No Recognition to Bolivian Junta

Scan page 2

Committee for the Defence of Democracy in Bolivia 1, Cambridge Terrace, London NW1 3 March 1981 Comrades, While attention following Thatcher's visit to Washington has quite correctly been centred on the escalation of Cold War threats and the redoubling of the barbaric offensive against the struggle for national liberation in El Salvador, we would like to bring to your attention one unforseen side-effect: the increased likelihood of recognition of the Bolivian dictatorship by the Reagan administration and the Tory government, following in its footsteps.

Until now Reagan has been prevented from backing the Junta led by General Garcia and established following the bloody coup of July 17 last year, because the US Drugs Enforcement Agency has given publicity to the fact that leading members of the military regime are The TUC's bureaucratic proscription of the conference on Ireland called by the Revolutionary Communist Tendency's "Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act Campaign" must be condemned throughout the trade union movement.

It is part and parcel of the dictatorial methods used by the union bureaucracy to keep the labour movement chained to pro-imperialist, bi-partisan policies on Ireland.

The workers Socialist League reiterates its active and unconditional opposition to such intimidation.

But neither did we give practical or political support to the RCT's conference. In fact we are strongly critical of the way it was called and the methods of the RCT.

By pursuing an adventurist elitist policy, the RCT leave anti-imperialist forces within the unions open to victimisation and potential exclusion from working class organisations.

Deaf to all but sectarian selfdeeply involved in cocaine trafficking.

This has meant that the Junta has been unable to renegotiate Bolivia's massive $3.8 billion external debt and flounders on the very of bankruptcy.

However, on. 27 February Garcia moved to clean up his image by firing the two leading drug smugglers in the cabinet. Colonels Luis Arce Gomez (Minister of the Interior) and Ariel Coca (Minister of Education).

Wall St.

They have been replaced by men no less right wing (civilians with strong connections with Wall Street) but less renowned for their dealings in narcotics.

With the return of Arce and Coca to their natural terrain of directing repression the way is open for recognition when, in fact, nothing has changed.

The report of the recent While it may salve the RCT's conscience, uncommitted militants gullible enough to fall for this demagogy will end up only isolated and demoralised.

This petty bourgeois, propagandist playing at politics smacks more of the Red Brigades than Leninism. It is a mere variation on the methods of their former comrades in the SWP, whose stunts on the Irish WaI have included throwing horse shit onto MPs from Parliament's public gallery.

The RCT initiated this conference with no attempt at discussion with others who might have given support.

Much worse, they even chose not to organise it through a trade union body but their own SPTAC, giving their party address for contact.

With a full scale media witch-hunt inevitable, this can only be seen as deliberately opening the door for a TUC attack and positively inviting disaffiliations.

The experience of Amnesty International mission to Bolivia corroborates the assertion that repression continues on a massive scale: the entire country lives under a state of siege and a dozen people a week are shot simply for breaking the curfew, all independent trade unions are outlawed and replaced by government-appointed 'coordinators'; of the political parties only the fascist right may work openly; the mines continue to be infested by troops (several regiments), and the slightest evidence of criticism (even from the Church) is dubbed 'subversive delinquency' The consequences of this are now well-known: arrest, torture and summary execution remain a daily occurence.

On 15 January nine members of the Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) were captured, brutally tortured and then assassinated with the regime making little effort to cover its tracks. This is, affiliation of Tameside Trades Council last veat nascedil RCT leadership nothing.

The WSL, who virtually alone, consistently supported the defence campaign, fought against bitter RCT resistance to turn that into a genuine classwide campaign against the TUC.

A resolution to this effect was carried at the Tameside conference and then forgotten. The RCT's infantile inability to understand the labour bureaucracy, typified by their identification of the Labour Party with the Tories, turned that struggle into a self-righteous talking shop.

The RCT's heroic gestures and single issue mentality sees a solution to every problem as simply running up the red flagor on Ireland more accurately a green flag as they boast of giving the IRA uncritical support.

They end up letting the reformists off the hook. And the only winners in this game are the enemies of the Irish people. though, only one instance among many.

Moreover, on 9 January the regime, in an effort to lay the ›asis for a close relationship with the IMF, introduced an economic 'packet' that removed the subsidies on a series of basic necessities, increasing inflation by around 100%, and froze all wages-except those of the military who have had three rises in the last year.

Strike

The workers response to this exceeded all expectations, with a 48-hour strike in the mines and the major factories of La Paz and Cochabamba.

Moreover, there is now a Front for Clandestine Trade Union Unity (FUSCLA), established on 16 December as an underground continuation of the COB (the outlawed national federation) with the support of workers' delegates from the PCB, POR, MIR, and PRIN..

The TUC is "an imperialist organisation" , and trades councils who don't have an anti-imperialist policy on Ireland are "good for nothing".

That was the theme of last Saturday's Coventry conference, which took place (literally) under the green banner of the Revolutionary Communist Tendency.

As the press, egged on by provocative RCT statements, whipped up a witch-hunt, added interest in the conference boosted attendance to 200 -mainly students.

However, significantly only two or three trades councils had sent official delegations foliowing the TUC's proscription threats and formal representation from other labour movement bodies was sparse.

Previously advertised speakers from British trade unions were also absent.

With the platform thus reduced to Irish republican and RCT speakers (who oppose any criticism of the IRA) it was no wonder the conference organisers drew high praise from Brendan Gallagher.

Alone among the main speakers, a TGWU branch secretary from Derry drew out some of the very real problems in actually organising on the Irish question in the unions. Cocaine Colonel Arce Gomez The FUSCLA calls for 100% wage rises, the establishment of a sliding scale of wages, return of the miners radio stations, full rights of assembly, speech, and trade union activity.

This reorganisation of the labour movement stands threatened by the renewal of imperialist support for the dictatorship and we believe that every effort must be made to isolate the Junta, including pressuring the Tory government to withold recognition.

We would, therefore, ask for your support in publicising the threat of recognition and building a campaign against it within the British labour movement.

Carrington has written to Tony Benn that the reason for witholding recognition is the suppression of democratic liberties. He must be kept to this and not allowed to repeat the policy applied to Chile and Argentina under the spurious excuse that the 'cocaine dealers' have gone and all is now well.

*Down with the Bolivian dictatorship!

*No recognition!

*No arms!

*No trade!