Argentina: Act to Help Free Militants

Scan page 3

Since the military coup of March 24, 1976, the workers of Argentina have been faced with a two-pronged attack from General Videla's junta.

Political repression has been capped by an onslaught on working class living standards in an attempt to strengthen bourgeois rule in the country.

Real wages during the first quarter of 1977 were one-third lower than they were in 1960, and just 53% of what they were in 1943.

These cuts have been achieved by holding wages down and letting inflation rip: for the first five months of this year the inflation rate was 42%-an overall figure which conceals the even higher rises in the price of essential goods.

On July 1, rents were increased by 25%-which means that rents have risen tenfold over the last year.

All told it is calculated that an immediate wage rise of 150% is needed just to restore living standards to the 1974 level In dozens of factories the workers have shown a clear willingness to resist this economic onslaught by demanding higher wages.

But this preparedness to fight has not yet been channelled into an organised, systematic movement capable of smashing through these starvation wages and overthrowing the Videla regime.

Chief culprit in blocking the formation of such a movement is the trade union throughout the count "normalisation" plans (i.e. his scheme for a docile, housebroken trade union structure), the class-collaborationist bureaucrats have rushed around betraying every single demand raised by the workers.

But Videla cannot rely on the trade union bureaucracy alone to discipline the working class, and has, in the year since the coup, stepped up repression.

The latest victim of these measures is one Enrique Broquen, the main legal adviser of the PSTArgentinian sympathising section of the "United" Secretariat of the Fourth International.

Broquen, aged 69, had been actively involved in defending political prisoners-including the almost 100 members of the PST now missing or in jail-until his kidnapping on July 5.

is one of several defence lawyers to have disappeared since last year, and is probably now in one of Videla's countless jails--if not already dead.

It is the elementary duty of socialists to demand that the leaders of the labour movement in Britain and other capitalist countrif Argentina to secure the against overthrow of the Junta and the restoration of full democratic rights.

High on this list of rights must be the demand for the immediate release of Broquen and all other political prisoners in Argentina.

Videla's efforts to crush the Argentinian working class through economic and politi cal terror must mons managed to beat down Hoffa and held onto power himself.

Hoffa subsequently vanished on July 30, 1975 and is still missing, presumed dead.

Nixon Fitzsimmons still rules the roost, although he and Anthony Provenzano are now being fingered by the FBI in connection with the Nixon pay-off.

In addition, Provenzano-who was Teamster boss in New Jersey until his conviction in 1963 for racketeering-is considered prime suspect in Hoffa's disappearance.

According to the Time report, Provenzano and a strong arm heavy Salvatore Briguglio ordered in January 1973 that $500,000 in cash be delivered to a White House courier in Las Vegas.

Provenzano is alleged to have told an associate that he had collected the money at Fitzsimmons' request, and that another $500,000 had been provided for Nixon also on Fitzsimmons' request-by Allen Dorfman, a convicted Chicago hoodlum and "adviser" to the Teamsters' Pension Fund.

SIGNIFICANT

Provenzano is further quoted as saying that the cash had been requested by White House aide Charles Colson, who was responsible for White House/Teamster relations.

The timing of these payments is significant, for it was in late 1972

Scan page 4

Page 4 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday I 7 August 1 977