Bolivian Miners Resist New Military Junta

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economic failure ; electoral liability The ruling class of the point in the heady days of the his campaign a "moderate"

İranian hostages affair and the cover by running Vice world's greatest imperialist Cold War moves over Afghanis- President. power is experiencing an tan, which have created the acute and prolonged crisis current problem for Carter. likely to win the 1980 elections Despite a well coordinated and systematic campaign of disinformation and outright propaganda on the part of the Garcia dictatorship in Bolivia, it is plain that two weeks after the bloody coup that brought it to power the military have been unable to break the heroic resistance of the miners who remain on strike.

For the last week the international capitalist press has. been reporting confusing and contradictory articles on the state of the workers" resistance.

Agencies Almost all of these, (emanating from the American UPI and AP agencies largely reliant upon official communiques in La Paz) have depicted a crumbling strike with gradual return to work in various mines after truces' with the army.

However, as of 3 August, no major mine has returned to work -althouoh some have given up their arms to avoid an all-out aerial bombing of the camps that house the miners and their families.

This is the case in the San Jose and Huanuni camps which remain at a complete standstill with the majority of the workforce staying down the mineshafts.

The military have now changed their tactics to destroy the major threat to their Chilestyle coup.

At tirst, tollowing a longprepared plan, they embarked on an infantry assault on the mines.

But this proved unproductive and dangerous since the conscripts either fired high or mutinied in solidarity with the workers.

This apparently occured at the strategic mine of Huanuni, The ruling class of the world's greatest imperialist power is experiencing an acute and prolonged crisis of leadership.

After the disgrace of Richard "Your President is not a crook"

Nixon, they wound up with Republican Gerald Ford, of whom it was generously said that he couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time.

The 1976 election saw peanut millionaire Jimmy Carter take office on a "whiter than white" platform-only to prove himself incapable of walking anywhere without tripping.

Failures

After four years of fiascoes and failures at home and abroad with US unemployment rising at record pace, the economy in polies turning in billion dollar losses, and the election pledges with which he won trade union support all abandoned, Carter now faces • the systematic destruction of even his "Mr Clean" image in a traumatic series of revelations of the activities of his brother Billy.

It is partly "Billygate" › and partly the catastrophic plunge in Carter's popularity since its high which control's the road to the vast Catavi-Siglo XX complex, where the miners were able to retake the town.

At the northern mine of Corocoro soldiers refused to fire, and some eighty were immediately. shot by their officers.

Killed officers Three lorry loads of rank and file troopers moving out of La Paz to the mining area killed their officers and deserted taking their arms to the workers.

Now all conscripts, including those who were kept on longer than their two-year term of service especially for the i coup have been withdrawn and replaced by the US-trained elite Ranger battalions Open convention A growing body of Democratic party leaders and even AFL-CIO union bureaucrats are calling for the New York •party convention to be not the expected rubber stamp for Carter's candidacy but an open convention, able to choose another candidate.

But the alternative choices available to the Democrats are none too promising either: there is Edward Kennedy, who trailed Carter throughout the primaries and who cannot even drive a car over a bridge; there is Secretary of State Edmund Muskie whose tall-ending of Carter scarcely equips him to fight. Ronald Reagan; or there is an anonymous crew of hopefuls, none of whom command wide party Meanwhile the Republicans have settled for a far from perfect "B" team-composed of geriatric 'B' movie actor Ronald Reagan and former CIA chief George Bush-who stepped in after Reagan had failed to persuade Gerald Ford to offer It was this unit that tracked down and executed Che Guevara in 1967; that massacred hundreds of students in Santa Cruz during Banzer's 1971 coup; that later beat to pieces their own mentor Colonel Andres Selich Chop under "questioning"; and since then has been used frequently both as a civilian "death squad" and as the major strike force for repression of mass struggles.

As always occurs in periods of intense class conflict, the military apparatus becomes severely tested and only those sectors which are highly professionalised, distanced from the masses and compromised with the crimes of the bourgeoisie can be fully relied upon.

In Bolivia in 1952 a major portion of the army and his campaign a "moderate"

cover by running as Vice President.

It is this team that seems It is this team that seems likely to win the 1980 elections and unleash a period of increas- and unleash a period of increasing international aggression and instability.

Seldom in recent history can the fate of the world have hung on the antics of such a bunch of incompetents and scoundrels.

. Yet the powerful US labour movement remains tied by its leadership to these two capitalist parties.

As Carter fights for his political life and Reagan promises to undergo regular senility checks, it is vital that trade unionists take up the fight for the AFL-CIO and other unions to break from the Democrats and form a Labour Party based on a socialist programme which alone can offer an independent way forward.

Last week's Socialist Press should have pointed out that the lobby of the Turkish Embassy which we supported was called by the Committee for Defence of Democratic Rights joined the MNR revolutionaries; in 1971 the Banzer coup: was Sanchez (once captured by Guévara) and only gradually supported by other units.

This time, however, it is exclusively amongst the rank and file that disaffection is evident; the political magnitude of the coup required extensive lobbying and preparation.

When the miners resisted the attacks and the first troops mutinied the generals tried to bomb the workers out: but while they could silence the miners' radio stations they stood in danger of destroying the very surface plant they need to continue the exploitation of the miners.

Now the miners are being starved out as Banzer did to them in 1976-then it took OVnI three months to, break the strike.

Now, as then, the strikers remain in the mine shatts-but they need to be fed. In this the local peasantry has displayed its political advance by smuggling in food bought in the highland town of Oruro. The last time the peasants did this was in 1947. • It now appears that the coup was not only backed by Argentine soldiers (200 of them in civilian dress), carried out with tried Argentine terrorist methods, but also manned over months with their assistance.

This, then, is an 'Argentinestyle' coup with 'Chilean' ends in mind.

But the Brazilians who saw the plans in May, are also involved-they were quick to recognise the dictatorshipalong only with Argentina and Paraguay (Chile has no diplomatic relations with Bolivia) in the entire world.

When Garcia now 'says he stay in power for 20 years to rid 'Bolivia of the cancer of Marxism" he is christening a new alliance of dictatorships: the southern cone of Latin America.

The mark of this can be seen in the new concentration camps in Bolivia, in the hundreds of people herded into the La Paz football stadium for days without food or water, in the total censorship and high number of deaths; in the persecution of the liberal clergy and pushing aside of the civilian bourgeois politicians.

This is the inevitable lesson of Bolivia's futile efforts at "democracy", one which should toral illusions in what proved such a tragic trick for the Bolivian working class.

The overthrow of the dictatorship is the prime objective of the vanguard-the miners-and in this they will require the greatest international solidarity which must now become an absolute priority for workers in the imperialist metropolis.

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opposed by the Colorados regiment led by Major Ruben

be learnt by those revolution- ary' groups which sowed elec-