MFP – 9th of April Tribute: Edilene – Present in the Struggle!
Featured image: Edilene and Izaque participating in an LCP event. Source: MFP
The People’s Women’s Movement (MFP) has paid tribute to Edilene Mateus Porto on this April 9th, the Day of Heroes and Heroines of the Brazilian People, defined as such by Revolutionary Front for the Defense of the People’s Rights (FRDDP) in an homage to Renato Nathan, the prominent leader of the League of the Poor Peasants (LCP) who was assassinated by paramilitary groups in the service of latifundium in Rondônia on the 9th of April 2012.
Edilene was an activist of the LCP in Rondônia and Western Amazonia, and leader of the 10th of May Revolutionary Area in Alto Paraíso, in the Vale do Jamari region, in Rondônia. Edilene and her husband Izaque Dias Ferreira helped retake the lands of ‘10th of May’ in 2014, securing land for those who worked on it for 150 families. They then became one of the main leaders of the area, serving the Agrarian revolution under way in Brazil, as part of the New Democratic revolution.
They continued to organize and mobilize the peasants, participating frequently in the LCP headquarters in Jaru, and actively participating in the 6th Congress of the LCP of Rondônia and Western Amazonia of 2014, as well as the 8th LCP Congress in of northern Minas Gerais and southern Bahia in 2015, and helped organize a public hearing in Porto Velho on the repression of the peasant struggle.
At home in the 10th of May Revolutionary Area Edilene and Izaque shared household chores and childcare, they worked together in the fields enjoying the freedoms won from their struggles. On September 13, 2016, Edilene and Izaque were brutally and cowardly murdered as they arrived on the plot for another day of work together.
MFP concludes by taking position for a quote from the LCP: “Big landlords are mistaken if they think they will drown the peasants’ struggle with our blood. This only increases our pent-up anger. […]the Agrarian Revolution, which will seize all the lands of the latifundium, shake the Brazilian countryside and sweep away the rotten and retrograde latifundium system, supported by the big bourgeoisie and imperialism. That is why Edilene, Izaque, Enilson, Renato Nathan, Cleomar, Zé Ricardo, Zé Bentão and so many other peasants and leaders fought. For them, we will raise the banner of the Agrarian Revolution even higher! Long live the heroes and heroines of the Brazilian people! Comrade Edilene and Izaque: present in the struggle!”
You can read the full tribute of the MFP here:
