Editorial Board
“Here, it is Palestine!”, ends a recent article from the New Democratic newspaper A Nova Democracia (AND) from Brazil. There, it is not only like Palestine, it is also reminiscent of Peru in 1979 or 1980, as the class contradictions sharpen toward their highest expressions. Brazil itself, an oppressed nation, the largest in Latin America, has a courageous and indomitable peasantry waging an unstoppable agrarian revolution against the latifundia (big landlords) and imperialism that is nothing short of a civil war in the countryside. It is Brazil where the masses are standing up. It is in this period that the special importance of Brazil is established in the World Proletarian Revolution. We at The Worker will be developing a special section in our newspaper dedicated to covering this unfolding epic of class struggle taking place in the “backyard” of US imperialism.
The third world nations oppressed by imperialism, mainly US imperialism, make up the storm centers of the world revolution. It is there that the most masses are concentrated under the most revolutionary contradictions. It is there where the people’s banners will soar the highest, and where the revolution will develop first, making conditions more favorable for revolutions within the imperialist countries of Europe and North America, a historic necessity. Every hard earned victory in new democratic revolutions must be cherished as our own, the international proletariat.
Developments in the Agrarian Revolution
In the southern forested area of Pernambuco, a northeastern state rising from the old colonial traditions of slavery and sugar plantations, the latifundia have been terrorizing the peasants for years, and for years the peasants have been fighting back. Large lands abandoned by the big landlords have been taken over by peasants, who cleared them, cared for them, honored them and made them productive. The big landlords then seek to evict the poor peasants who take up fierce slogans of combating and resisting.
Last month, the conflict developed in important ways, with gunmen hired by the old landlords entering to illegally evict the peasants. AND reports that:
“With fish knives, sickles, hoes, flags of the League of Poor Peasants (LCP) and a large banner reading ‘The risk of running the stick runs the axe!’ [translator’s note: meaning, if you think of attacking, think of being attacked], peasants supported by students expelled a troop of more than 50 armed gunmen and police officers from several cities during a paramilitary action…”
“…after a great political victory, seeing that their objectives had been achieved, the peasants shrewdly organized a retreat, concentrating at another nearby location. The troops fled and did not return that day.
“After the battle, the peasants held a meeting with 100 more people, reaffirming that this fight is just beginning. They argued that the squatters would remain in the region until all the lands of the former Frei Caneca Mill [editor’s note: a former sugar mill that went bankrupt] are in the hands of the people.”
The League of Poor Peasants wrote:
“The criminal attack took place in the morning, as the gang intended to attack the Barro Branco community, when most of its residents were in the center of Jaqueira, at the cities weekly market. The terrorist’s objective was to destroy the headquarters of the Barro Branco Association and the homes of its main leaders. However, this time, the paramilitary gang ‘Zero Invasion’ was defeated by the self-defense of the squatters who fought in defense of their land by right and in fact, in a fierce battle that lasted more than 6 hours, expelling the criminals.”
Invasion Zero in Pernambuco was founded a year ago and entered into the direct service of the large landlord class in the region, politically aligned with the Bolsanaro movement and is connected to the old-state.
The poor peasants of the region made up of hundreds of families who have lived and worked the land for 100 years have a long tradition of resistance and oppression at the hands of the big landlords. They subsided on working small plots around their homes and were forced to work for very low daily wages at the sugar mill during the harvesting period. This allowed the large landlords to keep the peasantry in poverty on the land to make them available when needed, forcing them to work for lower wages. In the early 2000s, the sugar mill went bankrupt and stopped production. The former residents became squatters on the land, enabling them to increase production and livestock. The mill never compensated the peasants for the violation of labor laws, let alone for the brutal exploitation they faced for decades.
The people demand the clearing of the land and returning it to the residents and workers who live there. Illegal leasing of the land, which belonged to the bankrupt sugar barons, to big landlord groups began in 2015. The big landlord groups started to use the land to raise and slaughter cattle to export the meat. In order to secure their illegal purchase they began an unofficial war against the poor peasants, comprising around 5,000 squatters. Peasant properties, their homes and crops were destroyed by hired henchmen of the big landlords. The squatters persisted in fighting for their homes and means of survival, while the old-state consistently sided with the criminal gangs in service of the landlords. The old state proposed settling the peasants who had lived there for over a century on worse plots of land very far away as a “solution.” This was unacceptable to the peasants who were tired of broken promises, bureaucracy and opportunism, so they joined the League of Poor Peasants.
The LCP organizes the masses for the struggle to conquer the land. With the LCP, things began to change in the area—when the henchmen of the landlord would attack property, their property would be attacked in return.
The attack which took place last month was the biggest yet, with the most fierce resistance, making it the biggest defeat the big landlords have suffered. The combined reactionary forces of the big landlords, paramilitaries, and police entered issuing commands, as if the peasants would just stand down and allow their homes to be destroyed. Instead, the forces of reaction were confronted with stones and blockades made of fire. Faced with such an organized force of peasants armed with their tools of production, backed up by class-conscious revolutionary students and supported by people’s lawyers, the forces of reaction ran away. The local president of Zero Invasion along with a member of his gang were shot. The battle of Barro Branco stands out as a victory of the people and warning to the forces of reaction. The LCP has warned the peasants of the country and called them to defend their lands, gun in hand. “This Bolsanairist paramilitary horde is taking its cowardly war to the countryside,” the LCP wrote, “it is war they will have!”
Developments in the Electoral Farce
On October 27th, the day of the municipal election, according to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Londrina, a bomb exploded at a fair in downtown Londrina (a city in southern Brazil which is literally named ‘little London”), with a leaflet signed by the Communist Party of Brazil found in the aftermath. The leaflet denounced the electoral farce in the most clear terms, calling into account the wretched decomposing old state and its service to mainly US imperialism. Below we reproduce as much as possible from photos found online and our translation from other articles in which it was quoted:
“DON’T VOTE!” was the title, it begins with the slogan “Elections, No! Revolution, Yes!” it goes on to state: “In the system we live in, participating in elections, voting for one party or another, for one candidate or another is giving our approval to all the disgusting rot that is official policy. In this system, voting is supporting the exploiting classes and their old State that have oppressed the people for centuries and kept them in misery, handing over the wealth and our country to foreign powers. Voting is consenting to this shameful situation that we have, which is in truth the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the landowners, servants of imperialism, mainly Yankee (North American).
“The electoral farce is the theater in which several candidates, servants of the latifundia, the bourgeoisie and imperialism, perform every two years, in which they appear to be mortal enemies of each other, but when they are elected they act exactly the same way, with differences only in appearance. With each election, this farce looks more like an electoral circus, which is a reflection of the absolute degradation and rock bottom reached by the political and moral crisis of the institutions of the old State and the demoralization of its electoral system. The vulgarity of the electoral campaign in the city of São Paulo is a revealing portrait of the electoral farce throughout the country. In front of the cameras, there is chair throwing, finger in the face and shouting; behind the scenes, in the corridors of the parliamentary pigsty, there is back-slapping, give-and-take and collusion against the people and the Nation. In this electoral farce, the tiny minority that does not participate in the schemes serves only to provide a veneer of morality and help legitimize all this filth as democracy.
“Such demoralization leads to the people who still vote no longer expecting anything from any politician and accepting any minimal offer that gives them some immediate benefit, or voting for the most eccentric as a form of protest, or bargaining for the best offer. Which makes the politicians, wanting to appear more ‘authentic’, make the farce increasingly ridiculous, perpetuating the cycle of moral degeneration. The truth is that neither the starched ones, preferred by the press monopolies, nor the ‘clowns’ – with apologies to the professional clowns – are interested in changing anything, much less through the electoral farce. It is necessary to boycott this horror show.
“Let us not fool ourselves, Brazil has already gone through all these parties, so worn out that in order to continue deceiving the people, many have changed their names (MDB, PSDB, PT, PSB, PDT, PC do B, União Brasil, PSD, PSL, etc. [Editor’s note: these are the names of revisionist and opportunist parties]) and nothing has changed. Not even the changes demagogically promised by these career politicians, election after election, can be made by them. Even less can they make the real changes that are so necessary. These cannot be made within this sham and corrupt electoral system, set up precisely to maintain the current system of exploitation and corruption unchanged. The real democratic issue, that is, the establishment of a true Democratic Republic, has never been resolved in Brazil. The local exploitative ruling classes and their imperialist masters fear the existence of a true democracy because this would mean the end of their domination and exploitation. But since the class contradictions and the people’s aspiration for democracy are great, they maneuver to impose this parody of the old democracy on the people and the country with their dirty elections. The people must seize power to bring about a general and complete change!
“The revolution is unleashed with the agrarian revolution, to destroy the latifundia, handing over land to the poor peasants without land or with little land and sweeping away the semi-feudal relations that have been crushing the peasantry for centuries and hindering the general progress of the people and the Nation.
“Only through the revolutionary political struggle for power will the exploited and oppressed classes be able to realize their aspirations for freedom, democracy and progress. To make the revolution, the people must build their three instruments: the revolutionary party, the people’s army and the revolutionary united front. The most essential thing is the existence of their revolutionary class party, the authentic and true Communist Party.”
The leaflet concluded with the slogans: “Lula [Editor’s note: Lula references Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the false ‘left’ ‘socialist’ president of Brazil]: hero of the bourgeoisie and the landowners” and “Long live the People’s War!”
The Worker Pledges
-To provide special and ongoing coverage on the rapidly developing situation in Brazil.
-To dedicate a special section titled “New Brazil” on our website where news, articles, commentary and resources can be centralized and found in English.
-To act in the spirit of international solidarity with our comrades in Brazil, highlighting and publishing unofficial English translations of important theory, news, and statements from the past and present struggles transpiring in the fight for a New Brazil.
-To host solidarity educational events for the people’s struggles in Brazil, with specific focus on the agrarian revolution, via our Support Committees across the country.
Photo: “Squatters from Barro Branco, organized by the League of Poor Peasants (LCP)… recovered an area destroyed by the Zero Invasion movement on September 28, and raised the Menino Jonathan Camp, in honor of the child cowardly murdered by gunmen at the behest of the large estate in Engenho Roncadorzinho, municipality of Barreiros-PE.” From AND.
