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meras about the detacile-tuation in the country.minories of life, of falue.Dre and triends We reached the do-tachmenta camping grounds towa.d'sevening of the third day. That daywe had a hot meal. It was iny first"guerilla" dinner -soup, roast squir-rel (very tasty, I must say) and, ofcourse, coffee. I spent several dayswith the guerillas, learning to knowthese brave patriots, their habits,aspirations, ideals and plans.***The commander of the detach-ment-for understandable reasons Iomit his name-is a 23-year-old of-ficer who after graduating from theMilitary Academy, attended a Yan-"anti-guerilla warfare"training centre. His patriotic feelingmoved him to go over to the side ofthe people and devote himself heartand soul to the struggle for theirinterests. Before joining the gueril-las he was one of the leaders of theAlejandro de Leon November 13thMovement, so named in honour ofan armed uprising in November 1960of a group of democratically-mindedofficers against the venal YdigorasFuentes government, the uprisingwas suppressed and Alejandro deLeon, one of the insurgent officerswho continued the struggle, wasmurdered by the secret police agents.The detachment command is bothmilitaryscientific and lovingly re-spected and respected by his commandens in arms and by the people of the nearby village. Thesame people who venal militarypolice agents hate him intensely.It is more than a year now thatonly learned to read and write in theCondeca(on), at the art walas of life,occupational and political views andother related felanda. There aremen from 25 to 50. But whetherleader or peasant, CommunistParty, all of them are unitedardent desire to rid the coun-try of its age-old backwardness andby a monopoly domination.At detachment they have taken thename of Ildar Palacios, a popularstudent leader. Besides being a lead-er of the United Front of Guatema-Inn Students, Ibarra was a memberof the Communist youth organiza-tion and the Vanguard of PatrioticWorker Youth. Everywhere, in theuniversity, in street demonstrations,in clashes with the police, he infuseda revolutionary spirit in the studentmovement. One of the first civilians tojoin the guerilla forces, he was killedin one of the battles fought by theAlarto Planos detachment. Now thedetachment is name after him andthe members have joined withother troops to form a sin-gle unit-the Armed Rebel Forces.From the first the Edgar Ibarraguerillas completed their militaryoperations, they work among thepeasants in the neighbouring villages.On their tours, to win them overstate to them back and to teach readingand writing to whole families. Theyhave won over the total support ofthe peasants. While I was with theguerillas, one of them told me:"We based the operation on de-tailed information gathered by ourcontacts in the village over manydays and then carefully analyzed it.concerned the exact location of ourtargets, the approaches to the powerplant and to the village. We drew a de-tailed map of the locality and a![map of Guatemala, Escuintla, Honduras, and El Salvador with the Pacific Ocean on the left and Caribbean Sea on the right]Guatemala's forest trade is conducted,passes a few kilometres away fromit. The Atlant route, linking thecapital with these parts, also passesit. Just outside it are the dam andthe main installation of the RioHondo hydroelectric station, whichsupplies current to the capital, Zaca-pa and Chiquimula departments.Large army and police forces alwaysguard this vital zone. A military unitand a police detachment are per-manently quartered in Rio Hondo.Through conversations and perspec-tives, answers and to arrive at a clearassessment seeks to know the dis-content of the people in this part ofthe country. Nevertheless, it is here,in this zone that the guerilla move-ment is spreading.One of the guerilla commanderstold me about an operation the guerillashad carried out in Rio Hondo:"We based the operation on de-tailed information gathered by ourcontacts in the village over manydays and then carefully analyzed it.concerned the exact location of ourtargets, the approaches to the powerplant and to the village. We drew a de-tailed map of the locality and asame operation occurred in a house in itwill come in details.***Rio Hondo is a small populatedtown in Zacapa department, in thecountry. From west to east runsa street to enter Teculutan and El Progreso. From the parts on which the detach-ment has been in themembers come fromvarious parts of the country. Fromthe capital, from Escuintla and othercities, from the Verapaz, Santa Rosa,Zacapa and Izabal provinces. Theyare workers and peasants, studentsand craftsmen and intellectualsof different intellectual levels comeKIVE MENSAJE No. 476