THREE WORKER MILITANTS
ARGENTINA] MURDERED! At 12:30 a.m. on the morning of May 30, a gang of fifteen right-wing thugs, using walkie-talkies and armed with clubs, machine guns, and other firearms, broke into the Pacheco (north Buenos Aires) headquarters of the Partido Socialista de los Trabajodores (Socialist Workers party), an Argentine sympathizing organization of the Fourth International. About twenty, persons were present in the headquarters at the time. All were beaten. Six members of the PST -- three men and three women -- were kidnapped by the right-wing gangsters. The men -- Antonio Moses, Oscar Dalmacio Mesa, and Mario Sida - were forced into the trunks of the goons' cars. Their bodies were found several hours later. They had been tortured and murdered. Beside the bodies were found nineteen .45 caliber, thirry 9-millimeter, and four ,22 coliber shells. The women victims were beaten, but later released alive. Moses, Mesa, and Sida were all young workers and factory delegates in the area of northern Buenos Aires; Moses and Mesa were metalworkers, Sida a textileworker. The incident was not the first case of right-wing violence in the area to be directed against the PST. On May 7 Inosencio Fernandez, a 26-year-old PST member who was also active in the metalworkers union, had been gunned down. Fernández had helped organize an opposition slate to the trade-union bureaucrats in his local during the March alections in the metalworkers union. The May 31 issue of the Buenos Aires daily Clarin reported that two additional attacks on the PST had been made in Mor del Plata on May 30: Carlos Petroni, a party activist and member of the Retail Workers Front, was shot by a group of thugs as he left the Commerce Employees Center, and a bomb exploded in the local PST headquarters, the tenth violent attack on the PST in recent months. No injuries wore reported, but damage to the headquarters was considerable. The attacks on the PST are clearly part of the general offensive of the Peronist trade-union bureaucracy and the Peronist government itself against the Argentine workers movement. Perón's attempts at "institutionalizing" his regime have been met with broad opposition from the working class, and the Icaders of the Peronist movement have answered that opposition with armed attacks on all forces standing to the left of the regime. Not even the left wing of Perón's own movement has been spared. The murdered members of the PST were clearly picked out because of their activity in unions that have been the arena of struggle ogainst the Peronist bureaucracy.
The PST has reported that work stoppages in response to the murders occurred in several factories and secondary school that the victims had been associated with. Moss student meetings took place hours after the bodies of the murdered militan had been found. Augustin Tosco, one of the leaders of the Cordobazo (the 1969 insurrectional general strike in the city of Cordoba), addressed 2,000 students in the law school of Buenos Aires University in solidarity with the PST on the night of May 30. Statements of support were received by the party's national headquarters from all the left parties. The Juventud Radical Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Rodical party Youth) called for mobilizations to oppose the right-wing violence. The Parliamentary Labor Committee of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies (made up of the heads of all parties participating in parliament) called on the government to take steps to arrest the murderers. It is clear, however, that the Peronist government, which is ultimately (if not directly) responsible for the armed rightwing affacks on the workers movement, will scarcely be the force to put a stop to the escalating right-wing terror. That is the task of the Argentine workers movement, for which the problem of the organization of armed self-defense is posed more sharply than ever, and of the workers movement internationally. The PST has asked that international solidarity messages be sent to its Buenos Aires headquarters: Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores, 24 de Noviembre 225, Copital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The international workers movement must respond fo the sti of the Peronist bureaucracy with international solidority the victims and with the whole Argentine worken mov
Some of the 4,000 people who demonstrated at the
Funeral of the slain PST members.
ITALY AFIER THE BRESCIA MASSACRE On May 28 a bomb exploded during a trade-union rally in the city of Brescia, killing seven persons and wounding several dozen.
It was clearly a fascist action, only the latest in a series of attacks and open provocations that began in December 1969 with the explosion of a bomb in the Agriculture Bank in Milan's Piazza Fontana. The Brescia massacre was answered by a broad mass response. On May 29 the whole country was paralyzed by a four-hour general strike that was accompanied by enormous demonstrations (200, in in Rome).
In some cities, local offices of the MSI (Movimento
Sociale Italiano -- Italian Social Movement, a neofascist organization) were attacked and destroyed.
In addition to the Brescia massacre and the mass response to it, the political crisis of the country was exacerbated by the worsening of the cconomic sitvation (increased rate of inflation, huge balance of payments deficit), which was pointed out in a report issued by Carli, the director of the Bank of The