BY HILDA CUZCO
Massive arrests and a stage of siege imposed by the Bolivian government April 18 failed to break the resistance of striking teachers and other workers. Instead, the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was forced to the negotiating table and on April 29 reached an accord with leaders of the Bolivian Workers Confederation (COB) to end the eight-week strike.

Under the agreement or "memorandum of understanding," signed in a secret meeting, the government pledged to release more than 400 unionists arrested during the previous 10 days. The state of siege - the fourth since 1982 - will continue its 90-day course, although, according to the minister of interior Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, it is "flexible."

The strikes began when 80,000 teachers walked out March 13 to protest the Education Reform Law and demand a wage increase. In response to brutal police repression against a march of 3,500 rural teachers heading to the capital, La Paz, March 21, the COB leadership called for a nationwide strike. The unions that make up the COB had submitted labor demands to the government several months earlier. After initially opposing ending the strike, the teachers unions decided to endorse the memorandum of understanding adopted by the COB, and classes resumed May 4.

Solidarity with the teachers' struggle came from miners, health and social security workers, Bolivian Government Oil Deposit workers, and university employees. Gradually construction, railroad, and some factory workers joined the protests. Clashes with the police occurred daily, leaving scores of people injured and unionists arrested. At one point, 27 teachers were charged with sedition and conspiracy.

The striking unionists voiced their opposition to the privatization of state enterprises, the education reform law, and the forced eradication of coca plantations in the Chapare, state of Cochabamba.

The evening of April 18, as the state of siege went into effect, more than 100 hooded police and civilian agents, all heavily armed, forced their way in the COB building in La Paz, just as the union federation's national meeting was adjourning. Firing tear gas, the cops raided the meeting hall and arrested all participants, including COB secretary-general Oscar Salas and other union leaders. Radio and television reporters who were covering the meeting were also beaten and arrested. Journalists took to the streets April 25, defying the stage of siege, to demand freedom of the press and the release of their colleagues.

Similar raids were carried out at the San Andrés University, where the rural teachers were staying, and the Mine Workers Union headquarters. The cops arrested everybody present. According to witnesses, these operations were repeated in all the buildings where unionists were lodged. The hundreds of arrested workers were sent to various distant detention centers in the jungles and Andean foothills.

In Copacabana, the police disrupted a meeting of the Andean Council of Coca Producers, which the government had branded as subversive. This organization assembles coca producers from Bolivia, Colombia, and Perú. Its president is Evo Morales, the central leader of the General Trade Union Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers (CSUTCB). The gathering - the fifth annual meeting of producers and their advisers - was to assess the 1995 coca harvest at a national and international level. Twenty-three peasant leaders were arrested, among them Morales and five other leaders of the CSUTCB, 12 Peruvians, 2 Colombians, 1 Brazilian, 1 Cuban, and 1 European citizen. The international participants were expelled or left the country, while Morales was detained and sent to La Paz.

Meanwhile, the military has deployed more than 80 soldiers in Chapare, announcing they will stay until late this year. Angry at the military presence, peasant unionists set up barricades and clashed with the military personnel, resulting in several injured and 150 arrested. At Washington's demand, the Sánchez de Lozada regime agreed to eradicate 4,300 acres of coca plantations by the end of June. In the meantime Morales, from prison, called for the suspension of the voluntary eradication of these crops.  
 
 
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