1.) The irrepressible Lina Ron:

Ron emerged as a leader of the Committee of Popular Struggle at the Central University of Venezuela, where she struggled in favor of students, street vendors, and squatters. Since Chávez came to power in 1998, she has been an ardent supporter and gadfly of the revolutionary left. More recently, she has been associated with the revolutionary neighborhood organizations known as the Bolivarian Circles. Ron has become a symbol of all that the opposition hates, and is most notorious for burning a U.S. flag outside the embassy after September 11th. More recently, she has formed a party of People’s Unity, composed of "radicals, hardliners, men and women of violence." Chávez has deemed her a "soldier" worthy of respect, but also some concern over how "uncontrollable" she had become.

2. The Tupamaro Revolutionary Movement (MRT)

Not to be confused with the Uruguayan revolutionaries from which their name is derived, the Venezuelan Tupamaros are an armed militant organization based out of the 23rd of January neighborhood in the barrios of western Caracas. The MRT combines armed self-defense—aimed at expelling the Metropolitan Police (PM) from their neighborhoods—with offensive acts of violence against targets in other areas associated with the oligarchy (though the latter have decreased as the MRT has entered politics in support of Chavismo). Previous targets of attacks include banks, drug dealers, a large mall, as well as several shootouts with police. Self identified Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, the MRT program includes the recuperation of public space, rescuing culture, social struggle, anti-imerialism and a hatred of the oligarchy, and indigenous rights. The Tupamaros are currently on the radical wing of the MVR, the electoral coalition supporting Chávez, and after supporting the candidacy of Alexis Toledo as mayor of Vargas, the Tupamaro leader José Tomás Pinto was named police chief of Vargas (it´s like Huey Newton being named Oakland police chief!).

Exciting stuff, but not always peachy: after a demonstration in Vargas in support of street vendors, Lina Ron claims that Tupamaros—at the orders of Toledo—attempted to assassinate her.