In the last half of the twentieth century, Latin America proved to be a particularly propitious laboratory for counterinsurgency because a combination of economic and social inequality and historically weak states made it a target for revolutionary activists, especially in the wake of the triumph of Castro’s 1959 revolution in Cuba. The question for counterinsurgents became how to react? Precisely because large-scale interventions by Western armies in Malaya, Indochina (twice), Kenya, and Algeria with the goal of “protecting the population” and defeating insurgent armies either had not worked, or had achieved success at high monetary, political, and moral costs, little political will existed in the United States in particular for a large-scale intervention to stabilize states under insurrectionary threat in the Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, the answer seemed to lie in some form of security assistance – that is, small teams of advisers would deploy to boost the military capabilities of threatened Latin American governments either through what might be called low- or high-option counterinsurgency strategies. The low-option approach, focused on eliminating radical activists and their supporters, was imported into Argentina by French veterans of Indochina and Algeria and subsequently with US assistance spread throughout the Southern Cone in the 1970s and 1980s through Operation Condor. A second, high-option approach that focused on conversion through winning the hearts and minds of the population via what was called civic action found more favor further north. That approach, too, was criticized for at least three reasons, beginning with the fact that it was anchored in the flawed contention that revolution was the product of poverty and a democratic deficit. An alternative view argues that whether a traditional community opts for insurrection depends on the state of its “moral economy.” For instance, if power brokers fail to respect community behavioral norms, rules of reciprocity and mutual obligations, and ignore constraints on their power, then a community is more likely, at least initially, to welcome guerrillas as a means to impose justice and rebalance culturally mandated social relationships.