Guerrillas

In this accessible study, Dutch development scholar, diplomat, and policy adviser Dirk Kruijt provides a focused, analytical introduction to the leaders of the three insurgencies in Central America that commanded worldwide attention from the 1970s through the mid-1990s. Informed by several years of serving as a policy advisor and engaging in collaborative academic research on the isthmus, more than 90 interviews with political and military leaders, and access to social scientists and intellectuals as well as literary and archival sources, Kruijt provides an instructive account of the guerrillas’ motivations, organizational structures, strategies, and tactics amid their shared historical contexts of oligarchic oppression, deep social inequality, and unhelpful U.S. influence. This historical analysis is complemented by an unvarnished assessment of the revolutionaries’ successes and failures, their legacies, and the as-yet-unmet challenges and unresolved tensions that remain in the region today.Using land, unemployment, and demographic data portraying growing social exclusion and displacement rooted in already highly inequitable societies, Kruijt points to the cognitive dissonance experienced by university students and other members of the emerging middle sectors as they navigated the sharply contrasting realities characterizing Central America’s urban centers crowded by poor rural immigrants. Chief among the reasons for the guerrilla insurgencies was the military oligarchic regimes’ inability or unwillingness to reform themselves. General Héctor Alejandro Gramajo, for example, recalled that even the hint of reform was entirely unwelcome, as when he attempted “to talk about Guatemala being a society that was stratified, fragmented, etc., and that we needed to have a more tolerant culture, a professional army, greater political participation, and so on” (p. 22).Kruijt emphasizes the importance of universities and Christian Base Communities for guerrilla recruitment efforts, albeit supplemented by trade unions, neighborhood organizations, peasant associations, left-wing political parties and some young military officers. For Francisco Jovel, who became secretary general of the Central American Workers’ Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores Centro-americanos) in El Salvador, involvement as a student began with “the idea of serving others” (p. 41). Monica Baltodano had participated in a high school group in which students “questioned their Christian faith in such an unjust and unequal society” (p. 42) before deepening her involvement and becoming a guerrilla commander of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) in Nicaragua. Guerrillas improvised what Sandinista Commander Jaime Wheelock referred to as a “very practical struggle” by combining liberation theology, dependency analysis, a variety of texts on revolution and military strategy, the guiding myths of popular resistance, and periods of training in Cuba (p. 56).Strategies and tactics and their resulting outcomes depended on many factors that Kruijt presents in a crisp narrative that makes effective use of the recollections of participants in these struggles. Here, as elsewhere, he draws comparisons among the three cases that contribute toward an understanding of the difference outcomes. Key considerations in this regard include strategies of rural and urban insurgencies, the role of the U.S. government, the intensity of military and paramilitary counterinsurgency campaigns, levels of popular support, and the guerrillas’ international diplomacy. The daily practice of gender and ethnic relations, sexual intimacy, and morality are similarly examined at the level of guerrilla units and in their relations with the surrounding communities. In sum, roughly the first half of the book presents the reader with a demystified yet generally sympathetic portrayal of the guerrillas.If the first half of the book serves to explain why so many young Central Americans became guerrillas in their countries’ periods of revolutionary struggle and hope, the second half in some sense seeks to come to terms with the often bitter results they obtained. The final chapters focus on utopia and dystopia in Nicaragua, the peace processes and reintegration, and guerrilla legacies and the enduring ambivalences of hindsight. For those who were present with these struggles, these chapters provide valuable material for reflection. This book should be read in its entirety by anyone interested in understanding the choices facing Central Americans and others similarly situated when regimes of political repression and social exclusion are not enough. It should also be required reading in Washington and Tegucigalpa as the leaders of the military coup of June 28, 2009, in the guerrillas’ neighboring country of Honduras seek “recklessly” to repeat history

Citizen journalism · Cognitive dissonance · Development economics · Oppression · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · Law · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America · Political Conflict and Governance · Politics and Society in Latin America · Psychology · Social Psychology