Venezuelan Communist party, Tiader the title, "Reflexiones Sobre Nuestra Lucha Guerrillera"™ (Reflections on Our Guerrilla Struggle).
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Our war has been going on for some time and we can judge it now with more seriousness. At the beginning, and for a certain time, our attitude encountered lack of understanding, indifference and even hostility among vast sectors of the people whose active friend- | ship is indispensable to us. This conflict also occurred within our party. Naturally, on being called to account, no one ventured or would still venture to question the road which the Venezuelan Revolution is compelled to take.
The illusion that revolutionary changes can be won without using the revolutionary means needed to impose them on such an obstinate enemy, never won any advocates. They discussed other things. They doubted that it was the opportune time to reply with arms to the official violence, they doubted that conditions were ripe; and they brought up in particular whether we really had the capacity to resort to this road.
This was the atmosphere in which our war was born. It was not born as a war of the masses. It came from a decision of the vanguard and we know that not everyone dedicated himself with the energy and enthusiasm that a decision of this kind demands.
At the vime, in their audacity and steadfastness, those who saw most clearly posed the political problem as one of convincing the party and the people of the need for an armed struggle and of transforming our decision to fight into a mass movement. This political and ideological SEruge +o had to be backed with actions and combats.
The military problem was posed as the need to form commands and fighters, to create the organizations to conduct war, and particularly to maintain ourselves and to survive once guerrilla actions were initiated. This military struggle had to be based on political clarification, on struggle against illusions and discouragement, and on the development of the popular movement (development of popular experience and consciousness).
In general the balance sheet of these efforts is positive. Things turned out well. Our capacity to maintain ourselves on this road and to survive has been proved. The question as to whether or not revolutionary conditions exist can now be considered from the position that our road is a good one, certain to bring these conditions closer in a country where absolutely only force can give a positive outcome to the conditions when they arise. The Venezuelan Revolution is now a practical problem, ce .
If all this is correct, it must still be said that while these objectives have been achieved to a certain extent, they continue to be insufficient. To win the party and the people to the war has Deen accomplished. Now no revolutionist is satisfied with noting our capacity to survive or our steadfastness. Victory over encirclement cannot indefinitely be the lack of victory of the encirclement. Since the decision of the party and the people has been given and the capacity of the party and the people to struggle has been proved, it is now necessary to convince the party and the people of the need for victory. We cannot, and it is necessary to make this clear, reconcile an affirmation (which I believe in) that the guerrilla movement has gained a new dimension and that the war has risen to a higher level with the fact of the small advance in our combat capacity, with the backwardness and extreme limitation of our resources and equipment, with our extremely low technical level.
The problem is no longer one of making war. War is made with a duplicating machine and a rifle. The problem now is to'win the war, And the war is won with broadcasting sets, thousands o rifles and many other arms.
From the viewpoint of a guerrilla fighter, it is sufficient in conducting the fight (and surviving for a long time in it) to know a zone, possess minimum equipment, maintain friendly relations with the population of the zone and have a certain capacity for tactical decisions. From the military point of view, to win the war it is necessary to know many zones, possess maximum equipment, bring the population into the battle, and have a certain capacity for strategic decisions. . .
The guerrilla struggle can create the situation but it cannot resolve the situation. Only when the guerrilla forces are transformed into their opposite, an army, does the perspective of struggle become converted into a perspective of victory. If this
is not understood, the danger exists of the guerrilla struggle not only stagnating put subsiding.
There are those who say that the enemy has the arms. This formula holds for the process as a whole; but to get the arms away from the enemy, you need something to get them with. A number of peasants, more than all the combatants on this front, are ready to join up and there is neither arms nor equipment for them. Recently a revolutionary leader of the trade-union movement was warning about the danger of the vanguard becoming separated from the masses, of posing things that were incomprehensible to them, of standing too far above their present level of consciousness, I don't believe that this is a danger, still less the situation. On the contrary, the problem of the popular movement in Venezuela is that of a vanguard, insufficient and incapable of satisfying the wishes and will for struggle of the masses. I am not sure if I am correct in this, but I understand that we would have no problem in finding capable hands at short notice to receive a considerable amount of arms. The same situation holds for the unfulfilled need for cadres and ré= sources, etc.
I am.convinced that our struggle is proceeding from a special impulsion that will bring us.up tothe level of the conditions that we have created or helped to create... And I believe that the fundamental part of this impulsion cannot be given from the field. It has to be resolved at the leve? of ‘the national leadership. - Special measures of a political, military and strategic character, of equipment and cadres, are necessary that can only be taken at that level. Only by mobilizing all our resources can we move ahead.
There is much today that has “to change. We have to spur and shake uy the party and the other revolutionary forces more vigorously even than when we decided to take the road of armed struggle. If © we re-examine the distribution of cadres, the utilization of relations and conditions and the allotment of resources in the light of the necessity and possibility of victory, there is undoubtedly much that will have to be changed. And I hope that this will soon be done. . 7 oo,
INTERVIEW WITH COMANDANTE YONG SOSA
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