• What is the purpose of your visit to Britain? A try to launch an internation- The aim of my visit is to al campaign to save the lives of Jose Francisco Paez and Arturo Apaza, worker militants and leading members of our party. Paez is now in jail in Cordoba, while Arturo Apaza has disappeared after being detained by military forces at his workplace.
These two comrades symbolise the hundreds of members of the PST who have been jailed, kidnapped and persecuted in one way or another, often having to leave their jobs and their homes. I am here to stress the need for your solidarity in developing a campaign to demand from the Argen tinian Government guarantees for the life of Paez, and the immediate location of Arturo, Apaza.
We are asking for public statements from MPs, trade unions, political organisations, well-known personalities, artists, ete. addressed to General Videla demanding that the lives of these two comrades be saved. We have already succeeded in this in Colombia, where 30 MPs from the left wing of the Liberal Party have made such a demand. The Colombian teachers union is calling for a similar move from other trade unions.
What is the present level of repression in Argentina?
Well, of course there was already repression under the Peronist regime. For the last two years the PST has been a particular target of the ultra-right terror gangs which operate with complete immunity. The vast majority of the PST's regional offices were bombed, and 15 leading members had been killed by the time of the coup in March. Since then these gangs have continued with their actions, also murdering "political refugees' from neighbouring countries.
Our party has been banned, our national headquarters were occupied by the army, over 100 comrades are in jail - most of them working class leaders while others have disappeared during the actions carried out by the armed forces in the factories, offices and working class housing dreds To give you one example, we are almost certain of the death of our comrade Carlos Agustin Falcon, an activist in a Buenos Aires factory. He was detained with two other shop stewards in the factory, taken to a place where other comrades were already detained, and brutally tortured. Since then we have heard nothing about him or the other two comrades.
Again, a comrade who was a clerk in the general tax office was taken from his house during the night and murdered. Four other comrades only escaped a smilar fate by deliberately leaving their houses. A fifth comrade, having also left his house with his family, then saw it blown up by a bomb.
The fourth issue of a legal fortnightly, La Yerca, which guardedly expressed the orientation of the PST, was seized by the police -showing the Government's determination to stop its publication.
Jose Francisco Paez, whom I've already mentioned - he's been detained since January - has written to us telling how a number of detainees are taken from their cells during the night and are found dead next morning, with the Government declaring that they died during gun battles between the armed forces and the guerillas. Although most of these people had been accused of being members of the guerilla movement, Paez says that one recent victim had no connection with any such organisation. This suggests that his own life is in serious danger.
As for comrade Apaza, he was detained along with other comrades by uniformed officers of the armed forces in the presence of many witnesses owners of the factory. However, in spite of requests by his family, comrades and even the factory owners, no official body will admit that he is a detainee. • Was there any resistance to the coup?
A explain a few things. During - ian working class twice successfully the aim of stopping inflation by freezing wages — in June 1975 and March 1976. But this success was not a total one, and its exact lesing class.
in June 1975 and March 1976. The latter was organised and led, particularly in Buenos Aires and isms called the coordinadoras zonales' which massively mobilised - including the To answer this I must first the last eight months of the Government of Isabel Peron, the Argentindefeated economic plans which had sons remained unclear to the workHowever, there was a qualitative difference between the triumphs the surrounding areas, by new organtaken away by the repressive forces, the workers in many factories fought to defend them. But despite some successes, both in defending living standards and in preventing some repressive actions, these did not spread and the Government was able to apply its policy little by little.
What are the political perspectives of the main left-wing groupings?
The main problem for the , Argentinian vanguard in the last thirty years has been how to overcome Peronism. This meant fighting for the working class, particularly its vanguard, to break with this bourgeois party and get rid of the brake on its actions represented by the Peronist trade union bureaucracy.
I don't want to deal here with the Stalinists of the Communist Party, who are not particularly significant in Argentina but like the Stalinists everywhere are constantly seeking an accommodation with the bourgeoisie.
What I want to do mainly, with the deliberate aim of polemicising, is to talk about the concept- oisie. ions and strategy of the guerilla groups, and contrast them with our own - which is to build the revolutionary party of the socialist workers through the concrete development of the workers' struggles. The PST rejects guerillaism in favour of the only strategy which makes it possible for us to be part of the working class experience: work in the factories alongside the workers.
Marxists have always rejected the "elitist conceptions involved in guerillaism - they disorganise and miseducate the workers movement on the correct methods of struggle, and they provide for the repression of those who are allegedly defended by the guerillas. Today there cannot be any doubt that all the guerillas 'exemplary actions' (kidnappings assaults on barracks, bombings, assassinations) have been and are totally isolated from the masses, who never felt identified with them and even repudiated some of them.
We are sure that as the workers movement increases its combativ.
ity, becomes conscious of its strength and deepens: its experience, the illusion that any 'out sider' can solve its problems will be finally dispensed with.
Despite the personal heroism of the guerilla militants, their objective role has been to confuse the workers movement and delay the process of breaking with Peronism. It would not surprise us if the ERP and the Montoneros decide to carry on the tasks of 'national liberation' by forming a ERP guerilla leader Roberto Santucho, murdered recently by Argentinian troops "national and anti-imperialist front' with sectors of what they call the "national and progressive' bourgeThat is not our way. We remain confident in the strength of the workers mobilisations, even if today they are unable as yet to launch a massive response to the repression of the reactionary regime and its servants. There is no way of destroying this bourgeois regime if the majority of the exploited do not understand the need to do it.
The PST is in urgent need of funds. both to aid those comrades and their families who have no other means of support and to maintain the work of the organisation in clandestinity. Please send all donations, marked PST, to: Red Weekly, 97 Caledonian Road, London N.I.