Bolivian Miners Appeal to British Socialists

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Santiago Fortin calls for solidal strikes are met with massive arn

BOLIVIAN miners embroiled in battle have issued an urgent appeal to the British working class.

Their struggle has erupted just one month after the dictatorship of General Torrelio received US recognition and proclaimed itself confident of ruling for three years without the slightest vestige of democratic liberties.

The junta has been faced with the unambiguous reply of the working class.

Token strike

On November 13, the miners of Huanuni called a meeting and unanimously resolved to reject all union officials appointed by the regime (relacionadores), demand full trade union and democratic freedoms and wage increases which compensated for the massive cuts in subsidies of the prices of basic necessities and an inflation rate of over 50 per cent. To back these decisions, made for the first time in an open assembly of the entire workforce, a token 24-hour strike was called.

The strike was designed to be a token stoppage since the union, which is illegal and forbidden to collect dues, possessed less than £300 in its reserves and the poverty of the workers meant that a long period without even the minimal wages they receive (£35 a month) would be disastrous. Nevertheless, when within a matter of hours the army had 'Capitalist Crisis and Socialist Alternative' , a detailed study of the breakdown of the boom, by Bob Sutcliffe. 50p plus postage from PO Box 135, London N10DD. mobilised and sent in two local regiments to invade the camp, the strike was prolonged for a further 48 hours.

The Minister of the Interior, Colonel Mercado, declared the stoppage 'subversive... led by known Advertisement particularly acute manner in Bolivia! extremists and agitators' and promptly ordered the arrest of workers' leaders. The response of the Huanuni workers in such an event had been agreed in the meeting and was realised without delay: an indefinite strike.

The dictatorship responded to this in the time-honoured fashion of capitalist rule in Bolivia: it cut supplies of food, water and electricity to the camp. With no funds left and a rapidly diminishing stock of basic supplies the position

off of food supplies.

of the 10,000 miners and their families reached an absolutely critical point in the middle of last week.

However, last Thursday, in response to the army's moves, the workers of the large Siglo XX-Catavi complex and the smaller San Jose plant called open meetings in defiance of the military present in their own camps and declared indefinite strikes in solidarity with their comrades in Huanuni, who have now been out for a fortnight.

The result has been the most forceful working class mobilisation against the dictatorship that came to power in the bloody coup of July 1980, when the miners fought a three-week battle against the troops of Garcia Meza, with the loss of hundreds of lives.

Desperation

Brothers and sisters in Britain who have some experience of strike action will appreciate only too well the position of a workforce of this size embarking on a strike with only a couple of hundred pounds of funds; they will have to exercise their imagination to grasp the extent of desperation and resolution that exists when this can take place in the full knowledge that it will be followed by military occupation and the cutting of all food, water and power supplies. The only hope then is solidarity action, both from their comrades in the other mines and from the international working, class.

Responsibility Socialist Organiser is read in Bolivia every week; articles on Bolivia are translated and circulated in the larger mines. This might bring us a bit of prestige but it also carries with it an extremely important responsibility: to live up to the words of solidarity expressed in these columns.

We have now been asked to realise this. Last Friday we received an urgent message from the Sindicato Clandestino of Siglo XX and the departmental union federation of Oruro to send funds for the strike as rapidly as possible. They asked us if we could manage a thousand dollars and we said yes.

We want to reach and exceed this figure, with the greatest speed and it should not prove difficult if supporters of the paper make every effort not just to raise an individual contribution but also to take the request into their trade union and Labour Party branches with the utmost urgency.

The class struggle against imperialism and dictatorship is posed in a particularly acute manner in Bolivia and the fundamental responsibilities of internationalism require that we act without delay in support of our comrades.

tion of Joe McCarthy dur-

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