
Brazil: Peasants take Lands from Usina São Fernando in Mato Grosso do Sul – Siege by Military Police and Eviction
On January 18, peasants organized in the Peasant Struggle Front (FCL), united with Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous people took over “the lands stolen by landowners Guilherme and Maurício Bumlai, sons of the persistent criminal José Carlos Bumlai – arrested in Operation Lava Jato for passive corruption and fraudulent management of a financial institution” in Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul, as AND reported.
There they began to build shacks and organize camp life. It is possible to observe in the videos released by the organization, a strong presence of women and children at the site, including Guarani Kaiowá indigenous people.


The Military Police mobilized soldiers and riot police to the scene. The military set up a siege against the camp. News are being reported in real time on the Instagram page comite.da.terra.prometida.
Part of the lands of the Usina São Fernando overlap with Guarani-Kaiowá territory, according to the peasants. They also report that the plant hired goons who threatened to burn down the indigenous people’s shacks after the take-over carried out in the Takoha Apyka’i area.
The lands belong to the people! This is the slogan defended by the FCL, which established a historic alliance between landless peasants and Guarani-Kaiowá warriors in the just struggle for land in Mato Grosso do Sul.
While the ruling classes struggle among themselves to see who tries to get their hands on the bankrupt assets of Usina São Fernando, those who live and work on the land took it into their own hands in a just struggle against all those exploiters and land thieves. The Peasant Struggle Front calls on all supporters to defend their just struggle.
In a brutal and illegal action, military police evicted the more than a hundred peasant families. Dozens of students from universities in Mato Grosso do Sul, São Paulo and Paraná, were present demonstrating their solidarity with the struggle and denounced the police action.

On the morning of January 19th, peasants preparing to start the daily work were surprised by a strong attack by the police, who mobilized a force of more than 100 agents, coming from Campo Grande, to evict the families. Helicopters, two trucks and dozens of riot police, as well as goons were used in the operation.
This attack by the reaction against families who were just looking for a piece of land to live and work in dignity proves that the struggle for land is entering a new level of confrontation.
The peasants denounced that the police threw stun grenades at women and children. Some of the military police officers involved were also masked and in civilian clothes without badges claiming to be civil police officers. Lawyers were not allowed to enter to monitor the eviction.
The Peasant Struggle Front, in a statement following the eviction, called for the solidarity of all those democrats who support the just struggle for land, so to contribute to the construction of a combative peasant movement and denounce the violent and illegal action of the repressive forces.