Blackwell Reference Online

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As a consequence of the debates provoked by the defeat of the armed struggle and the invasion of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR) by the Soviet Union, the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) split in 1970. The PCV had recently been legalized, but tensions within the international communist movement led to local debates. As a result, the Movement to Socialism (MAS) and the Radical Cause (Causa R) formed by splitting off from the PCV in 1971. In January 1971 MAS was formed under the leadership of Teodoro Petkoff, Pompeyo Marquez, Eloy Torres, and others, some of them former PCV central committee members. Instead of maintaining Marxism as its main ideology, MAS followed a reformist orientation. Because of these more conservative currents, former guerilla commander Alfred Maneiro, in turn, broke with MAS and led a small group of approximately ten activists to create a new political organization. This group acted first as Venezuela 83 but changed its name to Causa Radical (Causa R) in 1973. From 1973 to the beginning of the 1990s, MAS represented the main left-wing voting option, putting forward José Vicente Rangel, well known for his strong advocacy of human rights, as a presidential candidate in 1973. While Causa R focused on building independent trade unions, the split-off from MAS had also provoked a split in the PCV union federation CUTV. The MAS sector of the CUTV negotiated ... log in or subscribe to read full text