Movimiento al Socialismo (Venezuela)
Venezuelan political party
The Movement for Socialism (Spanish: Movimiento al Socialismo, or MAS) is a democratic socialist political party in Venezuela.
History
MAS was founded in 1971, with a view to emphasising a socialist message. Initially led by Teodoro Petkoff, its first congress was held on 14 January 1971. In 1988 another left-wing party, the Movement of the Revolutionary Left, merged with MAS.
In the 1970s to the 1990s, members of MAS hoped that the party would become the third largest political force, challenging the dominant Social Christian and Democratic Action parties. However, the party often won less than 5% of the vote. At the 1993 election it supported the National Convergence coalition which successfully backed Rafael Caldera, contributing 10.59% of the vote, a third of Caldera's total. At the parliamentary elections the same year it achieved a high-water mark of 5 Senators and 24 Deputies.
MAS initially supported the government of Hugo Chávez in 1998. Petkoff disagreed with this decision and left the party. Disagreements between MAS and Chávez subsequently emerged, and MAS joined the opposition.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Movimiento al Socialismo (Venezuela)” is venezuelan political party. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Movimiento, Socialismo and Venezuela, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q429548. VIAF identifies the subject as 149884619. The Library of Congress control number is n83231857. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1988, 1993 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Movimiento al Socialismo (Venezuela)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.