waiting for september
SPAIN by M. SAURA What is going to happen in September? For the past few weeks, this question has been on everyone's lips throughout the country, the bourgeoisie asking it fearfully, the workers in a defiant tone. The specter of September goes hand in hand with a record rate of inflation, on the order of 25 percent a year, a clearly unviable government referendum, an ever greater and more threatening activity on the part of the masses. It is this specter that provoked the fall of Arias Navarro. It is easy to give a more detailed listing of the basic reasons for Arias's "resignation. " What is genuinely difficult is to explain how he had been able to maintain himself at the head of the government for so long, during the most combative six months of the postwar period, the most economically disastrous six months since 1959, the most uncontrolled political, social, and economic period in the entire history of the dictatorship. Only the profound crisis of power of the Spanish bourgeoisie accounts for how a government whose function corsisted of "controlling the reform of Francoism" was able to hold on so long in spite of its very lack of control. There was no "control" and almost as little "reform." Especially during past weeks, when the most important laws of the government project were supposed to be passed (the law on political association and the reform of the Penal Code), the situation has been virtually surrealistic. In Spain today there is a law, approved by an overwhelming majority in the Cortes (parliament), that authorizes the formation of all political parties, "except those prohibited by the Penal Code. " But at the same time, the Penal Code prohibits all parties, without ex20 ception. This same Cortes approved, practically unanimously, some general guidelines for reform of the Penal Code explicitly proposing that those "organizafiors, subject to international discipline, that aspire to establish a totalitarian regime " be kept illegal, an "astute" formula by which to maintain the communist organizations in illegality while authorizing the Falange, whose program upholds "the totalitarian state. " Only one week later, the Cortes committee entrusted with converting these "orientations" into a specific bill adopted, again by a large majority, a new draft of the text in which all reference to "totalitarianism" and "international discipline" has disappeared, replaced by a vague allusion to the necessity of "respecting human dignity" and defending "political pluralism. As is well known, the projects of the government call for continuing the illegal status of the Communist party "during an initial phase." But the key men of the government, such as Minister of the Interior Fraga, have told their own political groups — Reforma Democrática in Fraga's case — that the CP should have been legalized immediately and that the government made a serious mistake in not doing so. The future has to be guuranteed. All these events, and the list could be lengthened, correspond to the impossibility of reforming Francoism on the basis of the Francoist apparatus itself and to the awareness on the part of the bulk of the bourgeoisie that granting legality to the entire workers movement is inevitable in the short term. These are the walls that enclose the narrow alley of the "Francoist reform. " The culmination of the crisis centered around the referendum, posed under conditions that endangered the crown. A few days ago, leading representatives of the
"democratic" bourgeoisie sent a memorandum to the king warning him of the dangers involved if the referendum were actually held, not only because the result of the vote could be negative - which had been totally excluded by the farcical electoral rules under which it was to be conducted - but also because the king would appear directly implicated in the fraud, and it is well known that the bourgeoisie has an interest in making the monarchy the fundamental political factor stabilizing the state. Moreover, the political aggressiveness of the Francoist far right was on the rise, with the deliberate objective of forcing the king to reaffirm his oath of loyalty to "July 18." The Francoist Senate had passed a similar motion, and Girón, one of the leaders of the Francoist bunker, wrote a similar memorandum, sent, significantly, to the most fascist general in the Spanish army, Milans de Bosch, chief of the Acorazada Brunete Division, the most powerful and best equipped unit of the Spanish armed forces. In this situation, the king decided to dispense with Arias. This move met with an enthusiastic response from the majority of the bourgeois opposition, only the far right expressed timorous reticence. There is a Spanish proverb that says, "Man is the only animal that trips twice on the same stone. " This bit of old popular wisdom gives a good picture of the immediate political future of the bourgeoisie. The fall of Arias marks the end not of the project of "Francoist reform, " but only of the first version of it. Now the second will begin. Until the composition of the new government is known it will not be possible to detail the new tactics of the Francoist monarchy. But one may assume that:
*there will be an attempt to convoke the general elections now scheduled for the second quarter of next year, maintaining the communist organizations in a position of "tolerated" illegality, the margins of tolerance obviously being dependent on the circumstances and the activity of the various organizations;
*there will be an attempt to obtain the more or less critical support of the bourgeois opposition sectors and of the Social Democracy:
*there will be an attempt to make the government independent of the Francoist apparatus. In sum, the government will try to directly assume a "Bonapartist" role within the bourgeoisie; the king himself will be presented as having broken completely with Arias already several months ago. The methods will change, but the objective remains: Big capital hopes to realize its dream of commanding a strong monarchist state with a parliament with a solid bourgeois majority and with a considerable sector of the working class under the hegemony of the Social Democracy. But September will come. It will undoubtedly bear new promises. The majority of the bourgeois opposition will probably ask for a "margin of confidence" in the new government, but without directly compromising itself with that government. The for right will continue to conspire, blocking the reform projects within the Francoist institutions as far as possible, preparing its own intervention in the elections, organizing its "strategy of tension" through the threats and affacks of its armed gangs. There is not sufficient space here to give a defailed analysis of the new internal political controdictions of the bourgeoisie, the form in which its various factions will adapt to the new situation. But in any event, what is certain is that the activity of the masses will spread, that the struggles in the factories, neighborhoods, and schools, the struggles of youth, of women that we have seen since January will be but a modest prelude to a "hot autumn." The mobilization of the workers will not be held back by promises or "partial conquests," A few days ago, 50,000 demonstrators from all the popular neighborhoods of Madrid shouted "Madrid is ours!" This was not an illusion, but a challenge. It reFlects the state of mind of millions of Spanish workers who will not cease to fight until "Madrid" is really theirs. July 3, 1976
21
NEW ESCALATION
Thousands of high-school students in the major cities of Bolivia had been mobilizing for reduction of military service and for freedom to form their own "federaciones de estudiantes de secundaria" (federations of high-school students). When the news came that former Bolivian President J.J. Torres had been murdered in Argentina, the protest spread, students demanding that the murderers be extradited; the student mobilizations gained greater amplitude. On June 8 police and army units opened fire on a street demonstration in Oruro. The response to this crime was the generalization of the student mobilization throughout the country. The dictatorship canceled classes in all educational institutions, decreeing "winter vacation." The murder of General Torres shook all sectors of the country and triggered protest strikes in the mines and some factories; there were declarations of mourning and demands for the extradition of those responsible.
Banzer 22
BOLIVIA OF REPRESSION Banzer and company reacted to this in a controdictory manner, which revealed the existence of differences and conflicts within the ruling apparatus. At First he decided to have Torres's body shipped back to Bolivia, declared national mourning, and then, in a written message, stated that "the doors of Bolivia are open to all those Bolivians who feel persecuted abrood. " But then, the next day, the dictatorship had to make a shift. In face of the impact of the death of Torres, with the miners demanding that he be buried in the mines, mobilizations being prepared to accompany the funeral cortege, and so on, Banzer and his generals became frightened and canceled the repatriation of the body. The Miners Congress of Corocoro, which met May 1-7, after approving its socialist theses, voted to launch a struggle for wage increases of at least .80