Bolivian dictator retreats

Scan page 3

Following two attempted coups within the space of a fortnight, both in the central city of Cochabamba and both led by the same man, Bolivian dictator General Luis Garcia Meza has been forced to announce his resignation as from 6 August, Independence Day.

According to Garcia's declaration, the armed forces should appoint his successor on 17 July, first anniversary of the bloody coup that brought him to power.

The removal of Garcia has been on the cards for some time as the country's armed forces fell out amongst themselves when faced with a crippling external debt, economic collapse, the smear of cocaine trafficking, staunch popular resistance and antipathy, and continuing failure to beguile the US into recognising their Government of National Reconstruction' Yet a series of coup attempts throughout the spring came to nought.

This was principally because once having undertaken their Pinochet-style coup ('pinochetazo') and immersed themselves In mafia-style infighting over cocaine spoils, the generals were unable to present. il viable alternative.

They were stuck with different figureheads and clans; but there was nowhere to go further to the right, and any genuine reversal of the dictatorship stood to open the floodgates of mass mobilisation.

Shift

The measured retreat taken by Garcia does, however, represent something a shift of the balance forces within the military.

It appears that a group not closely associated with cocaine smuggling and anxious to avoid further confusion inside the repressive apparatus by reforming the dictatorship along lines acceptable to the US has gained the upper hand.

The leading figures in this group are Generals Humberto Cayoja, Lucio Anez and Gary Prado, the latter being famous for his capture of Che Guevara in 1967.

Lurking behind the experienced butchers and veteran conspiratorsformer dictator Hugo Banzer and Alberto Natusch, leader of a short-lived coup, who have now established a more or less firm alliance, which does not explicitly rule out some form of election' : to reassemble the divided right and • refurbish the remnants of Garcia's regime.

In this they can count on the support of the civilian bourgeois parties and the CP and the petty bourgeois radical nationalist' MIR, who have called for the 'honourable' sectors of the military to take power and organised a demonstration of workers and students three weeks ago in Cochabamba in support of Colonel Lanza's failed coup.

Satisfied

Reports from Washington indicate that the State Department is highly satisfied with this particular form of revolutionary struggle? which promises to adorn the next strong-man with some spurious andephemeral 'democratic' credentials. terror organisation.

Agca is one of the tc gunmen of the NAP, Wr claim to have twenty mo like him. The attempte assassination had sever aims. It is a warning 1 both Evren and the bou geoisie in Europe. Who w be the next victim canni be predicted.

It shows that the NA are well organised throug out Europe-they are st very much there.

The NAP in Belgiu claimed- it was a prote against the trial in Ankar But the determining fact in that trial as for all oth aspects of life in Turkey w be the consistency of tl working class and its alli in the fight against not on the fascists, but the jun itself.