This month when Military Police attempted to enter the peasant controlled area of Barro Branco they were blocked from entering the gates of the sugar mill by a force of organized peasants willing to defend their land. The camp was established last month by peasants mobilized by the League of Poor Peasants (LCP) on land burned by the big landlords. It was established in honor of a child murdered by the gunmen of the large estates.
When the police attempted to enter the camp they were approached by a people’s lawyer; while the lawyer spoke to them, the peasants began setting off fireworks to alert their forces and prepare to resist incursion. When the peasants assembled and began shouting “police out!” and establishing barricades, the police retreated.
The imperialist G20 summit is taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this month amid fierce protests of the masses. Hundreds of activists along with several anti-imperialist organizations have gathered to condemn the summit near where the world’s largest imperialist leaders are convening. Luiz Inacio, the phony “left” president of Brazil issued a “law and order” decree amassing a large police force of an estimated 26,000 agents from different departments. Structures and corrals were erected to restrict the free speech of the people.
All this was unable to stop the protests from taking place. The Anti-imperialist League alongside democratic and revolutionary mass organizations led agitation in solidarity with Palestine and against the Zionist occupation, combining this with slogans in defense of the agrarian revolution in the Brazilian countryside.
Despite the area around the Summit barring protest, Santander, a bank belonging to Spanish imperialists, was bombed. The explosion forced the bank to close and a police officer on the scene commented to a reporter with A Nova Democracia that similar actions “could take place during the day.” At the same square, banners were raised of the Anti-imperialist League along with a banner honoring Palestinian Resistance leader Ismail Haniyeh who was assassinated by the Zionist entity this summer. Haniyeh was a former prisoner of war and the political leader of Hamas.
The Brazilian Workers League has issued a pamphlet denouncing the 6×1 work schedule calling for more hours for rest, study, and leisure—the 6×1 scale is a constitutionally-set work week of 44 hours within 6 days. The pamphlet reads: “The fight for a reduction in working hours without a reduction in wages is a historic cause for workers who need a reasonable amount of rest time to spend with their families and socialize, to study and to have fun. In their struggle for better working and living conditions, nothing is more just than the reduction of exhausting working hours, a historic and just cause that should always be raised, even more so today, amid the offensive by capital and its governments on duty against the rights of the working classes around the world, for more and greater profits and to confront their agonizing crisis.”
The pamphlet went on to include denunciation of Brazil’s phony “left” president Luiz Inacio and the Invasion Zero Movement of armed reactionaries who terrorize the countryside, linking the workers’ struggles with the that of the peasants, and the political struggles against opportunism. The pamphlet concluded calling for a massive mobilization of workers in both the city and the countryside “promoting the path of the General Strike of National Resistance to bring down all these anti-people, traitorous and obscurantist measures that obey the historical logic of exploitation and oppression of our people and subjugation of the Nation.”
On November 15, protests denouncing the 6 x1 scale began taking place in 30 cities across Brazil, responding to the call of the Workers League. Posters went up around working class areas calling the masses to join in the demonstrations. At one event, a teacher from the Class Conscious Education Workers Movement (abbreviated to MOCLATE in Portuguese) expressed the links between the international proletariat and the oppressed nations, describing how the masses are fighting increasingly combative battles, nationally and internationally, and further called for a General Strike of National Resistance, to break the 6×1 scale. A supporter of A Nova Democracia also spoke to the workers about the Battle of Barro Branco and the ongoing civil war in the countryside. The supporter highlighted that Brazil is going through a decisive moment, and that there is a tendency for the demonstrations to grow and spread like wildfire throughout the country.
A Nova Democracia’s editorial board calls the struggle against the 6×1 scale a practical expression of the struggle against opportunist, false leftist Luiz Inacio’s “labor reform” and “pension reform”, which AND argues is “the unchanged prescription of imperialism in recent decades” to their economic crisis, and stating that strategically: “such a leap in the workers’ struggle requires a long path of preparation, which, for its success, requires a tenacious struggle against the pelegao [trans: “lackey”] opportunism and yellow unionism that dominates the union centrals and most union leaderships. Furthermore, it is obvious that it requires an objective and a clear program of the most important demands of the toiling masses, their rights to organize and demonstrate, and to defend people’s democracy.”
The Worker continues to raise the banner of international solidarity with the justified rebellions in Brazil, extending its unwavering support to their struggle for new democratic revolution and the right to self determination free of imperialism and reaction. We call on our readers to redouble their efforts to express solidarity and support the struggles in Brazil over the coming months, and to send reports and contributions to our email.
featured image: flags of the League of Poor Peasants and Palestine fly over Menino Jonatas Camp in Barro Branco
