Becoming the Tupamaros

Description

In Becoming the Tupamaros, Lindsey Churchill explores an alternative narrative of US-Latin American relations by challenging long-held assumptions about the nature of revolutionary movements like the Uruguayan Tupamaros group. A violent and innovative organization, the Tupamaros demonstrated that Latin American guerrilla groups during the Cold War did more than take sides in a battle of Soviet and US ideologies. Rather, they digested information and techniques without discrimination, creating a homegrown and unique form of revolution.

Churchill examines the relationship between state repression and revolutionary resistance, the transnational connections between the Uruguayan Tupamaro revolutionaries and leftist groups in the US, and issues of gender and sexuality within these movements. Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver, for example, became symbols of resistance in both the United States and Uruguay. and while much of the Uruguayan left and many other revolutionary groups in Latin America focused on motherhood as inspiring women's politics, the Tupamaros disdained traditional constructions of femininity for female combatants. Ultimately, Becoming the Tupamaros revises our understanding of what makes a Movement truly revolutionary.

Sujets

• Latin American Studies
• Histoire
• Social movement
• History of the United States
• South America
• Latin America
• Anthropology
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826519467
• Langue: English

Extrait

Becoming the Tupamaros
BECOMING THE TUPAMAROS
Solidarity and Transnational Revolutionaries in Uruguay and the United States
Lindsey Churchill
Vanderbilt University Press Nashville
© 2014 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2014
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file
LC control number 2013007211
LC classification F2728.C535 2014
Dewey class number 989.506—dc23
ISBN 978-0-8265-1944-3 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1946-7 (ebook)
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. “Digging the Tupes”: The Unique Revolutionary Contributions of the Tupamaros
2. Supporting the “Other” America: Leftist Uruguayan Solidarity with US Radicals
3. Solidarity and Reciprocal Connections: Uruguayan and US Activists
4. “A Pistol in Her Hand”: Sexual Liberation and Gender in the Tupamaros and the Greater Uruguayan Left
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
Acknowledgments
RESEARCHING AND WRITING BECOMING the Tupamaros was an exciting and at times challenging process. I received the help of many wonderful people while writing this book.
Furthermore, the overseas and in country research I conducted for this project would not have been possible without outside support. Special thanks to the Graduate School at Florida State University for awarding me a research fellowship for the Spring and Summer semesters of 2009. This fellowship allowed me to conduct research in Uruguay and Argentina. I also was able to explore the US side of solidarity in both 2007 and 2008 because of the Mary Lily Research Grant from Duke University. Thanks especially to Kelly Wooten at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, for supporting my work.
My time as a Research Associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center at Mount Holyoke College in 2010–2011 allowed me to deepen this project by accessing the archives at Amherst College. At the Center I met many people who passionately supported this project. Thanks especially to Elizabeth (EB) Lehman and Laura Lovett for believing in my project enough to invite me to the FCWSRC. Megan Elias, Glenda Nieto-Cuebas, Japonica Saracino-Brown, you went out of the way to help me and showed an incredible amount of enthusiasm for my work. During this time I also got to know a wonderful community of scholars that included Karin Ekström, Amy Mittleman, Jennifer Hamilton, Johanna Hiitola, Minna Nikunen, and Ceyda Kuloğlu-Karsli. I will never forget these amazing, helpful, and fun cohorts!
I would also like to thank Robinson Herrera for his input and help concerning this project and its development.
A special thanks to Eli Bortz, my editor at Vanderbilt, for his unfaltering support of this manuscript.
Thanks to all of my new and wonderful colleagues at the University of Central Oklahoma for giving me the best job ever. I appreciate Jeff Plaks, Katrina Lacher, Patricia Loughlin, Tim Tillman, and Lindsey Osterman for going out of their way to make me feel included in this new community. Also, thank you to my students, many of whom have shown a great deal of enthusiasm for this project.
My family and friends have helped me immensely throughout this process. Thank you, Mom, Dad, and Nana for being the most loving and encouraging family imaginable. I honestly could not have done this without you. I appreciate the emotional support and encouragement offered to me throughout the years by Jessica Marion. Thanks also to Eileen O’Hara. Last but definitely not least, thank you Jeremy Holcombe for being there every step of the way.
Becoming the Tupamaros
Introduction
“Como el Uruguay no hay! There is nothing like Uruguay!”
ON MAY 29, 1970, around two o’clock in the morning, an assistant guard at a Uruguayan military training center in the capital city of Montevideo, Fernando Garin, inconspicuously removed his helmet and then quickly placed it back on his head. Though this small gesture seemed insignificant to Garin’s fellow guards, three men in a nearby car took notice and began to drive slowly down Washington Street. The car stopped in front of the gate of the military training center.
Two men wearing police uniforms emerged from the vehicle. Though the guards believed the men worked in law enforcement, in actuality, the “policemen” were soldiers in Uruguay’s national liberation army, el Movimiento de Liberación Nacional-Tupamaros (MLN-T), also known as the Tupamaros.
“We’re from police headquarters and need to see the officer on duty,” one of the Tupamaros commanded in a booming, authoritarian voice. The guard called for Garin, who pretended he didn’t know anyone in the group.
Garin walked to one side of the car and inspected the papers of the alleged police officers. He told the Tupamaros they had permission to enter the center, which housed around sixty people, mostly officers and sailors. Other Tupamaros, hiding in the darkness across the street, covertly witnessed this scene and waited for their chance to strike.
Indeed, the Tupamaros were known for their clandestine actions against the Uruguayan government and by 1970, committed new, violent actions nearly every day.
The hiding Tupamaros observed a soldier on the rooftop put down his rifle and adopt a more relaxed position. At the same time, a couple who appeared to be passionately in love walked down Washington Street. As they passed by the center’s high gray wall, one of the recently arrived Tupamaro “police officers” stopped the happy couple.
“Identification,” the Tupamaro “police officer” demanded. With nervous hands, the young man searched his pockets and the girl sifted through her purse.
“We don’t have any identification,” the young man stuttered. “We’re students, and we can prove it.”
“We’ll see about that,” the Tupamaro policemen said, and he ordered the two undercover Tupamaro students to go inside the building.
Meanwhile, Garin approached the rooftop guard and told him he had permission to leave for the remainder of the evening. The guard expressed suspicion about all of the late night activity. In response, Garin struck the guard in the stomach with his Colt .45 and confiscated his rifle. The Tupamaro policemen and the two students surrounded another guard who stood in front of the entrance gate to the center. From above, Garin pointed his newly acquired rifle at the guard.
After restraining the remaining outside guards, Garin changed into a police uniform and, along with the two fake police officer Tupamaros, entered the military base. The corporal inside the base called another officer on duty but failed to question the “police officers.” The corporal saw no need to set off the alarm that alerted the military men who slept in the center’s dormitories. The Tupamaros quickly overtook the officer and corporal on duty and tied them up. The Tupamaros then performed another costume change—they slipped into the ponchos worn by Uruguayan sailors. These types of disguises and costumes only fueled the mythology of the Tupamaros as hip and creative revolutionaries.
The group quietly allowed seventeen more awaiting Tupamaros into the building courtyard. The Tupamaros easily garnered control of an area where thirty sailors slept, the infirmary, the dining room, and the recruiting office. The surprised sailors were lined up in the central patio, most still in their sleepwear. Tensions ran high as it took nearly twenty minutes for a commando to arrive with keys to the cells inside the center. In spite of the delay, the Tupamaros successfully locked up the sailors without any overt violence from either side.
A truck entered through the center’s front gate and pulled up close to the building. The commandos emptied the navy’s arsenal and gathered up all available arms stored in the dormitories. The Tupamaros acquired three hundred rifles, two .30 caliber machine guns, 150 Colt .45 pistols, sixty thousand bullets, a cache of submachine guns, and six R-15 rifles, ostensibly used by the United States in Vietnam. While the Tupamaros loaded the arsenal into their truck, two sailors arrived at the entrance. They greeted the disguised Tupamaros and walked into the center. A Tupamaro awaited the sailors and trapped them as they entered the building. In this and other actions, the Tupamaros claimed to try to avoid gratuitous violence. In fact, the group prided itself on using violence only against specific targets or in self defense.
Around 3:30 a.m., the truck carried the arsenal and all but six Tupamaros from the center. One of the remaining Tupamaros removed the Uruguayan flag and in its place raised the flag of the Tupamaros. He took pictures of the jailed officers and sailors and the many revolutionary slogans that were sprayed across the center’s walls. Garin, the son of a textile union organizer, left a letter explaining that he had betrayed the Uruguayan military because he could no longer endure the oppression that the military inflicted upon labor unionists.
At 4:15 am, the remaining few Tupamaros vacated the building and drove away in a number of cars parked nearby for their convenience. Several hours passed before a group of navy officers finally managed to open the cell locks and alert the government about the Tupamaros’ latest mission. 1 In this action and others, the Tupamaros believed they were fulfilling their promise that “no one would be immune” to what they deemed “popular justice.” 2
This occupation of the Uruguayan Navy training center, described in the US leftist newsletter Liber