Red Flag Party

Red Flag Party Partido Bandera Roja
Leader	Gabriel Puerta Aponte
Founded	1970
Headquarters	Caracas, Venezuela
Ideology	Marxism–Leninism, Anti-Revisionism, Anti-Chavismo
Political position	Far-left to Left-wing
National affiliation	Democratic Unity Roundtable
Colours	Red
National Assembly	0 / 165
Website
Official Blog
Politics of Venezuela Political parties Elections

Red Flag Party (in Spanish: Partido Bandera Roja) is a communist party in Venezuela.

It was formed in 1970 by anti-revisionist members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). The Red Flag Party initially supported the ideology of Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania following the Sino-Albanian split, though in later years it gravitated back towards China.

In the 1970s up until the 1990s it was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the government. A young Hugo Chávez's first assignment in the Army was as commander of a communications platoon attached to a counter-insurgency force—the Manuel Cedeño Mountain Infantry Battalion, headquartered in Barinas and Cumaná. In 1976, under the presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez, it was tasked with suppressing the guerrilla insurgency staged by the Party. This was common procedure for Latin American regimes, military or democratic, which ceded to pressure from the United States to crush any and all anti-imperialist insurgencies.

The party is currently led by Gabriel Rafael Puerta Aponte. After the electoral victory of Hugo Chávez in 1998, the party started aligning itself with the right-wing and social democratic opponents of Chávez, labeling him as a social fascist. This has led to desertions from the party, as many cadres instead joined the Chávez camp.

The party was suspended from the International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organizations (Unity & Struggle) in 2005. It was succeeded within the organization by the Marxist–Leninist Communist Party of Venezuela.

In the 2006 presidential election, the party supported the candidature of Manuel Rosales. The party got (as one of several parties backing Rosales) 18,468 votes (0.16% of the nationwide vote) in that election.

As of 2009 its popularity has rapidly diminished from its prior years and is reported to have less than 100 militant members.

Youth wing

The youth wing of the party is the Revolutionary Youth Union (UJR).

Website

• http://bandera-roja.blogspot.com/