The Rural Guerrilla vs. the Urban Guerrilla (Updated)

Traditionally, guerrilla insurgency theory has been essentialized into two schools of thought. The first, Guevarism is marked by its adherence to Che Guevara’s foco theory, which says that a revolutionary uprising can create the necessary social conditions for a successful socialist revolution. It is a radically vanguardist, derived from Marxist-Leninism and adapted for social, political, economic and geographic conditions of Latin America. The second, Maoism is more traditional and conservative in that it considers favorable conditions among the rural population to be a necessary prerequisite for staging a guerrilla insurrection(Also See Mao's Innovations in Popular Warfare. But both agree that the countryside is the only place where such an insurrection is to take place and victory decided. In their analysis the urban sphere is completely excluded as the site of legitimate, potentially successful guerrilla operations. Without this, such movements become simply “terrorists,” linguistically and conceptually separate from a tradition to which it rightfully belongs. Perhaps the most significant theorist in the urban guerrilla tradition is Abraham Guillén, a former fighter in the Spanish Civil War who moved to South America after escaping from one of Franco’s prison. He wrote extensively about the Tupamaros guerrillas of Uruguay, a movement he highlighted as providing a model used by other urban guerrilla movements on the continent in his essay “Problems of Revolutionary Strategy.” This essay has earned canonical status, as urban guerrilla groups throughout South America during the 1960’s and 1970’s were trained by Guillén and his manual. It develops a discourse on urban guerrilla strategy through an in-depth critique of revolutionary movements, both contemporary and historical. He draws on dozens of examples throughout the world, not just in Latin America, although this is where the bulk of his analysis is focused. This is compared to Guevara's “Guerrilla Warfare” in which his analysis is based entirely on his experience in the Sierra Maestra during the Cuban revolution. Because of the historically influential nature of Che and his writings, he has become almost synonymous with guerrilla insurgency. Criticisms of Che and his method are equated in many people's minds with the problematic nature of guerrilla warfare as a whole. As such, Guillén writings, particularly his critique of foquismo are a refreshing change from Guevara’s non-self-critical tome and a positive addition to the discourse of guerrilla warfare.
It is not immediately clear what distinguishes urban guerrilla movements from their rural counterparts, other than the fact that they operate in cities. As previously stated I hope to elucidate these characteristics using the framework outlined in the beginning of this paper as well as my own analytic insight. Despite their obvious and significant differences, the rural jungle and the so-called “urban jungle” serve the same purpose for the guerrilla, protection through concealment. Similar to rural guerrillas disappearing into the jungle after an attack on an urban center, the Tupamaros guerrillas of Uruguay retreated to the safety of Montevideo after their temporary occupation of Pando, a small town immediately outside the capital. Concealment, analogous to that which is provided by the density of vegetation in the mountains is found by utilizing the density of population and development in the urban environment. Additionally, the city provides anonymity due to the alienation and disassociation of people from each other that many argue is inherent in urban social relations. The concealing properties of both types of terrain allow the guerrilla to suddenly appear, strike and melt into their surroundings.
While some similarities can be found between the tactics and strategies of the two types of guerrillas, several major differences distinguish them. To begin with, the daily life of the urban guerrilla is far less involved with the insurgency than that of the rural. According to Abraham Guillén, the urban guerrilla should live separately and fight together with their comrades in arms . The rural guerrilla’s entire life is the insurgency; they live, eat, march, sleep and fight together, almost completely separated from society. But all types of guerrilla theory stress the importance of mobility and non-reliance on permanent terrain (in the country permanent bases, in the city safe houses or arm caches.
Additionally the nature and style of their violent actions are very distinct. To begin with, urban guerrilla groups usually contain far fewer active members than rural groups, as bombings and kidnappings require fewer troops. The rural guerrilla, while certainly assisted by acts of sabotage, fights very much like a conventional army in that their conflicts are primarily gun battles. While they are irregular forces and utilize certain tactics to gain an advantage over a technologically superior opponent, the rural guerrilla army is organized and behaves like a conventional army. The urban guerrilla tends to avoid gun battles if at all possible and prefers three main types of actions, ones that take full advantage of the urban environment and the benefits that it provides, all of which were utilized by the FLQ; armed robbery, kidnappings, and bombings. Armed robberies are obviously nothing new and no different in function than the supply raids of rural guerrillas. The urban guerrilla robs banks, gun stores, shooting ranges, and police and army barrack in order to gain both funds and munitions. Kidnappings are also sources of income for the urban guerrilla but also a potentially useful political tool. Some are merely acts of extortion while others, such as when a politician, member of the bourgeoisie, or their family member had the additional benefit of demonstrating the weakness of the government and implicitly the strength of the guerrilla, freeing political prisoners or supporting non-violent labor movements such as a unions on strike.
The urban guerrilla uses bombings for very much the same reason: to demonstrate the state’s lack of control, it's inability to maintain its monopoly on violence (as described by Weber and Foucault) and stop the bombing of civilians and infrastructure. Foucault sees politics and the states relationship to society as inherently violent, arguing that politics are an extension of war by other means , reformulating von Clausewitz’s famous adage . His theory of biopower argues that the modern state utilizes “an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of population .” This is a kind of violence is omnipresent and invisible to those being controlled. Additionally, the state uses its various forms of legitimized violence to maintain its monopoly on means of violent coercion, by suppressing popular and non-state violence, i.e. riots, crime, guerrilla insurgency, etc. The urban guerrilla challenges this monopoly, the cornerstone of legitimized rule and therefore challenges the legitimacy of the state's existence.