Urban Guerrilla Warfare*

The kidnapping of ambassadors, the hijacking of aircraft and the bombing of company offices are likely to continue to be familiar hazards of life in the 1970s. Such incidents attract headlines, but they are only part of the repertoire of urban guerrilla warfare. The American bombings are the work of a lunatic fringe, not a case of terrorism used rationally as a political weapon. Urbanization in the world is often compared with the process of urban growth in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, but it differs from that earlier model in several vital ways. The irony is that the founding impetus of many urban guerrilla groups has come from young idealists: middle-class students and intellectuals who share a belief in a global revolution aimed primarily at the United States. The Tupamaros first signed their name to a manifesto protesting about the American involvement in Vietnam.