Excerpt of AND Editorial On The Attacks Against Peasants
Hereby we share an unofficial translation of an excerpt from the latest editorial by A Nova Democracia.
The recent armed clashes between the peasants acting in self-defense and the paramilitary groups, military police troops, and guaxebas (goons) in Rondônia do not come as a surprise: from this platform, we have insisted on the severeness of the situation in rural areas, whose explosions of violence – historically unchanged and always promoted by big landlords and their paid groups – are worsening and are now faced with peasants in better condition to resist.
The growth of violence in the countryside is not due to any other reason than the frantic race of monopolistic capital and big landlords towards production primarily for export, also impulsed by the State policy, carried out by all federal governments over the past few decades, of impulsing “agriculture” with public money. If in 2000, latifundium accounted for 18 to 22% of GDP, depending on the methodology, in 2023-24 it reached 47 to 49%, thanks to indecent investments of public resources and tax exemptions. The approximate evolution of the average land price in the Amazon region went from just over R$ 3,000 per hectare in 2020 to over R$ 5,000/ha in 2024, during the current government of collaboration between the fake left and liberal right. From 2018 to 2023, the national average increase was over 108%. The greater valorization of land boosts speculative activity and, within it, land grabbing combined with the expulsion of land occupiers, increasing land concentration in the hands of a handful of national parasites. This is the incentive for latifundium to extend their reactionary war to expel peasant communities, forced to resist, as the old State – particularly its police forces – is linked to paramilitary troops of aggression.
Recently, in the municipality of Porto Velho, in the former NorBrasil latifundium, taken over by peasant families since 2019, the nephew of the land grabber Antônio Martins, “Galo Velho”, claimed that his car was attacked with shots by the armed self-defense of peasants; the peasants, in turn, accuse João Martins of having invaded the Tiago Campin dos Santos 2 camp with his group of goons and military police troops. João’s uncle has a bad reputation: he was accused of leading a criminal organization that moved tens of millions of reais through land grabbing and militia formation, with the participation of police troops – the latter part, even confessed by João himself in a recent interview. “There were over 200 rifle shots, I have never been in such a tight spot”, João Martins said about the armed confrontation. Poor peasants cannot say the same: this “tight spot”, the terror of being under gunfire, is the daily life of peasant masses fighting for land – although it is unusual for someone like him to recount being wounded in the foot and having to drag themselves into the bush, and claim to have counted exactly 200 shots.
The Agrarian Revolution is the Brazilian revolution in motion. Consequential revolutionaries, who do not just desire it in words, can see it and take part in it. For democrats and progressives, for those who love justice and people’s freedom, it is urgent to defend the struggle of poor peasants with fervor and concrete actions.
