The urban guerrilla is an expert at blending in with the masses, so that he is never suspected of being anything other than another citizen of the city within which he lives.
The urban guerrilla wears the same clothes as the man in the street. Urban guerrillas operating in poor neighborhoods dress poorly and in working man's clothes, not in high fashion or modern dress. Similarly, the urban guerrilla dresses in the attire of the region within which he operates. if he is from the north, but operates in the south, he dresses as do the people in the south.
The urban guerrilla has a full time job or profession. Those formerly on parole or sought by the police must go underground. The urban guerrilla reveals his role to no one. It is his first duty to safeguard the revolutionary organization.
The urban guerrilla continuously observes everything. He must know everything, especially the movements and activities of the enemy. He should be intimately acquainted with the area within which he lives and operates, exploring a variety of escape routes and streets where movement may not be observed.
Yet the first and most fundamental characteristic of the urban guerrilla is that he engage in armed conflict. The fighting guerrilla can cling to a legitimate form of work or profession for only so long before he is identified and sought by the enemy. He is most likely to become known to the enemy during expropriation (i.e., stealing arms or money to finance the revolution). That is as clear as high noon. But it is impossible for the urban guerrilla to exist and fight without engaging first in expropriation of his weapons and finances from the enemy.
As the class struggle inevitably and necessarily sharpens, the armed struggle of the urban guerrilla points towards two essential objectives:
Clearly the armed struggle of the urban guerrilla has other objectives as well. But these must follow expropriation. Only through expropriation of the enemy's wealth and arms can the urban guerrilla kill policemen and all others dedicated to repression. This is accomplished by taking from the wealthy capitalists, the stooges of the foreigners, and the imperialists themselves.
One of the fundamental characteristics of the Brazilian Revolution is that it begins with the expropriation of wealth from the important bourgeois, the imperialists, and the stooges of the imperialists, not excluding the richest and most powerful commercial interests engaged in foreign trade. By expropriation from the enemies of the masses, the Brazilian Revolution strikes at the vital center through attacks on the banking complex. Thus the revolution strikes its most telling blows at the very nerve system of capitalism.
Brazilian urban guerrillas carry out bank robberies against such major capitalists as Moreira Sales and others, and against the foreign firms which finance the banks, as well as the companies owned by the imperialists, and the federal and state governments -- all of them targets of the expropriation policies of the revolution,
The fruits of expropriation provide the funds to learn and perfect urban guerrilla training and tactics, and to acquire new arms and transport them to rural areas, These same funds furnish the money to reinforce security, and to maintain our fighters on a daily basis, to support those who have been liberated from prison by armed force, and to aid those wounded or persecuted by the police. Additional funds are devoted to finance attacks to liberate comrades from prison, or to hide those threatened with police or military assassination.
Urban guerrillas make certain that the tremendous costs of the revolution are paid for by the agents of the dictatorship, the large capitalists, the imperialists, the stooges of the imperialists, and the state and federal government agencies. All are exploiters and oppressors of the masses.
Top government leaders, their subordinates, and the stooges of the North American imperialists must pay with their lives for their crimes against the Brazilian people.
Urban guerrilla revolutionary violence in Brazil includes executions, bombings, the capture of weapons, ammunition, and explosives, bank expropriation, and attacks on prisons to free comrades. The enemy has no doubt as to the true aim of the revolution. We remind them of the execution of Charles Chandler, the U.S. Army soldier who was actually a CIA spy and had come from the war in Vietnam to infiltrate the Brazilian student movement. This is a case in point. We remind them of the many military henchmen killed in bloody battles with urban guerrillas. All these point to the fact that the Brazilian masses are engaged in a full-scale revolutionary struggle that can be waged only by violence.
For this reason the urban guerrilla resorts to armed struggle, concentrating his activity on the actual extermination of all agents of repression. it explains why the urban guerrilla devotes twenty-four hours each day to expropriation from the exploiters of the masses.