Workers' struggles frighten South American dictators

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Somoża's soldier rounds civilians in Leon The upsurge of last month has struck terror into the hearts of military dictators in four countriesand Nicaragua.

in Argentina, the military junta which seized power three years ago has failed totally in the task it set itself to make the country safe once again for capitalism.

Recent figures show that workers' real wages have now fallen to 50% of their value in 1976.

The rate of inflation continues (at 175% a year) to erode these even further.

But these wage cuts, resulting from Eton-educated economy minister Martinez de Hoz's rigid austerity programme, have brought no bonanza to Argentine capitalists.

Last year industrial production fell by 7% and the regime is increasingly riven by internal disputes about whether to abandon austerity.

Anti-union law

They remain united on plans to introduce another tougher anti-union law.

The practical problems of this, however, are growing as workers resort to increasingly militant actions to defend their living standards and assert their trade union rights.

Over the last month a new wave of strikes has broken out, both in Buenos Aires (centred on the engineering and textile industries but spreading also into other sectors) and in Cordoba, where 10,000 Renault workers stopped work.

In Brazil the newly "elected" military president Figueiredo faced an even more powerful strike the day he took office.

This was the militant strike of 180,000 metalworkers in the 'ABC' industrial district of Sao Paulo, Brazil's major industrial city.

The strikers who had organised themselves independently of the official trade union were asking for a 77% wage rise now, a minimum of $200 a month, and recognition of shop stewards.

Pickets

For the first time since the military coup of 1964, strike pickets were used on a wide scale.

The trade won bureauстал! :EeC ES could to sell out a strike which created panic in their own ranks as well as in the new regime which was seriously split on how to deal with its first confrontation with the working class.

In the end it decided on brutal repression.

The union was taken over by the government and numerous leaders arrestedin particular members of the Socialist Convergence group who were blamed as the main "agitators" behind the strike.

At the same time the bureaucrats did their best to head off the fight.

The national head of the metalworkers, Argeu Egydio dos Santos, made a settlement for 63% with no other benefits-which was contemptuously rejected by the ABC workers, who declared themselves independent of the national union.

But it was the well-known left' union leader Luis Ignacio da Silva (known as Lula) who in the end, by addressing a mass meeting of 15,000 workers, played a crucial role in getting at least a temporary return to work.

To get the vote to return to work 'Lula' was forced to promise that if demands were not met by the new employers, and the government takeover of the union lifted, within 45 days; the stoppage would begin again.

The fact that employers have begun the 45-day "truce" by sacking hundreds of 'ringleaders' almost certainly means the strike will resume.

Peruvian strikes

Across the Andes in Peru recurring strikes of this kind have now continued for almost a year.

'Ihe latest strike of copper miners . has been going on since March 13.

The crumbling military regime of General Morales Bermudez has so far found no answer to it, aside from repression.

Two prominent leaders of the mineworkers union (FNTMMP)- Victor Cuadros and Hernan Cuentas, both left-wing deputies in the Constituent Assembly-were arrested along with several other Constituent Assembly members.

The thirty left and workers' party members are now boycotting the Assembly.

At the same time recognition has been withdrawn from the union ang hundreds of militant miners have been sacked.

Less and less able to rely on the increasingly exposed Stalinist leaders, the military regime now rests on nothing but the nationalist party APRA which dominates the Assembly..

But it is beginning to look as if relying on APRA means relying on a ghostAPRA's senile leader Haya de la Torre is struggling for his life in an American hospital.

If he dies, then there will be no obvious candidate of the right for the presidential election due to take place after APRA has railroaded its constitution through the Assembly in about two months -While a would-be dictator may be dying in Texas, an existing dictator trembles "on holiday" in Kansas.

•Anastasio Somoza, whose dynasty has trodden down the masses of the Central American republic of Nicaragua for 40 years, is now facing the second major threat to his regime in a. year.

The civil war of last autumn has now re-erupted in the two north-western cities of Esteli and Leon.

The rebel army is again led by the Prolonged People's War faction of the nationalist Sandinist National Liberation Front.

The military commander up of Esteli resigned as the Sandinists were reported to take over the city.

Last year, despite widespread popular support, the Sandinists showed themselves incapable of offering the revolutionary political leadership necessary to crush and replace the Nicaraguan dictatorship.

The renewed mass upsurge now. makes the building of such a leadership a priority task of the masses of exploited workers not only of Nicaragua but of the whole Latin American continent-in no part of which does imperialism have a secure resting place.

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workers' struggles in Latin America in the