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With a vigorous propaganda campaign, Belle Glade and other towns like it would quickly become sympathetic to our cause. Residents could send our focos cash, small arms, and other basic necessities, along with information on enemy movements. Nearby Seminole reservations like Big Cyprus would be particularly intrigued by the struggle, and might even become a primary source of additional recruits.

However, the most important task during this phase will be for the people’s army to cement an alliance with Cuba. Excluding the DPRK, Cuba is the last great Communist state, with a noble history of proletarian internationalism. When Angola needed his assistance, Fidel Castro answered the call. His brother Raul will be eager to answer ours. Cuba could provide the people’s army with invaluable resources, including tanks, missiles, heavy weaponry, fighter jets, and military advisors. They could also help our forces secure aid from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and the DPRK. Once these arrangements have been made, it will be crucial for our forces to gain a strategic foothold in Everglades City. This town is located on the gulf coast and would be a perfect location for Cuban supply ships to land at. After this shipping route is secured, the people’s war will escalate to the second stage: strategic stalemate.

“Take small and medium cities and extensive rural areas first; take big cities later.” —Mao Zedong

As its resources improve, the people’s army becomes increasingly ready to fuse the focos together to form larger units, engaging with the enemy directly to seize actual territory. As Mao explains, this process must begin with the capture of minor urban centers. In Florida, this would include entail first taking control of all the land in the Everglades, and then seizing all towns that are south of Tampa and east of Miami. This advancement must be rapid; because at the same time the bourgeoisie will erupt in terror and attempt to consolidate its forces in preparation for the final showdown.

There is a reason for the Everglades’ strategic value that has not yet been discussed: it is close in proximity to the Greater Miami Area, a sprawling urban metropolis. As the people’s army expands out of the Everglades, it will be in an excellent position to encircle this region, which is home to six million people. As it pushes closer and closer to the Miami area, the people’s war will transition to its final stage: the strategic offensive. City and countryside will be brought into tremendous dialectical tension. U.S. military forces will withdraw to Miami in a desperate effort to defend their last important stronghold in the Sunshine State. They will fight tooth and claw to protect it from us.

To counter this effort, we will use a very new set of tactics. For the first time, the people’s army will commence mass struggles in the cities, and not just sparsely populated locations. It should not be difficult for our army to mobilize Miami residents. Many of them are people of color who are already familiar with Communism. We will call a general strike, and thousands of workers will take to the streets to support the revolution. At the same time, we will infiltrate and fraternize with the U.S. military to encourage mass defections. As we enter the city, the military will be hamstringed and unable to shoot at our forces without cutting down throngs of civilians. When this occurs, morale will disappear and the enemy’s ability to resist our offensive will collapse.

The world will be turned upside down when our tanks roll triumphantly into the streets of Miami. Throngs of workers will gather together, singing the Internationale as we erect a statue of Che Guevara in Little Havana. Meanwhile, our army will move swiftly to cement its control over the city by weeding out all reactionaries. We will round up hundreds of first-generation Cuban exiles and send them to reeducation camps in the wetlands. Their properties will be confiscated and turned into revolutionary munitions factories.

With Miami in the people’s hands, the rest of Florida will yield within weeks. A People’s Republic of Florida will be announced on the steps of the Tallahassee Capitol Building. All nuclear warheads in the state will be seized, securing an ironclad deterrent against imperialist invasion. All banks and factories will be expropriated and nationalized, and the construction of the socialist order will begin.

Working and oppressed people everywhere will rally when they learn that the mass struggle is gaining ground in the United States. The new government in Florida will give massive aid to all oppressed nations, especially the DPRK. It will also send arms to revitalize the FARC, the Shining Path, the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Naxalites, and other Third World liberation movements. At the same time, it will expand the revolution within the U.S. by forming new divisions of the people’s army in the Rockies, the Appalachians, and the Great Dismal Swamp. Because of the nuclear deterrent, the U.S. imperialists will be powerless to stop these advances. The international proletariat and neo-peasantry will fight on, continuing their struggle until the red flag flies over every country.

This vision can become a reality, but only if we fight for it. It will all begin in the humble swamps of the Everglades. When should we establish our people’s army? Now, and not one moment later! The FCF calls on all true Marxist-Leninists in the United States to move to Florida and immediately begin preparations to set up camps. When the first hidden base in the Everglades is established, its leader should issue a public announcement, establishing their foco as the steering committee of the people’s army. Under the principles of democratic centralism, all future focos must strictly subordinate themselves to this central body. As Ho Chi Minh once remarked, “the man who first steps forward is the best to lead the charge.”

Many “revolutionary” parties will object to this arrangement on the grounds that they must first build up their organizational capacity before they commence any significant class struggle or people’s war. This is a grotesquely revisionist position. At the beginning of a class conflict, the party does not organize the struggle—the struggle organizes the party. As the masses fight for their interests in dialectical tension with the bourgeoisie, the vanguard party begins to manifest itself as an organic formation of the most radical and militant workers. Ergo, for a vanguard party of any significance to emerge in the United States, there must first be a pre-existing trend towards the escalation of the mass struggle. This trend will not be initiated on its own. It can only emerge through the conscious activities of a people’s army in a protracted people’s war. As Che Guevara observed, “the revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” —V.I. Lenin

Lenin understood that revolutionary actions must be initiated in short periods of tremendous opportunity. That opportunity has arrived for us. Throughout this text, the FCF has clearly demonstrated that a people’s war in Florida is the only path forward by which the American proletariat can begin to organize a liberatory revolution to seize power. The sun is rising over the Everglades, and the future beckons to us. We must dare to struggle and dare to win!

The power of our enemies is daunting, and our sacrifice will be tremendous. But it will all be worth it in the end, for we have no fear of death. We embrace martyrdom with open arms—to die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai! Focos, join our struggle; focos, unite! You have nothing to lose but your lives.