A critical examination of post-Cuban Latin American guerrilla movements between 1959-1979.
An examination of why almost every revolutionary movement in Latin America in the 1960’s and 1970’s failed to achieve its aims. The author explains that the aims of these movements were to defeat or topple an existing regime and replace it with a better regime. It shows that these aims failed because of the methods used.
“Latin America has had an abundance of guerrilla movements and guerrilla wars in its history. The majority has these, and the ones concerned with in this paper, have occurred in the last twenty to thirty years. Since the success of Fidel Castro in Cuba in January 1959, numerous attempts have been made to overthrow regimes using the same methods used by Castro. It is here that the various Latin American movements have made mistakes. Cuba appears to have been an “exception to the rule”, the methods used there were ineffective elsewhere as is noted by the failure of most of the guerrilla movements from 1959 to 1979. It makes no difference whether the movement is politically “left wing” or “right wing” oriented, the errors are still there.”