Crisis Wracks Bolivian

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Bolivia, September 8. ON FRIDAY September 4, La Paz suffered snowstorm the like of which the city hadn't seen for 40 years. At the same time Bolivia acquired its fifth president in a month: the gruff and palpably unintelligent General Celso Torrelio.

In the event, the urban masses paid a good deal more attention to the climatic conditions, reflecting the virtually universal recognition that the 'election' of one general by himself and two others (the previous jünta) heralded nothing new: the dictatorship continues.

The designation of Torrelio rather than one of the others rests almost exclusively upon the fact that he is not publicly known to be a 'narcotraficante' (cocaine smuggler) as is General Bernal, head of the airforce (US$10,000 a month for not interfering with illegal flights), or a smuggler of rotten rice to Pakistan, as is Admiral Pammo.

part trom his perman ent inability to drop his voice below a shout, Torrelio's only distinguishing feature for the masses - (who are by no means always progressive in such matters) — is his reputation as a "K'aspa Chola" fone disposed to adorn himself in female garb).

Yet the nomination of the new president did not proceed without another major crisis inside the military, since Torrelio, promoted from Lieutenant Colonel to Divisional General in a year, was the most obvious candidate of 'continuismo' of the continuation of the Garcia Meza dictatorship.

This led to the opposition of that fraction of the army which rebelled against JUNT New dictator Torrelio Garcia. early in August, headed by Generals Anez and Natusch, backed by exdictator Banzer and directed by the Pentagon, whose strategists are increasingly anxious to put an end to the games of the Bolivian armed forces.

In the event this bunch of rebels' - responsible for the massacres of November 1979 and yet shamelessly supported by the Communist Party and the petty bourgeois MIR -decided not to stand and fight.

One reason was the threat of yet another coup by Col, Luis Arce Gomez, the prime mover of the July 1980 uprising. Arce was Garcia's Minister of the Interior, responsible for hundreds of deaths, and is a leading 'narcotraficante' Arce's bloody schemes are now of little use either to the weakling native bourgeoisie or to the imperialists, for whom it is hard to square drug-dealing with 'freedom' (even of an imperialist variety).

Significantly, it is Arce' 's cocaine connection rather than his massacre of workers that gives rise to this "moral' objection.

Even though they are played upon the ! bodies of workers assassinated each week, these manoeuvres may appear as mere games. These they SANTIAGO FORTIN reports on the groware not.

They are the reflection of the deep-seated decomposition of the Bolivian military, which after a year in power has taken on all the structural deficiencies of the nationalist capitalist class, and is riddled with corruption.

Rigged election

For the last month the armed forces have been searching desperately for the means to pull themselves together.

The only difference between Anez and Torrelio is that the former sees salvation in a "democratic opening' and preparing the Old dictator Banzer way for a rigged election to nlace Ranzer in office while the latter lacks the imagination and political sense to grasp the straw offered by Reagan, the Cr, the banks, and social democracy.

Within a matter of weeks Torrelio will be forced to devalue the peso by around 80% if his government is to receive the 'support' of the IMF. If he survives this measure, it will only be by vet another direct offensive against the workers and peasants.

The last devaluation -in December 1979 - was met with a general strike and blockade of roads by the campesinos, who are now mobilising after the measurer retreat of Inlv AVULTURAN VL UNIJ 1980.

The clearest sign of this is in the repudiation by the miners of Siglo XX-Catavi of their "relacionadores' (yellow, officially-appointed, union leaders) who belong to the CP and MIR.

The 9,000 members of this same complex have shown their class independence by striking for five days to protest the killing of a 'relacionador' by the army, while at the same time repudiating the role of the 'relacionadores'.

This movement is now being spread to other mines and the factories of La Paz and Cochabamba, and represents the growing strength of the Trotskyists in the clandestine trade The Friday of Torrelio's inauguration also saw the (clandestine) publication of 'The Heroic Resistance of the Bolivian Miners' by the Human Rights Assembly.

This short book is completely bereft of any political perspective bar the bankrupt belief that elections will provide the Bolivian masses with a way out of their crippling economic and social plight.

Yet, nevertheless, it is tragic and impressive testimony to the heroism of the vanguard of the proletariat in its resistance of Garcia's coup.

The book details the daily battles, for over three weeks, against the military's offensive on the mining zones, and contains a vivid series of colour photographs of the final capture of Siglo xx, when a group of militants are captured by the Rangers, beaten up, robbed, taken to a distant hillside, stripped to avoid future identification, and executed.

Such is the nature of the Bolivian working class that despute such massacres the Bolivian generals have been unable to impose their ambition of a Pinochetstyle crackdown: after year they are running scared and in total collapse.

The growing mobilisntion, which has at its core a deep repudiation of the electoral adventures of the reformists and the lacklustre arguments of the Stalinists for class alliances, is the surest guarantee that these comrades, who are our comrades, have not fallen in vain.

ATS:

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ing disarray of the Bolivian military.