Los ejércitos libertadores de Sudamérica: teoría y práctica de la guerra revolucionaria

Abstract

This article raises the question of the nature of the liberating armies as political and military actors in the revolutionary process in South America. First, we will attempt an analysis of the international law and the law of war as it was understood during the period. In a second time, a brief comparative military history will be outlined in search of possible antecedents in other latitudes. Then, we will move on to the concrete study of how the liberating armies were conceived in South America, what were their characteristics and the principles that defined them, in order to contrast these principles with their effective practices in the field. We will thus state our main hypothesis: that there was a fundamental contradiction between the principles of the liberating war and the concrete conditions of its execution, which marked the character, scope and consequences of the revolutionary process in our region.