of and as such did not control any villages. They knew that they were no match for the army and avoided confrontations. Castro had been hoping that Venezuela would be the second act of the Latin American revolution, and he tried to supply the Venezuelan guerrillas. That was in keeping with the theory of what could be called the "permanent agrarian revolution", which the French intellectual Régis Debray had expressed in the widely circulated book Revolution Inside the Revolution and Ernesto "Che" Guevara had been trying to carry out first in Africa and later, fatally for him, in Bolivia. In 1966, Castro selected a trusted officer, Arnaldo Ochoa, to assess the Venezuelan guerrillas. Ochoa with the Venezuelan guerrilla commander Luben Petkoff, took a boat to the shores of Falcon, Venezuela, one of his most secretive expedition. Along with 15 other members of the Cuban military went to Coro Sierra mountains to strengthen Douglas Bravo guerrillas who were fighting the government troops that ended in a major strategic loss at large human cost. In 1967, the invasion of Machurucuto occurred with 12 Cubans and Venezuelans revolutionaries attempted to help Venezuelan guerrillas in the Venezuelan Andes. Soon afterward, Leoni suspended constitutional guarantees and, in a press conference, denouncing Cuban aggression against Venezuela and showed two captured Cubans: Manuel Gil Castellanos, and Pedro Cabrera Torres. Cuba was denounced by Venezuela to the Organization of American States. Cuba did not recognize his action even if the investigation of the AK 47 in possession of the guerrillas had serial numbers matching weapons sold by the Czech Republic to Cuba. The government of Venezuela broke off relations with Cuba them until 1974. That effectively ended Cuba's intervention in Venezuelan affairs. By then, Venezuelan leftists had given up on violence and were seeking legalisation, but Leoni did not offer it. Ochoa was later tried and executed by Castro on an unlikely charge of drug-smuggling. Meanwhile, Leoni signed the Cartagena Agreement. The precursor to the Andean Community, it was a trade bloc in Bogotá between Venezuela, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador. On 11 March 1969, Leoni transferred power to Rafael Caldera, a member of the Christian Democratic Party COPEI and a signatory of the Pacto de Punto Fijo. That transfer definitively instituted the alternation of power between the important parties until the late 20th century in Venezuela. Personal life and death Raúl Leoni was married to Carmen América