Stalinist-backed Junta Moves Right

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PERU:

The strikes and riots which followed the Peruvian military dictatorship's latest anti-working class economic measures have in their turn provoked a major upheaval within the military regime which first seized power eight years ago.

After he had put down an abortive coup by one General, the Prime Minister and Commander in Chief, General Fernandez Maldonado was himself deposed only a few days later to be replaced by General Arbulu Galliani.

This complicated reshuffling of Generals represents a decisive shift of power inside the Peruvian military. The shift is not, as the capitalist press and some of the left papers say, from the left to the right.

is rather a move away from the "modernising" section of the right-wing military which, seized power in 1968.

JUNTA

The Junta has since attempted to build up Peruvian industrial capitalism, has increased the role of the state, reduced the power of the old landed oligarchy and somewhat reduced the influence of the United States in Peru, replacing it with closer links with other imperialist powers in Western Europe and with Japan.

Maldonado and other members of his cabinet who have fallen with him still to some extent represented this "modernising" tendency in the military. The only representative of this tendency now remaining in a major position is the President, Morales Bermudez, who himself seized power from President Velasco after a previous series of anti-government riots in August 1975 and is now politically isolated.

ANTI-WORKING CLASS There was never anything "left"

about this group. They have systematically pursued an anti-working class policy, brutally suppressing any independnet political movement of the working class and peasantry.

The right to strike and form trade unions has been rigorously limited. On a number of occasions strikers have been shot dead by Hundreds of workers and peasant leader s have been tortured, imprisoned or exiled.

D'agac hav : heen controlled by The land reform introduced with much fanfare has brought no beneIts to the peasantry.

In foreign poncy, although the regime has produced a torrent of "anti-imperialist" and "third world" rhetoric, it has in reality been participating in inter-imperialist manoeuvres.

NO ASSISTANCE When the military dictatorship set out to crush the working class of Chile in 1973, the supposedly "progressive" Generals of Peru gave no assistance to Chilean workers; instead they assisted the military junta by returning political refugees, and that was totally in character with their regime.

Castro with Junta Generals class policies.

The Peruvian Communist Party has consistently supported the regime both directly and through the trade union federation, CGTP, which it dominates. The Soviet bureaucracy has continually allied internationally with the mintary dictatorship.

CASTRO

And Fidel Castro has also given the Peruvian generals uncritical In 1971 in Lima, Castro told an audience of Peruvian workers, some of whose leaders were in jail, who were forbidden to form indepeno 71 dent trade unions or go on strike, and who might be shot dead if they did so: "If I were Peruvian I would Vei las support this government"

It will now be more difficult for the Stalinists as well as many liberals and social democrats to continue to make their grotesque claims for the revolutionary credentials of the Peruvian military dictatorship.

The group under General Arbulu who have now taken power are closer to American imperialism and the old landed oligarchy than the defeated Generals.

They • make absolutely no attempt to disguise their extreme right-wing positions and anti-working class intentions.

FIGHT BACK

But they come to power at a moment when the Peruvian working class has shown itself ready to fight any new attacks on working alnao conditione and is demanding CRACK-DOWN