Brazil: Peasants Launch a Wave of Occupations at the end of July
Featured image: peasant occupation on July 24 in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Source: A Nova Democracia.
A Nova Democracia (AND) has reported a sharpening of the peasant mobilization at the end of July. Several mobilizations and occupations have shaken the Brazilian countryside and mobilized thousands of peasants. These actions are part of a national mobilization, the Peasant Week from 21st to 25th of July. The peasants reject the Safra Plan and Luiz Inácio’s plans of handing over almost half trillion of reais to the latifundium. According to the peasant organizations, around 122,000 peasant families live in more than 1,250 camps. They also denounce that more than 400,000 peasant families are already received lands but there is a lack of access to infrastructures, education, credit and dignity in the countryside.
Thousands of peasants occupied National Institute of Agrarian Colonization and Reform (Incra)’s headquarters in several cities: more than 500 peasant families occupied the headquarters on July 22 in João Pessoa, Paraíba. In Paraíba there are more than 3,000 peasant families living in 31 camps and 75 settlements. More than 200 peasant families occupied the headquarters in Brasília (Federal District) on July 22, and more than 300 peasants occupied the headquarters in north Fluminense. On July 23 more than 300 peasants occupied the headquarters in São Paulo on July 23. The peasant stayed there until 24, when the MST tried to “pacify” the peasant activists. Also on July 22 the peasants occupied the headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. On July 24 more than 500 peasants occupied a latifundium, the “Fazenda Cristóvão”.
More than 800 peasants occupied the Incra’s headquarters in Recife on July 22. The peasants continued the mobilization afterwards: on July 26 they erected a camp in Fazenda Melancia, in Pernambuco’s countryside, and on July 27 they occupied latifundium’s lands.
In order to solve these fundamental problems of the Brazilian society, AND reports that the League of the Poor Peasants (LCP) defend the need of an Agrarian Revolution that wipes out latifundium to give the land to those who work and live on it. The LCP also denounces Luiz Inácio’s agrarian policy, because it is arming more and more the fascist paramilitary groups who are attacking the organized peasants, in alliance with the latifundium.
