Between November 1948 and January 1958, Venezuela suffered under one of the worst dictatorships in Latin America in that period, that of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez. The overthrow of Pérez Jiménez was followed, after a year, with the election of Rómulo Betancourt of the Acción Democrática Party (AD) as President and the establishment of a democratic regime.
However, Betancourt came into office at almost the same time as the victory of Fidel Castro in Cuba. In spite of the very extensive reforms carried out by the Betancourt regime, including a major land redistribution program, impetus for industrialization, great expansion of education on all levels, and extension of the social security system, younger members of AD were impatient with the “slowness” of the democratic process and were inspired by the apparent romanticism of the Castroite experience. In 1960, they broke away to form another party, the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), which was clearly Castroite in orientation.
The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), which had suffered much less persecution by the Pérez Jiménez regime than had the AD, and emerged from the dictatorship stronger than it had ever been before, was influenced by the same factors that Acción Democrática was experiencing. The younger elements of the PCV, like those of the AD, were attracted by the Castroite model, and pushed their elders to try to apply that model to Venezuela.
As a result, late in 1962 guerrilla operations were launched with the enthusiastic support of the MIR and the reluctant backing of the PCV. These efforts had been preceded by two unsuccessful and bloody military mutinies by left-wing elements in the armed forces.
The guerrillas under PCV leadership were headed by Douglas Bravo, a young member of the Politburo of the party. They formed what they called the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN). Guerrilla operations in more or less isolated rural areas were supplemented by terrorist bombings and other activities in the cities. However, during this period, the Communists almost completely abandoned their activities in the organized labor movement and other legal work. At the same time, the Betancourt government cracked down severely on both the PCV and the MIR, “suspending” their legal recognition and jailing most of their top leaders.
In 1969 the Communist Party decided to abandon the guerrilla struggle. This decision of the PCV leadership brought down upon them a violent verbal attack by Fidel Castro, whose government had supplied arms and some “technicians” to the guerrillas. At the same time, Douglas Bravo repudiated the decision of the rest of the PCV leadership and continued the guerrilla campaign, with the endorsement of Castro.[543]
Douglas Bravo and Maoism
Early in 1970, Douglas Bravo, while continuing his now greatly diminished guerrilla activities, broke with Fidel Castro. At that point, the Castro regime had, following the death of Ché Guevara and liquidation of his guerrilla forces in Bolivia, downplayed, at least for the time being, its efforts to foment armed revolution elsewhere in Latin America. Rather, it was concentrating virtually all of its efforts on the campaign to turn out a 10 million-ton sugar crop in Cuba.
In a long interview in the Uruguayan magazine Marcha, Bravo elaborated on his differences with Castro. He particularly attacked the book by Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution, which had been widely distributed by the Castro regime. Bravo said that that book “did not formulate profound analysis but little recipes, interpretations which were in large part of a dogmatic variety.”
Bravo concluded that “In short, we can say that the tactic of Debrayism and of the Cuban comrades, who put it into practice in Latin America, is an incorrect tactic. It is a tactic of foquismo, of a shortcut, of not understanding the importance of organizing a party, a front, and of not understanding the importance of organizing the working class and the peasants.”
Bravo also attacked the Cuban concentration on the 10 million-ton campaign. He said, “Liberated Cuba is only the first base of operations on the continent, from which the battle against imperialism and the oligarchies can spread more effectively. There, we think, and this is what has worried us, that the line followed in practice since Comandante Fidel Castro’s speech January 2, when he spoke of putting emphasis on production, on what he called the Year of Decisive Endeavor, is a line which is not related to the strategy of the revolution, to the strategy of liberating this great nation of Latin America.”
Bravo also announced in this interview that his guerrilla force and one other had established a new organization, the Revolutionary Integration Committee. Its “fundamental objective is to create a single army and a single party to make the revolution.”[544]
Clearly, in this interview, Douglas Bravo was adopting the Maoist line rather than the Castroite one. About a year before this, Francisco Parada, one of Bravo’s chief lieutenants, had disclosed that there had been a “bitter ideological conflict” within the FALN, and that a “leftist faction which wished to apply the concepts of Debray in a mechanical manner” had broken away from Bravo’s group.[545]
In January 1971, in another interview that appeared in the Caracas magazine Vea y Lea, Douglas Bravo further indicate his inclination toward China. He said that the conflict between the Soviet and Chinese parties was one between the “revisionist” Soviet Union and the “anti-revisionist” Chinese People’s Republic, and that in that conflict he stood with the Chinese.[546]
A meeting of the Revolutionary Integration Committee in October 1971 issued a call for setting up a “single Marxist-Leninist Party to bring together all Venezuelan revolutionaries.” Lynn Ratliff noted that the Committee “apparently hoped that such a party could recruit the pro-Chinese Organization of Revolutionaries… whose leader, Julio Escalona, had called for such a united party of revolutionaries early in the year.”[547] The Escalona group was a splinter of the MIR.[548]
By 1973, the party advocated by Douglas Bravo had been established, with Bravo as its Secretary-General. This was the Party of the Venezuelan Revolution (PRV). In October of that year, the PRV sent a message to the Central Committee of the Chinese party, on the occasion of the CCP’s 10th Congress. It said that “it is the desire of the Central Committee to send to the Communist Party of China our warmest congratulations as well as the personal regards of Comrade Douglas Bravo, General Secretary of the Party of the Venezuelan Revolution.” Among other things, this message congratulated the Chinese on the “defeat” of Lin Piao.[549]
In 1976, a delegation of the Party of the Venezuelan Revolution, headed by Ali Rodriguez, visited China. It traveled in various parts of the country, and was received by Yao Wen-yuan, a member of the Chinese Political Bureau, who gave a banquet in honor of the Venezuelan visitors.[550]
Douglas Bravo, who was in exile in Colombia at the time, was interviewed in 1978, and told his interviewer that the PRV had ceased “military operations” in March 1974, when Carlos Andrés Pérez took office as Venezuelan President. He explained that the country’s increased petroleum wealth and the political bloc, including some leftist parties, that formed around the Pérez government, as well as praise of Pérez from international socialist quarters as an anti-imperialist, “weakened the revolutionary movement, making armed struggle inadvisable.”[551] At about the same time that the PRV abandoned guerrilla activities, Bravo had issued an attack on Fidel Castro for having “abandoned” the Venezuelan guerrillas.[552]
543
For details on the Venezuelan Communist Party guerrilla effort, see Robert J. Alexander,
544
“Venezuelan Guerrilla Leader Assesses Experience,”
545
William E. Ratliff in
546
William E. Ratliff, in
547
Lynn Ratliff, in
548
William E. Ratliff, in
551
Carole Merten, in