Brazil: Vila Bandeira Vermelha Celebrates Children’s Day and the Granting of Land Titles

Featured image: Residents of Vila Bandeira Vermelha celebrating the annual Children’s Day. Source: AND

On October 21, an event with an historical significance was celebrated in Vila Bandeira Vermelha, in Betim of Mato Grosso – the Children’s Day, organized as a yearly tradition by the Residents’ Committee of Vila Bandeira Vermelha, A Nova Democracia (AND) reports.

The struggle of Vila Bandeira Vermelha dates back to March 15, 1999, when around 200 homeless families occupied an abandoned public plot of land in the Bandeirinhas neighborhood of Betim. The families faced a violent eviction operation carried out by the hundreds of military police officers at the hand of the then PT government, where two peasants – the workers Elder Gonçalves de Souza and Erionides Anastácio dos Santos – were murdered during the resistance for their land. Despite the repression unleashed on the occupation the families maintained the occupation and achieved the construction of 180 homes in Vila Bandeira Vermelha, in addition to another 20 in the Teresópolis neighborhood, also in Betim.

Since then a long and hard struggle have been waged by the peasants for the right to housing and land, and now, after two decades of struggle, the families celebrate on this Children’s Day the granting of titles for the properties of Vila Bandeira Vermelha.

AND writes on the origin of the Children’s Day tradition in Vila Bandeira Vermelha: “In October 1999, in a wooded area in the Bandeirinhas neighborhood of Betim (MG), a group of children sang together with a comrade known as “the singer” – a revolutionary they knew only by his profession. The song mixed sadness for the loss of comrades in the struggle with hope for a bright future for humanity. The lyrics said: “Elder, Erionides, you are gone, and for all of us, you remain alive!” A tradition was born there that endures to this day: the celebration of Children’s Day in Vila Bandeira Vermelha.”

Several organizations partook in the celebration, among them People’s Women’s Movement (MFP), the Worker’s League (LO), Popular Struggle for Housing (LPM), the Popular Communities Movement (MCP), and the Minas Gerais Executive of Pedagogy Students.

During the celebrations the Saltimbancos play was performed, and amid jokes and laughter, at the end of the play, the children trampled imperialist flags, reaffirming the anti-imperialist fighting spirit that marks the history of Vila Bandeira Vermelha, AND reports.