Only a handful of people or even one individual can use sabotage as a method for effecting great destruction. The urban guerrilla should begin with isolated incidents of sabotage. These are followed by an ever-increasing pattern of sabotage carried out by the masses.
Sabotage, to be effective, demands careful study, planning, and execution. Common forms of sabotage include the planting of mines, sticks of dynamite, or arson.
A handful of sand, a trickle of any kind of inflammable chemical, a screw removed, a short circuit, even bits of wood and iron, can cause irreparable damage.
The objective of sabotage is to damage, cripple, render useless, and destroy the following enemy points of vulnerability:
The task of the urban guerrilla is to threaten the national economy, particularly the economic and financial centers, such as the domestic and foreign commercial network, foreign exchange and banking systems, and tax collection systems. Public offices, governmental service centers, and government warehouses are easy targets for sabotage.
Nor will it be easy to prevent sabotage of agricultural and industrial production by the urban guerrilla, particularly if he uses his thorough knowledge of local conditions.
Industrial workers acting as urban guerrillas make excellent industrial saboteurs since they better than anyone else know the industry within which they work. Each knows his own factory, his own machine, or the one weak link in a production system most likely to disrupt the entire manufacturing operation. Industrial guerrillas can wreak much more havoc than can those with little or no knowledge of the industry they wish to cripple.
Sabotage of the enemy's transport and communication systems should begin with railroads. Care should be taken so that railroad passengers, especially regular commuters, are not harmed. Major sabotage objectives in this area should be freight trains, boxcars -- either moving or stationary -- and all military communications and transportation systems.
Wooden railway sleepers can be torn up, as well as rails. A tunnel can be blocked by explosives, and even one derailed railroad car can obstruct traffic, causing great damage. The derailment of gasoline tank cars can cause the enemy major damage. Considering the enormous weight and size of railroad equipment and rolling stock, effective destruction or sabotage can result in months of rebuilding and repairing. This also applies to the dynamiting of railway bridges.
Highways and roads can be obstructed by cutting trees, by abandoning vehicles, digging ditches, and blowing up bridges and safety barriers. Ships at anchor or in shipyards are easy prey to sabotage. So too are aircraft awaiting servicing while on the ground.
Telephone and telegraph lines can be systematically destroyed through destruction of poles, towers, and pylons.
It is important to sabotage transportation and communication lines now since at this stage of the Brazilian armed revolution it is critical that we interdict the enemy's movement of troops and munitions.
Oil pipelines, oil refineries, ammunition dumps, arsenals and armories, military bases, and military supply dumps become first-rate targets for sabotage. Vehicles, army trucks, and other military and police cars must be destroyed wherever they are found.
The urban guerrilla saboteur also pays attention to the centers for military and police repression, as well as the organizations supporting that repression.
The commercial firms and factories owned by North Americans should be subject to frequent sabotage. Sabotage operations conducted against the imperialists should surpass the total of all other sabotage operations combined.