hands of workers and peasants. They also recognized the need to promote and protect national

industry in order to develop Uruguay’s industrial base and limit wealth extraction from the

countryside.153 “Production, commerce, credit and the economy in general” would be

nationalized and controlled through centralized socialist planning. Urban inequality would be

addressed through urban reform, including expropriation of large properties and the provision of

housing and other services for the poor and homeless.154 The justice system would be replaced

with laws “that take essential human values into consideration” instead of solely protecting

private property. Finally, distribution of goods would be “to each according to his needs” to the

extent possible based on the level production.155 In short, a Tupamaro leader says, “the

Movement’s program is in no way different from those of other revolutionary movements” in

Latin America.156

152 “Proclamation of Paysandú,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 298. 153 “The Tupamaros’ Program for Revolutionary Government,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 293-94. 154 Ibid., 294-95. 155 Ibid., 295. 156 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 292.

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Tupamaro Plan of Action

The Tupamaros grounded themselves in the Cuban Model, though they diverged from it

in key ways. They believed that armed struggle was the only path to socialist revolution.

Nonviolent movements would not be able to fix the fundamental structural problems in Uruguay

because the necessary changes would directly clash with the interests of the powerful elite.157

Drawing from Che and Debray, the guerrillas assert that the “fundamental principle” of their

strategy is “that revolutionary action in itself, the very act of arming oneself, preparing,

equipping, and pursuing activities that violate bourgeois legality, generates revolutionary

consciousness, organization, and conditions.”158 The Tupamaros believed that “Cuba is an

example” of how “the armed struggle hastens and precipitates the mass movement.”159 Further,

their internal slogan “politics divides us, action unites us” illuminates their approach to political

struggle. Though many different political currents existed within the organization, from Maoists

to anarchists, they were in agreement that armed struggle was the path forward to revolution. No

matter their political line, all Tupamaros fundamentally agreed with Debray’s maxim that

“insurrectional activity is today the number one political activity.”160 The Tupamaros thus sought

to apply the lessons of Cuba to their situation in Uruguay.

Yet Uruguayan revolutionaries confronted a very different spatial situation from that of

their Cuban counterparts. The most important difference was the country’s geography. Just as

significant as its urbanism was its complete lack of suitable terrain for rural guerrilla warfare.

Uruguay has no jungles or mountains in which a guerrilla foco may base itself. The “geographic

factor” meant that they “cannot copy the strategy of those countries where geographic conditions

157 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 284-85. 158 “Thirty Questions to a Tupamaro,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 227. 159 Ibid., 227-228. 160 Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, 116.

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permit installation of a foco in the mountains or woods with a chance of stabilizing itself.”161

Indeed, when the Tupamaros attempted to establish rural focos in the hope of diverting the state’s

attention away from Montevideo they were immediately crushed.162 Further, far from Batista’s

dictatorship in Cuba, Uruguay enjoyed a strong democracy until President Pacheco’s declaration

of a State of Emergency in 1968 — though temporary states of siege were declared several times

in the ‘60s — with major participation of Communist Party controlled labor unions. Finally,

Uruguay had no significant history of slavery. Most Uruguayans were historically white

European immigrants who performed waged, unionized labor.163 This combination produced a

population highly sympathetic to the socio-economic goals of the Tupamaros, though they were

often skeptical of the need for armed guerrilla struggle and opposed to political violence such as

the Tupamaro execution of hostages.164

Throughout the 1960s, mass worker and student strikes and demonstrations rocked

Montevideo, which lent credence to the idea of the city as a center of revolutionary struggle. In

1966, a National Labor Confederacy (CNT) of all Uruguayan unions was organized under

Communist Party control. The CNT was responsible for innumerable strikes and militant

demonstrations in the late 1960s. Tensions increased every year, marked by regular violent flare-

ups of riots and occupations.165 The Tupamaros recognized the importance of this militant mass

union activity and the possibilities it created, pointing out that

the mere fact that virtually all the basic services of the state, banking, industry, and commerce are organized constitutes by itself a highly positive fact without parallel in Latin America. The possibility of paralyzing the state services has created and can create very interesting conjunctures from the viewpoint of

161 “Thirty Questions to a Tupamaro,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 233. 162 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 269-71. 163 James Kohl and John Litt, Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 174. 164 Most (in)famous being their execution of accused CIA agent Dan Mitrione. 165 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 23-25.

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insurrection because — to give an example — it is not the same to attack a state at full strength as it is to attack one half-paralyzed by strikes.166

The impossibility of rural guerrilla warfare and the promising social situation of the capital city

caused the Tupamaros to turn their attention to the possibility of urban warfare.

The Tupamaro analysis of Uruguay’s objective and subjective conditions led them to

believe that revolution was possible through urban guerrilla warfare. The urban sprawl of

Montevideo was the ideal location for their conception of urban guerrilla warfare. To

compensate for lack of suitable rural terrain, “we have a big city with more than 300 square

kilometers of buildings, which allows for the development of an urban struggle. [...] Montevideo

is a city sufficiently large and polarized by social struggles to give cover to a vast active

commando contingent.”167 The city could act as a kind of “urban jungle” where the guerrillas

could hide in plain sight. By setting up a vast network of safe houses and supporters and

employing guerrilla tactics, the Tupamaros could effectively subvert and contest urban space.

Though they were ultimately defeated, the Tupamaros proved that it was to a certain

extent possible to base revolutionary activity in the urban sphere. For years, they were living

proof of the fact that guerrilla war need not be rural. This was a massive revision of the Cuban

foquista model. For a time it appeared as if urban guerrilla warfare was the revolutionary strategy

of the future — which contemporary scholars such as Uruguayan economist Arturo C.

Porzecanski argued.168 Of course, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century it is obvious

that Porzecanski was misguided: although the urban guerrilla model was attempted in many

countries across Latin America and the world, by everyone from the Montoneros in Argentina to

the Red Brigades in Italy, it did not produce a single successful revolution. Yet it is not hard to

166 “Thirty Questions to a Tupamaro,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 232. 167 Ibid., 233-35. 168 Arturo C. Porzecanski, Uruguay’s Tupamaros, xi.

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see why many people were convinced in the 1970s that urban guerrilla warfare was the

revolutionary strategy of the future. The Tupamaros appeared to come tantalizingly close to

success, and their flashy Robin Hood tactics lent them widespread international support.

By the early 1970s, the Tupamaros believed they were close to a revolutionary situation

in Montevideo. The police had proven unable to stop the onslaught of guerrilla attacks. A vast

network of guerrilla fighters, support networks, sympathizers of all kinds, safe houses, and

supplies were under control of the Tupamaros. The government was crumbling as it proved

unable to contain the Tupamaros, and the military was invited to assume control of the anti-

guerrilla campaign.169 This was identified as a pre-revolutionary moment, time for the

Tupamaros to take a great salto, or leap, forward: “our future perspective is one of greater

contradictions and sharpened confrontations as our struggle moves to a higher level.”170 Yet

instead, the military swiftly crushed the entire movement and assumed control of the country in

1973. The guerrillas’ failed revolutionary escalation in the 1970s revealed the problems inherent

to urban guerrilla warfare. The remainder of this chapter will analyze the tactics used by the

Tupamaros and explore the cause of their defeat.

Terrain and Preparation

Similar to rural guerrillas, the only way for urban guerrillas to ensure success is to have

intimate knowledge of the urban terrain. Knowledge of the terrain is key to the survival and

success of urban guerrilla warfare, and “the urban guerrilla’s best ally is the terrain.”171 Open

urban areas favor the police; convoluted, disorderly terrain is the prime operating space of

guerrillas. The guerrillas attempt to disrupt the government’s control of space by taking

169 Arturo C. Porzecanski, Uruguay’s Tupamaros, 63. 170 “The Tupamaros: An Interview,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 302. 171 Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, 35.

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advantage of the “unevenness” of urban terrain for hit and run attacks: familiarity with the terrain

allows the guerrillas to strike, retreat, and hide.172 Obtaining this sort of intimate knowledge of

the urban terrain often took months or years of careful study. But the work was necessary, as this

knowledge was a matter of life and death for the guerrillas.

Before bursting onto the national scene through a series of high profile armed actions, the

Tupamaros focused much of their early years on developing the knowledge and infrastructure

necessary to begin guerrilla war. This consisted first of mapping out Montevideo, establishing

networks of safehouses, and eventually obtaining high quality aerial photos of the city. A

Tupamaro leader explained that urban guerrillas “move about in a city which we know like the

palm of our hand.”173 The Tupamaros even dedicated a secret guerrilla cell to map Montevideo’s

entire sewer system. Between 1965 and 1966, teams of guerrillas would enter and explore the

system every week, in truly disgusting conditions.174 This work paid off, as the Tupamaros were

later able to easily navigate the entire city through the sewer system and used it to connect safe

houses, stage prison breaks, and conduct hit and run actions.

Armed Propaganda and Organizational Growth

Effective public guerrilla actions almost always have a propagandistic effect. In the

beginning of their operations, urban guerrillas are relatively weak and view the city as extremely

dangerous “enemy-occupied territory.”175 They must initially focus on symbolic armed action

that draws media attention, as “a single guerrilla attack in a major city immediately has more

publicity than the organizing efforts of ten guerrilla bands in the mountains.”176 Brazilian

172 Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, 35. 173 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 286. 174 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 39-40. 175 Brian Michael Jenkins, “The Five Stages of Urban Guerrilla Warfare,” 4. 176 Ibid., 6.

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Marxist and urban guerrilla theorist Carlos Marighella explains that “the coordination of urban

guerrilla activities, including each armed action, is the primary way of making armed

propaganda. These actions [...] inevitably become propaganda material for the mass

communication system.”177 The guerrillas must build support through careful attention to public

perception of their actions.

The Tupamaros were masters of the art of armed propaganda and quickly became famous

for their flamboyant actions. Armed actions and propaganda were always intimately connected:

“one had to be symbiotically associated with the other. [...] Operations would be designed to

humiliate the government, display the tactical superiority of the group, and awaken admiration in

the population.”178 As Tupamaro leader Urbano explained, “propaganda actions are those which

by themselves define the Movement’s objectives and conduct.”179 Indeed, their moniker “the

Robin Hood guerrillas” comes from one of their most popular examples of armed propaganda:

they would often take over goods delivery trucks in order to redistribute the contents to the

hungry poor. They sought to attack the decadence and corruption of the Uruguayan oligarchy in

a manner that directly garnered popular support.

The very manner in which the Tupamaros carried out actions was a type of propaganda.

For years, they refused to engage in certain actions that might harm innocents, like bombings,

because they might undermine popular support.180 All armed actions were conceived of as

propaganda, and were often accompanied by flyers and political lectures. For example, the

guerrillas viewed bank robberies as a perfect action that directly attacked their class enemies and

exposed the corruption of capitalism to Uruguayans. In addition to the news coverage they would

177 Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, 79. 178 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 85. 179 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 280. 180 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 85.

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receive, Tupamaros would lecture bank workers and patrons during the robbery.181 Perhaps more

importantly, the Tupamaros used bank robberies to seize documents that proved the rampant

existence of economic corruption among the elites and government officials.182 Finally, the

guerrillas once discovered that part of their haul from a casino robbery was meant to pay the

casino workers’ salaries and returned this portion of the money, resulting in a “brilliant

propaganda coup” that brought widespread support.183 This displayed the revolutionary nature of

the bank robberies and distinguished the guerrillas from common criminals.

The robbery of the Banco Francés e Italiano is a great example of successful armed

propaganda. In a major 1970 interview, Urbano describes the development of the action and

comments on the ingenuity of the guerrillas. A small number of Tupamaros were able to enter

the bank with clever disguises — one posed as a messenger while other dressed as Intelligence

Corps members and police. Bank employees were gathered and lectured about the action. The

guerrillas attempted to open the bank’s vault, but it required three keys from three different bank

officials. They were able to find two officials at their homes and obtain the keys, but the third

remained missing. The Tupamaros thus were not able to expropriate the bank’s money; yet they

turned the action into a propagandistic coup by instead stealing documents that proved the bank

was conducting illegal financial operations and resulted in an official governmental investigation

of the bank that led to its closure.184 These types of actions exposed the corruption of Uruguay’s

oligarchy to the masses, who were led to understand the importance of structural change.

Another illustrative example of the Tupamaro approach to armed actions is shown by

their method of hijacking vehicles. As some guerrillas took the car away to be used in an action,

181 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 89-90. 182 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 280. 183 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 89. 184 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 287-88.

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other Tupamaros would go for a walk or get dinner with the car’s owner.185 They would explain

their ideology and political practice, and sometimes the guerrillas even received requests for a

previous conversation partner to return and resume the discussion!186 Through flashy armed

actions and their gentle approach to civilians, the Tupamaros were able to quickly win a large

base of supportive and sympathetic Uruguayans.

The Tupamaros’ famous action in the city of Pando in 1969 provides a great example of

their approach to armed propaganda and questions of space. Pando was the largest operation in

the history of the organization, and took place on the second anniversary of Che’s death in

Bolivia. Through an elaborate plan, the guerrillas temporarily occupied Pando, neutralized

resistance in the police and fire stations, robbed three banks, stole arms and ammunition, took

over the telecommunications building, and controlled the public space in the center of the town

— all within the span of twenty-five minutes.187 Each particular target followed the traditional

style of armed propaganda: the guerrillas took the building over, gave political lectures, handed

out flyers and leaflets, and stole money and supplies. The plan allowed for a rapid entrance and

exit — a hit and run occupation — although the escape plan was botched and several guerrillas

ended up dead or in prison.

Pando was important because it showed the guerrillas’ ability to occupy an entire town at

once. The town itself became a site of armed propaganda, perhaps even a sort of temporary

liberated space. This temporary occupation of space was an important milestone for the

guerrillas. It proved their ability to contest and control space on a certain level. But the key to the

action was its temporary nature. It was by necessity a hit and run occupation; if the guerrillas had

185 Cars were returned after their use. 186 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 85-86. 187 Ibid., 99-101.

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attempted to control the town for any longer, enemy reinforcements would have arrived and

overrun them. Pando thus proved the extent to which the Tupamaros could successfully contest

urban space, but also the spatial limitations of the urban guerrilla approach. Pando received

notable media attention and led to significant growth of the guerrilla forces.

Armed propaganda and organizational growth were intimately connected. Each

successful attack the Tupamaros carried out garnered major media attention and caused a flood

of new recruits. At times the guerrillas were overwhelmed by the influx of new members.188

They attempted to form an organizational structure sufficient to channel the people’s energy into

revolutionary struggle. Unlike prominent urban guerrilla theorists like Carlos Marighella, who

called for radical decentralization of the urban guerrilla organization, the Tupamaros organized

themselves as a traditional hierarchical guerrilla army under politico-military leadership.189 They

had a very hierarchical structure with a clear line of command. Small action cells each had a

certain degree of autonomy, but each cell was ultimately under control of a central Executive

Committee that broadly coordinated guerrilla activity and planned armed campaigns.190 They

also practiced strict compartmentalization to minimize the potential damage caused by the

capture of guerrillas. Urbano explains that “compartmentalization and discretion are, to the urban

guerrilla, what the secret path is to the rural guerrilla.”191 This hybrid structure attempted to

combine the benefits of Marighella’s decentralized network model with the revolutionary

necessity of a hierarchical structure.

188 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 278. 189 Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, 25. 190 Arturo C. Porzecanski, Uruguay’s Tupamaros, 32-34. 191 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 279.

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Mass Mobilization and the “Urban Guerrilla Demonstrator”

Urban guerrillas ideally are organically connected to mass movements, and the

Tupamaros at times attempted to bridge the divide between guerrilla activity and mass action.

Though their focus was always primarily on guerrilla actions, they also recognized the

importance of “educating and training the people, discussing materials, and spreading ideas.”192

Guerrillas attempt to turn mass mobilization — typically organized by the Communist Party,

which had a fraught relationship with the Tupamaros — into low-level war between the people

and the government. Urban guerrillas would join demonstrations and teach protesters to

construct barricades, use slingshots, march against traffic, use paving stones as projectile

weapons, throw Molotov cocktails, navigate buildings for escape and hiding, and respond to

common police tactics.193 They attempted to escalate demonstrations and direct their energy

toward strategic goals. Effective mass action in the streets can produce temporary popular

control of public space.

Riots and barricaded street occupations are important mass actions for the guerrillas in

their contestation of urban space. Riots serve several different functions. First, riots can be used

to distract police attention from guerrilla forces, allowing them to carry out risky actions.194

Second, riots are fundamentally contestations over urban space. Violent riots can drive police out

of certain areas, leaving the streets in the hands of the people.195 Further, the guerrillas lead

efforts to build barricades in the streets to physically transform urban space and turn the streets

into popular warzones. Barricades effectively channel the energy of riots, which without

leadership typically spiral out of control and burn out. Barricades draw lines of confrontation that

192 “Interview with Urbano by Leopoldo Madruga,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 278. 193 Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, 61. 194 Brian Michael Jenkins, “The Five Stages of Urban Guerrilla Warfare,” 12. 195 Ibid., 12.

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can be defended to some degree.196 Riots and barricades thus work together to break down the

enemy’s control over space and physically produce temporary popular control over urban

territory.

The Tupamaros were able to take advantage of Uruguay’s frequent strikes and

demonstrations in order to promote effective mass mobilization. They often participated in

demonstrations and riots as urban guerrilla demonstrators. More interesting is how the

Tupamaros were able to coordinate riots in order to carry out guerrilla actions. For example, they

successfully planned a riot to cover their mass prison break in 1971. A group of Tupamaro

Support Committees was tasked with stoking a “spontaneous” riot in a faraway neighborhood to

divert police away from the prison and surrounding area. The ruse worked perfectly: the

neighborhood went up in flames and the rest of the city was emptied of police.197 This is a

perfect example of the Tupamaros’ ability to coordinate guerrilla warfare with the mass

movement.

Urban Liberated Territory

Most conceptions of urban guerrilla warfare accept that urban guerrillas cannot control

and produce liberated space, and instead aim only to foment chaos and disorder. There can be no

control over space, no defense against military attacks, no testing of revolutionary measures.

Marighella argues that “since we are inferior to the enemy in firepower, and have neither his

resources nor his power base, we cannot defend ourselves against an offensive or a concentrated

attack by the ‘gorillas.’ 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 repression.”198

196 Brian Michael Jenkins, “The Five Stages of Urban Guerrilla Warfare,” 12-13. 197 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 217, 221. 198 Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, 29.

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Without defensible liberated territory, the urban guerrillas depend on constant movement and a

network of safe houses. As soon as the government is able to gather the necessary intelligence to

expose the safe houses, the guerrillas become sitting ducks that are unable to defend themselves

from the inevitable brutal repression. They can never retreat to a defensible military base to

shelter from repression — only to another safe house. According to this view, and in line with

Che and Debray’s thesis, revolution must ultimately come from the countryside. But although

the Tupamaros recognized that Uruguay lacked many of the necessary conditions for guerrilla

warfare, including suitable rural terrain, they decided “that is not a reason why revolution should

wait.”199

Though the Tupamaros attempted to contest urban space, they were never able to control

urban space or produce anything close to liberated territory. Their networks of safehouses and

hideouts were no replacement for defensible liberated territory. Their inability to produce

liberated urban territory meant that the Tupamaros were unable to build a revolutionary base of

social support. While they had thousands of supporters, the guerrillas were not able to fully

integrate them into the revolutionary process. As chapter two concluded, liberated territory in

Cuba became the foundation for revolution. Proto-socialist reforms transformed the forces and

relations of production as well as interpersonal relations. The production of revolutionary social

space in La Plata became the basis of the revolutionary project and implacably drove the

guerrillas forward. The Tupamaros’ initial focus on armed propaganda built a certain base of

social support. By mid-1970, the Tupamaros felt that they had completed the initial phase of

armed propaganda and organizational growth, and they were prepared to launch a military

199 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 37.

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offensive.200 But this turned out to be what they would refer to as a “premature salto.” As they

escalated their campaign into violent guerrilla offensives, the space they produced became

nothing but chaotic and fearful. They could not point to an alternative, to a positive revolutionary

production of space. Without this base of spatial production, with its attendant production of

popular revolutionary consciousness, the Tupamaros descended into militarism.

The guerrilla offensive of the early 1970s reflected a militarist turn away from the

effective popular strategy the Tupamaros had pursued. They greatly escalated their violence and

began to turn it against civilians — often corrupt oligarchs who were indeed the true class

enemy, yet civilians nonetheless — which quickly eroded their base of support.201 Many

Tupamaros recognized the mistake of the offensive later in life. For instance, Raúl Sendic

himself, the founder and most prominent leader of the Tupamaros, reflected in an interview that

after years of successful actions that attempted to minimize violence, “at a later moment we

escalated our violence. We called it the Guatemalization of the guerrilla, and it was exactly what

he (sic) had originally tried to avoid.”202 And yet the revolutionary offensive is a necessary

progression of guerrilla strategy — that is, if the point is to take power. The downfall of the

Tupamaros was not necessarily their escalation of violence, but the fact that this militarist turn

was disconnected from popular bases of struggle. The Tupamaros became an army that could be

defeated on military terms, rather than a revolutionary force that based itself entirely in the

people.

200 Pablo Brum, The Robin Hood Guerrillas, 113,136. 201 Ibid., 255. 202 Ibid., 341.

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Conclusion

Uruguay’s spatial history created new challenges and opportunities for revolutionary

forces. Without suitable terrain in the countryside, the Tupamaros were forced to fight in the

urban jungle of the city. They attempted to subvert and contest enemy control of urban space

through a variety of tactics, with mixed success. Although they became a revolutionary force to

be reckoned with, the inability of urban guerrillas to control urban space and produce liberated

territory crippled them. Unable to produce revolutionary urban space, they grew disconnected

from the Uruguayan people and descended into militarism. Without a revolutionary base, the

Tupamaros were easily destroyed by the Uruguayan army, which proceeded to seize power and

impose a decade-long military dictatorship.

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Conclusion

Spatial analysis and spatial history are invaluable analytic tools to understand

revolutionary movements. Guerrilla movements are produced by the social conditions of their

country, and they must engage with the country’s production of social space. Guerrillas are

experts in moving through and around space, subverting it, contesting it, and producing a new

sort of transformative space in opposition to capitalist space. As I have argued throughout this

thesis, the key to revolutionary war lies in the guerrillas’ ability to produce revolutionary space

in the form of liberated territory. It is invaluable both for its use as a military base and, more

importantly, for the opportunity to carry out “socialist rehearsals” within it. This production of

revolutionary space forms the base and motor that drive revolution forward.

Cuba’s spatial history is illustrative of how abstract capitalist space is produced on top of

colonial space. The island’s colonial space was produced in order to dominate the land and

people of the island. The layout of the Spanish-American colonial town, the design of sugar

plantations, the organization of the transportation infrastructure, and the racial labor system were

designed to funnel wealth out of the country and into the hands of European capitalists. Abstract

capitalist space did not replace this colonial space but rather incorporated it into a new spatial

production. Agro-industrialization of sugar production reshaped the island and a national spatial

imagination was created. The colonial base of Cuba’s abstract space resulted in unevenness and

contradictions. The contradictions inherent in the production of space that was both colonial and

“modern” capitalist produced tension and faultlines that revolutionaries were able to exploit.

Cuban guerrillas were able to intervene into the contradictions of Cuban space and use

them to their advantage while building alternative spatial production in liberated territory.

Confronted by a landless peasantry, they adopted agrarian reform as their primary political

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demand. Faced with Cuba’s spatial divide between the developed west and the “shatter zone” of

the east, they based themselves in the rough terrain of the eastern Sierra Maestra mountains. The

rough territory of the east allowed them to use effective guerrilla tactics to defeat the Cuban

army. Further, the spatial context of the east allowed the guerrillas to control a bounded

defensible area and turn it into revolutionary liberated territory. Their production of

revolutionary space provided the foundation for the entire revolutionary project, and was the

progressive lever that pushed the revolution forward. The Cuban guerrillas thus successfully

intervened into Cuban space, contested and subverted it, and produced their own social space.

In Uruguay, the Tupamaros were able to subvert and contest urban space, but were not

able to control it or produce liberated territory. The layout of urban terrain was exploited by

using rough, convoluted terrain to stage hit and run attacks. The guerrillas mapped the entire

sewage system and used it to connect their network of safehouses, stage attacks, and break out of

prisons. In some cases, like the attack on Pando, they were able to temporarily occupy and

control semi-urban space. Yet because of the nature of urban guerrilla warfare, they were never

able to control a bounded area and begin production of revolutionary space. Thus, when they

began to launch guerrilla offensives in order to push for a revolutionary salto, they were quickly

defeated by the military.

These examples demonstrate the need for Leftist movements to identify ways to produce

revolutionary space of their own. In Cuba, the guerrillas were able to do so through armed

struggle in the countryside. This is not necessarily applicable to much of the contemporary

world. The same guerrilla strategies that triumphed in Cuba cannot be applied to cities. Urban

guerrilla movements appear to be ineffectual at best and counterproductive at worst. They

diminish the capacity of the urban Left to produce revolutionary space and provide an easy

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justification for brutal state repression. In order to more fully understand the possible alternatives

to the Tupamaro approach to urban struggle, further research might focus on the attempted

production of revolutionary space by other sectors of the Left in Uruguay, especially the

Communist Party. How did non-guerrilla Leftists attempt to contest urban space and produce

their own space, and how did these projects intersect with the urban guerrilla movement, for

better or for worse?

Epilogue: Lessons for the Present

Popular imagination tends to believe that the age of the communist guerrilla is over. The

fall of the Socialist Bloc precipitated the “end of history,” the ultimate triumph of neoliberal

capitalism that precluded any alternative. Asymmetrical warfare is now framed in terms of

counterinsurgency meant to defeat “terrorists.” Yet just as history was supposedly ending,

resistance to the domination of capital began to bloom across the global south. The Zapatistas

rose in 1994 to contest Mexican control of Chiapas and begin producing a distinct sort of

indigenous autonomous space shaped “from below and to the left.” Maoists assumed power in

Nepal after the victory of a ten-year Protracted People’s War in 2006. Former Indian Prime

Minister Manmohan Singh called the Maoist Naxalite insurgency the biggest security threat

faced by the country, and the Maoist New People’s Army continues to wage war in the

Philippines. The Left began assuming power throughout Latin America in the “Pink Tide” that

brought numerous erstwhile guerrillas into office through electoral victory, including the former

Tupamaro leader José Mujica. Cuba continues to hold out as the world’s last Communist state, if

one accepts that China, Vietnam, and North Korea have long abandoned the communist road.

The First World Left has also been reborn, from the Occupy movement in the United States to

the indignados in Spain and the Greek Movement of the Squares. Triumphant proclamations of

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the death of the Left appear almost entirely misguided; as prominent French communist Alain

Badiou proclaimed, history has been reborn.

As these various Leftist movements attempt to challenge the overriding dominance of

neoliberal space, they are already implementing the spatial lessons of this thesis’s conclusions

about the Cuban and Uruguayan guerrillas. Abstract capitalist space can be challenged by the

“irregular” space of the partisan. Dominant space can be moved through, subverted, and turned

against itself. New forms of space can be produced, and a “differential” space — the space of

popular appropriation — may overcome abstract space. Differential space celebrates the “right to

difference” against the alienated abstraction and purported homogeneity of capitalist space. Hints

of this differential space can be found in the cracks of abstraction, in the physical bodies and

networks of resistance. The Left’s contemporary project may well be to focus on these cracks,

the “in-between” spaces, and progressively widen them into a space that they may collectively

produce outside the control of state and capital. We thus end where we began, with the

possibility of autonomous, liberated revolutionary territory.

Though the Left cannot hope to control a bounded urban territory through force of arms,

networks of liberated autonomous spaces can be constructed nonviolently in order to begin

building new socialist space.203 Broad sections of the Left have learned this lesson and are

reinventing their approach to autonomous/liberated space. Squats, communes, social centers,

worker cooperatives, progressive places of worship, community gardens, and other collective

social spaces together form networks of autonomous differential spaces in the cracks of abstract

capitalist space. They reflect a search for non-alienated living based on new relations of

production and interpersonal relations. Occupy, the indignados, and the Greek Movement of the

203 This is not to say that violence can have no place in contemporary struggle, but that the model of violent urban guerrilla warfare cannot produce revolutionary social space.

75

Squares built upon this network model and attempted to expand it by occupying public space.

These autonomist movements fundamentally contest control of urban space and provide hope for

a new production of socialist space that might, to rephrase the Industrial Workers of the World’s

old slogan, build a new social space within the shell of the old.

76

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