Guevara and Foco theories of guerrilla warfare

Abstract or Introduction

Alternative models of insurgency are provided by the doctrine of “people’s war,” “foco theory”, and the urban guerrilla.

Che Guevara
After working with lepers in Peru (He had a medical degree.) and witnessing the CIA-sponsored coup of Guatemala's president in 1954, Guevara met Castro in Mexico City in July, 1956, and four months later joined the 80-strong guerrilla force that would topple Batista on Jan. 1, 1959.

After serving in various high-level government positions (last one: Minister of Industry), Guevara became disillusioned with Soviet involvement in Cuba (Guevara realised that the Soviet Union upon whom isolated Cuba was increasingly dependent, was not much different than the U.S. in its exploitation of the developing world for their own interests. The Russians procured sugar at a favourable price, while discouraging Cuba from developing industrial self-sufficiency and left Cuba in 1965.

He returned to the field, joining an unsuccessful guerrilla campaign in the Congo. In 1967, he went to Bolivia to trigger a peasant-supported revolution across Latin American. Without local help and hounded by the U.S.-assisted Bolivian army, Guevara was captured and killed October 9. (A peasant informed on the rebels. The remaining revolutionaries were outnumbered and surrounded in a valley.