From the Press
May 2008
Peasant camp destroyed by gunmen
The Poor Peasants League - LCP - mostly in the state of Rondonia, western Amazonia (border with Bolivia) - has been often attacked by the reactionary Brazilian press.
These articles are as coarse as its defamatory purpose and they lie accusing, without any proof, the LCP activists of several crimes as well as participating in presumed military training performed by FARC (Colombia Revolutionary Armed Forces) in the region.
The objective of this sordid campaign is to mischaracterize LCP as a legitimate peasant mass organisation in struggle for the land, and put a smoke curtain over a series of unpunished crimes, agressions and murders perpetrated against the peasants day by day.
The following report shows more details about these questions. After the conclusion of the report, another peasant was killed by gunmen.
In April 29th, a truck full of peasants was attacked by around 6 gunmen of Fazenda Cataneo, line 2, in the city of Campo Novo, The gunmen stopped only when an old man in the truck adviced that they were going away. Edson Dutra Barros, the driver, was shot in his waist and died in the hospital.
The criminalisation of the peasant struggle by the reactionary press and the cruel repression against the peasants in the northern part of Brasil
Cebraspo/Brazilian Center of Solidarity to the Peoples (18/04/2008)
Extract of Report
The Poor Peasants League - LCP - mostly in the state of Rondonia, western Amazonia (border with Bolivia) - has been often attacked by the reactionary country press. In an article entitled "Brasil has a guerrilla", published in the weekly magazine Isto É (see: http://www.terra.com.br/istoe/edicoes/2003/artigo75560-1.htm) the journalist Alan Rodrigues affirms, without any proof, that "there is a guerrilla in Brasil and the armed group has nine times more combatants than the one PCdoB gathered in Araguaia and last year they killed 22 persons". The journalist was referring to LCP.
The article also says that the Poor Peasants League has 20 settlements in 15 bases in the states of Rondônia, Pará and Minas Gerais, pointing out the areas supposedly controlled by LCP which would be guerrilla bases, showing the escape routes that could have been created by the supposedly guerrilla people. The road which was in fact built by the peasants is labelled by the magazine as "transcocaineira", meaning a possible route for drugs, weapons and smuggling.
In a new issue on April 2nd, 2008 (see: http://www.terrra.com.br/istoe/edicoes/2004/artigo75944-1.htm) Isto É magazine insists in the question in an article written by the same journalist, Unpunished Killing. On this article - the second of a series of ten other slanderous articles against LCP published in newspapers that are sold regionally and nationally - the governor of Rondonia state, Ivo Cassol, requires an immediate and direct intervention of the Brazilian Armed Forces to end up with the presumed guerrilla movement.
Isto É magazine's articles are as coarse as its defamatory purpose and they lie accusing, without any proof, the LCP activists of several crimes as for instance murders, tortures, drug dealing, etc., and accusing LCP as well of participating in presumed military training performed by FARC (Colombia Revolutionary Armed Forces) in the region.
The objective of this sordid campaign, at national level, is to mischaracterize LCP as a legitimate peasant mass organisation in struggle for the land. The reactionary press wants to show a distorted image of LCP as an organisation of transgressor guerrilla people with the aim of demanding more repression from the State. As a matter of fact, such a campaign has been the prediction of new and strong attacks against the mass of poor peasants. It was exactly what happened a fortnight ago after the publication of the first Isto É article.
In the morning of April 9th, 2008, 100 strongly armed hooded men invaded "Conquista da União" settlement, in the region of Campo Novo, Rondônia state and approximately 15 people were killed, a pregnant woman included, and some others taken as hostages.
Military trucks nearby the region of conflict
The attack of the reactionary press against LCP has happened before in another weekly national magazine, Veja. On November 7th, 2007, it accused the Poor Peasant League, in Pará, eastern Amazônia, of being a criminal and guerrilla organisation, linked to the Shining Path, from Peru.
Using the magazine Veja, the landlords were charging punishment from the Pará state governor, Ana Júlia Carepa, (PT- Workers Party) who, after the article publication (November 19th, 2007) ordered the implementation of the so-called " Operation Peace in the Countryside", which turned up being a terror operation. More than 200 peasants, out of the 1500 who were settled in the farm Forkilha, south of Pará, were wantonly arrested, cruelly spanked and tortured. Twenty peasants remained in prison until January 3rd, 2008, suffering all sort of psychological pressures and physical tortures.
The agrarian issue in Brasil
In Brasil the repression against the peasants has been constant. Nevertheless, the situation at the moment has been aggravating. A concrete data can explain such an intensification: in spite of the growing violence, the peasant masses, under the leadership of LCP, have been fighting in a more determinate way as a consequence of the raising of their consciousness in the practice of the land struggle, following the general political line to take the land and destroy the large landownership. In the development of this struggle the masses go against the interest of the ruling classes of big bourgeois and landlords and imperialism, mostly Yankee, in different regions of Brasil but especially in the Amazon area.
The maintenance and, more than that, the reinforcing of the private character of the property regime of land in Brasil based in the large landownership confirm that no structural change has occurred in the country for centuries. The monopoly and land concentration has persisted and its origin goes back to the colonial times.
The archaic production and property relations still existing in the country maintain themselves or develop under different manners. They are semifeudal relations which happen within the large landownership system of monopoly and land concentration that have for centuries been dependent of the slavery work still present and growing in the production relations in the countryside of Brasil. Later on it rested on the semi-slavery work in the country's huge areas and mostly in the Northeast and North. This has been the concrete basis on which developed and deepened the contradiction between landlords and poor peasants that in our country is the main internal contradiction.
The essence of the agrarian policy of the Brazilian State is still today the perpetuation of the landlords system as it has been guaranteed by the First Law for the Land of 1850. All the official publicity of "vigorous programme for the agrarian reform" reinforced in the country by Luiz Inácio government cannot hide the hard reality of the countryside. What can be seen is the continuous suffering of million of families of poor peasants, landless or owning small areas. Families which compound a battalion of starving people together with other million of Brazilians in a growing poverty.
The landlords crush the small landowners and try to prevent the development of the struggle of the landless people that threatens their business (the so called agro-business, just to be updated) which are so exempted as profitable. This is the logic which prevails in the countryside of Brasil. And it is particularly more cruel in the Amazon region because of the dispute among the large capitals of imperialism for the ownership of the Amazon area, considering the limitless wealth in its subsoil and biodiversity.
Amazonia
For quite a long time a campaign about the problems of Amazonia has been instructed by the more reactionary sectors of the press. Besides the attempt to criminalise the poor peasants in struggle for the land, the reactionary press has been openly defending those who for decades have been promoting a brutal devastation of the Amazon rain forest, i. e., the big soy producers, cattle raisers and mining and logging enterprises.
So that the reactionary press could make the defence of what they define as "entrepreneurs who take progress to the region" they have chosen a scapegoat for creating a smoke curtain for the real situation that has for many years been imposed in the region. This press, for expressing the interests of the ruling classes, attacks with a permanent and visceral fury the peasants who present a real threat to those interests. As a matter of fact, only the peasants will be able to occupy Amazonia, explore rationally its resources and defend the country's sovereignty in the region.
The situation becomes more serious whereas in the Amazon - not only the Brazilian one - the political, economic and military plans of imperialism for the whole Latin America are at stake.
The presence of opportunism in the management of the old Brazilian State has been decisive for guaranteeing the interests of the ruling class and imperialism. A shameful example of the measures adopted by the government of Luiz Inácio is granting to the agro-business around 60 million hectares of public land in Amazonia which could be a reserve for a project of agrarian reform.
On the other side, the Law n. 11.284, from March 2nd., 2006, that "treats about the administration of public forests for the balanced production" is the project that permits the denationalisation of whole regions of the Brazilian Amazon while foreseen the granting of even 13 million hectares of lands, in the first ten years, for lumber exploration and other economic activities. This forest leasing will be done through contracts that will last up to 60 years, renewable automatically.
Therefore the expansion of the so-called agro-business in the north of the country has grown pushing the agricultural frontier, destroying the rainforest and expelling large quantities of peasants from the area.
The destruction of the Amazon rainforest becomes bigger day by day, plundered by the landownership which does it just for opening new areas for pasture and for planting soy and sugar-cane. Who destroys the environment and the rain forest are the big entrepreneurs, the landlords, the large mining companies.
But the people of Rondonia and the whole Amazon area, mostly the peasants, know very well who are their real friends and who are their enemies. And they keep going forward in the struggle for the land, for occupying the large farms of the region, for making their division and sharing the land with the landless peasant families.
For that, at the moment, they must count on the support and solidarity of the democrat and people's organisations in struggle in Brasil and in the whole world. CEBRASPO pleads everybody to send repudiation messages against the defamatory campaign accomplished by the reactionary press and the growing repression towards the legitimate peasant organisations of the North of the country:
1)President of Republic
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
pr@planalto.gov.br
2) Minister of Justice
Tarso Genro
tarso@portoweb.com.br
3) National Secretary of Human Rights
Ministro Paulo Vanuchi
direitoshumanos@sedh.gov.br
4) Human Rights Commission of the Federal Chamber
Presidente: Deputado Pompeo de Mattos
dep.pompeodemattos@camara.gov.br / cdhm@camara.gov.br
5) Government of the state of Rondônia
Governador Ivo Cassol
sac@governadoria.ro.gov.br
6) Government of the state of Pará
Ana Júlia Carepa
agenda.governadora@yahoo.com.br
7) Chairman of the Senate
Senador Garibaldi Alves
garibaldi.alves@senador.gov.br
8) Chairman of the Federal Chamber
Deputado Arlindo Chinaglia
dep.arlindochinaglia@camara.gov.br