This chapter explores the conditions that sometimes gave rise to the formation of systems of rebel governance during more than three decades of guerrilla warfare in multiple nations of Latin America, 1956–1990. In those rural areas experiencing an absence or erosion of the effective – and populace-benefitting – exercise of governance by the central authorities, rebels were presented with a basic opportunity to form counter-states. Similar opportunities were provided if politically hostile para-political influences were absent (like non-revolutionary party-loyalties), or if pro-revolutionary para-political organizations were regionally influential. Where central governments responded to the nascent or established presence of rebel governance with predation or terror against local civilians, such actions were only likely to further erode the legitimacy of central governors. Rebels could deepen their initial patterns of governance by performing the classic obligations of governors: promoting material security and welfare, providing police and judicial functions, and protecting the populace from external armed attacks. Yet central governors could also restore or expand their delivery of those same “services” (e.g., through military civic action), and the two types of governments could find themselves competing to become the sole governing body. Declines of rebel governance commonly occurred, too, and could stem from effective military repression, but more interestingly when the rebels themselves violated the obligations incumbent upon governing authorities.