ABSTRACT
Urban guerrilla warfare in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil had national peculiarities but the principal factors involved in its emergence were remarkably uniform from country to country. Urban guerrilla warfare in Latin America has been undeniably effective but its effects have been other than those sought by the insurgents. To the outside world, Latin American politics have long conjured up images of political violence, instability and military intervention. The defeats of urban guerrillas in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil, and the experience of repressive military rule which followed, eventually led the Latin American Left to reassess its strategic options. Brazil's urban guerrillas foundered so rapidly because they embarked upon a high-casualty strategy at a time when mass movements had been subdued and when the military regime was at its strongest and most confident. Legal forms of free political expression had been suppressed by military rulers in Brazil and Argentina, while in Uruguay civil liberties were curbed progressively by civilian governments from 1965.
