General strike jolts = new Bolivian regime
1985Dan La Botz 1985-10Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 20 →
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As we go to press the Bolivian government has declared a 90-day state of siege and arrested thousands of workers and union leaders who began a nationwide general strike on Sept. 4. According to the latest news reports, however, the strike continues.
Soldiers have raided the factories and union halls, beating up workers and rounding up union activists. Juan Lechin, the leader of the Bolivian labor federation, and hundreds of others have been taken to isolated detention camps in the country's remote interior.
Dan La Botz, who was in Bolivia during the first two weeks of the general strike, has filed this eye-witness report and background analysis of the current situation in Bolivia-The Editors.
LA PAZ, Bolivia-Only two months after the national elections on July 14, Bolivia entered a deep political crisis.
The new conservative president, Victor Paz Estenssoro, announced an economic plan on Aug. 29 which would have reduced workers' real wages, cut back on food subsidies, and laid off some state workers.
In response, the Bolivian Workers Confederation (COB) called a general strike which began on Sept. 4, and all workers from miners to school teachers walked off the job.
President Paz then retaliated by having the military seize seven key state industries: petroleum, electricity, railroads, buses, telecommunications, trucking, and the airports. Military police were ordered to patrol the center of La Paz, and there were several clashes between university students and "As the crisis deepens Tin miners in Bolivia Che Guevara in the guerrilla movement in Southeast Bolivia, and he himself was later associated with the National Liberation Army (ELN).
Peredo lived in Chile from 1967 until the Pinochet coup in 1973, when he went into exile in Cuba. He secretly returned to Bolivia in 1975, but was taken prisoner in November of that year and held until February 1978, suffering torture.
Until recently he was the head of the Nicaragua news agency, but returned to Bolivia to take over as editor of the popular independent left weekly Aqui.
Peredo says there is now also a structural crisis:
"The Bolivian state that we have now is the result of the 1952 revolution. The state was then manipulated by 18 years of military dictatorships.
"In the beginning it was thought that the state could be democratically reformed and that the restoration of democracy would allow the state to function for the benefit of the Bolivian people.
"But in the last three years, the Siles' UDP government has demonstrated not only its political inadequacy, but it has also shown that the state which was formed in 1952 is incapable of defending the Bolivian people. It's worthless."
The origins of this "worthless" state are in the 1952 revolution which overthrew the government of the tin barons, La Rosca, as it was called.
The Trotskyist revolutionaries among the tin miners pushed for the nationalization of the tin mines under workers' control and helped arm the peasants. But the revolutionary upsurge died down. The Trotskyists were out-maneuvered, Juan Lechin Oquendo took control of the unions, and Hernan Siles Suazo and Victor Paz Estenssoro took control of the state.
They were nationalists, not socialists, and were prepared to make a deal with the United States.
Eisenhower recognized the revolutionary government, and John F. Kennedy gave it military aid to rebuild the shattered army. The military program was such a success that in 1964 the U.S.trained military officers overthrew the revolutionary government.
The military then ruled for almost 20 years, opening up the country to U.S. investors, including the Chase Manhattan Bank, U.S. Steel Corp., Lockheed Co., Gulf Oil, Grace, South American (continued on page 16, in “FSLN women's leader confident of success”)