[wnien receivea remarkably might prompt turther wide support…]

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wnien receivea remarkably might prompt turther wide support for a coun- action from the masses and try which lies under the wipe them all away; if there military jackboot. Although is anything that tempers a the peasants did not impose Bolivian officer's yearnings a road blockade (taken by for power and lucre it is the bourgeois press both in the memory of 1952 when Bolivia and abroad as an the working class defeated indication of 'defeat'), the army in three days of they argued that this was fighting. because the tactic was too Facade All the signs are that the the possibility of a coup miners' strike of November dressed up in some fancy has given the working class 'democratic' and 'popular' a renewed sense of confid- facade designed to gain the ence and radicalism which backing of the 'democratic' promises to overtake the bourgeoisie (too weak to bureaucratic backsliding survive the crisis without of the COB (the Bolivian a plethora of bankruptcies) TUC), the national leaders and the 'ever compliant of which are largely divor- forces of the petty bourHaig (left) wants to step up military aid to the bloody junta CAPITALISM in Bolivia continues to lurch. from crisis to crisis with remarkable rapidity and increasing gravity.

In 1981 the regimes of Garcia Meza, the military fashion to consolidate the pinochetazo they attempted in the bloody coup of July 1980 when hundreds of workers were killed. Last year saw five coups. The military apparatus rapidly decomposed under the influence of the cocaine trade, which divided it into mafia= like clans scrambling for a cut of the spoils.

Miami Income from cocaine is estimated at 2 billion dollars for 1981; it is now by far the largest export, but the great bulk of cocadolares stay put in Miami where the officers and oligarchs salt away their gains with little thought for supporting the Bolivian state.

At the same time the legal economy is in total ruin: at the last count Bolivia has only one million dollars in foreign reserves by Harry Sloan THE CIA - the gang of terrorists that brougnt ine world the Shah of Iran, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Angolan civil war are back in business.

A divided and increasingdespondent Reagan administration is resorting to desperate measures and dirty tricks to prop up the bloody dictatorship in El Salvador against the guerrilla struggle headed by the FMLN.

White House spokesmen have admitted that Reagan has given the go-ahead to CIA covert operations in Cuba and Nicaragua as part of the US effort to halt alleged arm s supplies to We d ..7 guerrillas in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

The Sandinista , regime in Nicaragua has fora long time Guard butchers from the Post. defeated Somoza dictatorMexico MEXICO CITY Mexico BELMOPAN Guatemala Honduras IN GUATEMALA SAN SALVADOR Nicaragua El Salvador Pacific Ocean and a foreign debt of four billion dollars (70% of legal export earnings go on servicing the interest alone).

In 1981 manufacturing output fell by 20%, unemployment rose to 37%, inflation to 67%, and the value of the peso dropped by 75% against the dollar. The country, for decades self-sufficient in foodstuffs, had to import four times as much wheat as it produced, while coca production rose fivefold.

Faced with total bankruptcy, which would have prejudiced the „ cocaine interests, Torrelio has sought to gain the help of the IMF to gain a bridging loan until the next cycle of crisis arrives. last week he introduced an economic package i designed … to beguile the managers of international capital and pauperise the masses; for all the dictator's palpable stupidity, he knows that the two go hand in hand.

The measures devalued the peso by 76%, increased electricity and petrol prices by 43%, lifted import duties and laid the basis for the denationalisation of wide sectors of the economy.

Now this operation has The CIA has asked Gulf of N America S America O TEGUCIGALPA MANAGUA SAN JOSE Panama Costa Ricar PANAMAI This 'package' follows that of January 1981 which eradicated subsidies on basic necessities (with an inflationary impact of 40% in one blow), removed the state's responsibility for insurance and social security payments s and froze all wages (except those of the officer corps which received a 300% rise).

The response of the workers and peasants to the latest attempt to drive them into starvation was a 48-hour general strike, -----J -.1_-LI-important to use in a stoppage of limited duration. $19 million to finance the construction of a reactionary political opposition to the Sandinistas with Nicaragua.

But their plans go much further-with contingency preparations for a naval blockade and even air strikes against Cuba, whose Stalinist government the Reagan administration accuses of supporting the guerrilla struggle in El Salvador.

The fact is that Reagan's cold war government faces major problems in preserving the Duarte junta against a strengthening popular resistance. The immense economic and political problems involved in sending US troops to fight in El Salvador means that they must therefore find means to prompt local 'provy" forces into doing their dirty work for them.

So on the one hand they are funnelling huge sums of money directly 1o the Duarte junta. which is ced from the rank and file led by the sindicatos clandestinos.

Once he had announced the devaluation, Torrelio scampered back to the presidential palace and had it surrounded with tanks while various colonels chatted over the possibilities of taking the opportunity to realise their sundry ambitions and stage a coup.

They appear to have decided against it in the (very) short term on the grounds that any action This does not rule out already the fourth largest recipient of US aid on world scale (despite the fact that El Salvador is no bigger than Wales, with a population of only 5 million).

Already $126 million aid is allocated for 1982: an additional $100 million is planned-including the supply of helicopters, transport planes and fighter bombers.

US "advisors" have trained one Salvadorean battalion, and been filmed accompanying them in combat zones. further training is being given to Salvadorean officers at fort Benning in Georgia. And though Reagan hus ruled out immediate dispatch of troops. there is talk of possible use of lis air support for ground operations in Ff Salvador geois MIR and the Communist Party, which now argues that workers should accept governmentbacked yellow trade union leaders.

Such a move would be incapable of stalling the economic crisis, would do nothing to develop Bolivia and could not hope to stall popular radicalism for very long.

Following on the failure of the 'democratic experiment' of 1978 to 1980, the collapse of the dictatorship established in July 1980 demonstrates with a clarity for which Bolivian workers have paid with their blood that capitalism can do absolutely nothing for this, one of imperialism's weakest links, whatever form it takes.

The Bolivian Workers' Support Fund still has a long way to go to meet the target it promised to the sindicatos clandestinos during the November strike. Readers of the paper are urged to raise motions for the sending of donations in their Labour Party and trade union branches as soon as possible. Personal contributions can also be sent to: BWSF, 54 Studley Road, London E7 9LX.

And on the other hand the clandestine CIA-backed operations on the borders of Nicaragua are designed both to cut off any supply of arms or military support to the Salvadorean struggle and also if possible to overturn the Sandinista regimeWhose very existence cocks a snook at US imperialism.

Secretary of State General Haig has spelled out plans for a big increase in military aid to the vicious Guatemalan dictatorship.

Meanwhile, on the Honduran border with El Salvador, Honduran troops, in close collaboration with US Green Beret "advisors" have begun to force march Salvadorean refugees further into Honduras. Leading cocaine trafficker Arce Gomez These moves can only be a preparation for use of Honduran troops in a pincer move against FMLN strong holds inside Salvador.

The slaughter-in, the countryside at the hands of the Salvadorean army, and in the towns where militant workers face savage anticommunist. death squadscontinues unabated, making defender of 'human rights' and selling to Congress proposals for still greater military support.

President Duarte, facing the hurdle of phony "elections" on March 28-in which he may well be toppled by the ultra-rightmoaned plaintively to a New sweek reporter two weeks ago:

"Why are all your stories the same-with the same pictures of bodies and blood all over and big headlines that say El Salvador! Murders! Death!?' Why does only part of the truth get told and retold? We are losing the fight with the guerrillas not only in the countryside but in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post"

It is high time that the leaders of the US labour movement took up their responsibility to ensure that Duarte and Reagan do lose the fight and that the people of El Salvador are freed from this vice-like grip of imperialism.

In Britain, we urge trade unionists and Labour activist to fight for affiliations to the El Salvador Solidarity Campaign and to build activity to publicise and rally political support STOP THE EXECUMONS Any TORTURES for the struggle.

Turkey Solidarity Campaign: Box BM 5965, London WC1N 3XX.

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Wor a tews Polish figures confirm that between December 13 and February 15, 2,727 people have been 'investigated', ', 2,616 of whom were arrested. 1,575 have been brought to court with 1,089 found guilty and only 79 acquitted.

Armed forces are so jumpy that last week in Warsaw a military patrol in an area close to the foreign press centre seized duplicate copies of articles dispatched abroad, thinking The junta has issued guidelines for the future of the trade union movement which in effect seek to destroy Solidarnosc as a national orgThe guidelines call for strict limits on the right to strike, insist that unions should henceforth concern themselves only with bread and butter issues, and make no proposals for talks with Lech Walesa and other leaders of the 10-million strong Solidarnosc. Demonstrate LONDON LABOUR BRIEFING While it would be an have repeatedly been exaggeration to claim that made: but the last 18 the concessions raise months has seen them immediate dangers of a produce ULU Malet St. London restoration of capitalism in returns.

Poland as a whole, the It is a measure of the Sat March 13 enmenlidation af an increas- desneration of the counby Harry Sloan WHERE all else-military force, censorship, imprisonment, and curfewsfails, wheel in the Pope. This seems to be the desperate conclusion of Poland's ruling Stalinist junta in the face of continued resistance from an unbroken workers' movement.

The announcement that the government will proceed with its planned invitation for the Pope to visit Poland in August came in the midst of a week of heavy repression.

A few days before, 194 demonstrators had been arrested in the western city of Poznan. The next day came a nationwide crackdown on martial law regulations -which led to 4,000 people being detained, 7,000 fined and 29,000 "reminded of their duties"

Steamroller

And three Catholic priests closely associated with the suspended Solidarnose trade union were arrested, while steam-roller court proceedings continued meting out jai sentences ranging from three to six years to martial law violators.

'Crimes" incurring such penalties include painting slogans 'hostile to the State' , printing leaflets allegedly intended to "incite riots', refusing to obey orders in the now militarised workplaces, or "slandering and mocking" the State authorities.

In the Baltic city of Gaynia, two militants, Ewa Kubasiewicz and LAST weekend an Oxford demonstration on Poland was supported by over 200 trade unionists and socialists-another indication of the level of backing for Solidarnosc in the British labour movement.

To further develop this support, Socialist Organiser and London Labour Briefing have called a national demonstration in London on Saturday March 13.

The demonstration will sentences of 10 years and 9 years respectively for organising a strike in a shipping academy and distributing leaflets.

To announce in the midst of such events that the Pope is to be invited is to make it clear that the regime, far from making concessions, is simply seeking the Vatican seal of approval.

But it is by no means certain that such approval would be withheld. The Catholic Church has for decades enjoyed a privileged relationship with the bureaucracy within Stalinist Poland on the basis of its political support for the regime.

In the aftermath of the December imposition of martial law, the Vatican was slow to respond, and Papal envoy Poggi did not even bother to ask to see imprisoned Solidarnose leader Lech Walesa. Statements from Catholic leaders ever since have been studiously worded to avoid unambiguous support to the Polish workers or all-out condemnation of the martial law.

Stalinist party chiefs, pondering ways and means to extricate themselves from the present acute economic and political ance on the Church.

Sejm

It is no coincidence that a series of important debates in the Party leadership on the next steps forward centre around . a February 27 meeting of the Church-State Commission and a meeting of the Polish Episcopate.

be addressed by Reg Race MP and by speakers from the Solidarnosc • trade union working group. It is open to all labour movement bodies, trade unionists and socialists to attend with their banners.

We particularly urge other groupings on the left to lend their support to this imtiative.

Leaflets for the demonstration (£5 per 1,000) can be obtained from Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, A week later junta chief Jaruzelski has been summoned to visit his own spiritual leaders-Brezhnev and the Kremlin bureaucracy.

In finalising plans for DEMONSTRATION CALLED BY AND SOCIALIST ORGANISER London N8. We ask readers to campaign for delegations and sponsorship to the demonstration which is based on the following slogans:

*End martial Release all political trade union prisoners!

*No Warsaw Pact vention!

*No to the state ul lions! *Unconditional su pport the Polish workers' f these meetings the 200strong Party Central com -mittee is to meet on Wednesday for the. first time since martial law.

It will be followed by a meeting of the Sejm. Among the proposals likely to be put forward at that meeting are package of draft laws making substantial concessions to Poland's private farmers.

Legislation would guarantee the rights of private farmers and increase fivefold the amount of land they are allowed to own.

This must be seen as a placatory gesture both to the wealthiest farmers (who alone will be in a position to buy more land), and the Church-which has insisted that the vast bulk of Polish agriculture remain in private hands.

With the collapse of the Polish zloty and the chronic shortage of industrial goods on the market, more and more of the most wealthy farmers have been effectively withholding supplies of vitally needed foodstuffs from the official distribution network and instead selling on the black market for hard currencies.

By the latest concessions - recognising private agriculture as "a permanent and equal component of Poland's economic and social system" - the bureaucracy is plainly hoping to coax some of these hoarded supplies into the open market.

But this retreat in the face of the wealthiest farmers is also linked by the regime with moves to crush the organisation of the poorer farmers and rural workers who spearheaded the struggle for union rights in the formation of Rural Solidarity.

Under the new proposals farmers would apparently only be entitled to form associations of agricultural producers - which would of course become dominated by the larger concerns.

This substantial extension of the rights to small scale capitalist enterprise at the very heart of the Polish economy (private farmers produce 70% of all domestic food supplies) comes from the same Stalinist leaders who claim that Solidarnosc - with its 10 million worker members and its challenge to bureaucratic control over the country's nationalised economy -is a "counter-revolutionary" ' and "reactionary" threat to socialism!

Persuaded

Of course Marxists do nut advocate the forcible collectivisation of the Polish farmers — or of peasant holdings in general.

The alliance between the working class and its fellow toilers in the countryside requires that the peasantry be persuaded, through its own experience, that the collectivisation of agriculture in a planned socialist economy offers the least arduous and• most Sócialist Orraniser. Thursda: Firer. them to be seditious leaflets! rewarding way forward.

The chronic deformation of the Polish economy -under constant bureaucratic control since the nationalisation of industry and the banks in the late 1940s -has meant that the experience of Polish farmtis las been precisely hoe hoon nraricolv the opposite.

The so-called "planned economy" has offered them inadequate supplies of finance, machinery, fertilisers, pesticides and animal feed, while paying artificially low prices for farm produce in order to keep down pressure for wages in the towns.

But none of these problems will be resolved by the junta's concessions to the private farmers. They could only be tackled by the ousting of the bureaucracy and the assertion of workers' control over the economy as a whole.

anisation. ingly powerful private sector in a key department of the economy can only be seen as a further bid to establish a reactionary alliance against the revolutionary struggles of the Polish working class.

It is, of _ course, the bureaucracy itself whose bone-headed mismanagement of the economy and reactionary foreign policy plunged … Poland S neckdeep into hock with the capitalist bankers and precipitated the present food queues and economic -dislocation.

It is their savage attempts to muzzle the voice of the Polish working class that perpetuate the passive resistance and anger on the shop fioor which in turn continues to crinnle production in Polish industry and thus worsen the economic crisis.

But while the junta chiefs may dream of a deal with the Vatican which would lend them a seal of legitimacy or even create conditions for the rélease from detention of Lech Walesa, hardliners and "moderates" alike must still be disturbed at persistent evidence that Solidarnose retains a powerful mass base of support while worker members have left the Stalinist party in droves since the 1980 Church pleas for moderation to Polish strikers diminishing try's ruling junta that it now turns back to the bishops to restore order where tanks and prisons have failed.

In saluting the courage and tenacity of the Polish workers who remain active in the now clandestine Solidarnose groupings, the British labour movement must recognise its duty to provide political, practical and financial support to their struggle.

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday February 25, 1982 Page 6 Wor a tews'

----- pull-quotes -----

ocaine generals! brawl over profits

ahead Reagan go-ahead to CIA gangsters

junta, and General Torrelio successively failed in abject

CA FRES

Reagan's task still harder in promoting the junta as a

Jerzy Kowasi recieved 10.30

crisis, have been increas- ingly driven towards reli-