The unexpected ease with which the Cuban revolutionaries overthrew Batista led them to conclude that the same thing should and could be done in other countries in Latin America. Castro told the crowds gathered at a rally in Havana in 1959 that the time had come to liberate the hemisphere:

Che, in particular, became a strong proponent for exporting armed revolution to other parts of the hemisphere. Influenced by Mao’s writings from three decades earlier, he and fellow Cuban leaders believed that other revolutionaries could simply follow a straightforward yet crucial textbook that could teach them how to become successful revolutionaries. In fact, by 1960 Che had authored a tome entitled Guerrilla Warfare that became requisite reading for budding revolutionaries across the hemisphere.

Che believed that “a hard core of thirty to fifty men [was] enough to initiate armed revolution in any Latin American country.” Based on the experience in Cuba, he highlighted three strategies for a successful revolutionary war. First, Che contended that this small band of committed fighters could take revolution into their own hands, providing the spark for mass revolt rather than waiting for another precipitating event to occur. He also posited that popular forces could win against a regular army. Guerrilla warfare, waged with the support of civilians, could bring a conventional army to its knees by wearing down its ability and its resolve to fight. Third, he maintained that in the Latin American context, the best place to “center” subversive activity was in the countryside, where, due to often horrible working conditions and a skewed distribution of land, “class contradictions are at their most violent.” These three tenets constituted the heart of foco theory.