Federation of Students of Venezuela (FEV)

The Federation of Students of Venezuela (Federacíon de Estudiantes, or FEV) was a Venezuelan student organization opposed to the government of Juan Vicente Gómez (1908–1929, 1931–1935). The General Association of Students was established in 1909, and on various occasions it participated in protests against the government. As a result the university was closed several times and the unity among its academicians destroyed. When the university reopened in 1925, the General Association of Students was reborn with the new name Federation of Students of Venezuela.

In 1928, FEV sponsored the week of the student, a festival that turned into an antigovernment demonstration. As a result FEV organizers were imprisoned or exiled but their actions had gained great popularity and became Venezuela's first urban mass movement. Exiled FEV leaders formed several political parties, two of which had lasting significance—the Partido Revolucionario Venezolano (PRV) and the Agrupación Revolucionaria de Izquierda (ARDI). The FEV was dissolved until 1935, but with the death of Gómez in that year, it reappeared as one of the organizations leading the protests of 1936.

See alsoUniversities: The Modern Era .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. López Contreras, Proceso político social, 1928–1936 (1955).

María De Lourdes Acedo De Sucre and Carmen Margarita Nones Mendoza, La generación venezolana de 1928 (1967).

Joaquín Gabaldón Márquez, Memoria y cuento de la generación del vientiocho (1978).

Arturo Sosa and Eloi Legrand, Del garibaldismo estudiantil a la izquierda criolla: Los orígenes marxistas del proyecto de A.D. (1928–1935) (1981).

Additional Bibliography

Caballero, Manuel. Las crisis de la Venezuela contemporánea 1903–1992. Caracas, Venezuela: Monte Avila Editores Latinoamericana, 1998.

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