New wave of Attacks against Peasants in Brazil
From February 23 peasant camps and Indigenous Lands suffer a new wave of attacks by goons at the service of the big landlords and Military Police (MP) what shows the reactionary violence to the poor people in the countryside.
The attacks have taken place in several areas of Brazil. For example, on February 23 the Military Police evicted without a court order, the peasant families of the Santa María Camp, in the municipality of Nova Olinda, in Tocatins. “The families had occupied the land the day before, after 11 years of living in a camp in front of the area, a public Union land claimed by the peasants,” declares A Nova Democracia. The Pastoral Land Commission has denounced the arbitrary detention of 16 peasants during the operation.
On the same day, goons attacked the Pakkurity camp in Dourados (Mato Grosso do Sul) and the Egídio Bruneto Camp organized by the Landless Workers in Bahia. In both cases, the violence of the goons went so far as to set fire to the peasants’ barracks.
Yesterday we reported on another attack to the Vida Nova Camp, in Minas Gerais, that took place on February 9.
Since the beginning of the year, AND has denounced brutal attacks by goons and police against the Avá-Guaraní indigenous people in western Paraná, executions of peasants in the Amacro region (border area between Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia), the eviction of 135 families in the Marielle Franco camp in Piauí and other cases of goons against indigenous peasants and Quilombolas.
As denounced by the Pastoral Land Commission, in the first 6 months of 2024 themselves, there were 1,056 agrarian conflicts, and everything indicates that this trend will continue, which indicates the degree to which the struggle in the Brazilian countryside is. These battles are growing where the latifundium is expanding the most: in the Amazon, on the border between Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia (popularly called Matopiba) and Amacro.
At the same time, peasant resistance to struggle against the violence of the latifundium is growing. The League of Poor Peasants reiterated in 2024 its statement released in 2023, which called on them to defend their right to land with weapons in hand.
