¡Alfaro Vive, Carajo!

Marxist Leninist political military organization from Ecuador. the at the Drive In EP

¡Alfaro Vive, Carajo! (AVC) (Alfaro Lives, Dammit! ), another name for the Fuerzas Armadas Populares Eloy Alfaro (Eloy Alfaro Popular Armed Forces), was a clandestine left wing group in Ecuador, founded in 1982 and named after popular government leader and general Eloy Alfaro. The group was labeled as a terrorist organization by the Ecuadorian state during the period of the former president León Febres Cordero. It existed between 1983 and 1991, when it carried out various armed actions and criminal acts in Ecuador, with Colombian (M 19) and Nicaraguan (Nicaraguan Revolution) influence. The group was initially formed sometime in the 1970s, but was not active militarily for the first few years of the 80's. An openly leftist organization, but not Marxist, they identified with the Democratic Left coalition. 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. Some of the group's leaders were thought to be affiliated with Cuba, Libya and Nicaragua, and the group itself was linked to militant groups in other Latin American countries, such as M 19 The AVC did not carry out attacks against the population or large scale attacks since according to Santiago Kingman, the main ideologue of the AVC any bomb exploding alone, senseless any killing of an unarmed person was stupid. In response to this activity, the government began conducting raids against the group. The group's leader, Arturo Jarrin, was killed during a shootout against government forces in October 1986. Due to the death in 1986 of its leader, Arturo Jarrín, arrests and the death of several other members in the same year took place as a result of the actions carried out by the security forces of the Ecuadorian State, AVC lost strength and was practically eliminated. According to the book The remnant of AVC, it formally handed over its weapons in 1991. The balance of the AVC campaign between 1983 and 1988 was: 16 AVC members, six members of the M 19, 14 police officers killed, more than 20 injured. in the 1980s. During the 1970s Ecuador experienced an annual economic growth rate of 8.1%

Beginning with President Osvaldo Hurtado (1981 1984) the government of Ecuador applied measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to restructure the economy. These measures included: reducing fiscal spending, devaluing the local currency, and raising prices. His economic team was made up of three economists fully identified with the business sector: Carlos Julio Emanuel, Francisco Swett and Alberto Dahik. They devalued the Sucre, promoting agricultural exports and favoring economic groups. At the same time, they eliminated price controls and reduced the gasoline subsidy, increasing the price of gasoline by 70 percent. 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 following is a partial list of armed robberies of banking institutions carried out by AVC members with the respective amounts stolen. The amounts in US dollars are approximate with the price of the year in which they occurred. In 1989, the government of Ecuador reached an agreement with AVC, with the group agreeing to end its violence. In January 2012, Rosa Mireya Cárdenas, who served as Secretary of Peoples, as a delegate of former AVC members, she returned the swords to the then President of Ecuador Rafael Correa.

Since the beginning of 1983, the AVC carried out a large number of operations, which included actions such as bank robberies and graffiti, seeking in this way to achieve loudness in the media, which according to the AVC, were controlled by the "right". 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. On 8 July, the Bust of Eloy Alfaro was stolen from the headquarters of the Supreme Liberal Junta in Quito Jarrín, Mireya Cárdenas and Edgar Frías held a press conference in which they announced the existence of the organization. Basantes and Frías temporarily assumed control of AVC. In October, during training near Esmeraldas, Basantes and Cárdenas were arrested for illegal possession of weapons. In April 1984, after the return of Jarrín from Libya and the release of Basantes from prison, the members of the AVC met and elected a Central Command made up of Jarrín, Basantes and Frías. On 12 June, the brothers Ricardo and Lilian Jarrín (both disguised as religious) assaulted the Banco de los Andes in Quito. Benavides for her part remained detained for months, accused of illicit association. 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. On 8 November, they kidnapped a reporter from the newspaper Meridiano de Guayaquil to force an interview with Fausto Basantes Borja. stealing 631 38 caliber revolvers, 40 carbines and several boxes of bullets. On 10 May, they seized radio station Iris from Esmeraldas to broadcast an AVC proclamation. On 16 October, they seized the embassy of Mexico in response to the rupture of their diplomatic relations with Nicaragua. The AVC wanted 5 million dollars for his ransom with whom he planned to train guerrillas together with the Colombian M 19 and form a rural guerrilla in Ecuador. A secondary objective was to make a political statement, being part of the Ecuadorian banking and commercial oligarchy. Thinking that the government would not put Isaías's life at risk and they would negotiate a financial bailout. Their plan was to take him to a safe house in Manta. After the kidnapping, the guerrillas left Isaías' house in two cars: one carried the kidnapped with guerrillas and the other Juan Cuvi and Juan Carlos Acosta. Cuvi and Acosta's vehicle stopped at a gas station in Nobol where a police unit patrolling the area arrested them. 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. Acosta was reportedly denied medical attention until his family intervened (his father was a former foreign minister), 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. In accordance with the state policy of not negotiating with terrorists, on 2 September at 03:26 As a result, both Isaiah and his kidnappers died. The failure of this operation collapsed the AVC's first attempt to generate an economic base.