Guevarism is a theory of communist revolution
and a military strategy of guerilla warfare
associated with Marxist revolutionary Ernesto
"Che" Guevara, a leading figure of the Cuban
Revolution who believed in the idea of Marxism–Leninism
and embraced its principles.
== Overview ==
After the 1959 triumph of the Cuban insurrection
led by a militant foco under Fidel Castro,
his Argentine-born, cosmopolitan and Marxist
colleague, Guevara parlayed his ideology and
experiences into a model for emulation (and
at times, direct military intervention) around
the globe.
While exporting one such "focalist" revolution
to Bolivia, leading an armed vanguard party
there in October 1967, Guevara was captured
and executed, becoming a martyr to both the
world communist movement and socialism in
general.
His ideology promotes exporting revolution
to any country whose leader is supported by
the empire (United States) and has fallen
out of favor with its citizens.
Guevara talks about how constant guerrilla
warfare taking place in non-urban areas can
overcome leaders.
He introduces three points that are representative
of his ideology as a whole, namely that the
people can win with proper organization against
a nation's army; that the conditions that
make a revolution possible can be put in place
by the popular forces; and that the popular
forces always have an advantage in a non urban
setting.Guevara had a particularly keen interest
in guerrilla warfare, with a dedication to
foco techniques, also known as focalism (or
foquismo in Spanish), which is vanguardism
by small armed units, frequently in place
of established Communist Parties, initially
launching attacks from rural areas to mobilize
unrest into a popular front against a sitting
regime.
Despite differences in approach—emphasizing
guerrilla leadership and audacious raids that
engender general uprising, rather than consolidating
political power in military strongholds before
expanding to new ones—Guevara took great
inspiration from the Maoist notion of "protracted
people's war" and sympathized with Mao Zedong's
People's Republic of China in the Sino-Soviet
split.
This controversy may partly explain his departure
from Castro's pro-Soviet Cuba in the mid-1960s.
Guevara also drew direct parallels with his
contemporary Communist comrades in the Viet
Cong, exhorting a multi-front guerrilla strategy
to create "two, three, many Vietnams".
In Guevara's final years, after leaving Cuba
he advised Communist paramilitary movements
in Africa and Latin America, including a young
Laurent-Désiré Kabila, future ruler of Zaire/Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
Finally, while leading a small focalist band
of guerrilla cadres in Bolivia, Guevara was
captured and killed.
His death and the short-term failure of his
Guevarist tactics may have interrupted the
component guerrilla wars within the larger
Cold War for a time and even temporarily discouraged
Soviet and Cuban sponsorship for focalism.
The emerging Communist movements and other
fellow traveler radicalism of the time either
switched to urban guerrilla warfare before
the end of the 1960s and/or soon revived the
rural-based strategies of both Maoism and
Guevarism, tendencies that escalated worldwide
throughout the 1970s, by and large with the
support from the Communist states and the
Soviet Union in general as well as Castro's
Cuba in particular.
Another proponent of Guevarism was the French
intellectual Régis Debray, who could be seen
as attempting to establish a coherent, unitary
theoretical framework on these grounds.
Debray has since broken with this.
== Criticism ==
Guevarism has been criticized from a revolutionary
anarchist perspective by Abraham Guillén,
one of the leading tacticians of urban guerrilla
warfare in Uruguay and Brazil.
Guillen claimed that cities are a better ground
for the guerrilla than the countryside (Guillen
was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War).
He criticized Guevarist movements of national
liberation (like the Uruguayan Tupamaros,
one of the many groups that he helped as a
military advisor) for trying to impose a dictatorship
instead of self-management.
== 
See also ==
Carlos Marighella
Cuban Revolution
Frantz Fanon
Foco
Guerrilla warfare
Protracted people's war
Revisionism (Marxism)
Urban guerrilla warfare
Wars of national liberation
Neozapatismo
== Notes ==
