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World

thes

‘Guatemalan unions

highlight repression

The recent illegal detention and subse-
quent release of two trade unionists shows
that Guatemala is still ruled by a military
dictatorship bent on crushing labour
Nights and human rights in the Central
American nation.

But it also shows the growing militancy
of both a revived trade union movement
nd an increasingly effective armed oppo-
Sition, two local members of the Guatem-
ala Human Rights Commission point out.

Most international human rights
Commissions that have visited our country
agree on one thing — that Guatemala is
One huge concentration camp,” said
Commission member Carlos Moreira.

€ commission sent out a alarm last
month when two brothers, Gaspar, and
Gaspar Mendoza y Mendoza, were
detained by members of the Voluntary
Civil Defence Committee in the village of
Aguacatan. The human rights group
called on Canadians to demand the unio-
Nists’ release,

A week later the brothers turned up in
their home village, showing signs of beat-
gs but otherwise unharmed. Their
Telease was precipitated by a magistrate
Who spotted the two escorted by civilian-
Clothed guards at the military base in
Huehuetenango Department (province).

The Mendoza brothers are local leaders
of STINDE, the union at the country’s
publicly owned National Electricity Insti-
tute (spanish acronym INDE).

Like other STINDE leaders, they have
Teceived death threats for their work. They

ave been prohibited from entering
Aguacatan, and fellow trade unionists
Carlos Molina and Rolando Caal of the
Workers Front have been ordered to cease
union activities.

Death threats to all STINDE leaders
Were received after the union’s central

office publicly denounced the illegal deten-
tion.

Founded in 1985, STINDE is an exam-
ple of a new growing trade union militancy
slowly rebuilding itself after the CIA-
backed coup that toppled the country’s
elected civilian government in 1954. _

In 1987, the 6,000-member union
forced the government to cancel a planned
hydro rate hike with a 15-day strike in
April and May. Union leaders also
demanded the firing of INDE vice-
president Roberto Balsells Figueroa for
his plans to privatize the corporation.

Figueroa subsequently in a televised
address accused the union leaders of being
subversive — a signal for new repression
by the military, which had already been on
alert since the strike, Moreira said.

In the wake of death threats, arrests and
other intimidations the Guatemala Human
Rights Commission launched an interna-
tional campaign in defence of STINDE.

Guatemala has one of the bloodiest his-
tories in Central America since the CIA
ushered in the dictatorship to protect the
interests of United Fruit and other U.S.
firms. Its worst period was 17 months fol-
lowing May, 1982, when former Army
general and president Rios Montt ordered
a military operation designed to “‘catch the
fish by removing the water,” Moreira said.

Some 15,000 mainly Mayan Indian vil-
lagers were slaughtered and 440 villages
were razed in the military campaign to cut
off bases of support for the armed insur-
rection.

Rios Montt’s record was so outrageous
to the international community the gen-
eral was deposed in a 1983 coup. Elections
the following year, in which several oppo-
sition parties were denied participation,
saw a majority of Christian Democrats
take the government. The following year

3 oli

in Solidarit ;
Guatemalan Trade yY with

Unionists
July ~1987

GUATEMALA HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

Christian Democratic president Vinicio
Cerezo was elected.

The appearance of a restoration of
democracy in that country “‘succeeded in
breaking the international isolation” and
last year External Affairs Minister Joe
Clark reopened bilateral aid to Guatem-
ala, Moreira said.

But Guatemala’s problems today are
the same old ones, and the military still
calls the shots, says commission member
Waldemar Monzon.

The latest threats against STINDE
indicate that the army is returning to its
previous strategy of attacking trade
unions in the urban centres after Rios
Montt’s slaughter in the countryside. But
labour is continuing its fight, and in the
mountains a re-vitalized revolutionary
movement is taking its toll of the armed

forces, the commission members said.

Between January and April this year
more than 700 soldiers were killed in bat-
tles with the Guatemalan United Revolu-
tionary Front (URNG).

“The new insurgency is more than a
military force. It is also a political one,”
Moreira said.

The peace accord, Esquipulas II, signed
by five Central American nations last year,
also brought the government to the nego-
tiating table, although there has been no
follow-up to last November’s meeting
with the URNG in Madrid, Spain.

Additionally, the ruling coalition of
Army, Christian Democrats and the coun-
try’s large landowners is shaky, as wit-
nessed by the recent abortive coup
attempt, the commission members pointed
out.

Vote doesn’t reflect strength of French GP

By TOM FOLEY
The results of the presidential elections

show that the French Communist Party

P) remains a powerful force in the

nation’s political life.

The elections took place in two rounds,

the first ‘April 24, the second, May 8. In the
first round, FCP candidate Andre Lajoinie
got 6.8 per cent of the vote. Then in the
second round, the FCP urged everyone to
vote for President Francois Mitterrand of
the French Socialist party.

A look at the results and the background

of the election explains why the FCP is a

Powerful force. Mitterrand won with over
54 per cent of the vote on May 8, inflicting
the most crushing defeat on the French
right in the entire 30-year history of Fran-
ce’s Fifth Republic. His opponent, rightist
Premier Jacques Chirac, has not only had
to resign as premier, but also may be out as
head of his rightist RPR party.

In the first round, Mitterrand received 34
per cent, Chirac 19.5 per cent, rightist Ray-
mond Barre of the UCF party got 16.5 per
cent and feo-fascist National Front candi-
date, Jean-Marie Le Pen, got an alarming
14.4 per cent, a gain of 5 per cent, from his
showing two years ago. The votes for Le
Pen, Barre and Chirac together total 50.4
per cent.

Confronted with this situation, the FCP
had to make a bitter choice. Although Mit-
terrand in 1981 won the presidency, it was
as the candidate of a joint Socialist-
Communist Party coalition with a common

increasing suffering

has fueled the growth
of rightist extrem-
ism and the emer-
gence of the National

fascist party which

program. By 1983 Mitterrand had ditched
the program for one of austerity, privatiza-
tion and closing down “unprofitable” state-
owned industries — which led to growing
unemployment and hardship for all work-
ing people.

The FCP was compelled to leave the coa-

lition so it could turn its political and eco-
nomic fire on Mitterrand. It has done so
ever since.

Meanwhile, the

France’s working
people had to endure

Front, a racist, neo-

calls for expelling all y it
py aa from MARCHAIS
rance, especially

Arabs and Africans, blaming them for
unemployment.

Mitterrand’s policies helped create this
situation, which deepened after Chirac’s
rightist RPR won the 1986 parliamentary

elections. As the presidential elections drew

nearer, Chirac and the RPR tilted toward
Le Pen and the National Front. Chirac’s

interior (police) minister, Charles Pasqua,

ordered mass roundups and expulsions of
immigrant workers. Pasqua’s advisers are
said to include people with ties to the apar-
theid regime in South Africa.

Andre Lajoinie, the FCP candidate, is the

head of the French Metalworkers’ Federa-
tion. The FCP campaign concentrated on
basic industrial workers. Lajoinie stressed
issues in his campaign; peace, disarmament,
jobs, doubling the minimum wage, granting
the right to vote in local elections to immi-
grant workers. He called for transferring 40
billions francs (roughly $9 billion U.S.)
from the military budget to education.

The FCP ran an issues-orientated cam-
paign, Party General Secretary Georges
Marchais said, because it did not expect its
candidate to win in the first round. The
campaign aimed to present voters with a
program that could resolve the country’s
problems in the interest of working people
and democracy, to influence both public
thinking and the programs of other candi-
dates.

At a meeting of the FCP Central Com-
mittee after the first round, Marchais noted
that Lajoinie received over two million
votes (the membership of the FCP is

600,000), visited every industrial area of

France, and that the FCP gained over
40,000 new members during the campaign.
District by district analyses of the voting
showed two important things, he said. One
was that Mitterrand’s vote gained by almost
the same percentage as the FCP vote
dropped in every district. Second, Le Pen’s
vote gained by almost the exact percentage
that Chirac (RPR) and Barre (UCF) lost in
every district.

Although it was clear Le Pen had won the
votes of many workers and young people,
Marchais said, the real change was a shift

within, not towards the right. The National
Front gained 1.5 million votes, while the
RPR mainly and the UCF to some extent
lost a total of 1.5 million votes. The slide
was toward extremism.

Marchais noted that in the local and
municipal elections in March, the FCP won
double or triple the 7 per cent Lajoinie won
in the first round presidential election. The
FCP even won many mayoral races in the
March vote. So it is not reasonable to
assume that within a few weeks these same
voters had abandoned the FCP or its pro-
gram.

What the results highlight, Marchais
said, is that the system of a two-round elec-
tion for a seven-year presidency is extremely
anti-democratic. When established in 1958
by Gen. Charles De Gaulle and his follow-
ers, the system was geared to provide “an
elective monarch,” Marchais said, focussed
not on issues but on personalities. and not
even personalities voters liked, but those
they thought could win the second round.

While the FCP urged people to vote for
Mitterrand in the second round, it emphas-
ized they should do so “without illusions.”
The Communists said they would continue
to fight Mitterrand’s anti-workers policies,
but stressed that the FCP votes would be
decisive in the second round in barring the
way to racist, neo fascist rule. Clearly, this
was true, and the FCP remains a decisive
force.

Tom Foley is a correspondent for the U.S.
People’s Daily World.

Pacific Tribune, June 1, 1988 ¢ 5