Also keep in mind that this was written in 1969 when even a two way radio was something of a luxury. Also, keep in mind that the urban revolution in Brazil failed, leaving a high economic cost in it's wake.
That said, this may give insight into the SLA's misguided thinking.
I just checked http://abebooks.com and no print copies available.
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by Carlos Marighella
A Definition of the Urban Guerrilla
The chronic structural crisis characteristic of Brazil today, and its resultant political instability, are what have brought about the upsurge of revolutionary war in the country. The revolutionary war manifests itself in the form of urban guerrilla warfare, psychological warfare, or rural guerrilla warfare. Urban guerrilla warfare or psychological warfare in the city depends on the urban guerrilla.
The urban guerrilla is a man who fights the military dictatorship with arms, using unconventional methods. A political revolutionary and ardent patriot, he is a fighter for his country's liberation, a friend of the people and of freedom. The area in which the urban guerrilla acts is in the large Brazilian cities. There are also bandits, commonly known as outlaws, who work in the big cities. Many times assaults by outlaws are taken as actions by urban guerrillas.
The urban guerrilla, however, differs radically from the outlaw. The outlaw benefits personally from the action, and attacks indiscriminately without distinguishing between the exploited and the exploiters, which is why there are so many ordinary men and women among his victims. The urban guerrilla follows a political goal and only attacks the government, the big capitalists, and the foreign imperialists, particularly North Americans.
Another element as prejudicial as the outlaw and also operating in the urban area is the right-wing counterrevolutionary who creates confusion, assaults banks, hurls bombs, kidnaps, assassinates, and commits the worst imaginable crimes against the urban guerrillas, revolutionary priests, students, and citizens who oppose fascism and seek liberty.
The urban guerrilla is an implacable enemy of the government and systematically inflicts damage on the authorities and on the men who dominate the country and exercise power. The principal task of the urban guerrilla is to distract, to wear out, to demoralize the militarists, the military dictatorship and its repressive forces , and also to attack and destroy the wealth and property of the North Americans, the foreign managers, and the Brazilian upper class.
The urban guerrilla is not afraid of dismantling and destroying the present Brazilian economic, political, and social system, for his aim is to help the rural guerrillas and to collaborate in the creation of a totally new and revolutionary social and political structure with the armed people in power.
The urban guerrilla must have a certain minimal political understanding. To gain that he must read certain printed or mimeographed works such as:
Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara
Memories of a Terrorist
Some Questions about the Brazilian Guerrilla Operations and Tactics
On Strategic Problems and Principles
Certain Tactical Principles for Comrades Undertaking Guerrilla Operations
Organizational Questions
O Guerrilheiro, newspaper of the Brazilian revolutionary groups.
Personal Qualities of the Urban Guerrilla
The urban guerrilla is characterized by his bravely and decisive nature. He must be a good tactician and a good shot. The urban guerrilla must be a person of great astuteness to compensate for the fact that he is not sufficiently strong in arms, ammunition, and equipment.
The career militarists or the government police may have modern arms and transport, and can go about anywhere freely, using the force of their power. The urban guerrilla does not have such resources at his disposal and leads to a clandestine existence. Sometimes he is a convicted person or is out on parole, and is obliged to use false documents.
Nevertheless, the urban guerrilla has a certain advantage over the conventional military or the police. It is that, while the military and the police act on behalf of the enemy, whom the people hate, the urban guerrilla defends a just cause, which is the people's cause.
The urban guerrilla's arms are inferior to the enemy's, but from a moral point of view, the urban guerrilla has an undeniable superiority.
The moral superiority is what sustains the urban guerrilla.. Thanks to it, the urban guerrilla can accomplish his principal duty, which is to attack and to survive.
The urban guerrilla has to capture or divert arms away from the enemy to be able to fight. Because his arms are not uniform, since what he has are expropriated or have fallen into his hands in different ways, the urban guerrilla faces the problem of a variety of arms and a shortage of ammunition. Moreover, he has no place to practice shooting and marksmanship.
These difficulties have to be surmounted, forcing the urban guerrilla to be imaginative and creative, qualities without which it would be impossible for him to carry out his role as a revolutionary.
The urban guerrilla must possess initiative, mobility, and flexibility, as well as versatility and a command of any situation. Initiative especially is an indispensable quality. It is not always possible to foresee everything, and the urban guerrilla cannot let himself become confused, or wait for orders. His duty is to act, to find adequate solutions for each problem he faces, and not to retreat. It is better to err acting than to do nothing for fear of erring. Without initiative there is no urban guerrilla warfare.
Other important qualities in the urban guerrilla are the following: to be a good walker, to be able to stand up against fatigue, hunger, rain, heat. To know how to hid and to be vigilant. To conquer the art of dissembling. Never to fear danger. To behave the same by day as by night. Not to act impetuously. To have unlimited patience. To remain calm and cool in the worst conditions and situations. Never to leave a track or trail. Not to get discouraged.
In the face of the almost surmountable difficulties of urban warfare, sometimes comrades weaken, leave, give up the work.
The urban guerrilla is not a businessman in a commercial firm nor is he a
character in a play. Urban guerrilla warfare, like rural guerrilla warfare, is a
pledge the guerrilla makes to himself. When he cannot face the difficulties, or
knows that he lacks the patience to wait, then it is better to relinquish his
role before he betrays his pledge, for he clearly lacks the basic qualities
necessary to be a guerrilla.
How the Urban Guerrilla Lives and Subsists
The urban guerrilla must know how to live among the people and must be careful not to appear strange and separated from ordinary city life.
He should not wear clothes that are different from those that other people wear. Elaborate and high fashion clothing for men or women may often be a handicap if the urban guerrilla's mission takes him into working class neighborhoods or sections where such dress is uncommon.
The same care has to be taken if the urban guerrilla moves from the South to the North or vice versa.
The urban guerrilla must live by his work or professional activity. If he is known and sought by the police, if he is convicted or is on parole, he must undergo and sometimes must live hidden. Under such circumstances, the urban guerrilla cannot reveal his activity to anyone, since that is always and only the responsibility of the revolutionary organization in which he is participating.
The urban guerrilla must have a great capacity for observation, must be well informed about everything, principally about the enemy's movements, and must be very searching and knowledgeable about the area in which he lives, operates, or through which he moves.
But the fundamental and decisive characteristic of the urban guerrilla is that he is a man who fights with arms; given this condition, there is very little likelihood that he will be able to follow his normal profession for ling without being identified. The role pf expropriation thus looms as clear as high noon. It is impossible for the urban guerrilla to exist and survive without fighting to expropriate.
Thus, within the framework of the class struggle, as it inevitably and necessarily sharpens, the armed struggle of the urban guerrilla points toward two essential objectives:
a) the physical liquidation of the chiefs and assistants of the armed forces and of the police;
b) the expropriation of the government resources and those belonging to the big capitalists, latifundists, and imperialists, with small expropriations used for the maintenance of individual urban guerrillas and large ones for the sustenance of the revolution itself.
It is clear that the armed struggle of the urban guerrilla also has other objectives. But here we are referring to the two basic objectives, above all expropriation. It is necessary for every urban guerrilla to keep in mind always that he can only maintain his existence if he is disposed to kill the police and those dedicated to repression, and if he is determined--truly determined--to expropriate the wealth of the big capitalists, the latifundists, and the imperialists.
One of the fundamental characteristics of the Brazilian revolution is that from the beginning it developed around the expropriation of the wealth of the major bourgeois, imperialists, and latifundists interests, without excluding the richest and most powerful commercial elements engaged in the import-export business.
And by expropriating the wealth of the principal enemies of the people, the Brazilian revolution was able to hit them at their vital center, with preferential and systematic attacks on the bank network--that is to say, the most telling blows were leveled against capitalism's nerve system.
The bank robberies carried out by the Brazilian urban guerrillas hurt such big capitalists as Moreira Salles and others, the foreign firms which insure and reinsure the banking capital, the imperialist companies, the federal and state governments--all of the systematically expropriated as of now.
The fruit of these expropriations has been devoted to the work of learning and perfecting urban guerrilla techniques, the purchase, the production, and the transportation of arms and ammunition for the rural areas, the security apparatus of the revolutionaries, the daily maintenance of the fighters, of those who have been liberated from prison by armed force and those who are wounded or persecuted by the police, or to any kind of problem concerning comrades liberated from jail, or assassinated by the police and the military dictatorship.
The tremendous costs of the revolutionary war must fall on the big capitalists, on imperialism, and the latifundists and on the government, too, both federal and state, since they are all exploiters and oppressors of the people.
Men of the government, agents of the dictatorship and of North American imperialism principally, must pay with their lives for the crimes committed against the Brazilian people.
In Brazil, the number of violent actions carried out by urban guerrillas, including deaths, explosions, seizures of arms, ammunition, and explosives, assaults on banks and prisons, etc., is significant enough to leave no room for the doubt as to the actual aims of revolutionaries. The execution of the CIA spy Charles Chandler, a member of the U.S. Army who came from the war in Viet-Nam to infiltrate the Brazilian student movement, the military henchmen killed in bloody encounters with urban guerrillas, all are witnesses to the fact that we are in full revolutionary war and that the war can be waged only by violent means.
This is the reason why the urban guerrilla uses armed struggle and why he
continues to concentrate his activity on the on the physical extermination of
the agents of repression, and to dedicate twenty-four hours a day to
expropriation from the people's exploiters.
Technical Preparation of the Urban Guerrilla
No one can become an urban guerrilla without paying special attention to preparation.
The technical preparation of the urban guerrilla runs from the concern for his physical preparedness, to knowledge of and apprenticeships in professions and skills of all kinds, particularly manual skills.
The urban guerrilla can have strong physical resistance only if he trains systematically. He cannot be a good fighter if he has not learned the art of fighting. For that reason the urban guerrilla must learn and practice various kinds of fighting, of attack and personal defense.
Other useful forms of physical preparation are hiking, camping, and practice in survival in the woods, mountain climbing, rowing, swimming, skin diving, training as a frogman, fishing, harpooning, and the hunting of birds, small and big game.
It is very important to learn how to drive, pilot a plane, handle a motor boat and a sail boat, understand mechanics, radio, telephone, electricity, and have some knowledge of electronic techniques.
It is also important to have a knowledge of topographical information, to be able to locate one's position by instruments or other available resources, to calculate distances, make maps and plans, draw to scale, make timings, work with an angle protractor, a compass, etc.
A knowledge of chemistry and of color combination, of stamp making, the domination of the technique of calligraphy and the copying of letters and other skills are part of the technical preparation of the urban guerrilla, who is obliged to falsify documents in order to live within a society that he seeks to destroy.
In the area of auxiliary medicine he has the special role of being a doctor or understanding medicine, nursing, pharmacology, drugs, elemental surgery, and emergency first aid.
The basic question in the technical preparation of the urban guerrilla is nevertheless to know how to handle arms such as the machine gun, revolver, automatic, FAL, various types of shotguns, carbines, mortars, bazookas, etc.
A knowledge of various types of ammunition and explosives is another aspect to consider. Among the explosives, dynamite must be well understood. The use of incendiary bombs, of smoke bombs, and other types are indispensable prior knowledge.
To know how to make and repair arms, prepare Molotov cocktails, grenades, mines, homemade destructive devices, how to blow up bridges, tear up and put out of service rails and sleepers, these are requisites in he technical preparation of the urban guerrilla that can never be considered unimportant.
The highest level of preparation for the urban guerrilla is the center for
technical training. But only the guerrilla who has already passed the
preliminary examination can go to this school--that is to say, one who has
passed the proof of fire in revolutionary action, in actual combat against the
enemy.
The Urban Guerrilla's Arms
The urban guerrilla's arms are light arms, easily exchanged usually captured from the enemy, purchased, or made on the spot.
Light arms have the advantage of fast handling and easy transport. In general, light arms are characterized as short barreled. This includes many automatic arms.
Automatic and semiautomatic arms considerably increase the fighting power of the urban guerrilla. The disadvantage of this type of arm for us is the difficulty in controlling it, resulting in wasted rounds or in a prodigious use of ammunition, compensated for only by optional aim and firing precision. Men who are poorly trained convert automatic weapons into an ammunition drain.
Experience has shown that the basic arm of the urban guerrilla is the light machine gun. This arm, in addition to be efficient and easy tp shoot in an urban area, has the advantage of being greatly respected by the enemy. The guerrilla must know thoroughly how to handle the machine gun, now so popular and indispensable to the Brazilian urban guerrilla.
The ideal machine gun for the urban guerrilla is the Ina 45 caliber. Other types of machine guns with different calibers can be used--understanding, of course, the problem of ammunition. Thus it is preferable that the industrial potential of the urban guerrilla prevent the production of a single machine gun so that the ammunition used can be standardized.
Each firing group of urban guerrillas must have a machine gun managed by a good marksman. The other components of the group must be armed with .38 revolvers, our standard arm. The .32 is also useful for those who want to participate. But the .38 is preferable since its impact usually puts the enemy out of action.
Hand grenades and conventional smoke bombs can be considered light arms, with defensive power for cover and withdrawal.
Long barrel arms are more difficult for the urban guerrilla to transport and attract much attention because of their size. Among the long barrel arms are the FAL, the Mauser guns or rifles, hunting guns such as the Winchester, and others.
Shotguns can be useful if used at close range and point blank. They are useful even for a poor shot, especially at night when precision isn't much help. A pressure airgun can be useful for training in marksmanship. Bazookas and mortars can also be used in action but the conditions for using them have to be prepared and the people who use them must be trained.
The urban guerrilla should not try to base his actions on the use of heavy arms, which have major drawbacks in a type of fighting that demands lightweight weapons to insure mobility and speed.
Homemade weapons are often as efficient as the best arms produced in conventional factories, and even a cut-off shotgun is a good arm for the urban guerrilla.
The urban guerrilla's role as gunsmith has a fundamental importance. As gunsmith he takes care of the arms, knows how to repair them, and in many cases can set up a small shop for improvising and producing efficient small arms.
Work in metallurgy and on the mechanical lathe are basic skills the urban guerrilla should incorporate into his industrial planning, which is the construction of homemade weapons.
This construction and courses in explosives and sabotage must be organized. The primary materials for practice in these courses must be obtained ahead of time to prevent and incomplete apprenticeship--that is to say, so as to leave no room for experimentation.
Molotov cocktails, gasoline, homemade contrivances such as catapults and mortars for firing explosives, grenades made of tubes and cans, smoke bombs, mines, conventional explosives such as dynamite and potassium chloride, plastic explosives, gelatine capsules, ammunition of every kind are indispensable to the success of the urban guerrilla's mission.
The method of obtaining the necessary materials and munitions will be to by them or take them by force in expropriation actions especially planned and carried out.
The urban guerrilla will be careful not to keep explosives and materials that can cause accidents around for very long, but will try always to use them immediately on their destined targets.
The urban guerrilla's arms and his ability to maintain them constitute his fire power. By taking advantage of modern arms and introducing innovations in his fire power and in the use of certain arms, the urban guerrilla can change many of the tactics of city warfare. An example of this was the innovation made by the urban guerrillas in Brazil when they introduced the machine gun in their attacks on banks.
When the massive use of uniform machine guns becomes possible, there will be
new changes in urban guerrilla warfare tactics. The firing group that utilizes
uniform weapons and corresponding ammunition, with reasonable support for their
maintenance, will reach a considerable level of efficiency. The urban guerrilla
increases his efficiency as he improves his firing potential.
The Shot: the Urban Guerrilla's Reason for Existence
The urban guerrilla reason for existence, the basic condition in which he acts and survives, is to shoot. The urban guerrilla must know how to shoot well because it is required by his type of combat.
In conventional warfare, combat is generally at a distance with long range arms. In unconventional warfare, in which urban guerrilla warfare is included, the combat is at close range, often very close. To prevent his own extinction, the urban guerrilla has to shoot first and he cannot err in his shot. He cannot waste his ammunition because he does not have large amounts, so he must save it. Nor can he replace his ammunition quickly, since he is part of a small group in which each guerrilla has to take care of himself. The urban guerrilla can lose no time and must be able to shoot at once.
One fundamental fact which we want to emphasize fully and whose particular importance cannot be overestimated is that the urban guerrilla must not fire continuously, using up his ammunition. It may be that the enemy is not responding to fire precisely because he is waiting until the guerrilla's ammunition is used up. At such a moment, without having time to replace his ammunition, the urban guerrilla faces a rain of enemy fire and can be taken prisoner or killed.
In spite of the value of the surprise factor which many times makes it unnecessary for the urban guerrilla to use his arms, he cannot be allowed the luxury of entering combat without knowing how to shoot. And face to face with the enemy, he must always be moving from one position to another, because to stay in one position makes him a fixed target and, as such, very vulnerable.
The urban guerrilla's life depends on shooting, on his ability to handle his arms well and to avoid being hit. When we speak of shooting, we speak of marksmanship as well. Shooting must be learned until it becomes a reflex action on the part of the urban guerrilla.
To learn how to shoot and to have good aim, the urban guerrilla must train himself systematically, utilizing every apprenticeship method, shooting at targets, even in amusement parks and at home.
Shooting and marksmanship are the urban guerrilla's water and ir. His
perfection of the art of shooting makes him a special type of urban
guerilla--that is, a sniper, a category of solitary combatant indispensable in
isolated actions. The sniper knows how to shoot, at close range and at long
range, and his arms are appropriate for either type of shooting.
The Firing Group
In order to function, the urban guerrillas must be organized in small groups. A group of no more than four or five is called the firing group.
A minimum of two firing groups, separated and sealed off from other firing groups, directed and coordinated by one or two persons, this is what makes a firing team.
Within the firing group there must be complete confidence among the comrades. The best shot at the one who best knows how to manage the machine gun is the person in charge of operations.
The firing groups plans and executes urban guerrilla actions, obtains and guards arms, studies and corrects its own tactics.
Where there are task planned by the strategic command, these tasks take preference. But there is no such thing as a firing group without its own initiative. For this reason it is essential to avoid any rigidity in the organization in order to permit the greatest possible initiative on the part of the firing group. The old-type hierarchy, the style of the traditional left doesn't exist in our organization.
This means that, except for the priority of objectives set by the strategic command, any firing group can decide to assault a bank, to kidnap or to execute an agent of the dictatorship, a figure identified with the reaction, or a North American spy, and can carry out any kind of propaganda or war of nerves against the enemy without the need to consult the general command.
No firing group can remain inactive waiting for orders from above. Its obligation is to act. Any single urban guerrilla who wants to establish a firing group and begin action can do so and thus become a part of the organization.
This method of action eliminates the need for knowing who is carrying out which actions, since there is free initiative and the only important point is to increase substantially the volume of urban guerrilla activity in order to wear out the government and to force it onto the defensive.
The firing group is the instrument of organized action. Within it, guerrilla operations and tactics are planned, launched, and carried through to success.
The general command counts on the firing groups to carry out objectives of a strategic nature, and to do so in any part of the country. For its part, it helps the firing groups with their difficulties and their needs.
The organization is an indestructible network of firing groups, and of
coordinations among them, that functions, simply and practically with a general
command that also participates in the attacks; an organization which exists for
no purpose other than pure and simple revolutionary action.
The Logistics of the Urban Guerrilla
Conventional logistics can be expressed by the formula CCEM:
C--food (comida)
C--fuel (combustivel)
E--equipment
M--ammunition (muniçoes)
Conventional logistics refer to the maintenance problems for an army or a regular armed force, transported in vehicles with fixed bases and supply lines.
Urban guerrillas, on the contrary, are not an army but small armed groups, intentionally fragmented. They have no vehicles nor fixed bases. Their supply lines are precarious and insufficient, and have no established base except in the rudimentary sense of an arms factory within a house.
While the goal of conventional logistics is to supply the war needs of the guerrillas to be used to repress urban and rural rebellion, urban guerrilla logistics aim at sustaining operations and tactics which have nothing in common with a conventional war and are directed against the military dictatorship and North American domination of the country.
For the urban guerrilla, who starts from nothing and has no support at the beginning, logistics are expressed by the formula MDAME, which is:
M--mechanization
D--money (dinheiro)
A--arms
M--ammunition (muniçoes)
E--explosives
Revolutionary logistics takes mechanization as one of its bases. Nevertheless, mechanization is inseparable from the driver. The urban guerrilla driver is an important as the urban guerrilla machine gunner. Without either, the machines do not work, and as such the automobile like the machine gun becomes a dead thing. An experienced driver is not made in one day and the apprenticeship must begin early. Every good urban guerrilla must be a good driver. As to the vehicle, the urban guerrilla must expropriate what he needs.
When he already has resources, the urban guerrilla can combine the expropriation of vehicles with other methods of acquisition.
Money, arms, ammunition and explosives, and automobiles as well, must be expropriated. And the urban guerrilla must rob banks and armories and seize explosives and ammunition wherever he finds them.
None of these operations is undertaken for just one purpose. Even when the assault is for money, the arms that the guards bear must also be taken.
Expropriation is the first step in the organization of our logistics, which itself assumes an armed and permanently mobile character.
The second step is to reinforce and extend logistics, resorting to ambushes and traps in which the enemy will be surprised and his arms, ammunition, vehicles, and other resources can be captured.
Once he has the arms, ammunition, and explosives, one of the most serious logistics problems the urban guerrilla faces at any time and in any situation is a hiding place in which to leave the material and appropriate means for transporting it and assembling it where it is needed. This has to be accomplished even when the enemy on the look out and has the roads blocked.
The knowledge that the urban guerrilla has of the terrain, and the devices he
uses or is capable of using, such as guides especially prepared and recruited
for this mission, are the basic elements in the solution of the eternal
logistics problem the revolutionary faces.
The Technique of the Urban Guerrilla
In its most general sense, technique is the combination of methods man uses to carry out any activity. The activity of the urban guerrilla consists in waging guerrilla warfare and psychological warfare.
The urban guerrilla technique has five basic components:
a) one part is related to the specific characteristics of the situation;
b) one part is related to the requisites that match these characteristics,
requisites represented by a series of initial advantages without which the urban
guerrilla cannot achieve his objectives;
c) one part concerns certain and definite objectives in the actions initiated by
the urban gerrilla;
d) one part is related to the types and characteristic modes of action for the
urban guerrilla;
e) one part is concerned with the urban guerrilla's methods of carrying out his
specific actions.
Characteristic of the Urban Guerrilla's Technique
The technique of the urban guerrilla has the following technique:
a) it is an aggressive technique, or in other words, it has an offensive character. As is well known, defensive action means death for us. Since we are inferior to the enemy in fire power and have neither his resources nor his power force, we cannot defend ourselves against an offensive or a concentrated attack by the gorillas. And that is the reason why our urban technique can never be permanent, can never defend a fixed base nor remain in any one spot waiting to repel the circle of reaction;
b) it is a technique of attack and retreat by which we preserve our forces;
c) it is a technique that aims at the development of urban guerrilla warfare,
whose function will be to wear out, demoralize, and distract the enemy forces,
permitting the emergence and survival of rural guerrilla warfare which is
destined to play the decisive role in the revolutionary war.
The Initial Advantages of the Urban Guerrilla
The dynamics of urban guerrilla warfare lie in the urban guerrilla's violent clash with the military and police forces of the dictatorship. In this slash, the police have superiority. The urban guerrilla has inferior forces. The paradox is that the urban guerrilla, although weaker, is nevertheless the attacker.
The military and police forces, for their part, respond to the attack, by mobilizing and concentrating infinitely superior forces in the persecution and destruction of the urban guerrilla. He can only avoid defeat if he counts on the initial advantages he has and knows how to exploit them to the end to compensate for his weakness and lack of matériel.
The initial advantages are:
1) he must take the enemy by surprise;
2) he must know the terrain of the encounter better than the enemy;
3) he must have greater mobility and speed than the police and other repressive
forces;
4) his information service must be better than the enemy's
5) he must be in command of the situation and demonstrate a decisiveness so
great that everyone on our side is inspired and never thinks of hesitating,
while on the other side the enemy is stunned and incapable of responding.
Surprise
To compensate for the general weakness and shortage of arms compared to the enemy, the urban guerrilla uses surprise. The enemy has no way to fight surprise and becomes confused or is destroyed.
When urban guerrilla warfare broke out in Brazil, experience proved that surprise was essential to the success of any urban guerrilla operation.
The technique of surprise is based on four essential requisites:
a) we know the situation of the enemy we are going to attack, usually by means of precise information and meticulous observation, while the enemy does not know he is going to be attacked and knows nothing about the attacker;
b) we know the force of the enemy that is going to be attacked and the enemy knows nothing about our force;
c) attacking by surprise, we save and conserve our forces, while the enemy is unable to do the same and is left at the mercy of events;
d) we determine the hour and the place of the attack, fix its duration, and
establish its objective. The enemy remains ignorant of all this.
Knowledge of the Terrain
The urban guerrilla's best ally is the terrain and because this is so must know it like the palm of his hand.
To have the terrain as an ally means to know how to use with intelligence its unevenness, its high and low points, its turns, its irregularities, its regular and secret passages, abandoned areas, its thickets, etc., taking maximum advantage of all this for the success of armed actions, escapes, retreats, cover, and hiding places.
Its impasses and narrow spots, it gorges, its streets under repair, police control points, military zones and closed off streets, the entrances and exits of tunnels and those that the enemy can close off, viaducts to be crossed, corners controlled by the police or watched, it lights and signals, all this must be thoroughly known and studied in order to avoid fatal errors.
Our problem is to get through and to know where and how to hide, leaving the enemy bewildered in areas that he doesn't know.
Familiar with the avenues, streets, alleys, ins and outs, and corners of urban centers, its paths and shortcuts, its empty lots, its underground passages, its pipes and sewer system, the urban guerrilla safely crosses through the irregular and difficult terrain unfamiliar to the police, where they can be surprised in a fatal ambush or trapped at any moment.
Because he knows the terrain the guerrilla can go through it on foot, on bicycle, in automobile, jeep, or truck and never be trapped. Acting in small groups with only a few people, the guerrillas can reunite at an hour and place determined beforehand, following up the attack with new guerrilla operations, or even evading the police circle and disorienting the enemy with their unprecedented audacity.
It is an insoluble problem for the police in the labyrinthian terrain of the urban guerrilla, to get someone they can't see, tp repress someone they can't catch, to close in on someone they can't find.
Our experience is that the ideal urban guerrilla is one who operates in his own city and knows thoroughly it streets, its neighborhoods, its transit problems, and other peculiarities.
The guerrilla outsider, who comes to a city whose corners are unfamiliar to
him, is a weak spot and if he is assigned certain operations, can endanger them.
To avoid grave errors, it is necessary for him to get to know well the layout of
the streets.
Mobility and Speed
To insure mobility and speed that the police cannot match, the urban guerrilla needs the following prerequisites:
a) mechanization
b) knowledge of the terrain;
c) a rupture or suspension of enemy communications and transport;
d) light arms.
By carefully carrying through operations that last only a few moments, and leaving the site in mechanized vehicles the urban guerrilla beats a rapid retreat, escaping pursuit.
The urban guerrilla must know the way in detail and, in this sense, must go through the schedule ahead of time as a training to avoid entering alleyways that have no exit, or running into traffic jams, or becoming paralyzed by the Transit Department's traffic signals.
The police pursue the urban guerrilla blindly without knowing which road he is using for his escape.
While the urban guerrilla quickly flees because he knows the terrain, the police lose the trail and give up the chase.
The urban guerrilla must launch his operations far from the logistics base of the police. An initial advantage of this method of operation is that it places us at a reasonable distance from the possibility of pursuit, which facilitates the evasion.
In addition to this necessary precaution, the urban guerrilla must be concerned with the enemy's communication system. The telephone is the primary target in preventing the enemy from having access to information by knocking out his communication system.
Even if he knows about the guerrilla operation, the enemy depends on modern transports for his logistics support, and his vehicles necessarily lose time carrying him through the heavy traffic of the large cities.
It is clear that the tangled and treacherous traffic is a disadvantage for the enemy, as it would be for us if we were not ahead of him.
If we want to have a safe margin of security and be ceratin to leave no tracks for the future, we can adopt the following methods:
a) purposely intercept the police with other vehicles or by apparently casual inconveniences and damages; but in this case the vehicles in question should not be legal nor should they have real license numbers;
b) obstruct the road with fallen trees, rocks, ditches, false traffic, signs, dead ends or detours, and other ingenious methods;
c) place homemade mines in the way of the police, use gasoline, or throw Molotov cocktails to set their vehicles on fire;
d) set off a burst of machine gun fire or arms such as the FAL aimed at the motor and the tires of the cars engaged in pursuit.
With the arrogance typical of the police and the military fascists authorities, the enemy will come to fight us with heavy guns and equipment with elaborate maneuvers by men armed to the teeth. The urban guerrilla must respond to this with light weapons easily transported , so he can always escape with maximum speed, without ever accepting open fighting. The urban guerrilla has no mission other than to attack and retreat.
We would leave ourselves open to the most stunning defeats is we burdened ourselves with heavy arms and with the tremendous weight of the ammunition necessary to fire them, at the same time losing our precious gift of mobility.
When the enemy fights against us with calvary we are at no disadvantage as long as we are mechanized. The automobile goes faster than the horse. From within the car we also have the target of the mounted police, knocking them down with machine gun and revolver fire or with Molotov cocktails and grenades.
On the other hand, it is not so difficult for an urban guerrilla on foot to make a target of a policeman on horseback. Moreover, ropes across the streets, marbles, cork stoppers are very efficient methods of making them both fall. The great advantage of the mounted police is that he presents the urban guerrilla with two excellent targets: the horse and its rider.
Apart from being faster than the horseman, the helicopter has no better
chance in pursuit. If the horse is too slow compared to the urban guerilla's
automobile, the helicopter is too fast. Moving at 200 kilometers an hour it will
never succeed in hitting it from above a target lost among the crowds and the
street vehicles, nor can it land in public streets in order to catch someone. At
the same time, when ever it tries to fly low, it will be excessively vulnerable
to the fire of the urban guerrilla.
Information
The possibilities that the government has for discovering and destroying the urban guerrillas lessen as the potential of the dictatorship's enemies becomes greater and more concentrated among the popular masses.
This concentration of opponents of the dictatorship plays a very important role in providing information as to moves on the part of the police and men in government, as well as in hiding our activities. The enemy can also be throw off by false information, which is worse for him because it is a tremendous waste.
By whatever means, the sources of information at the disposal of the urban guerrilla are potentially better than those of the police. The enemy is observed by the people, but he does not know who among the people transmits information to the urban guerrilla. The military and the police are hated for the injustices they commit against the people, and this facilitates obtaining information prejudicial to the activities of government agents.
The information, which is only a small area of popular support, represents an extraordinary potential in the hands of the urban guerrilla. The creation of an intelligence service with an organized structure is a basic need for us. The urban guerrilla has to have essential information about the plans and movements of the enemy, where they are, and how they move, the resources of the banking network, the means of communication, and the secret moves the enemy makes.
The trustworthy information passed along to the urban guerrilla represents a well-aimed blow at the dictatorship. It has no way to defend itself in the face of an important leak that jeopardizes it interests and facilitates ou
