SOMETHING STIRRING IN THE "SWITZERLAND OF THE AMERICAS"
[The following article has been translated from the October 18 issue of La Verdad, weekly publication of the Argentine Partido Revolucionario de los Traba jadores (Revolutionary Workers party). ]
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The "Switzerland of the Americas," the label for Uruguay that used to appeal to the exploiting oligarchies, has now become a melancholy phrase among the political commentators of the boss press. A profound crisis is shaking Uruguay from top to bottom, from its economic structure to its political institutions, demonstrating that the idyllic country where "nothing ever happens, is nothing but a link in the chain of imperialist domination, a link inevitably condemned to bankruptcy and frustration.
This "Switzerland" where it was traditional to praise the Western and Christian way of life, has become converted into an example of what a semicolonial country can expect nowadays from a capitalist class politically and economically dominated by imperial~ ism.
The fact is that a country which has traditionally exported agricultural products, like so many other Latin-American countries, has been dealt the coup de grace by the world market, so far as its basic crop, wool, is concerned. The manufacture of synthetic fibers in the U.S. with the consequent fall in the price of wool as well as in meat, coupled with limited production of cattle, knocked out two
of the foundation stones of economic stability in Uruguay.
The drop in national income is aggravated by something else, This income must provide for a naturally growing population. For a regime that holds profits and free enterprise sacred, this means spreading the misery among the bulk of the inhabitants so as not to sharpen the quarrels and disputes among, the narrow sectors elinging to their special privileges,
This economic crisis has shaken the foliage of the political superstructure, aggravating all its contradictions. The traditional parties of. the Uruguayan oligarchy could find no way out except to transform the state apparatus itself into a source of jobs. The offices of the administration and the public services are filled with a swarm of hungry bureaucrats. Public employment has been transformed into a life-saver for those who are unemployed or incapable of working at any other productive ocoupation. But, for the very reasons that gave rise to it, the bureaucracy does not have a swell~ ing public treasury at its disposal; on the contrary, the pork barrel belongs to a state in crisis. This has served as a powerful ferment in the present popular discontent.
The broad masses in Uruguay, including the numerous middle class dependent on the government, thus face misery with no perspec= tive of a way out. This is the background to the mobilization behind the general strike that has brought wide layers of the population into conflict with the regime,
But despite their growing radicalization, these sectors of the population, including the workers, have not yet succeeded in creating the class-conscious and revolutionary leadership needed under the circumstances to find a way out of the crisis.
The trade-union and political leaderships, from the Communist party to the various currents that claim to be Castroist have not succeeded in providing clear objectives for the popular mobilization, that is, a program, tactics and strategy. The proof of this is that the general strike itself has not raised the slogan of taking power, The forceful and extreme means of a general strike cannot lead to the desired results without posing this fundamental objective, since in the absence of this aim, it is senseless to paralyze the country and neutralize the organs of power of the class enemy, unless the leaders of the mobilization are seeking nothing more than to utilize it for negotiations,
But this means nothing less than capitulation and reformism, in the old pattern of the politicians of the Socialist party and as is now being done by the Peronist trade-union bureaucrats.
Only failure can come along this road.
This is exactly what we believe is occurring in Uruguay today
with the current general strike,
The present crisis in Uruguay -- a crisis of revolutionary leadership -~ can however, due to the impasse, hasten the process of forming a genuine workers and popular current with the clear politi-~ cal aim of taking power. The masses will go through the experience of failing with their traditional reformist leaderships, and this process will soon determine the outcome for this semicolonial country that is being smothered today by imperialism.
Meanwhile the possibility of a turn to the right, including desperate recourse to a military coup d'état, will be opened, threatening the Uruguayan people.
In vrief, the cronic crisis in Uruguay adds one more country to the series which imperialism is confronting with a decisive alternative -= either a friendly union with sister countries of Latin America in a Federation of Socialist States, or transformation into a bastion of the "Johnson doctrine against subversive wars"t in the con= tinent via the Armed Forces,
Thus we believe that "something has begun to stir" in Uruguay. The appearance of a revolutionary leadership and party will prove decisively whether or not what is now happening in Uruguay marked the hour when the country caught up with the present stage of the Latin- American revolution.
U.S. ROLB