The You-Know-Whos - A History of the Uruguayan Tupamaros [Part 1]

"Bourgeois property is our natural lifeline, and we reserve the right to expropriate it without compensation. The revolution helps itself to what the privileged have in excess.”
-The Tupamaros

(A major "inspiration" for this article is Pablo Brum's execrable "The Robin Hood Guerrillas: The Epic Struggle of Uruguay's Tupamaros". Do not buy it.) 

As with my previous article on the FARC, I think it's helpful to start by setting the stage with an outline of the history and geography of Uruguay. And the geography forms a stark contrast to Colombia's rugged impenetrability: Uruguay is low-lying, has no dense jungles and no vast mountain ranges. It is predominantly flat or gently rolling pasture, with a total area of about 176,000km - a little larger than England and Wales, or about the same as Missouri. The eastern coast, lying against the Atlantic, is somewhat marshy, and the ground becomes more hilly toward the northern interior, where today it borders Brazil. The climate is moderate - rarely dipping below freezing in winter, and with an average summer high of about 30 Celsius. The overall picture is of a mild and agreeable climate without extremes of heat or cold - though the lack of natural barriers leaves the entire country vulnerable to strong winds and sudden storms rolling in off the Atlantic.

Uruguay has no oil or mineral resources to speak of. Its sole natural wealth resides in its pasture, which provides vast grazing land for livestock - primarily sheep and cows, which were first imported from Spain in the 17th century. In the absence of mineral wealth livestock and agriculture formed the basis of the entire Uruguayan economy for most of its history, and the country has been referred to as “a mine of meat and leather”.

The majority of the population are now, and always have been found in the capital and largest city, Montevideo, which predates the existence of Uruguay. It was founded in 1726 as a fortified town and harbour 180km to the east of Colonia del Sacramento (then a Portuguese colony) amidst colonial jostling between Spain and Portugal for control of the Rio de la Plata basin. Buenos Aires lies just across the Rio de la Plata at a distance of approximately 200km.

Uruguay's independence existence was secured as the result of the dissolution of the Spanish Empire in Latin America, after a complicated civil war involving Britain, Spain, Brazil, and the state that would become Argentina. The date of Uruguay’s independence was 1828, and its history from that date to the turn of the 20th century can best be seen through the lens of its two principle political actors: the Blanco (Conservative) Party and Colorado (Liberal) Party. “Blanco” and “Clorado” meaning “white” and the “red” after the colours of their respective flags, rather than any ideological affiliation. The Blancos have traditionally been supported by powerful rural landowners and business interests, and are socially conservative. The Colorados are typically considered Liberal and were the dominant political party for about a hundred years.

For the much of the 19th century Uruguay was marked with more or less violent clashes between these two parties, this conflict reached its apex in a major civil war known as a the Grande Guerre lasting from 1839 to 1851 during which Montevideo was besieged for 9 years while two rival governments each claimed sole authority over the nation. The intervention of Brazil on behalf of the Colorados eventually lead to their victory, and in an act of conciliation the Colorados agreed to a power-sharing agreement with the Blancos. The Colorados maintained popular political supremacy for most of the next century, challenged only occasionally by the Blancos politically. The remainder of the 19th century saw at least one more insurrection by supporters of the Blancos, and a military coup which lasted 12 years beginning in 1873, but these events are of comparatively minor importance to this history.

1899

The defining policy of Uruguay’s political-economic history is almost certainly “Batllismo” - the modernising, secularising, and social-democratic economic policy of President Batlle y Ordonez - first elected in 1899 and serving intermittently until 1915. His sophisticated, forward-thinking policies (widely believe to be influenced by his interest in French social philosopher Auguste Comte) instituted a minimum wage, eight-hour working day, state pensions, a government office for arbitration of labour disputes, guaranteed weekends, and government compensation for workplace accidents.

After 1904 Batlle further modernised the Uruguayan state by instituting a High Court of Justice, a state newspaper, a state fishery, free state schools, the Institute of Industrial Chemistry, and establishing government departments with dedicated ministers. He also nationalised the Bank of the Republic (BROU) in 1911, the Electricity infrastructure (1912), telegraph (1914), and trams and railways (1915). Incidentally in 1920 he killed, in a duel, a Blanco journalist who had insulted him.

In terms of foreign trade, Batlle favoured a protectionist system of tariffs that insulated his country’s nascent native industries from international competition while allowing foreign investment in areas where the economy was weak - particularly in heavy machinery.

Batlle’s influence persisted long after he left office and his programme for the modernisation was followed by his immediate successors of the Colorados party.

“Uruguay's novel economic policies bore fruit. Incomes rose on the strength of impressive export earnings. The value of exports doubled between 1900 and the onset of World War I, when beef exports, for example, reached 130,000 tons per year. Between 1926 and 1930, beef shipments continued to increase at a rapid rate, averaging 206,000 tons per year, a record that has not been equalled since then. During the same period, the Batlle y Ordóñez initiatives improved the lot of the worker, helped create a large middle class, and added to the productive capacity of the economy. The fact that all three developments--increased export earnings, improved conditions for labor, and successful state enterprises--occurred simultaneously helped Uruguayans to associate state intervention with prosperity.”
[source]

By 1930 Uruguay was the envy of Latin American nations and widely described as the “Switzerland of Latin America”.

Every single article on Uruguayan history echos this comparison with a tedious inevitability. I could not bring myself to break with tradition.

WW1 to 1950

The first World War served Uruguay’s economy fairly well. The output and export of canned meat and wool nearly doubled between 1900 and 1918 assisted by state investment in canning. Despite a blip in the Great Depression the Uruguayan economy recovered well with the extension of import tariffs. The immigration of about a hundred thousand people between 1920 and 1930 brought the population up to 1.8million and created a surplus of labour (:crying_marx:) which allowed the further industrialisation of Uruguay to proceed smoothly. The numbers of Uruguay’s population employed in industry jumped from 90,000 to 200,000 between 1938 and 1951, for example, and it’s around this time that Uruguay’s industrial textile industry matured.

At the outbreak of WW2 Uruguay was able to respond to the demands of both the American and British markets and enjoyed a balance of payments surplus of about $140million by 1945. This brought about a noticeable increase in the standard of living in Uruguay which Alain Larousse illustrates by a three-fold increase in car ownership over the period, and a nearly six-fold increase in the number of children attending secondary schools compared to pre-war conditions. One political commentator of the time remarked “como el Uruguay no hay” - There is nowhere like Uruguay.

By 1950 approximately half of Uruguay’s 2.2million people were employed by the state in some capacity, but problems loomed. In order to achieve the economic and social reforms he desired, Batlle had been forced to placate the Blancos (who enjoyed the support of rural Uruguay’s elite landowners and stockbreeders) by giving them a free hand in rural governance and exemptions from many of his progressive policies. Consequently the growth of rural agriculture and the cattle ranches, so critical to the wealth of the entire nation, had not kept pace with industrial development and the growth of the city. Alain Labrousse notes: “No technological modification had been effected for twenty years and production had not increased since 1930”.

With the slackening of international demand for meat and wool that resulted from the end of WW2 and the Korean War, cracks began to show.

Economic Crisis

The World Wars and the Korean War had allowed Uruguay’s independent rural stockbreeders to secure the most competitive prices for their products owing to the increased demand for meat and wool. But the profits realised by private landowners where generally not reinvested into stockbreeding. Available land was limited, and costly mechanisation or conversion of waste-ground into new pasture was not an attractive prospect given the relatively modest profits on offer, especially since the decline in demand had led to falling prices of meat and wool, while the industrial sector offered apparently easy money.

The US Library of Congress:

"With only minor modifications, ranchers continued to rely on the extensive production techniques used since the colonial period. Livestock production was therefore limited by the carrying capacity of the land. For many years, successful livestock producers had been able to expand their operations by simply purchasing or renting additional land, but after the tremendous expansion of both cattle ranching and sheep ranching during the early decades of the 1900s, this option was no longer available. Producers rejected the obvious alternative of increasing production levels by using more intensive techniques, such as fertilized pastures. According to a study published by the Economic Institute (Instituto de Economía) at the University of the Republic (also known as the University of Montevideo) in 1969, ranchers chose not to invest their profits in improved pastures because many more lucrative investments were available. Preferred investments included manufacturing (after World War II), urban real estate (during the 1950s), and overseas opportunities (leading to substantial capital flight during the 1960s)."

Alain Labrousse expands on these last points:

“[The crisis] was made even worse by the attitude of capitalist groups representing stockbreeders and exporters, who demanded compensation in the internal market for the decrease in their profits caused by the lowering of international prices. They obtained this compensation by successive and radical devaluations. They formed pressure groups dedicated to destroying the modus vivendi established by Batllism. This struggle to maintain and increase their profits led the stockbreeders to organise the smuggling of animals to Brazil, and to stockpile (particularly wool). It led the exporters to falsify the amounts and the quality of exported products, to avoid tax and to set up trust funds abroad. It led banks to stockpile shares, to play with the exchange rates and to engage in illegal financial operations.”

“To assure the protection of its interests, the stockbreeding class attempted to put pressures on the economy, and the accession to power of the Blanco party (1959-67) made this easier for them. They joined forces increasingly with the exporters, bankers, and the owners of the refrigeration plants. This attempt to appropriate a growing profit by means of state action was strongly opposed by the trade-union movement representing the interests of the masses, who refused to agree to be deprived of advantages won in the preceding decades."

Between 1961 and 1966 the cost of living in Uruguay increased by 60% per annum, and jumped by an unprecedented 136% in 1967. The state responded to demands for wage increases to meet rising living costs with inflationary measures (private enterprises responded by raising prices even further). The result, according to the Economic Institute was “a swelling of the inflationary wave caused by growing pressure brought to bear by the stockbreeders, exporters, and speculators”. The banks did particularly well - at the end of 1961 there were 61 separate central banks and 557 branch banks in Uruguay, equaling one bank for every 4,500 inhabitants - a world record. The explosive growth of private banks in Uruguay was also the point of infiltration for international finance capital, and the eventual loss of authority by the Bank of the Republic (BROU) over the Uruguayan economy.

So who was to blame? I know what you’re thinking: those filthy bourgeois landowning swine! Well you’re right! But it wasn’t just them. Could the two major political parties, Blanco and Colorados, propose a solution to the economic crisis? No. Because by this point the dominant cliques of these parties represented the rapacious economic interests that have just been described.

The majority of the Colorado party was in favour of Batllismo, lead by Luis Batlle Berres, nephew of Batlle (nepotism is rife in Uruguayan politics, even today). This Batlle brought about some reforms, but was deeply invested himself in the banking and speculative business that gradually (temporarily) cost the party the support of the population. The people of Uruguay turned desperately to the Blancos in 1958, and back to the Colorados in ‘66. The Constitution was blame for all the country’s problems, and in 1952 a collegiate government with nine Presidents was instituted, only to return to the single Presidential system in 1966 with Oscar Gevido. None of the economic policies instituted by either party had any positive impact. 

In the first six months of 1968 total production increased by 0.3% - the lowest rate then recorded). The cost of living, meanwhile, rose 100%, with the highest monthly increase in wags being 18%. The drop in real wages was, on average, 47%. Alain Labrousse reports that:

"Measures taken by the government to control the crisis were regarded as scandalous"

The Director of the Bank of the Republic alleged that a devaluation of the currency in 1968: "was the result of two men, Dr Jorge Batlle and Sr Guntin". The Director was forced to resign by the President shortly thereafter.

Larousse goes on:

"Dr Jorge Batlle was at that time "the leader of the 'List 15'  which constituted one of the strongest parilamentary supports of the President. Herrera Vegas reported that on the day before the devaluation these two men bought  90 million Argentine Pesos with Uruguayan pesos and transported by lorry 75 million Uruguayan pesos to Sao Paulo to buy cruzeiros. A Commission of Inquiry appointed by the Senate concluded:  "These notorious facts, confirmed by witnesses, convince us that the April devaluation was the result of a process set in motion and controlled by speculators"

But I've already jumped too far ahead. Time to step back.

1962

The Coordinator

The first meeting of radicals dedicated to overthrowing Uruguay’s government took place in 1962 admid economic recession and ineffective and corrupt government response, and against violent suppression of union marches and demonstrations. The secret group was called “The Coordinator” and as the name hints, its main role was to facilitate joint acts of resistance between ideologically distinct leftist groups. It brought together Anarchists, Maoists, Trots, Socialists, and leftists of every other stripe - Uruguay at that time was practically overflowing with far-left groups.

Members of The Coordinator typically (though not always) joined, not as individuals, but as cells composed entirely of members from their parent party or group. Cells applying for entry had to be able to display a history of radical direct action. Early meetings to discuss revolutionary theory and tactics were reportedly held in a house in Montevideo’s run down La Teja neighbourhood, and were apparently lively to the point of fistfights breaking out over ideological disagreements. An early member was Jose Mujica.

Meanwhile, in the rural north of Uruguay, a certain Raul Sendic was organising the most radical labour union in the country - the UTAA, composed of the desperately poor workers on the vast sugar cane plantations owned by the rural elites.

Raul Sendic

Sendic was himself raised in a small rural community in the department of Flores in central Uruguay in the 1920s and 1930s. His childhood was characterised by a self-reliance that he practiced for life. To listen to football on the radio he would have to charge its batteries by spinning the wheels of the family’s mill. He milked cows at 4am every morning, rode a horse to school, and later recalled being terrified by his first sight of a train.

His interest in politics came in his teens, and he founded a student newspaper named ‘Rebeldia’ while studyin law at Uruguay’s only university: Montevideo’s Univesidad de la Republica. He later joined the Socialist Party and reached a high position in its youth wing, but ideologically he was famously independent; a free thinker with his own interpretation of Marxism, and no love for the USSR. As an adult, Sendic became a solicitor, but quit his job one exam short of becoming a doctor of law, and moved to the rural north of Uruguay to work with the beer and tanning unions in the city of Paysandu, but Sendic really made his mark in the poorest and most remote part of Uruguay: Bella Union, right on the border with Brazil and Argentina in the very north of Uruguay.

In this poor area Sendic worked with a group of disorganised sugar cane workers, and helped them found the UTAA (Union de Trabajores Azucareros de Artigas, or Union of Artigas Sugar Cane Workers) in December of 1961. It was the smallest and most militant union in Uruguay, and quickly moved to occupations and strikes at various plantations which forced many of the owners (including some American companies) to concede better pay and conditions to the workers.

Sendic’s rural agitation was a new novelty for many urban leftists who had never considered the rural peasants to be numerous, educated, or radical enough for class struggle. Sendic, however, was thoroughly at home on the cane plantations, and got on well with the rural workers. In the 1960s the UTAA marched on Montevideo on more than one occasion, and it was at these times that they first encountered The Coordinator - Sendic already knew many of its members from his university days and time with the Socialist Party.

Sendic is universally described as silent and humble. He apparently spoke rarely, but with gravity and “had an almost animal-like ascendancy over others”. Tupamara Yessie Macchi recalled: “Sendic is one of the most austere people I have ever known.” However his quiet and unassuming exterior belied a man who had devoured vast quantities of Marxist literature. Future MLN-T leader Eleuterio Fernandez put it: “People confused his simple manner of dressing, or carrying himself, and of talking, with theoretical ignorance - when in fact Sendic was, among all of them, the greatest theoretician”. Quiet as a rule, but elegant and concise with his remarks, he had a unique charisma. Years later, when the Tupamaros went underground and the average member did not know the identities of his own companeros, there was one name that every Tupa knew: Raul Sendic.

March on the CSU 5.May.1962

Through 1962 and 1963 the UTAA marched on Montevideo more than once. Their primary demand being the expropriation of around 60,000 acres of uncultivated land owned and unused by absentee landlords that could be productively used by poor rural peasants. In response to a public condemnation of these marches by the CSU (Uruguayan Union Confederation - a union popularly believed to have been organised and controlled by business elites) the UTAA marched on CSU headquarters wielding sticks and stones. In the confrontation that followed shots were fired and a passing nursing student named Dora Lopez was killed. The CSU building was trashed and burned by the UTAA members. Sendic and UTAA sources asserted that the shots came from inside the CSU building. I can find nothing to contradict this, not can I find any suggestion that UTAA members at the march were carrying firearms.

On this event Pablo Blum’s interesting work mentions a “confusing […] exchange of gunfire” during which Ms Lopez was killed - implicating the UTAA as at least equally responsible, and leaving open the possibility that she was killed by UTAA gunfire. Yet the sources he cites (and Brum’s own footnote) for this very passage firmly assert that the only shots fired came from the CSU building: “Sendic and virtually all other UTAA participants claimed the shots were fired from the CSU.” But Brum cannot restrain himself: “[UTAA] failed to understand that those shots would never have been fired if they had not assaulted the place, which makes them responsible for the woman’s death in all cases”.

This charming final comment, and the assertion of innocence by the UTAA members is hidden in Brum’s endnotes. Invariably, one story is presented in his main text (phrased, or omitting information, so as to imply wrongdoing on the part of Leftits) while the dissenting accounts of the situation are confined to endnotes that he hopes nobody will bother looking at. Later we will see Brum completely failing to cite sources (that he evidently knows about) when the source in question jeopardises his narrative. Reader beware!

Marysa Gerassi’s “Uruguay’s Urban Guerrillas” (New Left Review, July-August 1970) speculates that the confrontation with the CSU was what convinced Sendic of the need for an armed component to his union:

“The cane workers and their organizers faced not only the indifference of the government but that of the leftist parties as well. Furthermore, they met with the violent opposition of a labour union, now extinct, the Confederation Sindical del Uruguay. The death of a passer-by during a confrontation between the CSU and the utaa exposed the increasing radicalization of trade unions and political groups. This incident is regarded as one of the probable direct antecedents of the Nueva Helvecia rifle 'expropriation' the following year.”

Other observers speculate that it was a plan for occupying northern rural estates that necessitated the procurement of arms. All sources agree, however, that it was around the middle of 1962 that Sendic hatched a plan along with Eleuterio to rob the Swiss Rifle Club at Nueva Helvecia - though this plan did not mature for about a year. It was around this time, however, that Sendic’s UTAA beings to establish cells within The Coordinator. This, combined with the plan to procure a cache of weapons marks a critical step towards the urban insurgency that was to rock Uruguay.

1963

Club de Tiro Suizo (Swiss Rifle Club), Nueva Helvecia, Colonia 31st July 1963

A group of people (described in newspapers at the time as “common delinquents”) robbed the Swiss Rifle Club at Nueva Helvecia - a town of 12,000, located approximated 120km west of Montevideo. The perpetrators were Raul Sendic, Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro, and an unknown number of others - very likely Coordinator members, possibly involving UTAA members as well.

By all accounts the robbery was a quiet night-time B&E that was completed without incident. The booty: 'twenty 1943-model Czech guns, five 1908 guns, two .22-bore rifles and one antique Martini gun’ (Labrousse) and a quantity of ammunition (sources differ: some say over 3,000 rounds, others suggest a small amount). Shortly thereafter the police investigation identified Raul Sendic as the leader of the raid and issued a warrant for his arrest. Sendic was eventually caught at Monte-Casero, Argentina on December 16th, but escaped and reportedly swam to Uruguay while his extradition was being negotiated. The rest of the culprits in the robbery were gradually tracked down and rounded up, but Sendic remained at large. Some friends suggested that he surrender and use his trial as a propaganda platform, and the Socialist Party even offered to put him forward as a candidate in upcoming legislative elections that would have conferred legal immunity. Sendic declined both propositions and elected to remain a fugitive.

The robbery of the gun club, and Sendic’s decision to go underground produced (or rather revealed) deep rifts in The Coordinator. Already an ideologically divided entity, the threat of being exposed publicly by police investigation into Sendic’s accomplices proved damaging to the organisation’s solidarity, and a number of members left. Meanwhile, Sendic fled north in disguise. Remaining Coordinator members established a support network to keep him hidden. By all accounts Sendic’s vagrant existence sleeping in barns or on the sofas of friends didn’t bother him in the slightest.

On Christmas Eve of 1963 twenty members of The Coordinator armed with knives and hammers hijacked a truck delivering food to a false address supplied by the hijackers themselves, and distributed the truck’s contents among the poor of Aparicio Saravia Boulevard - a working class residential street in Montevideo. The culprits called themselves “Hunger Commandos” internally, but identified themselves publicly as the “Junior Jose Artigas Unit” and left a note reading: 

“Revolutionaries share in the Christmas of the poor and call upon them to form committees in each district to fight against redundancy and rising prices.”

One participant, Efrain Martinez, recalled “Later the police came and beat up those who had taken the food, and their families”.

1964

1964 was an odd year of stumbles and transitions; it was the year that The Coordinator was finally dissolved. The ideological and doctrinal differences between cells proved too great, and a number of them embarked on unilateral actions which threatened the security of the entire organisation. Among these actions were at least three separated botched robberies that resulted in short prison terms for Julio Marenales and Jorge Manuera of the Socialist cell, and a number of members from UTAA’s cell. In the latter incident the UTAA members robbed a bank which occupied the ground floor of the building in which the fugitive Raul Sendic was hiding. Sendic was apparently aware of this beforehand, and while watching from the balcony he fired his gun in the air in excitement. Incredibly his presence went undetected by police.

On the 20th of April one of The Coordinator’s cells (I cannot find out which one for certain) somehow made off with half a ton of explosives from a munitions works of the National Cement Company. The rest of the year’s headline heists were of variable success.

On the 30th June Jose Mujica, at that point temporarily unaffiliated with the Coordinator, was arrested and later imprisoned after a failed robbery of the manager of the American-owned textile company SudAmTex. He claimed at his trial that the theft had been for personal gain. It was later asserted that Mujica claimed personal profit as his motive in order to avoid the harsher sentences that were given for political crimes. In any case Mujica had to endure a period of exclusion and ridicule among his comrades after his 8-month prison sentence was completed.

September proved interesting in that Regis Debray, at that time the most influential Marxist in Latin America and a personal friend of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, visited Montevideo and attended a meeting of The Coordinator to discuss revolutionary theory. Debray was already a favourite among the Uruguayan Left, as Brum’s interview with Efrain Martinez reveals: “We read Regis Debray up and down, from the side, vertically, horizontally, every which way. We read him totally and absolutely”. Debray seems to have had little confidence in Uruguay’s potential for revolution, however, as he thought it lacked the objective geographic conditions considered indispensable to success by Mao and Guevara: the rural impenetrability of jungle and mountain.

Jorge Torres, a Communist member of the Coordinator and deeply interested in developing revolutionary doctrine suitable to Uruguay’s unique geographical and social conditions, saw things differently. He is reported to have referred to Che Guevara as a “stupid burro” during this discussion. The Coordinator had simply appraised their national geography differently. They did not lack a jungle - it existed in the form of sprawling Montevideo; then home to 1.2 million people. Their camouflage would be business suits, the latest fashions and the anonymity of urban existence.

One core aspect of Che’s strategy and Debray’s theory was retained, however: the insistence on focalism - the active creation of the social conditions necessary for wide-spread revolution through the actions of a small revolutionary vanguard, rather than reliance on the mass party.

But by the time Mujica, Manera, Marenales et al were released from prison The Coordinator was no more. The divisions between Marxists, Maoists, Leninists, Trots and Anarchists had proved too great. Members of the more active and dedicated cells (especially the Socialists and UTAA) remained in contact, however, and discussed forming a new organisation that would be united, driven, and focused on urban revolution where The Coordinator had been ad-hoc and direction-less. This new group coalesced and went into action surprisingly quickly - a message left at the site of a bomb attack on the 8th of December 1964 heralded an early public appearance of the new group’s name: “Tupamaros”.

1965

Efrain Martinez Platero almost immediately took on an extremely sensitive and secretive task for the new group: the mapping of Montevideo’s sewers. During most of 1965 and 1966 Martinez and associates would enter the sewers every Friday night (sometimes carrying caged canaries to warn of dangerous gases, like miners) their faces masked with handkerchiefs, and would wade in sewage sometimes up to their chests, sometimes crawling on their bellies as they meticulously mapped and noted every door and junction, every manhole, storm-drain and obstacle of the sewer system. This would prove critical to the Tupamaros’ ghost-like ability to move around the city with impunity - in defiance of every checkpoints, roadblock and the largest police dragnets.

Hugo Fontana’s “La Piel del Otro: La Novela de Hector Amodio Perez” remarked that Efrain later became: “’Lord of the sewers’ the greatest expert in the entire country in how to move about them. He and his special squads were able to move across the city, in nearly direct lines, faster than any vehicle could aboveground.”. Some of the bases and way-stations that his team established in the sewers could eventually support guerrillas for weeks, while others were high and large enough for 20 people to play football matches in, complete with a soft sand floor. One was located directly beneath Montevideo’s Legislative Palace. The Tupamaros would even dig secret entrances directly from the sewers to the basements of their safehouses. They could eventually cross the entire city without ever setting foot outdoors. But all of this was still to come.

While Efrain was busy with this delicate work, other cells concerned themselves largely with two tasks: robbery and arson. The former to secure funds and weapons necessary for supporting the planned revolution, the latter as political point scoring, but these operations seem to have been fairly minor, and most of the year was spent in quiet preparation. Tupamaros graffiti that appeared around Montevideo at the time read simply: “Arm yourself and wait”.

1966

January - Convencion Tupamara

It was actually not until 1966 that the first formal meeting of about 50 members took place and at which the group adopted definite strategies for urban revolution and elected a leadership structure. Chosen leaders were Raul Sendic, Eleuterio Fernandez, and Tabare Rivero. Sendic and Fernandez were also tasked with creating the organisation’s internal documentation that outlined its aims, methods, and identity. Also officially adopted at this point was the name “Tupamaros”, and one of the group's earliest symbols - a five pointed star enclosing the letter "T".

The name itself was an old portmanteau with a venerable (though at that time little known) association with historical individuals and groups which had rebelled against the Spanish Empire. The obscurity of the name was thought a weakness by some, but Eleuterio Fernadez considered that the main point: "Let people go through the trouble of finding out".

In February, a group of men invaded the Federation of Independent Theatres, tied up the security guards, and marched out with 10 Mauser rifles and 18 military uniforms that had been lent by the military for a production. A message left at the scene read:

“The people confiscate these arms so that they may not be defiled. The land is still in the hands of five hundred families who are thieves and crooks. Article 383 is still in force. Workers are flogged and imprisoned simply because they want to keep their wages; the United States has carried off our gold and now it is infiltrating the Bank of the Republic.”

The General Election.

The 27th of November 1966 was the day of the Uruguayan General Election. The previous election in 1962 had brought the National Party to power amid widespread dissatisfaction with the struggling economy. But the Blancos had fared no better, and the Colorados were widely expected to be brought back to power. On the night of the election with the streets deserted as the people crowded into homes and bars to watch the results, fifteen immaculately dressed Tupas (men and women) robbed the downtown El Cazador arms shop. The affair came off flawlessly. Julio Marenales’ group walked away with “twenty long guns, about 50 hand guns and a lot of .22 ammo, as well as 7.65 ammo, knives, and lanterns. There were Remington rifles, Brnos, Spanish shotguns…” and, in a fortuitous finding: a number of police uniforms. (seriously though what the fuck is it with the Uruguayan police and army just handing their shit out to everybody? From the sounds of it the Tupas could’ve just walked up and asked for guns and uniforms if they had said they were putting on a school play.)

Anyway. The Colorados were returned to power under the Presidency of Oscar Diego Gestido - a military general, but apparently regarded with some optimism by many in Uruguay, including the Tupamaros. His Vice-President was a somewhat mysterious and little known man named Jorge Pacheo Areco (the author writes, foreshadowingly…)

The arms secured by the Tupas in the robbery of El Cazador were to be put into action a month later in a raid on the FUNSA tire manufacturer’s monthly cash deposit. This raid was meticulously planned and included the acquisition of a stolen truck with fake licence plates, and the addition of a concrete barrier in the rear to act as a shield and firing platform for the five guerrillas. Command and control for the raid was undertaken by a sixth guerrilla riding a motorcycle as a chase vehicle.

On the day of the robbery the driver of a passing police car identified the stolen van (which had not been repainted) driving to the FUNSA depot. In the chase that followed the van’s occupants opened fire on the police car with rifles and an Uzi, but to little effect. The Tupas eventually abandoned their vehicle in a small patch of waste-ground. Four of the occupants fled on foot and evaded capture but a fifth, 23 year old Carlos Flores, was found dead in the vehicle. Alain Labrousse’s “The Tupamaros” reported that within 24 hours the investigation led the police to discover that the old house used for Coordinator meetings and further that the Comunidad Juvenil Eduardo Pinilla (a youth club, of all things) was being used as a front for a “paramilitary training school”.

Over the next few days further investigation and documents seized from the youth club led the investigators to a private accountancy school harbouring a secret firing range and bomb-making laboratory, and then to a house which had been converted into a workshop for the mass production of forged official documents and identification papers. On the 27th of December the investigators raided a house in Montevideo’s slums. I will again quote Pablo Brum’s text as further evidence of his propensity to hide awkward pieces of the puzzle in his endnotes:

“Five days after the failed FUNSA raid Otero’s detective raid led to an additional MLN safe house. A single Tupamaro, Mario Robaina, was holed up there. Upon arriving, the police called on him to surrender. The commander, Antonio Silveira Regalado ‘kicked open the door and entered the house brandishing his .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun (…) but Comisario Regalado froze in astonishment when he pulled on the trigger of the Thompson but nothing happened’. In the confusion shots were fired and the policeman was gunned down and killed. During the ensuing shootout, Robaina committed suicide.”

Buried in the endnotes:

“According to the Tupamaros, and most importantly to Otero, “The bullet that killed my colleague was not fired from the weapons of the Tupamaros.”

All sources agree that the most likely scenario was that Regalado was killed by another police officer firing blindly through a closed door.

The state had belatedly realised that it was up against a large and well-organised seditious organisation with formidable manpower, material resources and technical expertise. But (despite some arrests) they did not as yet understand the nature of their enemy, and some of their early press briefings pointed toward a Peronist, far-right organisation linked to the Tacuara Nationalist Guerrillas that had been active in Argentina some time earlier. Documents recovered by the police gave them some hints that the Tupamaros were interested in the sewer system. What they didn’t know was that by this time the Tupas had the best map of Montevideo’s sewers in existence - even better than the city’s own blueprints.

The days that followed were extremely precarious for the Tupamaros. Many members dove underground - some sleeping in the sewers, others lived in wooden beach huts or with sympathetic friends. The entire country was talking about the mysterious Tupamaros who had vanished into thin air. 

The following year would be largely quiet for the Tupas - but they survived and learned from the near disaster, and the police trail eventually went cold.

USAID and OPS.

The Tupas spent most of 1967 gradually rebuilding and replacing their lost infrastructure; mainly using expropriated funds to purchase (via intermediaries) inexpensive vacant buildings and plots of land all over Montevideo where they built safe-houses and a network of secret garages where stolen vehicles could be repainted and refurbished - so as to avoid a repeat of the disaster of the previous year. One such base in the neighbourhood of Pajas Blancas was named “Marquetalia” after the autonomous community that served as the FARC’s first outpost before being overrun by the Colombian military in 1964. While the Tupas were quiet, however, much of importance was happening elsewhere.

President Gestido accepted an American offer in early ‘67 to send a number of Uruguayan police officers to the United States for a “special course” on anti-guerrilla tactics, and simultaneously initiated a massive manhunt for the fugitive MLN-T. Now seems as good a time as any to talk about the Uruguayan police and intelligence services, and the assistance they received from the United States.

Head of the Uruguayan police operation in those early days was Comisario Alejandro Otero - a man well-known in Uruguay, and reported by all sides in the conflict to be “smart, efficient, and humane”. Otero is one of the few government and police officials to emerge from the conflict without being implicated in torture or murder - even rough handling of prisoners seems to have been disallowed in Otero’s unit. Otero had been assigned to head a combined police and intelligence department tasked with rooting out anti-government subversives around 1965. As head of a department critical to the security of the Uruguayan government Otero was also a principle liaison with the United States representatives in Uruguay. The USA took a great interest in all goings-on in Latin America and regularly liaised with and “advised” almost all of the police, armed forces, and intelligence services in the region.

The principle United States agencies active in Uruguay were the United States Agency for International Development or “USAID” and the Office of Public Safety or “OPS” (a subdivision of USAID). Our friend Brum provides many helpful descriptions of OPS and USAID. I have chosen to quote just one of them, but it is representative of how Brum describes them throughout:

“OPS programs were focused on augmenting local police capabilities. One effort consisted of sending promising Uruguayan police officers to OPS academies in the United States and Panama. USAID also provided Uruguay with grant money to purchase advanced police equipment, like vehicles and radios. Last but not least, OPS officers stationed in Uruguay provided on-the-ground advisory, examining Uruguay’s capabilities and providing tailored assistance to mend gaps in the country’s efforts.”

But this is altogether too modest and mundane a description for my tastes. Commissioner Otero would later describe them somewhat differently:

“In a surprising interview given to a leading Brazilian newspaper in 1970, the former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otero, declared that US advisers, and in particular Dan Mitrione [of OPS], had instituted torture as a more routine measure; to the means of inflicting pain, they had added scientific refinement; and to that a psychology to create despair, such as playing a tape in the next room of women and children screaming and telling the prisoner that it was his family being tortured.4 "The violent methods which were beginning to be employed," said Otero, "caused an escalation in Tupamaro activity. Before then their attitude showed that they would use violence only as a last resort.

-Blum, William. ‘Killing Hope’

These (and other allegations repeated in another interview given to ‘Jornal do Brazil’ on 14 August 1970) led to Otero being removed from command of the investigation into the Tupamaros. In Brum’s account of these interviews he states simply that Otero merely “acknowledged police brutality”.

If the words of Otero are not enough we may also consider the opinion of John Stockwell, a 13 year veteran of the CIA, chief of the CIA’s Angola Task Force and a member of the US National Security Council, who resigned in 1976 and published the bestselling and deeply critical expose “In Search of Enemies” (for which he was sued by the CIA). He alleged in a speech given in 1986 that:

“We had the `public safety program' [OPS] going throughout Central and Latin America for 26 years, in which we taught them to break up subversion by interrogating people. Interrogation, including torture, the way the CIA taught it. Dan Metrione [sic], the famous exponent of these things, did 7 years in Brazil and 3 in Uruguay, teaching interrogation, teaching torture. He was supposed to be the master of the business, how to apply the right amount of pain, at just the right times, in order to get the response you want from the individual. They developed a wire. They gave them crank generators, with `U.S. AID' written on the side, so the people even knew where these things came from. They developed a wire that was strong enough to carry the current and fine enough to fit between the teeth, so you could put one wire between the teeth and the other one in or around the genitals and you could crank and submit the individual to the greatest amount of pain, supposedly, that the human body can register.”
-John Stockwell, transcript of a lecture given in 1987

Back to William Blum’s ‘Killing Hope’:

"Things got so bad in Mitrione's time [with OPS in Uruguay] that the Uruguayan Senate was compelled to undertake an investigation. After a five-month study, the commission concluded unanimously that torture in Uruguay had become a "normal, frequent and habitual occurrence", inflicted upon Tupamaros as well as others. Among the types of torture the commission's report made reference to were electric shocks to the genitals, electric needles under the fingernails, burning with cigarettes, the slow compression of the testicles, daily use of psychological torture ... "pregnant women were subjected to various brutalities and inhuman treatment" ... "certain women were imprisoned with their very young infants and subjected to the same treatment" ..

And of the “special course” given in the United States:

at least 16 Uruguayan police officers went through an eight-week course at CIA/OPS schools in Washington and Los Fresnos, Texas in the design, manufacture and employment of bombs and incendiary devices.13 The official OPS explanation for these courses was that policemen needed such training in order to deal with bombs placed by terrorists. There was, however, no instruction in destroying bombs, only in making them; moreover, on at least one reported occasion, the students were not policemen, but members of a private right-wing organization in Chile (see chapter on Chile). Another part of the curriculum which might also have proven to be of value to the Death Squad was the class on Assassination Weapons— "A discussion of various weapons which may be used by the assassin" is how OPS put it.14"


As we’ll see later on, some of the accusations levelled against OPS and particularly against Dan Mitrione are so vile and grotesque that they strain credulity, but even leaving aside the worst excesses that they were accused of there are widespread allegations of “lesser” torture that Pablo Brum does not mention, or dismisses outright. At the very least the accusations should be put before the public so that they may judge the evidence for themselves. Instead Brum goes to marvellous lengths to simply ignore or dismiss any accusations made against OPS. He is not able to entirely avoid the accusations levelled against Dan Mitrione, though. As we shall see.

December

On the 6th of December 1967 Uruguay’s President, Oscar Gestido, died. He had not made the positive impact that manay Uruguayans had hoped for. He was immediately succeeded by his little-known Vice President Jorge Pacheco. 

Within a week of taking office Pacheco banned the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation, the Epoca party, the Uruguayan Popular Action Party, and the Socilaist Party. He also shut down a number of leftists newspapers including ‘El Sol’ and ‘Epoca’, and censored the rest of the press. The justification for all of these acts was subversive activity. The suppressed political parties were accorded no right to protest, despite this right being explicitly provided by Uruguay’s constitution under articles 66 and 72. Pacheco was quickly assuming dictatorial power over his government. The Communists, too powerful to be politically suppressed, resisted with large scale strikes and demonstrations.

After a relatively quiet year for the Tupas disaster stuck them yet again at Christmas. A small cell was holed up in the seaside town of El Pinar. The cell included Eleuterio Fernandez, Efrain Martinez, and Ismael Bassini - one of the MLN’s finest doctors. In an unfortunate coincidence the local police, going door-to-door in search of some muggers, knocked at the Tupamaros’ safe house. Martinez, on answering, was quickly recognised as a fugitive, and in the shouting that followed Fernandez appeared, pistol in hand, and ordered the police to put their hands up. The police drew their own weapons, gunfire was exchanged at point blank range, and one of the policemen was shot in the chest. The second officer fled.

The Tupas’ doctor Bassini hurriedly patched up the wounded policeman as best he could. Martinez later explained:

“We assisted him, we gave him good care, we calmed him down, and said ‘Don’t worry because now we’re leaving, but your people are coming any minute - that’s why we’re leaving. You just rest easy here’. We assisted him, placed his head on a pillow, put him in covers, and gave him a bunch of stuff”.

The Tupas quickly fled to separate safehouses in order to maximise their chances of escape. They spent the Christmas of 1967 much as they had spent the Christmas of 1966 - on the run and in hiding. Fernandez, who had been shot in the leg in the gunfight, later recalled walking 25 kilometres around the outskirts of Montevideo carrying a backpack stuffed full of guns and explosives, and hounded by the sounds of helicopters and sirens.

The Tupas had somewhat better luck this time - the police lost their trail almost immediately. No arrests were made, and no further safehouses were compromised. The Tupas later released a statement to the press which was widely published despite censorship:

“We are not common delinquents; our struggle is not against police officers. Our struggle is against those who use armed institutions, as well as those who lead them, to repress the people while preserving their own privileged. […] We have started a struggle in which our lives are at stake. It will only end in victory or death. […] For us the hour of rebellion has come, and the hour of patience is past. The moment for action and for a commitment right here, right now, has arrived. The time for conversation, theoretical announcements of purpose, and promises that will never be kept, is over. We would not have dignity as Uruguayans, not dignity as Americans, not dignity for ourselves, if we did not listen to the dictates of conscience, which calls us day after day to the fight.”

1968

Despite their strongly worded statement at the end of ‘67, the Tupas were curiously quite for the first half of ‘68. President Pacheco doubled down on his repression of the press, and curtailed civil liberties in the middle of the year amid a vast wave of strikes organised by the Communist Party - many of which were violently broken up by state forces.

One very conspicuous culprit in these strike-breaking incidents was the wealthy President of the state-owned telecoms company UTE - Ulysses Pereira Reverbel. Pereira was a personal friend of Pacheco, and reportedly a nasty character with a murder in his past for which he had served only 6 months in prison, and who regularly asked Pacheco to use the military to break up strikes. He was alternately a socialite and a brute, oscillating between lavish parties and strikebreaking appearances. Like a really shit Batman.

When the Tupamaros returned, it was to apply their own brand of revolutionary justice to Pereira. Their plan was to kidnap the President of UTE and ransom him for concession to the striking workers.

The kidnapping went off easily. On the morning of the operation Julio Marenales, wearing a police uniform, approached Pereira as he was leaving for work. With the help of Jose Mujia (whom Marenales had been pretending to arrest moments earlier) he overwhelmed their victim, while Tupamaros lurking nearby swept in and subdued Pereira’s aides. The MLN’s account of “Operation Birdie” remarks “the ‘birdie’ remained quiet, inundating the scene with a penetrating perfume”.

Pereira was thrown in the back of a vehicle, but the victim’s secretary, a man named Niguel Rey, loyally tried to rescue his boss. Mujica shot Rey at point blank range in the shoulder, and the guerrillas made their drove off. Another of Pereira’s loyal assistants gave chase in his own vehicle, but was warned off by an MLN backup car which rammed him off the road and brandished weapons.

Pereira was held in a secret prison cell for a number of days, and interrogated about his past actions - including the murder that he had committed.

The kidnapping was headline news across Uruguay, and once more the mysterious Tupamaros were the talk of the nation. In its fury the government raided every building it could think of. In its attempt to raid Montevideo’s famously independent university the students violently clashed with police.

Not yet possessing the (frankly incredible) facilities that the MLN-T would later establish, they were unable to hold Pereia for long, and he was released after five days. But this incident served as a precedent for one of the Tupas’ signature tactics later on.

Around this time the Tupamaros anonymously published “Thirty Questions to a Tupamaro” in the Chilean review “Punto Final”. It formed an early official public statement of the aims and objectives of the movement. The document provides one of the best insights into the MLN-T. I will reproduce this (rather long) text in a separate post.

12 August 1968

By the middle of the year, student protests and clashes with police were becoming almost routine, not helped by police raids and searches of the university faculty. On the 12th, a protest group composed of communist students from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine marched from their campus toward Rivera Avenue. The march was quickly intercepted and blocked by police, but the students refused to be halted and a fight broke out - I’m unable to determine who initiated the confrontation. In the melee that followed a police office named Enrique Tegiachi opened fire into the mass of students, hitting one of them in the groin. The wounded student was taken to hospital with a severed femoral artery. Despite the efforts of doctors to save him he died on the 14th of August.

The student’s name was “Liber Acre” - an exact homonym for the Spanish word “liberarse” meaning “Free yourself”.

Montevideo went fucking berserk and descended into riots, strikes, and barricades.

Pablo Brum remarks:

“Acre’s cause was a classic example of how the Communists could take a single incident, carefully prune it of inconvenient facts, and turn it into a cause celebre”

Such stunningly shamelessness hypocrisy defies comprehension. Brum goes on to describe Acre as a “professional rioter” (read: Communist Party activist). He further remarka that the police killing of another two students (Susana Pintos, 27; and Hugo de los Santos, 20) and injuring of a further 40 only days later was “foolish”.

The Tupas, meanwhile, were still carefully and quietly building their strength. Some propaganda actions took place, including the bombing of the newspaper ‘Accion’ but such events had only a minor register in the general wave of riots and arsons. The Tupas main activity at this time was establishing separate operational cells and columns with responsibilities for specific geographic areas and types of actions. I am intending to omit a detailed breakdown of the organisational structure in the interests of keeping the story flowing, but it’s probably doable in a separate post. Leave a comment on my webzone if wanted.

1969

On the 1st of January, under the cover of New Year celebrations, a column of Tupas stormed the headquarters of the police unit tasked with capturing them and walked away with over 40 previously captured weapons.

On 16th February, acting on information from a disgruntled employee, the Tupamaros robbed (in broad daylight) the Monty Society loan company in Montevideo. The robbery was flawlessly conducted by handful of Tupas dressed as policemen. In addition to the $116,000 (in 2014 dollars) the guerrillas also took the Monty’s books on the advice of their informant. After two days in which they saw no mention of the incident in the press, the Tupamaros themselves revealed that they had carried out an action in which they took (and were examining) the Monty’s books.

It turned out that the managers and owners had not even informed the police.

On the 28th of the same month the Tupas revealed preliminary results of their own forensic investigation of the accounts: the Monty had been operating a massive and illegal foreign currency exchange operation implicating many Uruguayan VIPS. Shortly thereafter the Tupas (brilliantly) left the original books, and their detailed report, on the doorstep of Uruguay’s chief prosecutor tasked with financial crimes. The official investigation and trials that resulted saw numerous prominent Uruguayans sent to jail for financial crimes, and in the ensuing uproar Pacheco banned all non-banking firms from operating in the market.

The disgruntled informer, Lucia Topolansky, sacrificed her legal existence and joined The Tupamaros underground. Her sister was already a member.

This episode was typical of the Tupamaros’ “Armed Propaganda” phase. It was direct action designed to humiliate the government or financial elite. The operations were conducted with a minimum of violence that was never a primary goal, and was employed only as necessary. The inventiveness and audaciousness of these actions gave the Tupamaros a legendary reputation in Leftist societies of the time.

All actions at this time were calculated so as to arouse the sympathy and support of the people. Even the simple matter of stealing a car was seen as a potential platform for appealing to the public:

“While some guerrilleros drove off in the stolen car, others kept close to the civilian victim and strolled with them around the city for the duration of the operation. According to accounts from the time, ‘In those long walks there were people who, while held prisoner by a girl young enough to be their daughter, expressed their sympathy for the MLN or provided fatherly counsel to their kidnapper’. Taxi drivers were the most frequent victims. Brum reports that "Sometimes the Tupamaros got requests for a previous kidnapper to appear, in order to resume an interesting conversation from a previous hijacking of the same cab. Later, the Tupas returned the cars. In the case of taxi drivers, they were given an amount of money equivalent to a day’s work.”

Just four days after the Monty raid, the Tupas hit the country’s biggest casino - the San Rafael. The raid was undertaken by Column 20, lead by Sendic, and included Pedro Zabalza - a young revolutionary who had spent 9 months in Cuba training to take part in Che’s revolution in Bolivia, but Che’s death terminated his aspirations and this direction, and he drifted back to Uruguay. His training and natural inclinations made him a perfect fit for the MLN-T and the story goes that, when first applying to join the ranks of the shadowy organisation he was surprised to discover that his contact and sponsor was none other than his own younger brother Ricardo, who was already a member. Pedro had had no idea.

The raid on the casino was, again, executed without major incident. Around noon on the day of the raid a pair of “police men” approached the casino’s manager - in town on his lunchbreak, and holding the key to the safe - and quickly bundled into a truck. At the casino the two “police” Tupas, and a third dressed in a business suit, entered the premises unchallenged. Once inside they revealed their intentions, comforted a cleaning lady who fainted from fright, gently subdued the unresisting staff, and (using the manager’s safe key) walked out with tweleve million in 2014 dollars and a number of documents.

Flyers left at the scene, and given to patrons and staff, read:

“Bourgeois property is our natural lifeline, and we reserve the right to expropriate it without compensation. The revolution helps itself to what the privileged have in excess.”

On examining the seized documents the Tupas discovered that part of the stolen money had been intended to pay the staff’s tips and wages. True to their growing Robin Hood reputation they announced that they would return the portion of the funds intended to pay the staff. They would steal only from oligarchs.

MAY - Copa Libertadores

Pacheco’s authoritarianism got worse. The press was already heavily censored - wide publication of the Tupas’ messages had long been suppressed, but more recently even the printing of the word “Tupamaros” was censored. The newspapers and radio had resorted to referring to the rebels by a variety of pseudonyms including “The You-Know-Whos”. The Tupas lifted a solution to the problem of publicising their aims straight from Che Guevara’s guerrilla warfare nanual: “the most effective propaganda is that which is delivered orally by radio”, but the Tupamaros - always high achievers, implemented it spectacularly.

On the 15th of May, Nacional of Montevideo hosted Estudiantes de la Plata in the first leg of the Copa Libertadores final. Coverage and commentary was live on Radio Sarandi - by far Uruguay’s most popular radio station, with the commentary provided by national treasure Carlos Sole. For the Tupamaros it was the obvious choice. 60,000 people were crammed into the Estadio Centenario, even these fans had small radios pressed to their ears to hear Sole’s commentary, to say nothing of the masses who could not get to the stadium that were listening at home.

Towards the end of the first half a squad of twelve Tupamaros (including a radio technician) approached the station’s remote main transmitter. The facility was mostly automated, staffed only by caretaker who lived at the site with his family. In their weeks of meticulous planning the Tupas had befriended the unwitting caretaker and visited the site numerous times. On the day of the raid they were thoughtful enough to bring a toy to calm the caretaker’s young child. The caretaker gave no resistance and, after a tense few minutes of work, hundreds of thousands of listeners heard Sole’s voice cut out - to be replaced by the Tupamaros’ message:

“The message you are about to hear is from the National Liberation Movement (Tupamaros).

Uruguayans, today a worthless government restricts and deprives you. Do not lose hope.”

The tape lasted over five minutes during which the MLN-T denounced the repressive government, corrupt politicians, speculators, and the United States and IMF. The recording repeated six times.

By the third repeat large numbers of heavily armed police had surrounded the transmitter. A note pinned to the door warned that the facility was booby-trapped with explosives. The police, powerless and indecisive, simply waited as the tape rolled on for another twenty minutes. Finally, with desperate orders from headquarters to stop the transmission, they cut the electricity to the entire district and breached the transmitter. Inside they found a few fireworks. The Tupamaros were gone, and broadcast had repeated for over 40 minutes.

Some days later the Tupas sent the commentator, Sole, a message apologising for interrupting his broadcast. Sole’s son went on to become a Tupamaro.

End of Part 1