Armed Forces of National Liberation (Venezuela)


The Armed Forces of National Liberation was a Venezuelan guerrilla group formed by the Communist Party of Venezuela to foment revolution against the democratically elected governments of Rómulo Betancourt and Raul Leoni.

Background

In 1958, Betancourt's Democratic Action party largely sidelined the extreme left wing, notably the Communist Party of Venezuela. The 1959 Cuban Revolution influenced PCV and student groups hoping to recreate Fidel Castro's regime in Venezuela. Many leftist students formed the Revolutionary Left Movement in April 1960.
Betancourt's firm stance against Castro, especially Cuba's expulsion from the Organization of American States led to bloody military uprisings in 1962, first at Carúpano on the Península of 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 in 1962. This drove the leftists underground and founded the FALN on January 1, 1963.
The FALN were engaged in rural and urban guerrilla activities, including seized the Venezuelan cargo ship Anzoátegui, kidnapping Real Madrid soccer star Alfredo DiStefano, sabotaging oil pipelines, kidnaping of American Colonel Michael Smolen, 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.

In popular culture

The 1975 film Chronicle of a Latin American Subversive by director Mauricio Walerstein, narrates the real life FALN kidnapping of American Colonel Michael Smolen in revenge for Nguyen Van Troi's death sentence.