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