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From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 47, 21 November 1949, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The “revolutionary” attempts by the totalitarian forces in Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay have ended in defeats that can have decisive importance in the future political development of South America. It is an open secret that all these movements, including those that won the support of important proletarian sectors, were encouraged and directed by Argentina’s Peron. Their defeat signifies the defeat, therefore, of Peronist Bonapartism in its imperialist expansion at the expense of neighboring countries. Two years ago we predicted the sad end of the Peronist sub-imperialism in its drive to dominate the South American continent and its inevitable capitulation before the Yankee colossus. Now this prediction begins to take shape.
The economic crisis in Argentina has exhausted the political and economic reserves of its Bonapartist government. The inflation brought only the illusions of “industrialization,” the looting of the funds and reserves of the nation have brought the period of wage increases to an end, pushing the real value of wages back to the low level of Argentina’s economic life. The Peronist monopoly in grains, which consisted of buying from the producer at .a very cheap price and selling at a very exorbitant one, has been shattered by international competition on the world market. The result has been the ruin of agriculture and the abandonment of a great deal of acreage formerly cultivated. The readjustment of meat prices to the scale demanded by the sover [?] British buyers has reduced the Peronist extravaganza to hard reality.
As always, the economic readjustment is being accomplished at the expense of the workers and the “Descamisados” (shirtless ones), the lumpenproletariat and very backward rural proletariat, who formed the main social base for Argentine Bonapartism. And where the means to maintain wages at high levels are not at hand, the “Loyalty Days” dedicated to President Peron and organized by the police-controlled Labor Federation are no solution. Economic interests cannot be replaced by empty promises and sugared words.
The worthy response of the proletariat to the “day of loyalty to Peron” has been a wave of “illegal” strikes in which hundreds of thousands of workers are taking part. The regime is revealing its complete political impotence before these strikes, which are being led without the participation of the state-controlled Peronist CGT. And as if to demonstrate its impotence even further, the regime is persecuting all opposition Socialists, Peronist party dissidents, Stalinists, Radicals and Conservatives with rabid fury.
Nevertheless, the opposition press, headed by the world-famous newspapers Nation and La Prensa of Buenos Aires, does not give Peronism one day of rest, and keeps on gnawing away at its base with ruthless criticism. It is no surprise, therefore, that these, papers are threatened with assaults and destruction by flying squads. In order to save itself from disaster, Peronism is unashamedly abandoning its “socialist” demagogy and bending toward the traditional conservative right.
Thus Argentine Bonapartism is annihilating itself politically. It is descending from the “independent” position it previously occupied, a position seemingly above society, and is taking its place on the bourgeois right, or more accurately, the landlord-bourgeois right. The changes in the personnel of the government camarrilla and the workers’ strikes express the two sides of this process, which has as its basis an economic policy designed to reconstruct Argentine agriculture (devastated by Peronism) as the last bulwark of Peron’s “revolutionary” economy.
In Bolivia the civil war, financed by Argentine Peronism, has ended with the crushing defeat of the MNR (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement) , and unfortunately of that sector of the workers’ movement that supported it. But political life on the Bolivian plateau lacks consistency and is convulsive in character. The victory of the traditional Right over the MNR having been achieved, the official party immediately divided into different groups which are in open conflict. The resignation of President Hertzog represents the march of this party toward the right.
Inevitably, these internal divisions are feeding the tendencies toward a military dictatorship in true Bolivian style. On October 28, a new conspiracy, backed by the military, was uncovered in La Paz. The victors in the civil war are demanding their reward. The “strong” government of Urriolagoitia, which replaced the “weak” government of Hertzog, is digging its own grave, on which the new military dictatorship will rise.
To the north in Colombia, “an undeclared civil war” has broken out according to the statement by a minister of the official government party. Since the dramatic events of 1948 in Bogota, Colombia has attracted worldwide attention. The Stalinists knew how to profit from the latent social antagonism between the Liberals and Conservatives in order to greet the Pan-American Conference in Bogota with “revolutionary fireworks.” The assassination of the Liberal leader, Gaitan, almost led to the end of the feudal dictatorship of the Conservatives. But the regime managed to save itself.
Today the Conservative Party has launched a full offensive, presenting as its presidential candidate that most “extreme” representative of the right, Laureano Gomez, who embraced the program of Franco’s Falange during his stay in Spain. And the more aggressive Laureano Gomez becomes, threatening to declare the Liberals illegal, the gentler the Liberal’s presidential candidate Echandia becomes, ready to negotiate and compromise like any good bourgeois lawyer.
The Liberals protest against the campaign abuses committed by the Conservative dictatorship, and threaten to abstain from voting. But this threat hardly matters to Laureano Gomez, the ardent Franquista. He wants to establish a Franquista dictatorship in the heart of the continent and govern with an iron fist at the very time that the hateful Franco dictatorship, illegitimate child of Nazi-Fascism and foreign intervention, is beginning to tremble in Spain. Nor does the fate of Getulio Vargas and the approaching end of Argentine Bonapartism matter to Gomez.
But the Colombian masses are not thinking along the same lines as Laureano Gomez nor even the smooth Liberal leader Echandia. The Colombian Federation of Labor, the CTC, has proclaimed an imminent general strike against the Franquista provocations of Gomez. The political struggle has taken on cruel and savage characteristics. It is unbelievable but true that whole towns have been destroyed (Ceilan) and hundreds of corpses thrown into nearby rivers (Bugglagrande).
The Conservative dictatorship has become insupportable for the Colombian people. The Liberal party, which functions within the framework of bourgeois politics, expresses in-distorted form the social aspirations of the popular masses, including the workers, by virtue of its role as the opposition party. The Conservative and Falangista party bosses are trying to eliminate it and accuse it of being “communistic.” In reality the Stalinists have no great political importance and do not control the vast opposition movement.
While the parliamentary sectors of the Liberal and Conservative parties negotiate a truce, the assault groups of the Conservative party continue to destroy entire communities and assassinate the supporters of the Liberal Party by the hundreds. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Colombian proletariat threatens to respond to the Franquista offensive of Gomez with a general strike.
The social content of the South American convulsions reveals itself as the post-war crisis gripping a backward, semi-feudal economy that is dominated by the all-powerful dollar. The Bonapartist and native-Nazi attempts to overcome this backwardness and economic dependence have failed, leaving a more mature and experienced proletariat on the field of battle, a proletariat with an increased political and social consciousness.
The strikes in Argentina, the partial abandonment of the nationalist complex by the Bolivian proletariat, and the stubborn resistance of the Colombian workers to the petty Falangista dictators, demonstrate that the class struggle in South America has risen to a new level.
Spontaneously, the workers have abandoned Peronism as well as Stalinism and are seeking a better expression of their political and social independence. This spontaneous movement gives fresh confirmation to the Marxist point of view that only socialism can solve the social and economic problems of South America, a continental South American socialism that advances, arm in arm, with the workers’ movement of North America.
Lima, Peru – November 1949
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Last updated: 23 February 2023