Brazil: indigenous peasants reject repression from the old Brazilian State and confiscate a rifle
Featured image: images of the National Force and Military Police running from the property Fazenda Brilhante. Source: A Nova Democracia.
A Nova Democracia (AND) has reported that the Avá-Guarani indigenous peasants from the town of Terra Roxa, in Parana, rejected the repressive operation carried out by the National Force (NF) and the Military Police (MP) on September 6. Moreover a lieutenant of the Battalion of Military Police of Borders (BPFron) lost his own rifle while he fled.
This repressive operation has been carried out to attempt to evict the peasants who occupied the property on July 5, 2024. On July 20, a court from Parana ruled that the property should be given back to its owner, the Ferreira family, big landlords. A period of 10 days was given to the indigenous peasants to voluntary leave the property, which was obviously rejected by them. According to pro-latifundium media there are other properties occupied in the area. But before that ruling of the court the big landlords already attacked the peasants by using gunmen, and making clear they do not care about the laws of their own system. Thus, mercenaries ran over two indigenous peasants and some barracks were torched. On August 28, an operation of latifundium terror was carried out close to this area, again by gunmen who wounded four indigenous peasants in the attack.
In the recent operation, the repressive forces have been harshly humiliated, forced to flee the area, and going back again and again due to the fierce resistance of the indigenous who shot arrows and were firm, even confiscating a riffle from the repressive forces. As AND reported, in one moment of the struggle the repressive forces were cornered and defeated and even gun-shoted the indigenous peasants again. We hereby share a video in which the scene can be seen:
Afterwards it became know that the repressive forces acted by an explicit demand of the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to the Ministry of Justice. This operation was called Tekoha 4. Thus, the Luiz Inácio and PT government, as well the opportunism which support it (for example, the minister of Indigenous Peoples is from the Party of Socialism and Freedom – PSOL, Sônia Guajajarala), have been unmasked.
AND points that: “What recently occurred in Parana is part of the escalation of the struggle for the land all over the country, already in form of a civil war between big landlords and peoples from the countryside. A clear tendency in this phenomenon is the armed response by the peasants, indigenous and Quilombolas against the offensives and terrorist raids which they are facing by the big landlords and gunmen bands.” (All the translations of excerpts from AND are ours and unofficial).
The League of Poor Peasants (LCP) also recently referred to these facts in the commemoration of the resistance of Corumbiara, and said that in 2023 there was the highest number of conflicts in the countryside in Brazil, under a coalition government of reactionaries and false left opportunists that are pretending to be friends of the people’s struggle but who actually serves the latifundium. In this way the LCP called again to “the peoples of the countryside to form self-defense groups to respond ‘in the same proportion and caliber’ to the attacks of the latifundium and gunmen bands”. Thus, in many places of the countryside in Brazil, the peasantry has decided to say enough of the abuses from the latifundium and the old Brazilian State.
