Brazil: LCP statement on the war in the countryside

Featured image: Peasants report on the history of struggle in the region; Source: AND Database

We publish an unofficial translation of the following statement by the League of the Poor Peasants (LCP):

Peasant self-defense confronts and defeats the attack of the paramilitary hordes “Invasão Zero”

“The fences of my land, oh my ,

No one can imagine touching them, oh my,

The wires are made of bullets, oh my,

and the posts are made of carbines, oh my.”

(from the song Land Thief , by Jacob and Jacozinho)

The pro-Bolsonaro movement “Invasão Zero” has carried out yet another of its terrorist attacks against the rural masses. In several regions of the country, this paramilitary group, financed by big landlords, with the political support of “authorities” of the old State and the military support of the Military Police and Civil Police, armed to the teeth, has attacked the mobilizations of peasants, Quilombolas and indigenous people. In 2024, bringing together a large number of pickup trucks with armed gangs, “Invasão Zero” attacked unarmed peasants in Pará, preventing a fair land reclaiming. In Bahia, with the support of the Military Police of the PT government, it attacked an indigenous mobilization and murdered comrade Nega Pataxó. At the beginning of the year, in Rondônia, in the municipality of Machadinho D’Oeste, more than 100 armed men surrounded a camp without any batch, subdued the peasants, tortured several people and handed them over to the Military Police. In the same way, they have systematically attacked the Guarani-Kaiowá people in Mato Grosso do Sul, and on September 9, the same gang murdered the young Guarani leader Neri Ramos da Silva, while the National Security Force, sent by the Luiz Inácio government, did nothing to stop the murderers. Also in Paraná, in the municipality of Terra Roxa, where the Awá-Guarani are trying to reclaim the lands seized by the Brilhante farm, the same “Invasão Zero” group, under the watchful eye of the FNS, set fire to the product warehouse and injured four indigenous people.

On Saturday, September 28, 2024, this reactionary far-right group attacked the Engenho Barro Branco community in the municipality of Jaqueira, Zona da Mata de Pernambuco. As usual, they gathered a large group of gunmen and big landlords, numbering more than 50 criminals, in 14 pickup trucks. These cowards had the support of more than 50 military police officers from the 10th Battalion of the Military Police of Palmares, to provide security for their criminal attack. Leading this horde was the state president of “Invasão Zero”, the big landlord José Antônio Fonseca de Mello.

This criminal attack took place in the morning, as the gang intended to attack the Barro Branco community, when most of its residents were in the center of Jaqueira, at the city’s weekly market. The terrorists’ objective was to destroy the headquarters of the Barro Branco Association and the homes of its main leaders. However, this time, the paramilitary gang “Invasão Zero” was defeated by the self-defense of the squatters who fought in defense of their land by right and in fact, in a fierce battle that lasted more than 6 hours, expelling the criminals.

The Engenho Barro Branco community is made up of hundreds of families who have lived and worked on the land for over 100 years. They were all residents of the old Usina Frei Caneca and for decades were subjected to semi-feudal relations of exploitation by this latifundium. Throughout the year, they cultivated small plots of land around their homes and, during the sugarcane planting and harvesting period, they worked for the Sugar Mill in exchange for a measly daily wage. This form of exploitation, extremely common in the region, has always been used by the latifundium, as it allows them to both retain the workforce on the land, to have it available when they need a large contingent of workers, and to lower the workers’ wages during the sugarcane harvesting period, mainly.

In the early 2000s, the Usina Frei Caneca went bankrupt and stopped grinding sugarcane and producing sugar. Under these conditions, the former residents became free squatters on those lands, thus being able to increase their production and livestock. The Usina never paid a compensation for all the labor rights’ violations carried, much less the compensation to which those families were entitled for decades of exploitation. The demand for the clearing of all the lands of the bankrupt owners and their return to the residents and workers for decades at the end was more than fair.

Starting in 2015, the lands of the bankrupt owners began to be illegally leased to big landlord groups that raised cattle to slaughter and export of meat. An undeclared war then began against the more than 5,000 squatters on those lands. Numerous crimes were committed by these groups, in a process of expropriation of peasant properties that was not restricted to the city of Jaqueira, but encompassed the entire Mata Sul region of Pernambuco. In Engenho Barro Branco, many peasants were expelled from their homes, and several of them were demolished and even buried by the henchmen of the latifundium.

With much resistance and unity, several communities of squatters remained on their lands, struggling and demanding their rights. The organs of the old State, the judiciary, the state government, INCRA [Translator’s note: National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform], ITERPE [Translator’s note: Institute of Lands and Agrarian Reform of Pernamburco], etc., always sided with the big landlords, that is, the bankrupt owners and the agro-exporting group. As a “solution” to the conflict, they proposed settling the peasants on small plots of land very far away. In other words, they proposed removing those families who had lived there for over a century so that catling could take over the place.

Of course, the families of Engenho Barro Branco did not accept this proposal, and since 2023, tired of the delays of the State agencies and the never-fulfilled promises of a solution by opportunism, they joined the League of Poor Peasants to organize their struggle with the mobilization of the masses for the conquest of land. The group of big landlords, led by the thief of public lands Guilherme Maranhão, who had reigned in the area since 2018, committing all crimes against the peasants with impunity, in disregard of the law and with the convenient blindness of the judiciary, began to face more tenacious and organized resistance. With each attack by the big landlords, they received a response. They cut down the squatters’ fences and, now, saw their structures for managing livestock being demolished. After all, if there is no justice for the poor in this country, all that is left for them is the old principle of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

The last attack, on September 28, was the biggest they had ever made against the squatters of Barro Branco. It was also the biggest defeat they had suffered. They lined up their pickup trucks, with two backhoes in front and the police troop in the rear. As always, they came with their coronelistic arrogance, ordering the peasants to get out of the way, believing that those masses would accept, once again, seeing their homes demolished and buried. This time they came across two barricades and a lot of fire on the road. Cornered by the stones thrown and the fire started by the resistance, they showed the extent of their “bravery” and like cowards they fled in despair. The state president of “Invasão Zero”, so used to beating peasants, he and another member of his gang were shot with hot lead. A backhoe was also destroyed and one of the Rottweiler dogs taken by the criminals to intimidate the peasants ended up dead by the fire from the barricades.

Two peasants and a UFPE student were wounded by bullets. After the battle, the injured comrades received medical attention and recovered, and all returned victorious to Engenho Barro Branco. The Bolsonarist big landlords’ reaction, after several defeats imposed by the LCP in Rondônia, which is why they created, with the full encouragement of then President Bolsonaro, the paramilitary force “Invasão Zero”, which in its short time of existence has already committed and continues to commit so many crimes throughout the country, suffered its first defeat in Barro Branco. It is the first of many that will be bitter, as more and more peasants, indigenous people and Quilombolas realize that only by increasing their self-defense they will be able to secure their rights. In 2023, in a public statement, the LCP warned peasants throughout the country and called on them to defend their right to land with weapons in hand. This Bolsonarist paramilitary horde is taking its cowardly war to the countryside; it is war that they will have!

The old Brazilian State has always been on the side of the big landlords, because they are their creators and one of their main supporters, together with imperialism, mainly Yankee (North American) and the local big bourgeoisie. After this criminal and illegal action, which the reactionaries and the uninformed called “repossession”, the State apparatus, as always, turned against the peasant organizations, seeking to criminalize them. Let it be very clear, on September 28, there was no enforcement of “repossession”. On the contrary, what happened was an attack by this paramilitary gang of the big landlords created under the name “Invasão Zero” against the centuries-old possession of the peasants of Engenho Barro Branco. The peasants’ farms were attacked and parts of their plantations were destroyed. These bandits wanted to demolish the houses built decades ago by the squatters, all made of masonry and covered with tiles, where their great-grandparents and grandparents lived, and where they live and work today. But these land thieves were unable to do so, as they were faced with the intrepid resistance of the peasants and the fearless support of students, teachers and other popular and democratic organizations, present in a Solidarity Mission.

This is the old fate of peasants in Brazil. The judiciary of this old bourgeois-big-landlord State only recognizes the “sacred” right to private property if this property belongs to the latifundium; when the property or possession belongs to a peasant or to indigenous peoples and Quilombolas, the right to property is simply trampled upon by the very institutions, law enforcers, of this decomposing State, by its police and by gangs of goons and paramilitaries of the latifundium, who expel the peasants, stealing their lands and their goods. When the lands are public, if a peasant takes possession of even the smallest piece, he will soon be expelled and criminalized; if he is a big landlord, then the story is different, for this “businessman” there will be all the rights and soon his “cricket” (forged, false deed) of public land will be legalized for the “good of the nation”. This is how the law is in a semi-feudal society like ours: on the letter, everyone is equal before the law – in practice, some are more equal than others. In other words, peasants are less citizens than big landlords; in practice, their rights are never respected, even if they are those of “private property.”

Under these conditions, there is only one path for peasants, indigenous peoples and Quilombolas: the path of the Agrarian Revolution, as an inseparable part of the New Democratic Revolution. Only by revolutionizing the countryside, destroying the latifundium and its old State, will the masses be able to win the sacred right to land for those who live and work on it. The Agrarian Revolution is the destruction, in practice, of these semi-feudal relations of production that have been in force in the countryside since the origin of the Brazilian nation (five centuries); today, the Agrarian Revolution, moreover, is the defeat in practice of the extreme right. As the great Peruvian revolutionary Mariátegui established, the struggle for land is always violent and therefore touches on the political question of Power from the beginning. Under the leadership of the revolutionary working class, the insurgent Brazilian peasantry advances with each struggle towards the construction of a New Power.

In August 2024, in its announcement on the 29th anniversary of the Heroic Armed Peasant Battle of Santa Elina, the National Commission of the Poor Peasant Leagues (LCP) once again called on peasants from all over the country to prepare armed self-defense against the war of extermination of peasants, indigenous people and Quilombolas struggling for land, led by the paramilitary hordes of Bolsonaro supporters, organized and financed by the latifundium and ongoing in the countryside throughout the national territory. The murder of Mãe Bernadete, Nega Pataxó and the Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous people and dozens of other attacks on peasants struggling for land and the murder of their leaders demonstrate that only with armed resistance can the poor in the countryside, even in unequal conditions, defeat these parasites of the nation, big landlords who steal land from the Union and the peasants, and the hordes of goons and paramilitaries from the far-right Bolsonaro supporters. The condemnation of this call by the LCP by opportunists on duty are nothing more than symptoms of the weakness and cowardice of the sick and decaying nature of these deceivers of the people.

Recently, President Luiz Inácio was publicly criticized by a historic indigenous leader for his government’s complete paralysis regarding the demarcation of indigenous territories. Lula felt the blow and in a furious response blamed his government’s inaction on the reactionary majority that currently dominates the Brazilian parliament. This is a lame excuse, since his government has decided to focus its economic policy on latifundium embellished with the name of “agribusiness”, on the de-industrialization and denationalization of the economy, based on political alliances with reactionary forces in the name of confronting the extreme right. Luíz Inácio’s decision is to adopt a policy of appeasement with the coup-plotting generals, of collaboration and class conciliation, and of the illusion that the Supreme Court (STF) of this old State of big bourgeoisie and big landlords, lackeys of imperialism, especially Yankee imperialism, can halt the counterrevolutionary offensive to prevent the inevitable uprising of the people and to save this rotten system of oppression and exploitation of our people and of foreign subjugation of our Homeland, which has been dragging the country into successive political crises for ten years. Only by mobilizing the people in combative and revolutionary struggle is it possible to crush this entire offensive of reaction and fascism. This is what history teaches us. Today in Brazil, only a solid worker-peasant alliance built in the revolutionary struggle for the destruction of large estates, for the land for those who work it and in defense of the rights of the people, strongly united with the women of the people, the students and the combative youth, with the teachers and other honest intellectuals, with the small landowners and with all the truly democratic and progressive forces will be able to crush the extreme right and the militarily active right, paralyze the sincere conservatives and liberals from joining the counterrevolution, defend freedoms and conquer a New Democracy and the New Brazil.

The fierce resistance of the squatters of Engenho Barro Branco is the continuation of the heroic struggle of the peasants of Santa Elina, Eldorado dos Carajás, of the Guarani, Kaiowas, Tupinambás, Caigangues, Mundurucus, Pataxós and many others, of the Manoel Ribeiro camp and the bloody battles of the peasants of Tiago dos Santos, to cite a few examples from our recent history. It is also the continuation of all the combative struggles of our people as a continuation of the indigenous resistance and rebellion of the Tamoios Confederation and the war of over 100 years of the Aimorés, the struggles of the Quilombolas against slavery and of the colonized against the Portuguese yoke, and those of all these three pillars of our race against the genocidal colonial/semi-colonial State of big landlords and slave-owners, a State of big bourgeois and big landlords, a lackey of imperialism; resistance and war against the latifundium of over 5 centuries. It is, ultimately, the only way through which the rural masses can conquer their land and create the basis for building the People’s Democratic Republic, a historic, pending and overdue task.

The historic saga of the democratic path in our country to defeat the bureaucratic path of the big bourgeoisie and big landlords, lackeys of imperialism, is now merging with the Heroic Palestinian National Resistance, which on October 7th completes one year of its audacious counteroffensive that shines before the whole world and calls on all the oppressed to rise up against obsolete imperialism. The indomitable Palestinian people have been fighting for 76 years against the Zionist occupation of their ancient lands. The terrorist Zionist State of Israel is a puppet entity supported and maintained by Yankee imperialism, to subjugate the Arab peoples and control their sources of oil and project its “geopolitical” military power. Financed by Yankee imperialism, Israel has the most lethal weapons and continues its crime of genocide without suffering any punishment from the so-called International Community, nothing more than the UN sanctions that have become dead letters, and none even from the International Criminal Court. We, the peasants, are the Palestinians of Brazil and we are fighting against an enemy armed to the teeth; but just like the Palestinian people, our struggle is just and we will inevitably win! Exactly 75 years ago, the Chinese people, in more than 27 years of prolonged people’s war, defeated three great enemies that weighed down the Chinese people and nation: imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and feudal and semi-feudal latifundium. In the same way, the Palestinian people and the Brazilian people will ensure their complete liberation, even if the struggle takes a long time to complete, our cause will inevitably triumph!

The National Commission of the Poor Peasants’ Leagues and the LCP Northeast call on all land struggle organizations in the state of Pernambuco, from the Sertão to the Coast, and peasants, indigenous peoples and Quilombolas from all over the country, to mobilize to confront and defeat the Bolsonaro paramilitary hordes of the far-right “Invasão Zero”, in every situation that arises and to support the struggle of the squatters of Barro Branco.

National Commission of the Leagues of Poor Peasants – LCP

League of Poor Peasants – LCP Northeast

Engenho Barro Branco, Jaqueira, October 1 ^, 2024