Terror and Violence as Weapons of Counterinsurgency in Guatemala

Bibliographic Data

ID4499724
AuthorsGabriel Aguilera Peralta (Department of Spanish at the University of Pittsburgh.), John Beverly (University of Pittsburgh)
Year1980
Volume7
Issue2-3
Pages91-113
Publication date1980-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLatin American Perspectives (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-582X • E-ISSN: 1552-678X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0094582x8000700207
OpenAlexW1971049025
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited1

In all class societies, class conflict manifests itself in economic, ideological, and political arenas. Likewise, the ruling class always has at its disposition, through control of the state apparatus, the most direct and effective means of maintaining its domination, those special detachments of armed men (Lenin's phrase), the army and police. The dominated class, which aspires to gain control of the state apparatus, must at some moment of the class struggle provide for the development of its own armed forces in order to confront and eventually defeat those of the dominant class. History shows that in general class struggle reaches this level of open armed conflict in its final stages. The precondition for such a situation, however, is the full maturation qualitative as well as quantitative of the class struggle. Barring this maturation, recourse to an armed confrontation of state power may prove suicidal. The military expression of class struggle takes different forms in different historical circumstances. During the French Revolution, for example, the triumphant bourgeoisie created a modern army, based on popular levy and inspired by a high level of morale, with which it was able to defeat the feudal armies of the European monarchies. During the Russian Revolution, by the same token, the Soviets and the emerging workers' and peasants' state created the Red Army with which they were able to defeat in the civil war the armed expression of the Russian ruling class and its foreign allies, the White Army. In other cases, among them those of the Chinese and Vietnamese Revolutions, the exploited classes have confronted the military force of the state not (initially) with a popular army but rather with guerrilla bands. In the Chinese case, the dominated classes most fundamentally the poor peasants carried out a tenacious thirty-year guerrilla war which culminated in the consolidation of the Peoples Army and the conquest of the state apparatus after the Second World War. In the Vietnamese case, guerrilla war proved to be effec

Criminology · Medical emergency · Poison control · Political science · Sociology · Terrorism · Law · Medicine · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America

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