The Armed Forces of National Liberation (in Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, FALN) was a Venezuelan guerrilla group formed by the Communist Party of Venezuela to foment revolution against the democratically elected governments of Rómulo Betancourt and Raul Leoni.
Betancourt's firm stance against Castro, especially Cuba's expulsion from the Organization of American States (OAS) led to bloody military uprisings in 1962, first at Carúpano on the Península of Paria, then at Puerto Cabello.
After the unsuccessful revolts, Betancourt suspended civil liberties and arrested the MIR and PCV members of the forerunner to the National Assembly of Venezuela bicameral Congress in 1962.
The FALN were engaged in rural and urban guerrilla activities, including seizure of the Venezuelan cargo ship Anzoátegui, kidnapping Real Madrid soccer star Alfredo Di Stéfano (both performed by Paul del Rio), sabotaging oil pipelines, kidnapping of American Colonel Michael Smolen, bombing a Sears Roebuck warehouse, and bombing the United States Embassy in Caracas.
The 1975 film Chronicle of a Latin American Subversive (Spanish: Crónica de un subversivo latinoamericano) by director Mauricio Walerstein, narrates the real life FALN kidnapping of American Colonel Michael Smolen (portrayed as Colonel Robert Whitney by actor Claudio Brook) in revenge for Nguyen Van Troi's death sentence.