Foco
Guevara's theory of foco, known as foquismo (Spanish: [foˈkizmo]), was self-described as the application of Marxism-Leninism to Latin American conditions, and would later be further popularized by author Régis Debray.
The theory became especially popular in the New Left for its breaking with the strategy of incremental political change supported by the Soviet Union, while also encouraging the possibility of immediate revolution.
During two years, the poorly armed escopeteros, at times fewer than 200 men, won victories against Fulgencio Batista's army and police force, which numbered between 30,000 and 40,000 in strength.
These articles helped formalize his foco theory and a history of the Cuban Revolution that stressed the role of the rural guerrillas as the main revolutionary force.
[5] This idea of the lone rural guerrillas deciding the revolution became immediately popular among the rebel army while consolidating their new government, and became a driving force in Cuban politics as a nation-building myth.
Guevara also believed in fostering armed resistance not by concentrating one's forces in urban centers but rather through the accumulation of strength in mountainous and rural regions where the enemy had less presence.
The vanguard guerrilla was supposed to bolster the population's morale, not to take control of the state apparatus itself and this overthrow would occur without any external or foreign help.
The attempt failed after the government of Isabel Perón signed in February 1975 the secret presidential decree 261, which ordered the army to neutralize and/or annihilate the ERP.
Operativo Independencia gave power to the Argentine Armed Forces to "execute all military operations necessary for the effects of neutralizing or annihilating the action of subversive elements acting in the Province of Tucumán.
He also argued that these rural guerillas only supplied for easy victories by the reigning state power who could easily defeat isolated rebels in the countryside who lacked connections to military resources.
Guillén instead argued revolution was possible during dire political crisis, with a mass workers alliance, and taking place in urban centers where most modernized nations populations resided.
