The AVC first received national attention in 1983, when it broke into a museum and stole swords used by former president and leader of the liberal revolution, Eloy Alfaro.

[2] They were responsible for several criminal actions including robberies and kidnappings; highlighting the kidnapping of Nahim Isaías Barquet, who was the general manager of the bank Filanbanco in September 1985, who was killed while the intervention for his rescue was being carried out by the Anti-Terrorist Unit of the Special Forces Brigade of the Ecuadorian Army, ordered by the then president León Febres-Cordero.

In 1982 the economy stagnated due to the fall in the price of oil and the simultaneous rise in interest rates in international markets.

[22] Beginning with President Osvaldo Hurtado (1981-1984) the government of Ecuador applied measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to restructure the economy.

[23][24] His economic team was made up of three economists fully identified with the business sector: Carlos Julio Emanuel, Francisco Swett and Alberto Dahik.

[22] The crisis was felt particularly in the poor sectors of the cities with an average fall in real urban income of 8.7 percent per year from 1981 to 1989, the most large among Latin American countries.

The MIR had student leaders, such as: Arturo Jarrín entered the Central University of Ecuador in Quito, to study sociology, leaving it during his fourth year, after participating in popular organization activities in the Ciudadela Ferroviaria de Quito, he joined AVC, becoming the leader of the organization being elected at The First AVC National Conference held in Esmeraldas in February 1983, attended by around 60 guerrillas.

The first operation to receive extensive media coverage was the theft of the swords of Eloy Alfaro and Pedro José Montero from the Municipal Museum of Guayaquil, on 11 August.

[28] In January 2012, Rosa Mireya Cárdenas, who served as Secretary of Peoples,[29] as a delegate of former AVC members, she returned the swords to the then President of Ecuador Rafael Correa.

[32] On 11 March, an attempt was made to assault the payer of Casa Baca (Quito), as a result of which Ricardo Merino and Vicente López were arrested.

[33] On 8 July, the Bust of Eloy Alfaro was stolen from the headquarters of the Supreme Liberal Junta in Quito[33] On 22 September, at the Pululahua resort (Pichincha),[20] Jarrín, Mireya Cárdenas and Edgar Frías held a press conference in which they announced the existence of the organization.

[34] On 2 November, the facilities of the radio stations: Noticia, La Fabulosa and Universal de Guayaquil were seized to condemn the intervention of United States in Nicaragua.

[20] At the end of 1983 Jarrín and about twenty guerrillas traveled to Libya to receive military training in one of the camps sponsored by Muammar Gaddafi.

[34][20] On 4 May, the AVC occupied the offices of the Ecuadorian News Agency (ANE) in Guayaquil to send a message against León Febres-Cordero, then a candidate for the presidency of Ecuador, and in support of Rodrigo Borja.

[36] On 12 June, the brothers Ricardo and Lilian Jarrín (both disguised as religious) assaulted the Banco de los Andes in Quito.

[35][38] On 10 August, the day that Febres-Cordero assumed the presidency of Ecuador, the AVC took over several radio stations to announce its opposition to the incoming government.

At the end of that month Hamet Vásconez, who had been in El Salvador, arrived in Ecuador and joined the AVC Central Command, replacing Jarrín, who was detained in the García Moreno Prison in Quito.

[39] On 8 November, they kidnapped a reporter from the newspaper Meridiano de Guayaquil to force an interview with Fausto Basantes Borja.

[20] On 2 January 1985, they assaulted an armored vehicle of the Banco de Descuento in Guayaquil, resulting in the death of a guerrilla Jorge Lima Trujillo and the arrest of another.

From a nearby commercial premises they dug a tunnel through which Jarrín, Vásconez and two other members of the AVC escaped, taking advantage of the guards' shift change.

On 7 August they executed his plan, when Isaías arrived at his country house, known as "Las Alturas", 8 kilometers from Guayaquil on the road to Daule.

The guerrillas from the second vehicle exchanged fire with the police and fled to Guayaquil, where they had to take Isaías to a house in the La Chala neighborhood.

[48] Acosta was reportedly denied medical attention until his family intervened (his father was a former foreign minister),[48] according to the official version he was injured during his detention after he shot members of the police.

[49] According to his mother, Laura Coloma de Acosta, who visited him in the hospital earlier his body was covered in bruises and his testicles were mangled.

[50] In accordance with the state policy of not negotiating with terrorists, on 2 September at 03:26[45] the Anti-Terrorist Unit of the Special Forces Brigade of the Ecuadorian Army was ordered to carry out a rescue operation.

[54][34] During 1986 the actions carried out by the government almost completely neutralized the AVC, seeking mainly to eliminate its leaders (Jarrín, Basantes and Vásconez).