Examining the history and theories of guerrilla warfare/insurgency is important for correctly perceiving our present political situation and the development of new options of resistance for Xicanos and other Third World people in the United States. Based on an acknowledgement of industrial inferiority the Vietnamese people and leaders approached the development of political will in their war with the French and the United States, as a necessary component of national survival. While the French and U.S. “were fighting to control the national territory … the guerrillas were interested only in winning its population” this is the essential distinction between conventional warfare where “the army fights to occupy territory, roads, strategic heights, vital areas” and guerrilla warfare where “the guerrilla fights to control people, without whose cooperation the land is useless to its possessor” .
In other words, a people’s war produces military power as a consequence of the political mobilization of the people by the army. This is why Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen wrote the main responsibility of a peoples war is first to “educate, mobilize, organize, and arm the whole people in order that they might take part in the resistance” and form a peoples army which according to Mao Tse-Tung Chinese General and theorist of revolutionary war “is not an instrument of the state, but the essence of it, its spirit, its life and its hope.”
It is important to remember that revolutionary situations can, have been and continue to develop in Third World and that these tried and tested methods and theories of revolutionary activity have resulted in numerous revolutionary insurgencies, most of which been successful. The existing body of literature concerning guerrilla movements, insurgencies and revolutionary thought is considerable and much of it focuses on Latin America. It is important to understand that guerilla warfare is the only proven method of successfully challenging the overwhelming military, political and technological strength of the First World. By its nature political warfare is an activity that favors the poor and underdeveloped nations, invigorating the will to resist by creating a will to win. These are not methodologies and ideas produced by inexperienced moaners or whiny children but intelligent people dedicated to the liberation of their nation from colonial domination.
To understand the relationship of this body of knowledge to the Xicano community and what it could ultimately mean for indigenous people to understand the development of physical resistance is a legitimate aspect of Xicano studies. It is constructive topic of academic discussion, debate and dialogue. Why it is not a major branch of study within Xicano Studies, which publicly states its beginning was in the revolutionary Third World student movements of the United States, is a question of concern about the future of Xicano Studies and a subject for future papers.
The theories and ideas of revolutionary methodology should be important pieces in the Xicano struggle against U.S. imperialism. It is important to state up front this is a suggestion that analyzing these different methodologies to organize a Third World population for political change and national liberation is a good idea. Mao was very clear in stating and writing that no two revolutionary situations were the same. All the same, any a mass movement in the U.S. must take race and class into account if success is desired. The same is true of a Xicano Liberation Movement, however, in the end, race and class not withstanding, it is the adherence to and belief in the stated goals of any resistance movement that determines the nature of the combatants and their aspirations.
That being said, it is crucial to note there is currently no basis for making any type of prediction about the goals of a Xicano insurgency, who would fight (since the term Xicano liberation is used frequently we can assume a portion of that populations would participate), where they would come from in society or if their objective would include a geographic succession or some type of autonomous homeland. It is beyond the scope of this post to consider such things. Indeed, it may be beyond the state of current Xicano politics and scholarship to consider these matters. Mainly, because the framework for implementing the type of organizing efforts discussed within the boundaries of the United States has yet to be created. The purpose of this exercise is solely to define and study revolutionary methodologies implemented in other countries for political change and to offer suggestions for creating a method of revolutionary political mobilizations that operates legally within the United States based on those observations.
In the last half the 20th century European imperial and colonial powers around the globe were challenged by Third World liberation movements relying on a strategy of political education escalating into guerilla warfare and then conventional warfare as theorized by Third World military strategist such as Mao Tse-Tung, Che Guevara, Amilcar Cabral and Vo Nuygen Giap . This “fusion of traditional guerrilla tactics with political and, especially, ideological objectives marked the emergence of a revolutionary guerilla warfare or insurgency” during the latter half of the 20th century. This prevailing model of guerilla warfare is traditionally strategized as a rural based military movement where a growing insurgency controls larger and larger tracts of the countryside until the guerillas encircle the cities and cut them off from each other causing the downfall of the central government . This has occurred because up to the present time the majority of any the world’s population lived in rural areas, hence the focus on mobilizing where the people are.
However, dramatic shifts in populations’ centers around the planet are happening and as a result “the world is expected to reach 50 percent urban for the first time in history in 2007. In 2000, 2.9 billion people live in urban areas, comprising 47 percent of the world population. By 2030, 4.9 billion are expected to live in urban areas, or 60 percent of the world.” In addition by 2010 “some 80 percent [of the worlds population] will inhabit the developing world…by 2020 the developing world will have accounted for 90 percent of global population growth since 1930.” This shift to urban settings due to forced migration brought on by war and economic need, along with the ongoing population explosion of Third World peoples is creating new paradigms in the theories of guerilla warfare and insurgencies. These facts along with a clear understanding of how important political education is to beginning guerilla movements and insurgencies is central to Xicanos engaged in cultural and physical resistance to U.S. imperialism as the next logical step in the decolonization of the Americas.
As people indigenous to this continent we languish in the shadow of the greatest military power the world has ever known. By any explanation it appears we are permanent guests in our own land, and are currently moving rapidly toward a permanent illegal alien status. In spite of the rhetoric of revolution embedded in the U.S. Chicano dialogue we continue to deal with the reality of revolution as a phase of youthful fancy. Xicano scholars refuse to have serious conversations among themselves when in fact a large body of scholarly research has been compiled regarding the issues of secession, nation building and revolution. Partly this has happened because as a scholarly community we have not incorporated into Chicano studies a vocabulary appropriate to the subject by which to articulate academically our ideas about revolution.
One goal of this discussion is to define specific revolutionary methodologies that have proven successful over the course of time and relate them to our current situation as Xicano/ Mexicanos in the United States. One important way of doing this is through an understanding of internal colonialism as first a metaphor for understanding the experience and contextualizing the presence of Third World people, specifically non-Europeans, within the U.S. colony “the general concept appears to apply to a number of cases, and is valuable in emphasizing the structural similarities and common historical origins of the positions of Third World peoples inside and outside the United States.”
It is here in the United States that the presence of indigenous people and Africans gives a modern reality to the idea of an internal colony. By placing this discussion of national liberation within a colonial framework it is understood the existence/purpose/history of the continental United States and its territorial holdings are explainable within the framework of the colony . To be specific the colony being is historically an economic venture by Europeans here in the Americas and around the world that by “the middle of the last (19th) century … the colony was understood to mean, both in official circles and in common language, possession of a territory in which European emigrants dominated indigenous peoples.” Accepting this definition of colony allows us to understand how and why the history of the United States is officially told though the lens of the European conqueror. It is by this process of colonial displacement the United States has become a pretend motherland to white Europeans.
It is also important to note this discussion of resistance takes place with full awareness and understanding of the powerful arguments that exist for joining our oppressors. Each urging us to take our place next to the colonizer of our land, and march out to conquer the rest of this world both ideologically, physically, and economically. Indeed, many of us have already proudly chosen that course. Activists during the 1960s recognized this danger when they saw “the potential for the creation of a Chicano/a professional class disassociated from the ethnic Mexican working class in the United States.” As Xicano Historian George Mariscal points out “there was certainly no reason to think that even the most radical Chicano/a could successfully counter the seductive power exerted by consumer society.”
Viewing the success individual Xicanos and Mexicanos have achieved through total compliance we must ask ourselves, what is the point of continued resistance? How will exploring and understanding different methods of resistance help Xicanos make better decisions in strategy and tactics while developing long terms goals for national survival? Fanon was pointed in his depiction of the demise of a nations culture under colonialization,
Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to oversimplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. The cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women. - Frantz Fanon
Xicanos, particularly in academic and activist circles talk all the time about being a colonized people. But we never discuss the physical dismantling of the colonized situation. We talk, debate and speak of our oppression and displacement only in historical, academic, and identity terms never in the context of our colonization being a living and ongoing system of economic exploitation that must be confronted and destroyed. Our subaltern position has become so entrenched in our national and personal psyche we debate and ridicule anyone who argues against total collusion with our subjugators.
