External resource mobilization and successful insurgency in Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador, 1959--1992

This study investigates the importance of external resource mobilization to the success of revolutionary warfare in Latin America. Recent scholarship on Latin American guerrilla movements since 1959 acknowledges military strength was a necessary condition for successful insurgency in Latin America but denies that external resource mobilization played an important part. This study challenges this assertion by conducting an in-depth examination of the post-1945 insurgencies in Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the most successful insurgencies to date in Latin America. Relying as much as possible on primary and secondary sources written by the insurgents themselves, it seeks to answer three questions: (1) whether or not the leadership believed external resources were important, (2) whether the rough ratio of external to internally mobilized resources was significant, and, (3) whether or not resources made a difference on the battlefield. Furthermore, to provide context it conducts a comparative survey of pre-Cuban insurrections from 1899 to 1950, and the failed insurgencies between 1959 and 1979. The study finds that in Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador, external resources made significant contributions to the insurgent's military strength. Furthermore, it finds that one of the key reasons for failure of insurgencies between the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions was the lack of adequate resources. The study concludes that external resource mobilization was much more important to Latin American insurgents, than heretofore conceded.