We explain what a guerrilla is, its strategies, and examples from history and today. Also, guerrilla marketing.
What is a guerrilla?
a guerrilla It is a fighting force composed mostly of armed civilians with little or no connection with the armed forces of a State, and that carry out light tactical operations against an army, an enemy guerrilla or even the government institutions themselves. Those who make up a guerrilla are known as guerrillas.
While the existence of guerrillas can be traced back to ancient times, This term was coined in the 19th century, in Spain invaded by the military forces of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), to indicate the unequal struggle between armed civilians and an army of professional soldiers. The Spanish guerrilla resistance was so fierce that Napoleon himself considered them (contrary to the opinion of historians) as the main cause of his defeat.
Throughout history guerrilla warfare It has been a method of resistance for weaker factions against a much more powerful formal enemy. Populations invaded by ancient armies often resorted to forming guerrillas as a way to resist the formidable enemy, just as many of the European countries invaded by the Nazis did, centuries later, in World War II.
However, the guerrillas were particularly common and important in Latin America throughout the 20th century as part of their liberation movements, politically oriented towards the revolutionary left and communism, and sometimes also against them.
From Mexico to Argentina, almost all the large Latin American nations had the presence of guerrilla cells, accused by the governments of the time of terrorism or insurgency and fought more or less fiercely.
Many of these Latin American armed movements acquired international renown, becoming anti-capitalist icons and, faced with the US foreign policy of the time, anti-imperialist icons.
Such is the case of the July 26 Movement (M-26-7) with which Fidel Castro assaulted political power in Cuba, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in Mexico, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) in Peru, or Montoneros in Argentina, among others.
Guerrilla strategies
Given their numerical, technical and training inferiority in combat, the guerrillas are incapable of fighting as a regular army would. Instead, they practice what is known as guerrilla warfare, which generally involves a combination of methods of active resistance, agile combat actions and rapid retreat such as planting bombs, robbery and kidnapping, or spreading propaganda.
The foundation of guerrilla warfare is avoid open, conventional combat against a stronger enemy dedicating themselves to quick and specific actions in different locations, carried out with stealth.
That is why guerrillas operate best in difficult-to-access terrain, with multiple camouflage possibilities, where they can maintain a certain tactical advantage over the enemy. These lands are usually rural, but the appearance of urban guerrillas that articulated secret networks among citizens was also common in the 20th century.
Guerrilla warfare has been studied by war thinkers such as Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), even by its great practitioners of the 20th century, such as the Chinese Mao Zedong (1894-1976) and the Cuban Ernesto “Che” Guevara. (1928-1967).
Guerrilla warfare is generally considered to be a model of war of attrition, whose effects on the enemy army can be very effective in the right scenario, forcing them to waste their resources and dynamiting their morale in the face of a virtually invisible enemy.
A famous case of the latter was the bloody Vietnam War (1955-1975) in which the United States and its allies of the Republic of Vietnam (south) faced off against the army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (north). and, above all, against the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, a guerrilla movement also known as the Viet Cong.
The performance of the latter was decisive in rejecting the North American invasion, and its effects were so devastating on the morale of the enemy soldiers that after several years of war in the jungle, the Americans had no choice but to give ground and withdraw from the conflict.
Colombian guerrilla
Another of the best-known cases of guerrilla warfare in the world is Colombia. What we ordinarily refer to as the “Colombian guerrilla” is in fact a complex political, military and economic conflict, whose origins date back to the violent confrontation between the Colombian Liberal Party and the Conservative Party between 1925 and 1958 (known as “La Violencia”). “).
Starting in 1960, this internal Colombian conflict grew in dimensions and changed its actors, who from then on have been:
- The Colombian Army supported internationally by the great Western powers
- The guerrilla groups of the extreme left (such as the ELN, the FARC or the EPL), supported at the time by the Soviet Union, Cuba and later Venezuela.
- A set of far-right paramilitary organizations (such as the AAA or the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia).
As if that were not enough, numerous criminal groups dedicated to drug trafficking (cartels) and illegal mining later joined. There is, therefore, no single Colombian guerrilla.
The conflict has been bloody and prolonged, causing almost 9 million victims until 2020. It went through many stages of extreme violence (especially between 1988 and 2012), affecting the border regions of neighboring countries, especially Venezuela, whose government has maintained tense relations with Colombia for recent decades.
In 2012, however, peace talks between the government and the FARC-EP began in Havana, Cuba, and continued for four years until finally reaching an agreement for the disarmament and incorporation of the FARC to ordinary politics. The end of the conflict, however, still seems far away.
Guerrilla marketing
The term “guerrilla” is used in the field of marketing or marketing, to give name to the unconventional product promotion strategies.
The term guerrilla marketing emerged in the 1980s, created by Jay Conrad Levinson (1933-2013), and is still considered current because requires very little financial investment compared to traditional advertising campaigns, and appeals instead to creativity and imagination.
Its name comes from the proposition of street actions, graffiti, anonymous interventions without prior announcement. Passers-by may or may not participate in them, imitating in some way the usual practices of urban guerrillas, except that, instead of disseminating political content, it is done with the brand or product to be promoted.
The invention and popularization of the Internet has opened a lot of scope for guerrilla marketing techniques through the viralization of content and positioning on social networks, strategies that do not seem to emanate from the advertising company itself, but rather simply “emerge”, camouflaged among the sea of information that exists in our daily lives.
Continue with: Militia
References
- “Guerrilla” in the Dictionary of the language of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Guerrilla warfare” on Wikipedia.
- “Guerrillas in Latin America” on Wikipedia.
- “Guerrilla marketing” on Wikipedia.
- “Guerrilla” at Deutsche Welle (Germany).
- “In the jungle with the ELN, the last guerrilla in Latin America” (video) on AFP.
- “Guerrilla” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
