Revolutionary Left Movement (Venezuela)
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Revolutionary Left Movement Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria | |
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Left-wing | |
The Revolutionary Left Movement (
MIR merged with the
History
The origins of the party can be traced directly to the first visit Commander Fidel Castro made to Venezuela, specifically to its capital Caracas in January 1959, to celebrate the first anniversary of the fall of the military dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Castro's visit served him to encourage the youth of the Democratic Action around the epic lived by the Cuban Revolution in Sierra Maestra. The political contrast of Castro and then Venezuelan president, Rómulo Betancourt, made the political youth of the time more encouraged towards Castro's position, this made more by generational differences than ideological ones. To round off the internal crisis, Democratic Action expelled from their ranks a number of youth leaders and party members that identified themselves with Cuban policy in addition to constant criticism of the policy of unemployment, struggle against reaction, land reform, economic policy, fiscal and international all contrary to the doctrinal basis of Democratic Action.
For these reasons, Domingo Alberto Rangel, Gumersindo Rodriguez and Jose Rafael Muñoz justified the division from their former party and founded, with groups of mostly young people, the new leftist revolutionary party. At the exact moment of the creation of MIR, it pleaded, according to their weekly Izquierda, as a "Marxist party, their goal was to drive the Venezuelan people to the path of socialism through the National Revolution realizing a clearly anti-imperialist and anti-feudal program".
On May 9, 1962, the
During this time, the MIR integrates with the PCV, the so-called Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN). Some of their leaders included Domingo Alberto Rangel, Jose Manuel "Chema" Saher, Américo Silva, Americo Martin, Simon Saez Mérida, Etanislao Gonzalez, Jose Manuel Gilli Trejo, Ruben Jaramillo, Gabriel Puerta Aponte, Victor and Fernando Soto Rojas, Julio Escalona, Marcos Gomez, Carlos José Ugueto Marino and Carlos Betancourt.
The MIR was actively involved in subversive struggles developed in Venezuela in the 1960s. One of the most active cells was named "Van Troi" led by Jesus Alberto Marquez Finol who executed many officers, soldiers and civilians for not supporting the armed struggle, such as the shooting of Doctor Alfredo Seijas, Legal Counsel of the DIGEPOL in September 1965, who was a lawyer and was abducted from inside the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) and moved towards urbanization Macaracuay of Caracas, to run to death. Other rural guerrilla Youth members of the MIR, as Ramon Amundaray Sanchez, died after being caught flying a pipeline north of the state Anzoátegui.
Divisions
Just as the MIR decided to go to the armed struggle, a sector of the party opposed to these actions, led by
Starting on 1982, the main trend in the MIR began a process of alliance and merger with the
See also
- Red Flag Party (Partido Bandera Roja), which split from MIR in 1970
- Socialist League (Liga Socialista), which split from MIR in 1973