Marc Becker's Home Page

Teaching


Research
Current Research
Books
Articles
awards
papers
lectures

Interests
Vita


Book Reviews 
Churchill, Lindsey. Becoming the Tupamaros: solidarity and transnational revolutionaries in Uruguay and the United States. Vanderbilt, 2014. 206p bibl index afp ISBN 9780826519443, $55.00; ISBN 9780826519467 ebook, contact publisher for price

The Uruguayan Tupamaros have long enjoyed an image as a successful, egalitarian, and creative urban guerrilla group. This image emerges in no small part from Costa-Gavras's 1972 film State of Siege, which depicts the kidnapping and execution of the US foreign agent Dan Mitrione, and the austere lifestyle of former guerrilla leader and current president José "Pepe" Mujica. Basing her book primarily on published sources, historian Churchill (Univ. of Central Oklahoma) provides a compelling analysis of the Tupamaros' role in transnational solidarity networks, as well as gender dynamics within the guerrilla group. The Tupamaros became an important symbolic model for the Black Panthers in the US, even as they did little to advance the struggles of Afro-descendants in Uruguay. The Tupamaros also gained a good deal of international support due to their Robin Hood tactics and their flexible ideology, which combined socialism, anarchism, and nationalism. Nevertheless, the Tupamaros also practiced traditional gender roles typical of a patriarchal Left from that period. Their ideological flexibility, however, allowed them to move beyond these positions, and that helped ensure their current electoral success. A useful study for understanding early 1970s radical movements. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.

--M. Becker, Truman State University

| Marc Becker's Home Page | marc@yachana.org |