The June elections to the Constituent Assembly, organized by the military officers who have been in power for ten years now, were part of an overall plan. The aim was to begin with a relatively democratic opening so as to create the conditions for a transition from military dictatorship to a civilian regime by the 1980 presidential elections, a transition that would avoid the cost of a wave of mobilizations with a revolutionary character.
Several factors converged to make this operation necessary.
One was the scope of the economic crisis Peru has been going through for several years. The combination of unchecked inflation (price increases in the first four months of 1978 point to an annual rate of inflation on the order of 65% to 70%) and a recession affecting a near totality of economic sectors is having intolerable consequences for the Peruvian masses.
It is no exaggeration to say that particularly in the last few months, unemployment, poverty, and hunger have increased daily for the working class and poor peasantry-that is, for the immense majority of the population.
In this context, the rapid growth of an already substantial foreign debt is having effects that border on the absurd. Peru is virtually in a situation of suspension of payments to its imperialist creditors. Not only can it not repay the debts that come due, but it is not even capable of paying the interest on them. Hence the constant renegotiation of loans, the search for new loans designed solely to pay the interest on earlier borrowings, and the strict supervision by imperialist financial institutions, above all the International Monetary Fund, of the government's day-to-day economic decisions.
For the military, who at the outset, during the presidency of General Velasco so because the Aprista Party goes around
Alvarado, held themselves up as the defenders of national independence, and made populist, socialist-sounding speeches about raising the masses' standard of living, it has been a total defeat.
Hence their current lack of credibility among the masses. This lack of credibility is also rooted in the present Morales Bermúdez government's policy of systematically confronting and repressing movements around wage demands, strikes, and popular mobilizations.
This policy, moreover, is ineffective, for instead of decreasing, the strikes and mobilizations have multiplied and become more radical.
The great majority of the Peruvian bourgeoisie-important sectors of which feel their interests have suffered from the disorganization of economic management in the last few years-is thus in favor of establishing a civilian regime that could send the military back to their barracks, while keeping them in close partnership with the government.
This project combines several aspects that are partly contradictory.
For the bourgeoisie, placing the military in partial reserve offers an opportunity to develop a more effective economic policy. In addition, it is also seen as a means of guaranteeing the unity of the army, which is highly politicized after ten years in power, and where, on several occasions, differences have appeared (the creation of the Revolutionary Socialist Party by a few senior officers, now retired, is one indicator of this.
Specifically, however, this project is an attempt to contain workers mobilizations by using the prestige and mass influenceeroded, but still real—of Haya de la Torre's APRA, the principal bourgeois formation.
The elections to the Constituent Assembly were the first stage of this plan.
Despite the restrictions (illiterates could not vote) and various kinds of fraud (particularly the invalidating of a large number of ballots), the elections had the opposite effect to that intended.
The size (relative to previous elections) of the vote obtained by forces on the left in this unfavorable context (about 30%), and within that vote, the weight of the ballots clearly cast in favor of class political independence-in particular, the 12% of the vote obtained by FOCEP, whose main spokesman is our comrade, Hugo Blancowere seen by the mass of workers and exploited in Peru as a major victory.
This is especially true inasmuch as many of those who voted for APRA did so believing, after the demagogic campaign it carried out, that they were voting in a consistent way against the dictatorship and its policy, against the stranglehold of imperialism on the Peruvian economy. This sentiment of victory was rapidly reinforced by the return of the political exiles-among whom were several newly elected members of the Assembly, including Hugo Blanco-authorized soon after the official proclamation of the results.
Consequently, rather than acting as a brake on popular struggles and containing them, the elections to the Constituent Assembly on the contrary encouraged mobilizations.
In this regard, the strike by the vast majority of Peru's public high-school teachers organized in the SUTEP' is exemplary. After eighty-one days, the strike, which had begun during the election campaign, ended in a nearly complete victory on July 27, on the eve of the official opening of the Constituent Assembly, when the government agreed to satisfy the essential part of their demands.
Throughout this crucial period the teachers' struggle grew increasingly militant. The strikers defeated all the pressures and maneuvers of both the dictatorship and APRA, and fought back against all provocations and measures of intimidation.
The massive, independent, and unified mobilizations of the SUTEP teachers won the support and active solidarity of the most militant sectors of the workers movement, who saw in it a symbol and an example for their future battles.
Simultaneously, in several provincial cities, in Arequipa-the second largest city in the country-Chimbote, and Cuzco, wage struggles developed against the ef fects of the economic crisis and against the repression. As the great majority of the population rallied behind these struggles, local forms of organization arose such as the "people's assembly" in Chimbote, and the "fronts for defense of the people" in Cuzco and Arequipa. These were local structures, confused and ephemeral, but indicative of the desire of important sectors of the masses to organize themselves.
Even before the teachers won their victory, a strike by a majority of health and hospital workers began. Shortly afterward, it was the miners—a key sector of the Peruvian proletariat-who went on strike. This strike, too, was massive, and militant, continuing for more than a month despite the repression and the brutal occupation of the mining centers by the army.
These mobilizations, as a whole, were rooted in the struggle to counter the effects of the economic crisis and defend workers' buying power.
Given the breadth of these mobilizations, the stated determination of the military to concede nothing transformed them into confrontations with the dictatorship itself. The political dimension of these confrontations made itself felt through the considerable weight they exerted in the debate over how to get rid of the dictatorship—a debate that dominated the campaign for the Constituent Assembly elections, and that, to a much greater extent than the drafting of a new constitution, is the main preoccupation of the deputies.
On the one hand, the voting for the Constituent Assembly, a partial and distorted reflection of these mobilizations, led to the election-unforseen by the inventors of the plan!-of deputies like those of FOCEP and the UDP. These deputies are in no way willing to accept the framework of a Constituent Assembly that is supposed to busy itself with discussing the articles of a future constitution while the military continues to rule and to repress popular mobilizations.
On the other hand, the breadth of these mobilizations is making the bourgeois parties' role more difficult day by day. This is especially true for APRA, which is bound by its pacts with the military and at the same time forced into demagogy against the dictatorship, at the risk of becoming rapidly discredited and doomed as a political alternative when the time comes—i.e., in 1980, according to the plan.
Intended as the basic instrument of a painless transition, the Constituent Assembly, from its opening, has become a kind of sounding board for current struggles.
The recent statements by Haya de la Torre, president of the assembly, must be understood in light of this new situation. According to him, the two years allotted for drafting the constitution could easily be compressed into a year or less, which would mean holding general elections not in 1980, but in mid-1979.
Clearly, this seems to signify that for APRA, the initial schema that served as the basis for the pact with the military must be adhered to, but at a faster tempo so as to get the Constituent Assembly out of the way as soon as possible.
However these "special" aspects of the role of the assembly-products of the growing mobilization of the Peruvian masses and of the presence in it of deputies reflecting that mobilization and struggling for its extension and independence-should not breed illusions. By virtue of its composition, the Constituent Assembly is not and cannot be a counter organ of workers power, a potential alternative organ of power to the military dictatorship.
The bourgeois majority of the Constituent Assembly, regardless of its demagogic speeches, is bound hand and foot to the military dictatorship.
It had a basic agreement with the military chiefs on what practical steps to follow to set up a civilian regime and, as for the economic crisis facing the masses, it has no distinct political alternative from that of the dictatorship.
Any illusions about the Constituent Assembly and its role inevitably lead to another illusion, that of its bourgeois majority.
Thus, to counterpose the assembly to the dictatorship, by struggling for the overturn of the dictatorship and its replacement by a "government of the Constituent Assembly," is a grave political error that sows illusions about the bourgeois APRA-PPC majority and the alternative that it might represent.
The Constituent Assembly, on the other hand, can and should be used by revolutionists to aid in the development and deepening of mobilizations by the worker and peasant masses, thereby intensifying the crisis of the dictatorship.
As Hugo Blanco's activity in recent weeks has shown, the assembly can have a considerable impact when it is used as a platform to criticize the dictatorship and condemn its excesses and repressive policies; to demonstrate in practice, by making specific proposals and motions, the limits of the bourgeois majority's demagogy, and particularly APRA's contradictions; to publicize and centralize ongoing struggles and solidarity actions aimed at the unity and independence of the working class, the unity of its mass organizations, and the solidifying of the worker-peasant alliance.
Steps toward utilizing the Constituent Assembly in this way worry the Peruvian bourgeoisie and its military officers far more than calls for dissolving it because it is not truly representative and cannot solve anything, and far more than the demand for "all power to the Constituent Assembly," which will inevitable create the illusion that its bourgeois majority is a real alternative to the dictatorship.
This is what Haya de la Torre was thinking of when he suggested that the Assembly's deliberations be curtailed, and what some officers were thinking of when they hinted that a coup, implying the dissolution of the Assembly, might be a solution to the current impasse.
That these alternatives are being contemplated more or less openly proves that time is short in Peru, that the bourgeoisie is seriously beginning to envision new plans for stabilizing the situation.
Frontiers of Free Enterprise
The Italian Ministry of Health has calculated that 71.5 percent of the 1.8 billion prescriptions filled by the country's pharmacists in 1976 were "of little or no benefit." Not surprisingly, it is also reported that the Italian pharmaceutical industry spends more on advertising pills, laxatives, salves, tonics, and vitamins than on what goes into them.
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Notes
1. SUTEP-Sindicato Unico de Trabajadores de la Educación del Perú (United Federation of Education Workers of Peru).
2. PPC—Partido Popular Cristiano (Christian People's Party).