Revolution is a social phenomenon that depends on men, weapons, and resources. Weapons and resources already exist in our nation, and can be expropriated and used. This can be accomplished only by men. Without manpower, weapons and resources are of no value. Potential urban guerrillas must have the following attributes:
Men with the proper politico-revolutionary motivation may be found among the vast, clear-headed contingents of the population. These are the natural enemies of the military dictatorship and U.S. imperialist domination. Daily such men gravitate to the urban guerrilla movement. For this reason the reactionaries no longer announce that they have thwarted the revolution. Instead they suffer the painful experience of watching the revolution rise up again and again out of its own ashes.
The best trained and most experienced men dedicated to urban and rural guerrilla warfare constitute the backbone of the Brazilian Revolution. From this backbone will come the marrow of the revolutionary army of national liberation, rising up in guerrilla warfare.
Such men form the central nucleus. Not the bureaucrats and opportunists who hide within the organizational structure, nor the empty conferees, the clenched-fist authors of paper resolutions, but rather the men who fight. These are the men who from the very first have been determined and ready for anything. These are the men who personally participate in revolutionary combat, and who neither waver nor deceive.
This is the nucleus that must be indoctrinated and disciplined with a long-range strategic and tactical vision consistent with the application of Marxist-Leninist theory, and the modifications introduced by the Castro-Guevara experiences. All this is applied to conditions within Brazil. This is the nucleus that will lead the revolution through its guerrilla phase.
From this nucleus will come men and women with politico-military experience, one and indivisible, whose task will be to provide the future leadership after the revolutionary victory, forming a new Brazilian society.
The men and women selected for urban guerrilla warfare today include peasants who come to the city for jobs. They can be indoctrinated, and be prepared politically and technically to return to the countryside. The same applies to the industrial workers, students, intellectuals, and the priests. From these masses we build, starting with urban guerrilla warfare, and evolving into an armed alliance of the workers and peasants, aided by students, intellectuals, and priests.
Workers have an intimate knowledge of industry and perform best in an urban revolutionary climate. The urban guerrilla with industrial experience participates in the struggle by manufacturing weapons and explosives, engaging in sabotage, and in personally participating in tactical operations requiring the use of hand weapons, or in organizing strikes, and helping to achieve the partial paralysis of industries characterized by mass violence in factories, workshops, and other places of industrial employment.
The peasant is blessed with an extraordinary intuition and feeling for the land, good judgment in confronting the enemy, and the indispensable ability to communicate with even the poorest and most humble of the masses. The peasant is already participating in our struggle. It is he who touches the very core of guerrilla. He establishes centers of support in the countryside, hides fugitives, as well as weapons, supplies and ammunition, sows and harvests food for guerrilla use, acts as a guide through rural regions, and establishes a rural intelligence network.
Students are noted for being politically crude and coarse. They break all the taboos, Students who engage in urban guerrilla warfare, now joining us in great numbers, demonstrate a special talent for revolutionary violence. They need little time to develop high levels of political-technical-military skills. Students currently have plenty of free time on their hands because schools are closed and classes suspended. Many have been expelled by the dictatorship. So they devote their free time most advantageously to the cause of the revolution.
Intellectuals make up the vanguard of resistance to social oppression and injustice, and to the terrible inhumanity of the dictatorship of the "gorillas." Intellectuals sound the revolutionary call, and their influence on the masses is great. The urban guerrilla intellectual or artist brings fresh and modern ideas to the revolution.
The men of the church, that is to say, those ministers or priests and religious men of various hierarchies and persuasions, represent a sector that has a special ability to communicate with the masses, particularly with the workers, peasants, and the Brazilian women. The urban guerrilla priest serves as a vital ingredient in the ongoing Brazilian revolutionary struggle. He constitutes a powerful arm in the war against military oppression and North American imperialism.
As for the Brazilian woman, her participation in the revolutionary struggle, and particularly in urban guerrilla warfare, has been marked by an unsurpassed fighting spirit and tenacity. It is not by chance that so many women have been accused of participation in guerrilla operations against banks, mining quarries, and military bases. Many are now in prison, while others are fugitives from the police.
Urban guerrilla warfare is a school for guerrilla selection. it prepares and selects, at the same level of responsibility and efficiency, those men and women who share the same dangers: fighting, expropriating supplies, serving as messengers or runners, as drivers, sailors, or airplane pilots, obtaining secret information, or helping with propaganda, or with political indoctrination.