Latin America's • Brazil's government. with an ever-increasing $103bn debt. has won a 3-month stay of execution from the IMF, but scorned the routine IMF remedies as a long-term solution.
Tand central bank president have both resigned. leaving less orthodox figures in president Jose Sarney's government to try their policies. Real wages have already been cut by 50% over the pasts years. while inflation is running at 200% and the economy has slumped back into recession. Even at the height of the reBrazil's $12 billion trade surplus was payments on the foreign debt.
Now the country's Planning Minister. Joao Sayad. is adamant in rejecting the monetary restraint and cuts in government spending customarily demanded by the IMF. One of his aides declared:
I'm not going to entertain dismissing a quarter of the workforce just for the sake of macroeconomic stability."
President Sarney himself is echoing the same defiant note: Brazils economy must the debt with grow by at least 5 percent every year. and this must be the starting point of any readjustment programme:
Elsewhere he has insisted that he
would not allow the "dogmatic intransigence" of the IMF and others to impose recession on Brazil.
It remains to be seen whether this stubborn stance will remain firm in the lace of pressure from the
Brazilian workers. who in either case face further speed-up and attacks on their living standards from
multinational employers' Sarney's capitalist cabinet. will need to
establish their own line of struggle rather than wait for the outcome.
• Bolivian workers are again out on
strike as we go to press. this time
against the brutal austerity measures
of the newly-elected right wing
government of President Paz
Estenssoro. Under conditions of
14,000% inflation, the peso has been
devalued by 95% from 75.000 to the
dollar to 1.5 million.
But wages have been frozen until
December. while petrol prices are
raised by 900%. There is to be a major
shakeup for state-owned industries.
where miners in particular have wag-
ed repeated struggles for workers"
control.
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