AND Editorial: Class struggle in the countryside and the civil war
We hereby publish an unofficial translation of the last Editorial published by A Nova Democracia.
There is no other scenario in the Brazilian countryside than war. In Jaguaruana, Ceara, more than 50 goons, dressed in black uniforms, in an action typical of the paramilitary terrorism, raided the Gregorio Bezerra II occupation against peasant families. Aggressions, psychological torture and threats of all kinds against adults and children marked a military operation which started at 2 of the dawn of the 26th. At the other end of the country, the Ava-Guarani communities, at western Parana, recently retaken areas by the indigenous masses, are being surrounded by bands of troops of the latifundium, who have carried out sabotages in several parts of the locality to prevent the flow of vehicles and to isolate the indigenous peoples; then, they pretend to exterminate the indigenous peoples.
The latifundium brutality does not stop here. On last 17th, a peasant, Melquisedeque Gomes da Silva, well-known leader who has been denouncing the land-grabbing crimes in the region, was murdered, stabbed in Mariposa, a community 1,5 kilometers from the municipality of Timbiras, in Maranhão.
Regarding that, in MS [Translator’s note: Mato Grosso do Sul], for example, the opportunist government in alliance with the liberal right have its troops in position, but no one thinks they are concerned by the murder and extermination of indigenous peoples: so far, the National Force only seized two weapons and seven ammunition from the big landlords, in a place were the goons are free and this is well known. The cost to keep those troops in the locality is more than R$5 millions.
What have Luiz Inacio and his defenders among the people said on the massacres of poor people in the struggle for the land? Where is the “prateleira” of the agrarian reform [Translator’s note: prateleira of lands is a term used by the PT to design a kind of relation of unproductive areas and given back to the peasants in the framework of the supposed agrarian reform], this excrescence defended by the current president of the republic as the universal salvation for the agrarian conflict? And what has the opportunist leadership of the MST said about the rampant repression, which in 2023 surpassed the numbers from 1986, carried out by big landlords and Bolsonarists in the countryside? They, all of them, have invited the peasants to make steps back, to be “intelligent” and to understand that they cannot accuse the government, since this will bring a worse government forward, even more reactionary.
In this scenario, the sharpening of the class struggle and the criminal actions of the reaction, the distinction between those who struggle seriously and the crying cowards with their appeals and justifications for the masses to take steps back because they don’t want to make steps forward, has been unavoidable and beneficial. The national leadership of the MST, for example, abandoned long time ago the land “occupations”. The consequent peasant movements have not just raised this flag, but also have called to the organization of armed self-defense groups as the only way to combat Bolsonarism – which is armed and legalized by companies of “organic security”-, and as condition to consolidate the seizures of lands and to carry out new ones. This is the center of the question, the center of the class struggle, and out of this or disconnected from this, everything appears without perspective, or with the perspective of parliamentarian cretinism and deception of the people.
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On public spending: Galipolo, trusted name of Luiz Inácio, and new president of the Central Bank, replacing Roberto Campos Neto, notorious Bolsonarist. On the contrary of what it may seem: Luiz Inácio is not relieved. The abusive interest rates are not just the stubbornness of Campos Neto: are demands of the rentist financial capital, demands which Luiz Inácio, firm lackey, will not do anything else than subject himself. In fact the struggle is encouraged to pretend that there is a supposed antagonism, between a “president with progressive intentions” but impeded to be progressive, in practice, by others. Now, however, it will be clear that Campos Neto was a useful enemy. For sure there is a theoretical possibility that Luiz Inácio can order the fall of the interest rates. But that depends of factors, which today are against the president, among them: the popularity and stability of the government; a margin of economic maneuver before the financial capital; the level of intern and extern political crisis. All of them suggest that Luiz Inácio is forced to remain firmly on a leash: because of that he does cuts in social programs, one of his only policies – maybe the only one – which he can boast as a mark of his government. He cut R$6,4 billions from the BPC [Translator’s note: monthly minimum payment by the old State to some sectors of the population]; R$10 billions cut from the INSS [Translator’s note: National Institute of Social Security, in charge of giving several subsidies]; R$2,3 billions cut from the Family Basket [Translator’s note: subsidies program to the families with less income]. This, without mentioning the already announced cuts in education, healthcare and other services. There is no doubt that the Bolsonarists will be pleased of that: once more, the social-democrat, coward and liar government, is preparing the field of destroyed lands for the ultra-reactionary government.
