Guerrilla Warfare by Guerrilla Warfare (SR Books 1997)

Author:Guerrilla Warfare (SR Books, 1997)
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461637141
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2013-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

While some analysts might question whether the last part of this statement is a revisionist interpretation of the Venezuelan Communist party’s (and the guerrillas’) views in the 1960s and 1970s, it was clear by the late 1970s that democratic values and reformist programs had been adopted by Petkoff and most of his ex-comrades. Few people remained who saw the 1960s and early 1970s insurgencies as other than a strategic error, although Juan Vicente Cabezas, el comandante Pablo, could still imagine reopening guerrilla fronts if a Pinochetazo or Videlazo occurred in Venezuela.25

When President Caldera (1969—74) legalized the Communist party, established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, gave amnesties to the ex-guerrillas (including the release of Petkoff from prison), and pacified Venezuela, his initiatives anticipated the outcome of the guerrilla struggles in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s. Likewise, the decision by Petkoff, Pompeyo Márquez (MAS), Alfredo Maneiro (late-1970s leader of Causa-R), and others to create social democratic and democratic socialist movements to promote their visions for political change provided examples that would be followed elsewhere in the hemisphere. Rejecting the viability of the guerrilla movements of the 1960s, Maneiro declared at the end of the 1970s: “Broadening and deepening democracy are the ideological commitments of Causa-R . . . democratizing the municipal structure of Caracas, seeking the unity of the left. . . . [My hope] is that some force arises that galvanizes the frustration of this country, of this people, to break the co-dominion of Acción Democrática and COPEI. If that doesn’t happen, we may see a ‘Mexicanization’ of Venezuela.” 26 Joined by other populist, reformist, and Marxist parties, including the Venezuelan Communist party, the Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo (MEP, which had split from AD), and MIR (which merged with MAS in 1988), the Venezuelan left disassociated itself from armed struggle, revolutionary socialism, and anticapitalism. “Renovated” long before perestroika, the left was not threatened (indeed, perhaps vindicated) by the end of the cold war in contrast to insurgents in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru—and Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

Not until 1994 did the co-dominion of AD and COPEI over the presidency end. MAS, allied with seventeen other parties and movements, helped elect Rafael Caldera, COPEI founder and now “independent” leader of Convergencia. MAS became part of the government; Causa-R remained a leftist opposition party with growing influence. Not all ex-guerrillas and revolutionaries wished to forget—or at least to suppress—the ideological and political “error” of guerrilla struggle in emulation of the Cuban Revolution. And not all of them believed, like Juan Vicente Cabezas, that “nos derrotaron porque somos unos pendejos” (they defeated us because we’re fools).27 But well before perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union transformed the still-militarized left in Latin America, the Venezuelan left had taken a more reformist and constitutionalist approach to politics and social change.28

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