We publish below an unofficial translation of an article originally appearing on A Nova Democracia here, and translated into English by The Red Herald here. We have made a few minor adjustments to the English translation.
According to the news site “Acre 24 horas,” six people were killed in the Tiago Campin dos Santos area, in the municipality of Nova Mutum Paraná, in Rondônia. The names were spread by the police, who say they are investigating the case. The police are handling it as a “massacre” due to a land dispute, but the local peasants claim it was an action of “people’s justice decided in the People’s Assembly” to address the constant and incessant thefts that the group was committing in the locality against the peasant masses.
The report from the media from Acre states that “the police reported that the region is marked by the presence of social movements, such as the League of Poor Peasants (LCP),” and highlighted that “the manner indicates” that the event involved “the action of an organized group.”
A peasant woman, a resident of the Tiago Campin dos Santos area who did not want to be identified, told AND that the People’s Assembly, held on March 2, decided on the execution of the individuals and that the masses organized themselves to carry out the decision. According to her, the criminals were warned several times in various People’s Assemblies, but they chose to continue their harmful practices against the masses. Another peasant, who preferred not to be identified, informed the report that the episode was not about a land dispute, but rather a “cleaning of the area” carried out “by people’s justice.”
What is the Tiago Campin dos Santos Area?
The peasant community has been resisting police encirclement since 2021. At that time, the government of Jair Bolsonaro designated the LCP, which operates in the area, as the number one enemy of his government and mobilized a troop of 3,000 men against the locality. “LCP, get ready, what you are doing will not go unpunished. There is no space here for terrorists,” Bolsonaro said in May 2021 during a political event in Rondônia.
At that time, Rondônia was the center of a sharp moment in the struggle for land between the LCP and local big landlords. More than a thousand peasant families from two camps in Rondônia had been struggling for a year against a mega-police operation organized after two military police officers acting as goons were killed in the vicinity of the Tiago Campin dos Santos Area, in northern Rondônia. The military encirclement against the peasants of Tiago Campin dos Santos in 2021 involved police from different municipalities and even nearby states, troops from the Special Operations Battalion (Bope), and big landlords and goons.
The immense police and military troop, facing the resistance of the peasant self-defense groups, could not evict even a third of the families, despite the vast state resources invested. The old State was later forced to reinstate the evicted families, marking a complete victory for the peasant resistance.
image: A peasant assembly in Brazil organized by the League of Poor Peasants
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