With environmentalist speech the government increases repression against peasants
We reproduce a statement found in A Nova Democracia here by the League of Poor Peasants (LCP) of Rondônia and Western Amazonia, related to recent government measures and the increase in repression against peasants.
The old State, through its shift manager, Luiz Inácio, has promoted the increase of repression in the countryside using the pretext of protecting the environment. Speech that serves to please the international demagoguery of the imperialist powers and superpowers, these are the greatest destroyers of the natural environment in their own countries and in others where they exploit exploitation based on limitless degradation and that have increased in recent decades. In practice, all this talk about environmental preservation, which deceives many, largely aims to prevent the use of national resources so that, now and in the future, imperialist monopolies can increase the plundering of the diversity of these riches here as they see fit.
In Rondônia, they expanded repressive operations on a large scale in several rural areas in different locations, committing all kinds of arbitrary acts, burning machinery, imposing millionaire fines and putting an embargo on production, mainly of cattle. In the case of the embargoes, the cattle must be removed from the land within 5 days, otherwise they will be confiscated by the government.
And the situation, which was already bad for small and medium-sized cattle producers, with a drop in beef prices, an increase in the price of inputs such as salt, feed, vaccines, etc., is now worse! You have to spend even more on leasing pasture and transport, making production increasingly unsustainable. Meanwhile, for the population in general, the price of meat in butcher shops does not go down because we live in the dictatorship of the big slaughterhouses, who buy cattle paying little and sell at an exorbitant price, with the guarantee that they can set the price they want, since the producers are prevented from selling meat directly to the population.
For public opinion in the cities, the government and the communication monopolies show peasants, small and medium rural producers as the greatest deforesters and destroyers of nature, when they occupy a small percentage of the land. It is right and fair that natural resources are exploited in a rational and planned way, but what this demagogic environmentalist discourse hide is that the greatest destroyers of nature are not the small and medium-sized ones, but the land-thieving landowners of the Union called ” agribusiness”, which are deified as “the wealth industry” of the country. Not to mention the big mining companies, which have been draining our wealth for centuries, destroying everything in their path, ending the lives of so many people (example of the dams breaking), and continue there with impunity.
In these current repressive operations in Rondônia, the big landowners remain untouched, or at most one or another are hit from time to time, but the bulk of those affected by these government measures are small and medium peasants and other rural producers. And now, adding to the permanent State terrorism against the peasants in struggle for the land, they seek to increase the strangulation of the economy in the countryside, curbing small and medium production by all means, alongside giving free rein to the large landowners, that parasitic class, which contrary to what is said on television, does not guarantee food on the population’s table, the peasants do. In fact, the so-called agribusiness lives off the export of mono-cultivations, mainly soybeans, which do not benefit the people, much less the local economy. This backward class, of true hoarders, thieves of public land of the Union, and that in the last years have increased the legalization of those thieved lands by the successive adjudications of turn, they do not pay taxes, they exploit even the last drop of sweat and blood of the workers that are subjugated to the most denigrate conditions of the serval work (legally called as work analogue to slavery), they have all the benefits of the government on shift, the forgiveness of the debt, always abundant credit, in addition to all kind of relations with the people in the government.
Let’s see the Galho Velho gang, Antônio Martins, one of the biggest land thieves in Rondônia, the target of countless police operations and lawsuits, with close links with police, gunmen and relations with government officials to plunder the public coffers in millions, and that even though he is all wrapped up in inquiries and criminal cases, continues to walk around freely and with impunity. This is just one well-known example, so brazen that not even the rubbish press could hide it.
Let’s see the data announced by the Luiz Inácio government itself in the so-called Cultivation Plan of this year, where 364 billion reais are earmarked for the undertakings of big estates, while for what they call “family farming” they allocate only crumbs and welfare programs released into account drops. Such an amount donated to the big landowners scoundrel at once surpasses all previous governments, including Bolsonaro’s, unabashedly faithful defender of the big estates. As they like to say in their demagogic speeches, they could say that never before in the history of this country has the Union’s land-thieving big estates been so benefited!
For the poor of the city and the countryside, for the peasants, small traders, small and medium-sized rural producers, there is nothing to expect from this old state and its shifting governments but crumbs and repression. To face this situation of crisis, repression, persecution and strangulation of the peasant economy, the people must unite and organize themselves to face all of this storm. Demand an end to fines and embargoes, demand the release of the sale of cattle directly to the producer, without going through slaughterhouses, health surveillance and other bureaucracies, demand investments for true rural producers who guarantee food on the table, road infrastructure and all logistics for production, storage, with decent roads and transport for its disposal. Demand the regularization of land tenure by peasants, demand the final tittle of the lands in the areas that they call of “assent” and to illegal occupations and end the Incra’s protection and other government bureaucracy.
And more than ever, to the poor peasants without land or with little land to promote new land seizures, to take all the lands of the big estates, distributing and handing over the lands to those who live and work in it, promoting the Agrarian Revolution, and in this way, yes, we will make progress and prosper the economy in the countryside, in the small towns, transforming what today is a place of injustice and violence against the people into a place of prosperity and development for those who live and work with dignity.
End the repression of peasants and other workers in the countryside!
The Amazon belongs to the Brazilian people!
Down with the environmental policy farce that only persecutes and oppresses the people!
No more fines and embargoes!
Down with the dictatorship of the slaughterhouses and health surveillance!
Direct sale from the producer to the consumer now! Cheap meat on the people’s table!
Death to the landlord!
Long live the Agrarian Revolution!
LCP – League of Poor Peasants of Rondônia and Western Amazonia
July 2023
