The Root Cause

La Causa Radical (usually abbreviated as La Causa Я or LCR) is a Venezuelan labor political party founded by Alfredo Maneiro.

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Political ideology

The Radical Cause was founded under the thought of Alfredo Maneiro who advocated what he called a "radical democracy", which consisted of a deepening of democracy with popular participation and contrary to authoritarian socialism and liberal democracy. Maneiro himself considered this movement as "peculiar" and "eccentric" within the Venezuelan left, he also considered it "Marxist but tenuously" and in turn as non-dogmatic.

On the other hand, Maneiro expressed that his idea of «revolutionary quality» was not limited to the seizure of power, but that even before this the transformation of society should begin, while warning of the risk of that by only focusing on the seizure of the State in the end the parties reproduced internally the structure of the system.

At the same time, Maneiro questioned the bureaucratism of the parties and defended an open party-movement that would feed back with the social struggle of the various sectors of society. His idea was to establish a direct relationship with the people, and through ideological construction continued from this practice and experience. Although Maneiro certainly defended the idea of the political vanguard, he understood it as a process of interaction between the leadership and the movement that the party understood not as the beginning of the revolutionary movement but as the result and that would allow the constant emergence of new leaderships adjusted to their specific reality.

For Maneiro, it is not a question of infiltrating a movement but rather "facilitating the search and encounter with that leadership, which surely had occurred during the conflict".

History

The party was born after the division of the Communist Party of Venezuela, when the Movement for Socialism (MAS) was also formed. At that time, some of the former members of the party who were not satisfied with the division made, grouped together as La Causa Radical.

His first victory was the presidency of the SIDOR workers' union in 1979, defeating the Acción Democrática (AD) party. The party began to present candidates for the presidential elections from 1983 without success, its leader Andrés Velásquez being postulated, although he only obtained 0.09% of the votes, in the 1988 campaign he was initially going to nominate the historian Jorge Olavarría, but it did not materialize and finally La Causa R nominated Velásquez again, whose results only improved slightly with 0.37%, remaining in a distant eighth place, however in an environment of discredit of the majority parties and in the climax of the popular insurrection known as Caracazo the party increased its popularity, especially in the poor neighborhoods of Caracas, therefore, at Velásquez's third attempt in the 1993 presidential elections, he obtained a surprising increase in votes with 21.95%, but finishing fourth place. In the 1998 elections, at first the organization supported the mayoress of the Caracas municipality of Chacao, Irene Sáez, but due to disagreements, La Causa R finally presented Alfredo Ramos as a candidate, in which he obtained sixth place with a bare 0 11% of votes.[1]. During the previous year, La Causa R suffered a split in its left wing, led by Aristóbulo Isturiz and Pablo Medina, which was renamed Patria Para Todos (PPT), and supported the presidential candidacy of the former military man Hugo Chávez, (who finally won the campaign of 1998).

La Causa R in the presidential elections of 2000 supported Francisco Arias Cárdenas who obtained second place and whose card was the second most voted with 18.95%, in 2002 La Causa R decided to form part of the Democratic Coordinator, which brought together a coalition of parties and organizations of a broad spectrum whose common elements were to be opponents of the government of Hugo Chávez, but it was dissolved in 2004. In 2006, La Causa R announced its support for the candidate of the Un Nuevo Tiempo party (and a good part of opposition parties, essentially the same ones that made up the Coordinadora Democrática), the social democrat and former AD Manuel Rosales for the December 2006 elections, who could not prevent the re-election of President Chávez, with the LCR obtaining a very low percentage of votes on his card, again several militants separated from the party in March 2007 to join the Un Nuevo Tiempo movement of former candidate Rosales. In November 2007, he presented himself as one of the parties to promote the "No" to reject the 2007 Constitutional Reform Project in Venezuela.

In the last parliamentary elections, held in September 2010, La Causa Radical obtained 103,367 votes, which represents 0.91% of the valid votes and makes it the twelfth most voted Venezuelan party, and at the same time makes it the eighth party of the opposition coalition MUD, by monopolizing 1.94% of its votes. Although the party has participated in national elections since 1983, in this election 53.06% of its votes came from Bolívar state.

Some of the members of Causa R work politically in one of the union centrals in the country: the CTV, and other unions, their presence being located in the steel and electrical companies of Venezuela.

Even so, the greatest achievements of the party have been obtaining between 1989 and 1995 the Governor of the Bolívar state with Andrés Velásquez, between 1995 and 2000 the Governor of the Zulia state with Francisco Arias Cárdenas, the Mayor of the Libertador municipality between 1992 and 1995 with Aristóbulo Istúriz and the Mayor's Office of the Iribarren municipality (Lara) between 2012 and 2017 by Alfredo Ramos.

Election results

Presidential

Legend: In coalition with other parties.

Women Parliamentarians

Year	Votes	% of votes	Deputies	+/-	Senators	+/-
1983	35 304	0.5 %	0/200		0/44
1988	117 562	1.6 %	3/200	3	0/44
1993	974 190	20.68 %	40/203	37	9/50	9
1998	147 806	3.0 %	5/207	32	1/54	8
2000	196 787	4.41 %	3/165	2
2005	Don't participate			3
2010	203 740	1.2 %	3/165	3
2015	No data		4/167	1