CRISIS IN BOLIVIA
La Paz, Bolivia
MAY 16 -- Yesterday Juan Lechfn Oquendo, the trade-union leader and head of the PRIN [Partido Revolucionario de Izquierda Nacionalista] was seized and exiled to Paraguay. As a result, a general strike has been called and a demonstration is scheduled for tomorrow.
The new crisis began, however, four days earlier when the Seven main trade unions in Bolivia signed a joint agreement to engage in a common struggle for an increase in wages. The answer of the military junta to this was a decision to resort to force.
The junta offered the school teachers some increases in hope of breaking the union front and then seized Lechfn with the idea of precipitating the miners into an isolated struggle in defense of Lechfn,.
However, this afternoon the COB [central Obrera Boliviana ] held meetings with the leaderships of the national confederations of workers and the result was the call for a general strike. The decision was to act in behalf of Lechfn but to also press for the wage demands at the same time. The struggle for Lechfn is in reality a struggle for trade-union rights and liberties which were violated by the arrest of Lechfn.
The junta's scheme of dividing the working class and isolating the miners did not succeed. In fact the country as a whole is close to insurrection.
The military government is being pressured by the Yankee embassy to settle accounts with the workers movement in order to then initiate stringent economic measures. These would probably begin with denationalization of the mines and their ultimate conversion into private property, possibly through mixed companies if they were not handed over directly.
In the wake of Santo Domingo, the military junta has abdicated power, handing it over to the North American ambassador Henderson.
The morale of the masses is high. On May Day they were out in force with a demonstration here of some 20,000 workers.
Upon the invasion of Santo Domingo, the COB called a meeting of trade-union leaders to decide what to do. Forty leaders were ~ invited, but they widened the basis of the gathering and 2,000 turned out. They organized a demonstration which met with police violence,
Since gaining power last November, the position of the military junta has deteriorated with increasing rapidity. Among other things it has been undergoing an internal crisis,
The generals renounced being candidates for the presidency and elections were set for next October 30. But a crisis among the bourgeois parties led imperialism to reconsider this step. The elections were suspended indefinitely and it was decided to resort to open repression, This was the only weapon they had left.
_ This may prove to have been a very bad mistake. Instead of ending the bourgeois crisis, it can givé a big impulse to revolutionary struggle. Judging. from recent experience, the ranks of the army will not prove to.be a reliable instrument.
The vanguard is now trying to organize the resistance to the repression in such a.way that when it is over there will be no repetition of the situation of last November 4 when. the masses brought down Paz Estenssoro only to leave an opening for establishment of a military junta.
DID