Communist Party of Venezuela

The Communist Party of Venezuela (Partido Comunista de Venezuela, PCV) is a communist party and the oldest continuously existing party in Venezuela. It was the main leftist political party in Venezuela from its foundation in 1931 until its split into rival factions in 1971. The PCV opposes the government of Nicolás Maduro. The PCV was founded in 1931 as a clandestine organization during the military dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez. It was initially led by Juan Bautista Fuenmayor and Francisco José "Kotepa" Delgado. The PCV became the Venezuelan affiliate of the Communist International. A forerunner of the PCV, the Venezuelan Revolutionary Party, had been founded in exile in Mexico in 1926 and attempted a rebellion in Venezuela in 1929. The PCV remained an illegal organization until 1941, when it entered into an alliance with the progressive military regime of Isaías Medina Angarita, following orders from Comintern for communist parties throughout the world to support governments that aided the allied war effort. During this time it published the weekly newspaper ¡Aquí Está!. The PCV was outlawed during the conservative military dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1948–1958), when it played a key role in organizing the clandestine resistance to the regime, alongside activist from the (also banned) party Democratic Action. In 1952, despite remaining an illegal organization, PCV provided key support to the non-communist leftist party URD in elections organized by the military regime to legitimize its rule. When URD's election victory became apparent, the military ordered the ballot counting process stopped and refused to accept its defeat at the hands of the communist-supported opposition. The episode shifted the balance of power in the military from relative moderates to the hard-line faction led by Marcos Pérez Jiménez, which substantially stepped up efforts to repress the clandestine opposition. In 1958, the three main non-communist opposition parties (Accion Democratica, COPEI and URD) purposely excluded PCV from the power-sharing Puntofijo Pact that would underpin the country's transition to democracy.