Régis Debray

Debray's book is a polemic against everyone who held that the time was never right for armed struggle. He read the Cuban experience this way: the people already know their oppression and need only the confidence that they can win. A small band winning with guerrilla tactics supplies that confidence. It becomes the pole the rest gathers around.

One consequence matters for this record: the movement no longer needs the vanguard Marxist-Leninist party. The revolutionary organisation grows out of the guerrilla column rather than directing it. That is a deep break with Leninism, made from inside the tradition. It licensed small groups to act without waiting for permission.

American radicals read it alongside Guevara, Mao’s little red book, Fanon and Robert F. Williams. Weatherman took the licence and not the rural setting.

Debray later dismissed the position as Leninism in a hurry and went on to a long career in French public life. The archive records the recantation because a doctrine's own author abandoning it is evidence, and because the people who acted on it did not get the chance to.