General Strike in Arequipa May Mark New Tu

IN PRU from ‘World Outlook’ Although the Belaunde regime seemed to have established a kind of grave yard peace in Peru....that peace may now be on the verge of being shattered by a new rise in the class struggle. The basic reason for the turn is grave inflation and economic stagnation affecting the country. The price of fish meal, which accounted for 27% of export earnings in 1966, suddenly dropped last year from $143 to $107 a ton. The cost to produce a ton of fish meal in Peru is about £130 - the manufacturers decided to stockpile the product pending a more favourable price, At the same time, military expenditure for the "Gorillas™ in charge of keeping down the peasants and workers, rose to new heights, further dislocating the budget. On September lst, Belaunde met this situation in the customary manner, He devalued Peru's money, reducing the Sol from 26.80 to the dollar to 40. A newspaper columnist in Lima noting that the Government wanted to cut imports by 50% in 1968 to check the outflow of dollars and to curb inflation, commented: "This will happen because 50% of the population will be dead of starvation." In Arequipa, Peru's second city (160,000 inhabitants), the workers were unwilling to die of starvation for the sake of balancing Belaunde's budget and keeping the military supplied with US armanents. They demanded a 30% increase inwages to make up for the 35% devaluation of the soland its immediate reflection in soaring prices for basic necessities. When they got no satisfaction they decided to call for a geheral strike. This went into effect on October 19th. Arequipa, . some 7CO miles south of Lima,was sewed up tight. The strike began with militant demonstrations. The strikers sought to block the railway line. They sent rocks sailing through the windows of some of the stores. The police responded in the typical way of police in Peru, They moved brutally against the demonstrators. 20 were injured and about 100 arrested. But this did not have the expected effect and did not halt the strike. The government decided to follow up with more serious action. It suspended the sectors of the constitution guaranteeing civil rights and civil liberties. But the strikers refused to give up their struggle and the entire city remained paralyzed. On October 23rd the confederation of workers went into action in Lima, staging a demonstration at the government palace. Fighting flared as the police again resorted to their favourite tactic. The general strike lasted a solid eight days in Arequipa before it came to an end. Details were not indicated in the papers outside Peru, but the government apparently made a significant concession to the workers in both Arequipa and Lima. he Belaunde regime proclaimed that the ending of the strike action indicated that things were again well in hand. However, it was also clear that Belaunde feared a grave social and political crisis was in the making for he held sccret meetings with Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, who stands more or less for the liberal bourgeois opposition, and Manuel A. Odria, the retired General who was dictator of Peru from 1948 to 1956 and is still a powerful figure among the most reactionary circles. It remains to be seenwhether this tentative coalition can be cemented into something durable. That it could block a fresh upsurge in the class struggle seems highly dubious. An average per capita income of only $267 a year is clearly far below what is needed to keep body and soul together among the workers and peasants upon whom the entire society rests.