S. America Round up

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Hard on the heels of the came the killing of Juan Torres, ex President of Bolivia.

Bolivian military dictator, Hugo Banzer, who seized the presidency from Torres in 1971 and unleashed the most murderous repression of attempted to use Torres: Body ts, Bolivian workers and peasants, counter some of the rapidly mounting opposition to his regime from workers and students.

Torres did a lot of opportunistic left talking during his ten-month Presidency but systematically prevented the workers from arming themselves against the right-wing reaction.

In spite of this he has retained some popularity among the Bolivian masses, if as nothing more than a symbol of their hatred of Banzer.

Banzer declared national mourning for Torres and arranged for his body to lie in state in Bolivia.

When Torres' wife insisted that the lying-in-state should be in San Andres Catholic university in La Paz and in the headquarters of the mineworkers union, Banzer refused and the body was buried instead in Mexico.

These events triggered a new development of the already strong mass action against Banzer.

The universities have been in turmoil for several weeks. Last week the students of San Andres went on strike against Banzer's decision about Torres' body.

In Oruro on the following in a protest over the ending of deferment of military service for students, two students were killed..

Among Bolivia's powerful tin miners discontent has been growing for some time. Banzer did not dare to stop them recently holding an open congress (the first for 2% years) at which they elected the former (now exiled) reformist leader Juan Lechin as president, and voted to pursue a large wage claim with strike action.

The events surrounding Torres' death and the murder of the student demonstrators sparked off a wave of protest strikes in the mining areas.

The Banzer government has reacted with panic. It has brought forward the university vacation and sent all students home.

The army has occupied mining centres and radio stations in the Altipiano (the high Andes). It has arrested the main mineworkers' leader still in Bolivia, Veta Lopez, along with many others.

Torres' death prompted Banzer to offer amnesty to any exiled Bolivian in Argentina who returned home. The three former ministers in the Torres government who accepted this offer are now also in jail for their gullibility sums of money to the Chilean junta, as soon as it ceased to be quite such an embarrassing ally and released some if its political prisonPinochet appeared only to halfunderstand the hint. The day before Kissinger arrived, 60 prisoners were ostentatiously released, just as before the visit of US Treasury Secretary Simon four weeks earlier.

Unfortunately it turned out that nearly all of them had only been arrested a few days earlier simply to be released in this public display! And during the last month, Chile's many thousands of long-term political prisoners have been joined by 500 more.

This is the biggest wave of arrests for many months and includes large numbers of the remaining leaders of the Communist Party.

In Guyana there is now talk of the People's Progressive Party, led by Cheddi Jagan, joining the government of Forbes Burnham's ruling People's National Congress.

Burnham came to power in 1964 with the help of the CIA's "destabilization" campaign against Cheddi Jagan's Soviet-backed 'Marxist"

He has stayed in power through a combination of election rigging and an opportunistic "drift to the left". , the main feature of which has been large-scale nationalisation now encompassing 80% of the economy.

This culminated last month in the nationalisation of the Booker McConnell Company which for over a century has dominated the Guyanese economy through control of sugar and many other interests.

Bookers get modest compensation of half the book value of its assets in bonds redeemable over 20 years.

Although Jagan's Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) has demandec no compensation plus the nationalisation of foreign banks, the Bookers nationalisation was enough to "justify" Jagan's ending his 3-year boycott of parliament in protest against election rigging.

The raprochement between the PPP and Burnham's People's National Congress (PNC) began last year.

Jagan announced "critical support" for the PNC government soon after a meeting with Castro, who also prepared the deal personally with Burnham.

Thus in their own ways both US imperialism and world Stalinism are attempting to impose a stabilisation which can neutralise the independent struggle of the working class.

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murder of two prominent members of the now suppres- sed Uruguayan parliament,