Brazil – Interview a peasant leader: “The struggle for land is the struggle for power”
We publish some excerpts of an unofficial translation of an interview with Mestre Joelson by A Nova Demcoracia. Mestre Joelson is the coordinator of Teia dos Povos, which according to him is a “gathering of communities, territories, peoples and political organizations, from rural and urban areas”, which wants to form a “struggle alliance independent from electoral politics and State institutions”. Joelson is a historic leader of the struggle in Brazil and a resident of Bahia, of the Terra Vista settlement.
Joelson starts talking about the first years of Terra Vista Settlement, which at first, in 1992 was led by MST and it occupied the land where cacao was harvest, which was 70% of Bahia’s GDP, by latifundium. But all plants were killed by a fungus and that left 25.000 families impoverished. So then the families retook the land and founded Terra Vista settlement. It was later, in 1997 and 1998 when a new wave of mobilizations arose in the movements for struggle for land in Bahia. Now, as AND states, there are still important attacks against the peasants in the area, the most outstanding is the Mãe Bernadette Revolutionary Area, organized by the League of Poor Peasants (LCP), carried out the self-demarcation of their lands in a “People’s Court”, facing and defeating armed bands by the latifundium.
Joelson also states on the character of the struggle for land:
“Look, it’s not new that the State, the State apparatus, is at the service of the latifundia. That comes from Colonial Brazil. The State is a legal arm, an armed arm to contain the struggle for land. Because the struggle for land is the struggle for power. Whoever has land and territory has power. Those who don’t have it, don’t have power. And we have to understand that the struggle for land is also an anti-capitalist struggle. If it doesn’t have these characteristics, struggling against the government and against capital, it has no meaning. Because capitalism is no longer reformable. There is no longer any condition for reforms. So it’s a struggle against capital”, stated Joelson.
In addition to that, he also speaks on how the social movements awaited for the PT government to solve the land problem with the agrarian reform, which never came. “This is an anti-capitalist struggle, an antagonistic struggle, in which latifundium has to die, agribusiness has to die, so that the landless peasants can survive. So there is no possible agreement in this struggle.”
He states clearly that Invasão Zero is part of the armed groups of the latifundium, which take advantage of the non organization of the social movements: “When movements come together, prepare the struggle and face Invasão Zero, this group disappears. So it is the inability of social movements to organize themselves to face Brazil’s greatest enemy, Brazil’s oldest enemy, which is the latifundium (…)”. The peasant ended stating: “A class alliance against latifundium, liberalism and capitalism is urgent. And not to carry out agrarian reform, as that no longer fits”.
Similarly, as the conclusions of a statement by LCP:
“Our struggle is just, our cause is sacred! We call on the peasants to build armed self-defense organizations in the struggle for land in the same proportion and caliber as the latifundium does! We call on the peasant leaders who did not bend the knee, the squatter leaders, the indigenous peoples, the Quilombola organizations, the populations affected by dams, mining and eucalyptus plantations, the proletarian masses and other workers in the city, who are increasingly struggling in defense of their trampled rights, to close ranks with our brave peasantry, on the path of the Agrarian Revolution.”