Guns against the hungry blocking investments in the state sector, with the perspective of eliminating it. Food and gasoline subsidies were removed. The currency was devalued, and restrictions on lay. offs in the public sector were lifted
The press has written a lot about the 15,000 per cent inflation in 1985 and the success of the free-
ON AUGUST 28, at 6.30 in the morning, T33's left the military airport of El Alto near La Paz. They flew to Calamarca and San
Antonio, which lie a few dozen kilometers from the capital. The
"elite" troops, just good enough to kill defenceless workers and farmers, surrounded the procession of miners and their families.
The latter had just passed their sixth night in cold and bad weather - and now the soldiers were preventing the clergy from bringing them food and medicines.
CHARLES-ANDRE UDRY
The miners, with their wives and children, came from the two mining centers of Potosi and Oruro, and had covered more than 180 kilometers.
"road of sacrifices,"
wanted to go to the government palace in La Paz to stage a hunger strike to press demands for withdrawal plans announced by the state tin-mining board (COMIBOL).
August 1985,
7,000 miners had already lost their jobs, and now another 8,000 were to of 23,370
For months hundreds of families had the tropical areas, where sought to become farmers or start panning for hypothetical gold.
they leave the highlands for an Eldorado? Not exactly!
"My grandfather was a miner.
My father was a miner. What else should I do but go down the pit too?
They pushed me down into the tropical zone, and I am dying from
There is too much light here, brother," a miner grumbled.
In particular, in the new settlement area, there is no infrastructure.
are dying from diseases.
habits here are comthe "elite"
soldiers came and poked their submachine guns in the backs of women and children, forcing the people into trucks and carting them back to the mining villages, which had become ghost towns.
Paz Estensorro had declared a state of emergency, under the pretext that an insurrection was being prepared. An Associated Press correspondsecond time in a year that the government has declared a state of emergency to suppress a workers' mobili-
[International Herald Tribune, August 29, 1986.] Brutal austerity program
The first time he did this, in September 1985, it was to impose people. The second time, to silence "a starving mass, a marching most of them with bleeding feet," as the weekly magazine of the establishment cynically remarked. [The Economist, September 6, 1986.]
The repressive forces, which in all absorb half of the budget, while only four percent is spent on health, arrested about 25 union leaders, along with left and Christian activists. As in the days of the military dictatorship of Garcia Meza (1980-1981), they were banished to jungle villages in the province of Beni, the same area that the laid-off miners were supposed to seek their fortunes.
In March 1985, when a giant general strike paralyzed the country, the workers were unable to seize the opportunity and pose the question of brutally in the other direction.
the background defeat of the workers' movement and the confusion of the socialist revolutionary forces, the Movimiento enterprise economic policy in this area. It is true that inflation was cut to 50 per cent in the first half of 1986, and that many items reappeared in shop windows. But most Bolivians could not afford them. The medicine had killed the
Competition from imports is killing the weak domestic industry. Poverty has never reached such a level. Underemployment afflict two-thirds of the population. For those who have jobs, the minimum wage is 15 dollars a month. A teacher gets 20 dollars, a doctor 25, but an officer gets at least 150. Infant mortality has reached a rate of 16.8 percent.
June 1986, labor movement (the COB) has rethe initiative. It organized people's referendum against the new that rewards the rich and punishes the poor, and against paynational debt. action was a success. Hundreds of thousands participated in the vote, minister of defence declared illegal.
On June 30, 30,000 peasants came to La Paz out of the highlands to support the COB's popular referendum. On August 1, the employees of the Bolivian airline and of the University of San Andres went on strike. At the end of June, 21,000 COMIBOL miners also began a strike. With their backs to the wall, they said "no" to the government's plans and proposed a plan for saving jobs.
Since May 1986, the US has been building up its military presence in Bolivia. Joint military maneuvers have been carried out, in which the Yankees have spread insects that are supposed to destroy the cocaine plantations. The despatching of 170 military men at the end of June to fight the drug mafia went far beyond the declared goal. Washington wants to get the region used to a US military presence.
Now that the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile is tottering and Washington is no longer entirely sure of Peru, the Pentagon is
The state of emergency in