The Red Flag Party (Spanish: Partido Bandera Roja) is a communist party in Venezuela. Formed in 1970 by anti-revisionist members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), the 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 Venezuelan 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