Workers Rise Against S.american Diciators

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The great majority of Latin American countries are at present ruled by reactionary military dictatorships who compete with each other in brutality in their suppression of the labour movement and all forms of popular resistance.

Yet despite the severity of the repression, despite the support these political gangsters give to each other and receive from the imperialists and the Stalinists, they have not been able to crush the fighting strength of the working class.

Courage

Over the last few months almost daily proof has come of the courage of hundreds of thousands of workers in maintaining their organisations under appalling conditions and in taking bold actions when they know that such action carries the risk of death.

The last few months have shown that none of the dictatorships is safe from the resistance of the working class.

In both Colombia and Peru, general strikes have taken place against the anti-working class economic policies of the governments.

The Colombian government, though nominally a democratically elected one, rules through states of emergency in much the same way as the military dictators.

The latest reports from Colombia indicate that the death toll in the one day general strike of September 14 was 33 killed, of whom 30 were in the capital, Bogota.

Jailed

24 people have so far been given prison sentences for helping to organise the strike and at least ten unions which the scene last month of a massacre of workers unparalleded in the country's history since the infamous massacre in Guayaquil in 1922.

The scene this time was a sugar plantation only a few miles from the same town. 1700 sugar workers had gone on strike in support of higher wages and several hundred of them had occupied the administrative buildings of the plantations.

The police invaded the building and drove workers and their families out towards a deep irrigation canal into which many of them fell to their deaths.

The Interior Minister admits that 24 people were killed but claims that the strikers, "committed sucide in order to promote unrest in the country"

The unions say that 120 were murdered in the massacre and others have been killed in anti-government demonstrations which have followed the massacre in most of Ecuador's main towns.

The extent of the mass demonstrations against the massacre is hard to assess because of the news blackout imposed by the dictatorship; and the same problem exists for other parts of the continent.

But reports leaked out this week of a renewal of workers' action even in Chile where a complete generation of workers' leaders were slaughtered after the 1973 coup.

A strike over pay is reported from the *El Teniente' copper mine, the largest in the country, where at least 25% of the labour force were refusing to work.

In the last three weeks it is in Argentina that the most dramatic upsurge of workers' struggle has taken place.

The major strikes in the railways and the Buenos Aires Underground spread to other public sector workers-to dockers in Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, to electricity and water board workers Rosario, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires and to workers in the state oil company.

Gunpoint

The strikes did not stop there but went on to affect a number of major firms in the private sector-the Alpargatas and Alpesa textile factories and the Peugot car works.

The public sector workers were reportedly driven back to work more or less at gunpoint.

A strike leader on the Buenos Aires Underground was also shot dead by the security forces. This incident was publicised half-hourly on the radio with the threat that the same fate would await any other striker who did not return to work.

Kidnapped

The authorities appear to have kidnapped a large number of other strike leaders and their fate is unknown.

Even if the current strike wave has been temporarily controlled, it has shown up the critical position of the Videla regime and its inability to implement its pro-capitalist economic policies, which require a total repression of all workers' struggles.

Its repression in fact was not sufficient to get the latest strikes called off. It was also forced (without apparently even being able to consult Chilean butcher Pinochet with the Finance Minister Martinez de Hoz who was on one of his begging missions in Europe) to grant some wage increases which broke its own limit of 40%.

This is a symptom of the regime's weakness, though the concessions were minimal compared with the demands of the workers. They are demanding increases of 80%130%.

These are modest demands in view of the fact that since January 1976 real wages in Argentina have fallen by over Demonstration in Colombia. 60% and the massive rate of inflation shows no sign of being cut below its present level of well over 100% a year.

The reduction of the working class to abject poverty is intensifying the economic crisis since it has virtually destroyed the internal market for a wide range of manufacture.

The regime looks for its economic salvation to the IMF (and thus to the imperialists) on the one hand, and to expanding export markets, especially for agriculture on the other.

Here it has found ready assistance from the Soviet Union, Eastern. Europe and Cuba.

While police and troops were shooting and kidnapping strikers, the Soviet government and the other Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe were welcoming a highpowered trade delegation from the military junta.

New agreements were signed with Poland and Rumania and that with the USSR was reinforced.

So in addition to their criminal open political support of the murderous regime of General Videla, the Stalinists continue to build up their material aid to these hangmen of the working class.

The events of the last few weeks have shown, however, that the dictatorships power in Latin America, despite their powerful imperialist and Stalinist friends, despite their unswerving

INDIA

Ex-dictator Indira Gandhi was slightly injured during a Janata Party demonstration in South West India against her continued tour of the country to win back support.

SPAIN

Enrique Lister, Secretary General of the minute pro-Soviet Workers Communist Party has been permitted to return to Spain by the Suarez He immediately launched an attack against CP Secretary General Santiago Carrillo whom he called a "political gangster".

Carrillo had himself just returned from Moscow where he had been prevented from speaking at the anniversary celebrations of the Soviet This was, Carrillo says, for political reasons. The Soviet leaders say it was because he arrived too late.

Carrillo has basked in the attacks from both Lister and Moscow. He is proud, he said, to be Spanish. And for good measure he lauded Premier Suarez too as "a good Spaniard and a good democrat".

BANGLADESH

92 Soldiers have now been sentenced to death and others to prison terms after the October 4 mutiny which followed the attempted coup on October 2.

The government of Forbes Burnham has been forced to withdraw 300 strike-breaking troops which were being used against a strike in the sugar industry which has lasted for 3 months. The climbdown followed an embargo on oil shipments to Guyana imposed by oil workers' trade unions in Trinidad.

PANAMA

The treaty which allows the United States to intervene after its formal occupation of the Canal Zone ends in 2,000 was approved by 66% of the electorate in a referendum. This, however, was less than the Torrijos dictatorship hoped for and it is clear that resistance to this imperialist treaty is far from finished.

TUNISIA

A wave of strikes swept across the country last week after a reported attempt to assassinate the leader of the state "trade union" Habib Achour, Though he claims his relations with President Bourgiba are still "excellent" there is suspicion that Bourgiba's