Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Interview with a Tupamaro
Mickey Z. talks with Hiber Conteris
"Unlike other Latin-American guerrilla groups, the Tupamaros normally avoid bloodshed when possible. They try instead to create embarrassment for the Government and general disorder.” - New York Times (1970) ...
“Perhaps the cleverest, most resourceful and most sophisticated urban guerrillas the world has ever seen, the Tupamaros had a deft touch for capturing the public’s imagination with outrageous actions, and winning sympathizers with their Robin Hood philosophy,” Blum wrote. “Their members and secret partisans held key positions in the government, banks, universities, and the professions, as well as in the military and police...Once they ransacked an exclusive high-class nightclub and scrawled on the wall perhaps their most memorable slogan: “O Bailan Todos O No Baila Nadie — Either everyone dances or no one dances.”
HC: I would say that the best way to characterize the MLN-Tupamaros, is to say that it finally became an urban guerrilla warfare movement, which decided to resort to the arms as a way not necessarily to overthrow the government, but to create consciousness among the population about the futility of the electoral process under a corrupt and repressive regime. At the beginning, the movement created by Raul Sendic (a former member of the Socialist Party) had no other goal than to organize the workers in a sugar cane plantation in the North of the country in a trade union, demanding better salaries, better work conditions, and eventually a sort of land reform, the right to work by themselves the unproductive lands owned by the company and the landlords. Different circumstances (the indifference of the legislature, the repressive measures taken both by the government and the land owners, etc.) determined that the original union movement became a clandestine movement: their members were forced to steal some arms to defend themselves, and then to rob a bank to get some money to survive themselves and feed their families. Sendic and the original founders of the movement were after these events in the underground, required by the police, and the whole group began to grow up as a guerrilla warfare movement ...
MZ: Do you think such tactics could be adapted for use in 2004 America ... a nation in dire need of consciousness and alternatives to a corrupt electoral process?
HC: Definitely not. I don’t think that that kind of tactics used by the MLN would have any positive effect on the North American population. Remember the case of the Black Panthers and other “guerrilla warfare” groups that appeared in the U.S. in the 60’s. They were minoritarian groups that never obtained the general support of the population, not even among the Black population. On the other hand, you have to remember that the MLN suffered a military defeat in 1972, and now it is a political movement articulated in a wider political front, with a couple of senators and several deputies in the Congress ...
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/mickeyz11232004/