International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Born in Guadalajara, Spain, Abraham Guillén was a leading Latin American theorist of urban guerilla warfare. His work was informed by his first-hand experience in the anarchosyndicalist popular militias that were active during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9). Ideologically, Guillén was firmly rooted in the Spanish anarchosyndicalist tradition of the National Confederation of Labor (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, CNT) and the Federation of Spanish Anarchists (Federación Anarquista Ibérica, FAI). He spent several years in prison after the civil war until successfully escaping in 1945, first to France and then, in 1948, to Argentina. In Argentina he worked as a journalist, publishing his works under two different pseudonyms, Jaime de las Heras and Fernando Molina. In 1956, he published his two-volume Agonía del imperialismo (The Agony of Imperialism). In the early 1960s he became involved with the Argentinian guerilla movement known as the Uturuncos. He was detained in 1961 by the Argentinian security forces, and after his release he moved to Montevideo. It was there that Guillén commenced work on his Estrategia de la guerilla urbana (Strategy of the Urban Guerilla), which appeared in 1966. In this work Guillén advocated an alternative to the “established” thinking in guerilla warfare. In contrast to the Fidelista model, Guillén shifted attention away from the jungles ... log in or subscribe to read full text