Brazil as the Crown Jewel of Yankee Imperialist Intervention
Featured image: Peasants organized by the LCP and supporters confront goons, police, and big landlords’ machinery during the fierce resistance in Barro Branco, Jaqueira (PE), in September 2024. Source: AND
A Nova Democracia (AND) reports that during the A Propósito broadcast #369 from the 16th of July – wherein the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” was discussed – Victor Bellizia, the General Director of AND, stated that the counterinsurgency policy driven by Yankee imperialism directly targets the revolutionary struggle for land in Brazil: “Here in Brazil, there is a real peasant war for land, and they are also watching that.”
Creator of the Guerra Patriótica channel, historian João Cláudio Pitillo, also participated in the A Propósito debate. He defines Brazil as the “crown jewel” of the “recolonization policy in Latin America.” According to him, Brazil is indispensable to the imperialist machine, due to its abundant wealth and the raw materials produced in its territory, stating that “the US can accept many things, but not losing Brazil.”
Bellizia goes on to specify that the Yankee interventionist policy in Brazil can not exclusively be explained by the country’s size, markets and natural resources. He highlights that the country is fielding a growing process of revolutionary struggle for land, threatening to destabilize the semi-colonial order sustained by imperialism and the latifundium. This is the context in which the new counterinsurgency policy emerges – in the face of the rise of revolutionary struggle in Latin America, expressed through different forms of armed struggle and, in Brazil, “in the persistence of the Agrarian Revolution,” as Bellizia puts it, adding that “Here in Brazil, there is a real peasant war for land, and they are also keeping an eye on that.”
Bellizia further links this to the criminalization of the League of the Poor Peasants (LCP), where in Rondônia the Military Police uses the same labels against the movement as those deployed by US counterinsurgency policy, such as “guerrillas” and “narcoterrorists,” attempting to fabricate associations between the peasant struggle and terrorism to justify the military siege of the areas in conflict. By developing its counterinsurgency policy in Brazil, Yankee imperialism seeks to both take control of the riches and resources of Brazil, along with the development of a preventive counter-revolutionary policy, Bellizia summarizes.
Pitillo highlights the fact that this offensive against the Agrarian Revolution and other forms of popular struggle is a systematic structure of domination built over decades, stating that policies such as the National Security Doctrine, the School of the Americas, Operation Condor, the so-called “war on drugs,” and Plan Colombia are iterations of this same offensive, with the permanent element being the subservience of the Latin American States and the incorporation of Yankee doctrines by their armed forces and police apparatuses.
Speaking of the Trump administration, Pitillo concludes: “He extends that arm and tries to create a new fascist international, a vast network of persecution and denunciation, a police apparatus that hovers above nation-states […] In simple terms, it’s the White House determining how the cop on the corner should repress us.”
Listen to the full A Propósito broadcast here:
