BOLIVIA: from front page

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and troops amongst which were over 200 specially-trained Argentine soldiers.

Simon Reyes, leader of the miners union (FSTMB) and CP congressman and Marcclo Quiroga Santa Cruz, head of the Socialist Party (PS-1), were hauled out, insulted, brutally beaten and summarily executed. Juan Lechin, leader of the COB; was wounded and captured, later to be paraded ignominiously in front of TV cameras. Some 20 other union leaders were assassinated.

The COB and CONADE called the prepared general strike and blockade of roads and Siles urged continued resistance to the army.

Censorship

Although it is still difficult ascertain with confidence what occurred in the first days, because of total censorship and the unreliability of bourgeois information, it appears that for the first two working days after the coup the general strike was solid in the towns.

However by mid-week after threats of dismissal, with the widespread deployment of troops and rightist vigilantes, and without any direction from their political and union leadership (either dead, underground or captured) the urban working class gradually began. to return to work.

Urban resistance became centred on the students, who bravely continued to • erect makeshift barricadies, snipe at patrols and sabotage communications and water supplies. This sporadic activity continues.

The prime concern of the military is, however, outside of the towns, in the countryside and the all-important mining camps, the dynamos of the Bolivian economy and the home of the militant vanguard of the working class.

Resilient

is here that the strikes and blockades had the most immediate impact and proved most resilient.

The peasants played an important role in last year's overthrow of Natusich by blocking the main roads.

This was an important development for it gave concrete evidence that important sectors of the peasantry had broken from the military-peasant alliance which was established by Gencral Barrientos in the early 1960s and became thereafter a critical base of support for the army.

Peasant Late last year the national peasant union joined the COB, an unprecedented step, and although these sectors were far from revolutionary they dis played a deep anti-militarism and showed themselves to have superceded the provincial apathy so characteristic of pcasant masses.

The results of this development have proved uneven in the last week, but within two days of the coup two Peruvian journalists counted OVer 1,400 lorries stranded in the bleak Andean altiplano as a result of road blocks.

It is, nevertheless, against the miners that the army has traditionally directed its vengeance.

Large numbers of troops were rapidly ferried to besiege and take the southern camps, particularly the major centres of Huanuni, Catavi-Siglo XX and Chocalla.

There, the strike was total and careful preparations for self defence, based on plant unions and coordinated through the union radio stations, were put into effect.

Contrary to early reports the miners are not heavily armed but almost totally reliant upon their traditional weapon of dynamite. Nevertheless, heroic resistance leaves the army's progress very slow and costly.

Huanuni was defended vehemently and retaken from a large occupying force. It is likely that this battle cost many lives.

Fierce resistance was also reported in the mine of Santa Ana, near potost bay for five army was held at days.

However, one by one the radio stations have fallen silent and the workers, completely surrounded, have retreated down the mineshafts themselves to avoid the slaughter. This is what occurred in 1942, 1965, 1967 and 1971.

Miners in the Siglo XX mine, facing a threat to bomb the mine unless they surrendered, have now laid down their arms.

Latest reports suggest a truce -it is not yet possible to verify these. It is, however, clear that the working class is extremely badly placed to overthrow the dictatorship in the short term.

This is most apparent in the balance of class forces in simple terms of power-unarmed, on the defensive, without coherent political leadership, the proletariat has suffered a major setback.

Violation

Garcia, and his tellow butchers on the ruling junta, remain at present ostracised by the US imperialists, who have cut off aid and withdrawn their ambassador in protest at the 'savage violation of human rights' They are also isolated from the countries of the Andean Pact but they will continue to derive support from Argentinian butcher Videla (first and foremost) as well as Pinochet.

At first sight the Bolivian officers appear to have joined those South American regimes that are prepared to enter into partial contlict with the imperialist leaders over the form of policing their neo colonial states.

They • know, along with Reagan and the more outspoken marshals of failing monopoly capital, that buoyant profits, guaranteed investment and political stability are not in the least assured in Bolivia or anywhere else by respect for "human rights".

Luxury

How long Washington can afford the luxury of its current verbal opposition to the coup is uncertain. Carter is afraid to condone the Bolivian slaughteryet his minions are beginning to realise there is no 'middle way'.

The small Bolivian bourgeoisie, totally insignificant in international terms, has suffered the full force of the crisis of imperialist capital and the national economy is verging on bankruptcy.

The Gueiler regime was engaged in talks with the IMF, which wants to impose savage terms on rescheduling Bolivia's £1.5 billion debts.

There can be no doubt that Siles and the UDP would have been unable to meet such conditions and been obliged to implement some form of redistributionist and reflationary measures which would have further crippled the state and the feeble local businesses.

It was fear of this that drove substantial sectors of the middle classes to the right in the last year, further limited the constituency for parliamentarianism and put imperialist capitalwhatever Carter's bleatings-fair and square behind the coup.

Meanwhile in Bolivia as workers attempt to regroup and defend their organisations against further attack, it is essential that armed self defence squads be established in the proletarian centres.

At the same time the forward movement of the Bolivian peasantry against the junta must be developed: it is important that the workers movement should champion the democratic demands of the peasants and support their struggles for land, fair prices, and cheap credit.

Alliance

But in seeking to develop an alliance with the peasantry it is vital that no adaptation is made to the politics of the petty bourgeois political formations.

As we go to press, little news has emerged of the fate of the Trotskyist forces in Bolivia. It is clear however that only the POR, led by Guillermo Lora, consistently warned the workers' movement of the imminent danger of a coup and correctly pointed to the fraudulent nature of the elections, calling for a boycott and a struggle for a workers' and peasants' government.

The bitter lessons of the coup must now be learned and remembered by all revolutionaries in the next period as the reformist and petty bourgeois politicians and their hangers-on inevitably seek to mount a "democratic" opposition to the junta.

Bas Bolivian workers in struggle in 1971 On July 23 the bureaucracy was forced to concede a 15% increase for 30,000 steel workers.

And by last week railway repair workers in Ostrow western Poland were on strike in support of a demand for 20%.

According to the KOR-the Workers' Self Defence Committee-at least 70 factories have now experienced total strikes since the beginning of July.

At present the situation is one in which the growing demands of the workers are becoming increasingly contagious and are finding a spineless bureaucracy forced to make concessions at every turn.

Having started by attempting to resolve some of its economic problems by cutting real wages, the bureaucracy has so far arrived at a position in which its economic problems are worsened because the working class is forcing concessions on real wages.

The bureaucracy must now be considering an attempt to stop the erosion of its power by staging a major confrontation with the working class.

Battle for power

It is a situation which could very suddenly erupt into a new full-scale battle for power between the Polish working class and its Stalinist oppressors.

It is no doubt with this in mind that Polish Stalinist leader Gierek has gone on a rapidly arranged "holiday" to consult with fellow Stalinist leaders in Moscow.

There is little doubt that any serious rising by the Polish workers that might oust Gierek could provoke a military intervention by Kremlin troops along the lines of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 in order to restore the stability of bureaucratic rule and forestall any growth of revolutionary struggles across the border into the USSR itself.

It is precisely in seeking such a political revolution that Marxists, while defending the nationalised property relations in the USSR, Poland and other deformed workers states, side with the workers in their struggle for the overthrow of the bureaucracy.

We call in these struggles for the establishment of workers' councils to challenge the power of the parasitic Stalinist regime, and form the basis of revolutionary workers' states through Eastern Europe.