From; ENN DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT-ERRI Risk Assessment Services-Tuesday, June 24, 1997 Vol. 3 - 175
LATIN AMERICAN GUERRILLA GROUPS
COME AND GO
By Steve Macko, ERRI Risk
Analyst
Counterterrorism and military analysts have been saying that the swift and brutal raid by Peruvian commandos that killed 14 members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) at the residence of the Japanese ambassador in April was a serious psychological blow to the ever thinning ranks of leftist insurgents in Latin America.
The MRTA still has some firepower, with about 200 guerrillas said to be hiding in the jungles of Peru, but its political leadership and inspiration were lost in the spectacular raid by Peruvian authorities.
Nelson Manrique, an historian at Lima's Catholic University, said, "The MRTA is now without political leadership." He added that terrorist leader Nestor Cerpa, who was killed in the ambassador's residence, was "the last MRTA political leader still free. The rest are inexperienced youngsters."
Peruvian guerrilla expert Carlos Tapia said, "I don't believe the MRTA can regroup, at least in the short term."
The guerrilla threat in Peru is now considered to be much weaker. While there are some rebels in Mexico, Colombia is now the only other country in Latin America that has an active guerrilla war. Colombia has two major rebel groups: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberarion Army (ELN), which recently has been involved in some major bomb attacks against the Colombian government.
Of the innumerable leftist uprisings in Latin America through the years, only two have ever achieved their main goal -- Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution in 1959 and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1979.
After Castro took power almost 40 years ago, Fidel and his Argentine-born lieutenant Ernesto "Che" Guevara promised to create, in their words, "One, ten, a hundred Vietnams in Latin America." Castro and Guevara inspired guerrilla groups all through the region.
However, their dream did not come true. They were met by determined foes in Venezuela in the early 1960s. They met their match against military dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay in the 1970s.
Some of the Latin American leftist groups were just plain beaten, like the Tupamaros in Uruguay, one of the earliest rebel groups that began in 1960, but were gone twelve years later. A brutal military crackdown in Argentina in the mid-1970s defeated the Montoneros and the ERP. The Ecuadorian government defeated the Afaro Vive Carajo! in the 1980s.
Other rebel groups signed peace deals and even became involved in mainstream politics, such as Colombia's M-19 -- which was a major terrorist force in the 1980s. Others that made peace with their respective governments were the Farabundo Marti rebels in El Salvador and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit, which signed a peace treaty in 1996, after a three decade struggle.
In Peru, the Maoist-inspired Shining Path (SL), which is larger and more violent than the MRTA, is still around and carries out attacks. Since it came into being, Shining Path has carried out almost 1,500 guerrilla attacks and is said to be responsible for the deaths of about 27,000 people. But ever since 1992, when Peruvian authorities captured SL leader Abimael Guzman, Shining Path is not quite the terror organization that it was about ten years ago.
Today, Latin America's really last major guerrilla group is the FARC in Colombia. The FARC has been around since 1964 and is still waging a war. The FARC is in control of large remote parts of Colombia and it doesn't look like there will be any kind of peace agreement with or will it be defeated by the Colombian government any time soon.
(c) Copyright, EmergencyNet NEWS Service, 1997. All Rights Reserved. Redistribution without permission is prohibited by law.
The ENN DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT is a subscription publication of the EmergencyNet NEWS Service, which is a part of the Chicago-based Emergency Response and Research Institute. This publication specializes in Security/Terrorism/Intelligence/Military and National Security issues.
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