Weekly Summary

Approved for Release: 2023/03/28 C03154550
“SEGREI;
b3
payroll holdups, raids on gun shops, and attacks
on small police or military posts have provided
variou.s guerrilla groupswith more than enough
money and weapons for their operations. Kid-
napings for ransom have also proved richly re-
warding for guerrilla groups in Guatemala, Colom-
bia, and Uruguay. Demanding the release of polit-
ical prisoners in exchange for kidnaped diplomats
or other high-level political figures is another pop-
ular tactic of terrorist organizations.
Although Castro is undoubtedly aware that
his own diplomats serving abroad are vulnerable
to terrorist attacks, he has made no attempt to
renounce publicly the kidnaping or assassination
of foreign service officials. In fact, when 13 of the
15 prisoners released by Brazil in exchange for US
Ambassador Elbrick chose to travel to Cuba for
asylum, Castro was on hand at the airport and
saw to it that they got red carpet treatment upon
arrival. A warm welcome was also given to four of
the five prisoners freed in exchange for the Jap-
an‘ese consul general in Sao Paulo and to 19 of the
20 Dominicans freed in a trade for an attaché of
the US Embassy when both groups sought refuge
in Cuba.
The Cuban press has been outspoken on the
subject. A radio commentator in Havana, for ex-
ample, called the kidnaping of Ambassador El-
brick “the most brilliant action carried out re-
cently,” while Tricontinental of December 1968
characterized the assassination by pro-Castro re-
bels of US Ambassador Mein in Guatemala City as
“punishment well deserved.” Similarly, Verde
Olivo, the Cuban military weekly, reported the
assassination by the same rebel group of _two US
military officers in Guatemala in January 1968 as
being “the only language that the native oligarchs
and their patrons, the Yankee imperialists, under-
stand.”
The Cubans until C1969 had always under-
played the importance of urban terrorism in the
Special Report -
revolution of 1957-58. The guerrilla war in the
mountains had always dominated accounts of the
overthrow of Batista. Last August, however,
Pensamiento Critico published the text of a talk
given in closed session to Latin American journal-
ists in 1967 by Major Faustino Perez, the man
who directed Castro’s urban apparatus during the
war. Perez’ remarks were probably released be-
cause by 1969 the policy reassessment had indi-
cated that added importance was to be given to
urban terrorism in the revised revolutionary
theory. Perez’ historical review closely paralleled
the theses expounded by Fonseca Amador and
Marighella. His reason for employing terrorist
tactics is simple: urban terrorism creates a “situa-
tion of insecurity in the so-called economic
classes...who are going to feel that their base is
shaky and are themselves going to be thinking of
the necessity of change, the necessity that this
situation cannot continue....A state of general
opinion in the people favorable to change will be
created. In other words, even those who are not
revolutionaries realize that this cannot continue
and will assume an attitude favorable to change.”
RAW MATERIALS FOR REVOLUTION
Perez laid great stress, as did Marighella and
Fonseca Amador, on the participation of students
in the revolutionary process. Students have a de-
veloped political consciousness, a certain lack of
caution, and have the fitness of youth. The vio-
lence that students have precipitated throughout
both North and South America in the past few
years has apparently impressed Castro with re-
spect to revolutionary possibilities. In late 1969,
he ‘initiated plans to resurrect his old student-
front group, the Continental Organization of
Latin American Students (OCLAE), which was
formed in Havana in 1966 to act as a support
apparatus for the Guevara adventure in Bolivia.
OCLAE has lain dormant since Guevara’s failure,
but last December its permanent secretariat in-
vited to Havana a select group of student leaders
' 8 May 1970
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Approved for Release: 2023/03/28 C03154550