IntroductionIn 1985, Latin America surpassed Western Europe as the region with the most acts of international terrorism
against U.S. targets, and remained a prime venue of domestic and international terrorist incidents in 1986 and
1987. Largely responsible for the steadily increasing levels of anti-American and anti-state violence in Latin
America during the 1980s are at least two dozen Marxist-Leninist organizations known to receive support and
advice from Cuba.
Pro-Cuban groups currently pose serious national security threats to two Latin American countries in particular.
El Salvador and Colombia. In Colombia, many significant acts of anti-U.S. and anti-state terrorism also have
been sponsored by the cocaine trafficking mafia known as the Medellín Cartel, which has hired the services of
the Colombian guerrilla groups. Policymakers should be particularly concerned about these dual threats to
democratic governments in Latin America, as well as Cuban/Soviet-supported efforts to establish Marxist
regimes in Panama and Chile.
It is doubtful that the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) could have seized power in Nicaragua in
1979 without Cuba's extensive material, advisory and other support. The Sandinista victory vindicated the
Cuban-Soviet "political-military" model of revolution which conditions Cuban-Soviet support for so-called
"national liberation movements" on their progress in unifying in an alliance with the local pro-Soviet Communist
party, through which Cuban guidance could then be provided. Since 1979, the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua
has actively assisted Cuban efforts to support the extreme left in the region, and, therefore, policy-makers must
also be equally concerned about Nicaragua's subversive activities.
This paper will examine how and to what extent Cuba and Nicaragua have been supporting guerrilla warfare
and terrorism by Marxist-Leninist organizations in the hemisphere since 1979. It will focus on the guerrilla and
terrorist coordinating and support activities of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee's (PCC/CC)
America Department (DA), as well as the DA's counterpart organization in Nicaragua, the International
Relations Directorate (DRI). These agencies -supported by a network of other organizations in their respective
intelligence and security services- are responsible for conducting their governments' subversive programs in the
hemisphere. Various Cuban and Nicaraguan intelligence defectors have emphasized, moreover, that Cuba
controls the Nicaraguan intelligence and security apparatus and uses it as a front to obscure Havana's own
covert activities in the region.
Some of the Castroite groups discussed in this paper -such as those in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Honduras-
are primarily urban terrorist organizations, without any significant guerrilla forces engaging in rural insurgency.
These groups have not advanced sufficiently in their organizational development to wage a viable guerrilla
insurgency. Others -such as those in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia- may be categorized as primarily
guerrilla organizations that engage in skirmishes with military and security forces and exercise de facto control
over some territory in remote areas. Most of the Cuban-supported guerrilla groups, however, also
systematically perpetrated terrorism, such as kidnap/ransom operations, in their formative years and continue
using it selectively.
Castroite groups usually carry out actions consonant with Havana's strategic objectives and guidance, and the
dictates of Marxism-Leninism, i.e., targeting representatives of Western democratic governments (especially the
United States) and rightist dictatorships (namely Chile), and in solidarity with other Marxist-Leninist or
pro-Soviet revolutionary groups or regimes (such as Libya) in other regions. The solidarity factor helps to
explain why several Sandinista terrorists assisted the infamous hijacker Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in an unsuccessful attempt to hijack an Israeli airliner in London in 1970, and
why Colombian 19th of April (M-19) terrorists participated in the kidnapping of an Ecuadorean banker by an
Ecuadorean terrorist group in 1985. This ideological solidarity is currently being demonstrated in Colombia and
Panama, where Cubans, Nicaraguans, and members of foreign terrorist organizations are reportedly organizing
international brigades to engage in guerrilla warfare or terrorism.
Geez, and to think that I almost believed you because, well, your smarter than I be.
Want more?...........................................( )
