Bolivian workers resist "cocaine' junta

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TURKEY SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN efend democrati rights in Turkey After six months in power, the Bolivian dictatorship of General Garcia has proved totally incapable of consolidating its rule and reaching an agreement with the leading imperialist powers over how the country should be made safe for the banks.

. The IMF has once again refused to release the final $17 million of an $85 million standby loan agreed with the Gueiler regime in November 1979. At that time Gueiler could only obtain the loan through a massive devaluation of the peso and widespread increases in the prices of basic necessities.

Within five days of forming her government she was met by a general strike and blockades of roads by the increasingly radicalised peasantry.

If Garcia and his cronies want to lay their hands onthe rest of this money they will have to encounter a similar response from the workers and peasants and this, despite their constant barbaric repression since the July coup, they are not yet prepared for.

Postponing repayments While the IMF has attempted to ease the generals' path to the implementation of a vicious economic attack on the working class by postponing debt repayment for a further three months, the fact remains that Garcia continues to face a movement of the working masses that, while suffering a major setback, has not been decisively As Bolivia's • massive $3 billion debt goes on spiralling, he dictatorship's options will narrow once more to the point of political crisis.

The continued failure to take concerted action, epitomised in constant haggling within the cabinet as to whether Bolivia is leaving the Andean Miners at the Siglo XX mining Pact or not, reilects the Bolivian bourgeoisie's political confusion -in a situation where the regime is recognised by the Kremlin, but continues to be shunned by the White House.

This impasse may indeed be resolved once Reagan takes office. But it is only the tip of the iceberg of problems for the country's weakling capitalist class which is now led by a political faction whose wealth rests on peddling huge cargoes of cocaine into Colombia and who are not centrally concerned with resolving the fiscal crisis of the state through the traditional mineral exporting sector.

There is growing evidence that the mining sector is now deeply regretting the Garcia coup which has bruught tin production to its lowest level for nearly 20 years.

This fall in production is the result of constant and heroic workplace resistance by the camp miners who, in the face of the disintegration of the national trade union (COB) leadership, have formed local branch resistance committees, the most important of which are under Trotskyist leadership as, for example, in the massive Siglo XX-Catavi complex.

Wandering around

While the bureaucrats of the COB wander around Europe trying to pump up social democratic backing for Hernan Siles. bankrupt bourgeois UDP 'Government of National Unity' the comrades in the mines organised a 48-hour strike late in the year which was supported in all the major centres. For this action militants have continued to be arrested, tortured and shot, provoking further sabotage of production.

A COB proclamation from Panama has announced another strike to take place in the next tew weeks, although it appears that this is not the result of coordination between the national leadership and the rank ana file leaders, who are now effectively leading the resistance.

It would not be altogether out of character for a man such as Lechin, general secretary of the COB (who in the summer told a military officer in an interview published in a national paper that it was now time for anpirations for another day its that the coup had given him "an insight of the armed forces that I had never properly appreciated before") to regain his vacuous populist rhetoric once out of the country.

This traitor, who told the Bolivian workers to cease all resistance when even the veteran CP bureaucrat Reyes refused to make a similar statement "because I have no mandate dictatorship.

There are, unsurprisingly, reports of CP militants ignoring the party line and supporting the : resistance committees in repudiation of yet one more vile Stalinist betrayal.

At the same time, the UDP's total bankruptcy was revealed by its Vice-President, Jaime Paz Zamora of the petty bourgeois MIR, on a visit to London last month. He revealed that the coalition's primary • objective was to get support for a coup by 'moderate officers' who would then guarantee fresh elections!

This cretinism, whose cost if implemented would include the deaths of hundreds of Bolivian workers and peasants, has served to cause extensive disenchantment inside the MIR itself, the militants of which live out their daily lives in conditions that make a total mockery of their globe-trotting leaders' cynical strategems.

Nevertheless, Garcia is by no means safe from the varying ambitions of his army colleagues.

The 'grupo institucional' of officers who backed elections and parliamentary rule has been broken up and dispatched to distant garrisons, while the failed dictator and drug addict Natusch has finally: been

PUBLIC RALLY

all, Red Lion Square, Lond‹ Red Lion Square, 1 sday 29 January at 7.30 p.n y 29 January at 7.3 the Labour and trade union Labour and trade u Many senior officers have taken to setting up home in their barracks while their civilian lackeys contest for control of the cocaine trade in a series of mafia-style executions in Santa Cruz.

Resistance

These schisms will continue and worsen as the proletariat sustains its resistance and thwarts efforts to realise the Pinochet-style crushing of the working class that Garcia promised in July.

The formation of the resistance committees and "the successful two day strike mark a new stage in the recovery of the workers' forces-in alliance with the peasantry which has been severely attacked in the last 18 months. Albeit in characteristic uneven and partial manner, the peasants have sustained their support for the vanguard of the working class and not lost the radicalism imbued by the crisis of the Natusch regime.

In view of this and the continued diplomatic activity of the UDP, the fundamental tasks of international solidarity must be realised through a constant repudiation of deals with imperialism and struggle for the independence of the working class.