The Armed Forces of National Liberation (in Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, FALN) was a Venezuelan guerrilla group formed to foment revolution against the democratically elected government of Rómulo Betancourt.
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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 Revolutionary Left 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 the United States Embassy in Caracas. FALN failed to rally the rural poor and to disrupt the December 1963 elections.
The head of the Office of Public Safety (OPS), Byron Eagle, sent LAPD officers to Venezuela in 1962 to train local police officers and assist them in their fight against the FALN.[1]