The tortuous, violent path of the Latin American Left over the past quarter of a century has broken new ground in the past decade. The most significant change has occurred within the Marxist-Leninist camp itself and has grown largely from a dramatic shift in how Cuba and the Soviet Union perceived the opportunities, means, and tactics for their allies to gain power in the Western hemisphere.
This reassessment resulted in a pronounced decline in ideological dogmatism in both the traditional Castroite groups and the pro-Soviet communist parties; in increased coordination and cooperation among them, and between them and other elements of the revolutionary Left, including Trotskyites and Maoists; and in continuous efforts to minimize the costs of subversion.
Less dogmatism permitted the communist parties greater flexibility, allowing them to participate in revolutionary violence, something few supported before. The Castroites, in turn, stopped attacking the established parties, often accepting them as intermediaries in the channeling of Soviet bloc funds.
The involvement of Third World radical regimes or groups (Libya, Iraq, Iran, or the PLO) on behalf of Latin American revolutionaries has further offset the costs of subversion, mostly through their financial support. Money supplies were augmented through the entrepreneurial links between insurgents in certain countries (Colombia, Panama, and Guatemala) and the fabulously profitable drug trafficking to the United States.
Essential to this refined strategy in Nicaragua's Sandinista regime with its ties to international terrorism that long antedate its rise to power, its advantageous mainland location, and its enormously effective network of sympathizers in the United States, Western Europe, and the Third World.
The Nicaraguan civil war ten years ago - the struggle against Somoza between 1977-1979 - provided the first opportunity for guerrillas from throughout the Americas to operate together. Thus, Argentine Montoneros and the Salvadoran FARN group provided the Sandinistas with financial support as well as fighters. Revolutionaries from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Panama fought alongside the FSLN; and even non-Latin American groups, like the Basque ETA and the PLO, were directly involved.
Guerrilla Infrastructure
By the beginning of the 1980s the hitherto divided and mutually hostile guerrilla groups in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador had followed the pattern established by the three FSLN factions in 1979 (at Cuba's prodding) and established umbrella organizations at the national level. These organizations included some non-Leninst political parties as well as the insurgent groups.
Another new pattern developed almost simultaneously - the creation of small guerrilla-terrorist groups in one country by older and larger such groups in another country. At least three of the Honduran Marxist-Leninist organizations operating sporadically since 1983 were the direct creation of either the FSLN (the Cinchoneros) or of the various groups from El Salvador (the Morazanist Front for the Liberation of Honduras and the Revolutionary Party
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