The Radical Cause ( es, La Causa Radical, LCR), stylized as La Causa Я, is a minor

left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

, and today part of the Venezuelan opposition to president

Nicolás Maduro Nicolás Maduro Moros (; born 23 November 1962) is a Venezuelan politician and president of Venezuela since 2013, with his presidency under dispute since 2019. Beginning his working life as a bus driver, Maduro rose to become a trade unio ...

. At its peak in the early 1990s, the party came within touching distance of winning the 1993 presidential elections. However, the party split in 1997 when a number of members left to form

Patria Para Todos Fatherland for All (''Patria Para Todos'', PPT) is a leftist political party in Venezuela. It was founded on September 27, 1997 by members of The Radical Cause party led by Pablo Medina, Aristóbulo Istúriz and Alí Rodríguez Araque. In 199 ...

, now part of the pro-government

Great Patriotic Pole The Simón Bolívar Great Patriotic Pole ( es, Gran Polo Patriótico Simón Bolívar, GPPSB) is a left-wing socialist and chavist electoral alliance/popular front of Venezuelan political parties created in 2012 to support the re-election of Hu ...

(GPP) electoral

alliance An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

. LCR has now lost much of its national profile, but retains some influence in its home region of Guayana.

History

Early history

LCR was founded in 1971 by :es:Alfredo Maneiro, an intellectual and former guerrilla who had been expelled from the

Communist Party of Venezuela The Communist Party of Venezuela ( es, 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 it ...

. The new revolutionary socialist party grew quickly, benefiting from the collapse of the Communist Party. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the party focused on organizing factory workers in the Guayana region of Bolivar state through the so-called Matanceros Movement, as well as workers on the west side of Caracas, Catia, Caracas and Catia. The party gained control of the leadership of the SUTISS metalworkers' union at SIDOR, the largest steel company in Venezuela. Maneiro's premature death, caused by a heart attack in 1982, left the party's leadership in the hands of the young labor activists he had trained.

Electoral challenges

With the 1989 introduction of elections for local and regional offices, LCR had its first opportunity to compete electorally with a chance of success. In December 1988, LCR sent three deputies to the

Venezuelan Chamber of Deputies The Chamber of Deputies () was the lower house of Venezuela's legislative under its 1961 constitution; the Venezuelan Senate was the upper house. Under the 1999 constitution, the bicameral system was replaced by the unicameral National Assembly o ...

. In 1989, one of LCR's leaders,

Andrés Velásquez Andrés Velásquez is a Venezuelan politician of the Radical Cause (''La Causa Radical'') party. Formerly the general secretary of the steelworkers union of SIDOR, he became one of the leaders of Radical Cause after the death of its founder, Alf ...

, became the first Venezuelan elected governor who did not belong to either of the two major political parties (

Accion Democratica Democratic Action ( es, Acción Democrática, AD) is a Venezuelan social democratic and centre-left political party established in 1941. The party played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, leading the government durin ...

and COPEI), winning the Bolívar governorship on the LCR ticket. In the 1992 local elections,

Aristóbulo Istúriz Aristóbulo Istúriz Almeida (20 December 1946 – 27 April 2021) was a Venezuelan politician and academic who was vice president of the Constituent Assembly of Venezuela in August 2017; he was also the vice president of Venezuela from January 2 ...

was elected mayor of Caracas for LCR, where he initiated processes of citizen participation which, although canceled after his term ended in 1995, would later influence the

Bolivarian Revolution The Bolivarian Revolution is a political process in Venezuela that was led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement and later the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The Bolivarian Revolution i ...

. In the 1993 presidential elections, the party nominated

as its candidate. Velásquez finished in fourth place with 22%, according to the official results, close to winning candidate

Rafael Caldera Rafael Antonio Caldera Rodríguez ( (); 24 January 1916 – 24 December 2009), twice elected the president of Venezuela, served for two five-year terms (1969–1974 and 1994–1999), becoming the longest serving democratically elected leade ...

's 30.5%. However, Velásquez and his party alleged that

electoral fraud Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of ...

had taken place and that he had actually come in second place.

Francisco Arias Cárdenas Francisco Javier Arias Cárdenas (born 20 November 1950) is a Venezuelan politician and career military officer, and was the governor of Zulia state. He participated in Hugo Chávez's unsuccessful February 1992 coup attempt, being pardoned in ...

, one of the main co-conspirators in

Hugo Chávez Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republ ...

's 1992 coup attempt, later joined LCR and was elected Governor of

Zulia State Zulia State ( es, Estado Zulia, ; Wayuu language, Wayuu: ''Mma’ipakat Suuria'') is one of the States of Venezuela, 23 states of Venezuela. The state capital is Maracaibo. As of the 2011 census, it has a population of 3,704,404, the largest popu ...

Split

In 1997, the party split into two factions, a radical faction led by

Pablo Medina Pablo Medina is a Cuban American poet and novelist, Professor in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College and Director of its MFA Program. Biography Medina was born in Havana, Cuba and emigrated to New York Cit ...

and

Alí Rodríguez Araque Alí Rodríguez Araque (9 September 1937 – 19 November 2018) was a Venezuelan politician, lawyer, and diplomat. He was the leader of the political party Patria Para Todos ("Fatherland for All") and occupied various positions in the governmen ...

and a moderate faction led by Andrés Velásquez. The radical faction, which was favored by a majority of party members, left to found a new party

(PPT) and went on to support

's candidacy for the presidency the following year. After losing a majority of its members, LCR's influence was diminished. It retained its name, moderated its radical ideology, and later went into opposition to the Chávez government. The party remained strongly opposed to the Chávez government, joining the Coordinadora Democrática in 2002, supporting

Manuel Rosales Manuel Antonio Rosales Guerrero (born December 12, 1952, in Santa Bárbara del Zulia) is a Venezuelan educator and politician, current governor of Zulia, Venezuela's most populated state. He was the most prominent opposition candidate in the ...

in the 2006 presidential elections, and opposing the 2007 proposed constitutional reform. The party won four seats in the

2000 Venezuelan general election General elections were held in Venezuela on 30 July 2000, the first under the country's newly adopted 1999 constitution. Incumbent President Hugo Chávez ran for election for a full 6-year term under the new Constitution. He was challenged by anot ...

, but lost them all four years later. In the

2008 Venezuelan regional elections The 2008 regional elections of Venezuela were held on 23 November 2008 to choose 22 governors and 2 metropolitan mayors. The candidates were selected for a term beginning in 2008 and ending in 2012, when the next regional electio ...

, held on November 23, Andrés Velásquez narrowly failed in his bid to win the Bolívar State governorship once again, due to splits within the opposition. LCR's Victor Fuenmayor was elected mayor of the state's second largest city,

Ciudad Bolívar Ciudad Bolívar (; Spanish for "Bolivar City"), formerly known as Angostura and St. Thomas de Guyana, is the capital of Venezuela's southeastern Bolívar, Venezuela, Bolívar State. It lies at the spot where the Orinoco River narrows to about ...

, the party's best result in the election. The party earned less than 1% of the nationwide vote for the various governorships.

External links

La Causa Я website

La Causa Я Twitter

References