Fifth Congress of the
Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores
Founding Resolution of the Revolutionary Army of the People
Whereas:
In the process of revolutionary war that has begun in our country, our party has begun to fight with the aim of disrupting the armed forces of the regime in order to create the conditions for the victorious insurrection of the proletariat and the popular sectors.
The armed forces of the regime can only be defeated by confronting them with a revolutionary army that by its very nature gives the revolutionary military forces a character distinct from that of the party, as the personnel involved must be recruited as much from outside as from inside the party.
Constituting a revolutionary army under the present conditions (our party’s weakness, the nonexistence of a workers state on our borders, the absence of large armed forces) will be a prolonged political, social, technical and military process that will unfold “beginning on a small scale and growing to a large one.”
For a whole long period our revolutionary war will assume the forms of urban and rural guerrilla warfare, extending to different cities and zones in the countryside with local operational radiuses. On the basis of extending these radiuses politically and militarily, it will be able to move from a war of movement in the countryside to building important strategic units in the cities.
The Armed Forces will have a working-class and popular character and will be under the firm leadership of the party, constantly maintaining the functioning of its cells and the political and ideological education of its cadres.
The Vietnamese experience recommends the principle of “leadership by the executive committee of the party and the responsibility for the unit chiefs. This guarantees that the principle of collective leadership will be applied and moreover, draws on the knowledge of the masses, further strengthens unity and internal structure, coordinates the different aspects of work in the army, achieving unity of action and thought.” (Giap)
The other basic principle of revolutionary war that our military force should apply is carrying out military operations in accordance with a political mass line, that is, actions aimed at mobilizing the masses and gaining their direct or indirect participation in the war.
The Fifth Congress of the PRT resolves:
1. To found the Revolutionary Army of the People [ERPI and give it a banner.
2. To consider the Revolutionary Army of the People and its different armed detachments as the party’s military instruments for carrying out its political line in the current stage of the class struggle and as the embryo of the future revolutionary workers and people’s army.
3. To build a Revolutionary Army of the People involving all elements prepared to fight against the military dictatorship and imperialism (and who accept the army’s program), making a very careful and necessary selection of recruits, based on the criteria of security, determination, courage, morale and proletarian hatred of the dictatorship.
4. Recruitment to units of the Revolutionary Army of the People will be supervised by party cells, party leaders, military leaders and political commissars, who will take charge of guarding against any deterioration of morale, discipline, and social composition of the units, or any weakening of the leading role of the party.
v5. During the first stage of the revolutionary war, the ERP will be composed of the following forces: (a) Urban units represented by armed commandos organized by the party and by armed commandos outside the party who accept the discipline of the ERP. In the latter a leading party cell must be immediately formed. (b) Suburban units formed in the same way. (c) Rural guerrilla units.6. The primary military task of the base cells of the party will be to assure that a mass political line is carried out by the ERP. They will help to achieve this by maintaining close contact with the army, transmitting information and relaying the spirit of the masses to the army in order to enable it to mobilize the masses by armed propaganda operations. They will also carry out resistance and intelligence: (a) In line with the needs and possibilities of their mass front; and (b) as auxiliaries of the ERP. In this latter case they will receive directives and orientation from the branch and section executive committees or from the executive committee of the party.
7. The Central Committee and executive committee of the party will make up the collective leadership conducting the war. It will appoint the national military secretary, the military leaders of the various units, the respective political commissioners and the military committee of the party. In the countryside, these military leaders will make up the branch and section executive committees of the party. On all levels the cells of the party that are in the army will assure that the military directives coming from the Central Committee and the executive committee are steadfastly and correctly applied.
8. Groups and individuals from outside the party who join the ERP will do so under the condition that they accept the party’s military leadership and the political commissioners it designates.
9. Intermediate organizations. In addition, the People’s Armed Commandos form part of the ERP: These are the organizations that the party and the Revolutionary Army [ERPJ create from the active resistance of the masses. Their actions continue to increase from a small to a large scale with a minimal level of organization. They are organized to function with the maximum initiative and with the following objectives: To defend the immediate struggle of the masses, to give impetus to the class struggle, and to provide tactical support as well as a means of weeding out potential recruits to the Revolutionary Army [ERP]. Forming such units is of the greatest importance, because this will introduce armed struggle into the masses.