Cocaine generals fear Bolivian workers

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IN THE second week of muster to sustain a regime tical opinion in support of and altered the ex need every man they can. unanimity of Bolivian poliweek of April Leopoldo Galtieri Naldinai received a call from his friend Celso Torrelio making a direct offér to send Bolivian troops to aid the defence of the Malvinas.

The Bolivian dictator was the only Latin American president to manifest such generosity, but he received a polite refusal since Galtieri is only too well aware that his Bolivian colleagues Torrelio muster to sustain a regime Naldinai 1Lad Lam Lan- unal nas been In constant been made an are th crisis since the Garcia Meza coup of July 1980 and now shows signs of complete disintegration.

Indeed, Galtieri himself has twice visited La Paz to put resolve into the generals and arbitrate in their disputes over the spoils from the cocaine For Torrelio, the virtual tical opinion in support of the invasion of the islands proferred an unexpected opportunity to cash in second-hand with a threadbare propaganda diversion. Apparently he hardly gave a thought to the fact that this might prejudice: all-important support from Washington.

In the event the State Department kept quiet, for it cannot afford any further disasters in the hemisphere, and imperialist control in Bolivia is now increasingly vulnerable.

Washington's price for overlooking the cocaine trade and recognising the regime consisted in the traditional demands to bow to the wishes of the IMF and introduce a harsh deflationary economic package. Only then would progress be made in renegotiating Bolivia's massive 4 billion dollar debt.

Technocrats

As a result, Torrelio's technocrats proceeded with measures that pushed inflation up to 70%, increased unemployment by 15% and altered the exchange inlanda roto farm An noone rate from 40 pesos to 118 pesos to the dollar.

Food is not just extraordinarily expensive, it is very scarce; Bolivia is in the worst economic crisis it has suffered in the last 30 years. The regime continues to be under threat of a coup from the ultra-right in the military, but this is much less because of the uncertain future of the cocaine trade than because Torrelio is feared to be too weak to confront the mass mobilisation that is growing apace as a result of his government of national destruction.

Give The military was forced to give way first in the November and December strikes in the mines which won the freedom of arrested union leaders. Since then the execution of six demonstrators in Cochabamba and the introduction of the economic measures have led to two 48hour general strikes. The backing for these has been remarkable given that the paramilitary forces funded continue to assassinate and persecute with impunity and the full backing of the regime.

The generals are gravely concerned by the revival of the working class and the authority of the clandestine trade unions; they are equally worried by the expansion of worker-peasant pacts organised by the unions. These pacts signify the erosion of the armed forces' control over the rural masses and a renewal of peasant militancy.

For three months the dictatorship has maintained a tenuous hold on power while the working class recuperates. However, the food shortages are so severe that the crisis is sure to come to a head before long.

The Bolivian masses are at a critical crossroads and more than ever dependent upon a leadership that has been schooled in the heart of the resistance. With political control in the entire region in considerable doubt its reyolutionary direction will be of decisive importance.

At the same time the way in which the bureaucracy was able to selze upon & Jaust the struggle brought about by a hesitation of the Solidarnosc leaders CHOSi its martial law has pointed to the necessity to build upon the growing struggles the rank and file and to respond to each and every challenge to the gains won py workers in suruggit The weeks of conconalol show that Solidarnosc TOY dead the Stalinists and their ailes wowd nave us believe. And the material problem. 8 00 ances which Polish workers into battle in 198081 remain very much alive as producaon contnues u slump and the economy plunges from bad to worst The next period must include political ation to ensure that future rounds of mass struggle are carried through Lite political overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy whose parasitic mismanagement ercanoi threat to the nationalised economy.

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Socialist Organiser no.85 May 20 1982 Page Books and pamphlets that you should read rARE YOU BUILDING JUNE 5 MARCH?

Coventry Is.

OH GuRu, Archant Matter of the workd, We Men HAVE BEEN CRipPLED. WE HAVE NEVER LEARNED HOW to feel; we don't know HoW to CRY.

FOR PaY You At wonen's WagESAND THeN ILL throw in sole Support of A pre-scubaL CHild..

ActuALLy Guru, I saw MYself starting out SlewLY, watching old SHirley temple flicks, Maybe a few scenes From Bambi... cuRu, Can PROBLEM.

It- staRt you At DEAD-END JoB.. This week Martin Thomas introduces 'Housewife' by Ann Oakley 'I'M NOT married to a house. I hate the word 'housewife' They say 'what are you?' and you say, 'I've got a baby... I'm a mother and a wife', and they say, 'Oh just a housewife' "Just a housewife! The hardest job in the world. You're never just a housewife. Into that category comes everything...

• Something like one third of all working hours in Britain are housework. And the housewife who told Ann Oakley that it is "the hardest job" could cite a lot of evidence.

Average hours of housework are reckoned at abouf. 70 a week - but in fact the housewife is never off duty. Despite labour-saving devices and despite the fact that more and more housewives (about one in two today) also do another job, there is no sure evidence that these hours are decreasing..* Into the job, as Ann Oakley was told, "comes everything" - at least in one sense. The housewife faces a wearying variety of tasks and can never say: "That's not my job!' An insurance company recently estimated the 'value' of this variety of tasks at £200 a week.

No variety But in another sense there is no variety. The routine of childcare, cleaning, cooking, shopping and washing is monotonous. There is never a new product, never the prospect of progressing to a 'better job' In one way housework is chooses to give her.

Back in the early 1970g, some feminists proposed what seemed an obvious answer: wages for housework. But most feminists and socialists have rejected this.

In the sink The demand would leave women with their arms still in the sink, only being paid for it. It would divert from campaigns for nurseries, for women's equal right to jobs, for access by women to the jobs which are still male preserves. And anyway it is unclear: who would pay the wages? The state?

The job is not to 'elevate' housework to the status of wage labour, but to abolish the system of wage-labourand-domestic-labour, replacing it with a new division of labour, a new control by women and men over their work and its products, and a new relation between work and life.

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

in OH MY WISE SuRe No

You tearfl Me to cRy? foraRRow

ne hardest job in world