Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (Venezuela)

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Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN) was a Venezuelan guerrila group formed to foment revolution against the government under Rómulo Betancourt.

[edit] Background

In 1958, Betancourt's Democratic Action (Acción Democrática, AD) party largely disenfranchised the extreme left wing, notably the Communist Party of Venezuela (Partido Comunista de Venezuela, PCV). The 1959 Cuban Revolution influenced PCV and student groups hoping to repeat Fidel Castro's success in Venezuela. Many leftist students formed the Leftist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, MIR) in April 1960.

Betancourt's firm stance against Castro, especially Cuba's expulsion from the Organization of American States (OAS) led to bloody military uprisings in 1962, first at Carúpano on the Península de Paria, then at Puerto Cabello. After the unsuccessful revolts, Betancourt suspended civil liberties and arrested the MIR and PCV members of the forerunner to the National Assembly of Venezuela bicameral Congress (Congreso) in 1962. This drove the leftists underground, where they engaged in rural and urban guerrilla activities, including sabotaging oil pipelines, bombing a Sears Roebuck warehouse, and bombing and the United States Embassy in Caracas. FALN failed to rally the rural poor and to disrupt the December 1963 elections.

[edit] See also

• Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (Puerto Rico)

[edit] References

• The Triumph of Democracy via U.S. Library of Congress Country Studies/Area Handbook Series sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Army between 1986 and 1998.