Member of the National Liberation Movement, a Uruguayan leftist urban guerrilla organization founded 0441; 1963 and named for Tupac Amarú II, an 18th-century Peruvian revolutionary.
The earliest Tupamaro efforts involved robbing banks and businesses and distributing the goods to the poor, but in the late 1960s they mounted a wave of violence aimed at the authorities. The military government that seized power in 1973 launched an offensive against them, killing some 300 and imprisoning 3,000 others. When democratic rule returned in 1985, the Tupamaros were reorganized as a political party.