GREAT GUERRILLA WARRIORS

by Carleton Beals ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 1969

Carleton Beals parlays his long-standing concern for the miserable revolutionary conditions in Latin America (and most of the Third World) into a more fashionable celebration of the guerrilla heroes who made and are making the revolutions. Che is of course the star of this decade, but Beals recounts with drama and approbation the causes and crusades of other guerrilla greats of modern history: Aguinaldo in the Philippines, Villa and Zapata in Mexico (though Villa wove an uncertain path between sheer banditry and revolutionary heroism), Sandino in Nicaragua, Abdel Krim in Morocco, Tito in Yugoslavia, the African guerrillas, and the more familiar radical trinity of Ho, Fidel, and Mao. An angry book, this tends to substitute rhetoric for rational persuasion and offers few in-depth analyses of Third World problems, fewer concrete alternatives to Waging warfare, and no specific suggestions for a more positive American approach to Latin America and the rest of the underdeveloped world. Beals prefers to rail against the negative, the corrupt and disastrous imperialist policies of past and present, and to prophesy the millenial agonies of a new birth (without squarely facing the moral issues of ""freedom by any means""). Although urban pseudo-guerrillas are sprouting in the United States, there still exists a hope and possibility for nonviolent change there ""that unfortunately no longer exists for most of the so-called Free World or Third World."" Not likely to convince those who need convincing, but a welcome rendering of guerrilla lore for the left-leaning.

Pub Date: Feb. 9, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Prentice-Hall

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION