Joint Calling for the Support and Defense of the League of Poor Peasants (LCP)

By a commentator for Tjen Folket Media.

We are pleased to share this important joint call issued by Ao Povo Brasileiro which have been signed by several organizations, groups and democrats in Brazil and around the world.

“There is no greater suffering

Than a peasant living

Without land to work”

Patativa do Assaré

The League of The Poor Peasants (LCP) was born as a product of resistance. It was resisting the latifundio that the peasants conquered the lands of Santa Elina, where the Heroic resistance of Santa Elina took place. On that day, the peasants, armed with sticks, stones and rudimental weapons, fought bravely against gunmen and the police who were defending the interests of Antenor Duarte, the latifundiary who pulled their strings. Governor Valdir Raupp (PMDB) was the one who sanctioned the murderous action at the time. After the resistance, the surrendered peasants were tortured and massacred, even the eldery and children. Vanessa, who was 7 years old, was killed by a rifle shot.

The brutality committed by the Old State, by the big landowners and its minions wasn’t responded with capitulation. Instead a bigger resistance took place, with organization and a clear revolutionary line. The death of those comrades irrigated LCP’s beginning with blood. Even though they were convicted by the Inter-American Court of Human Right, the brazilian old State, under any government, didn’t care about the punishment of those involved in the massacre after the battle. This can be easily confirmed, as José Hélio Cysneiros Pachá, one of the Corumbiara’s butchers, is now the secretary of defense in Rondôndia and continues to conduct the same politics, ordering from his position a bigger massacre along with the bureaucrat Marcos Rocha, state governor. 25 years after the resistance that led to LCP’s emergence, the Santa Elina old farm was conquered. There was no way to stop the peasants and that is why the land thieves and the dogs of the old State fear them so much more now.

Since 1995, the League of the Poor Peasants has been organizing the brazilian peasantry in a revolutionary line, fighting for the Agrarian Revolution and having the total destruction of latifundio as their main objective. In over 500 years Brazil’s land problems were never solved, and that is on purpose, since it serves to maintain a ruling class of landowners who feed from the misery of the people. And that is why the LCP was always seen as a threat to the old bureaucratic State. With the goals of the ruling class being threatened, the bourgeois-landowner bureaucratic State tried to extinguish the League in any way possible. From the League’s foundation until now, many leaders and militants were arrested, pursued and killed by big landowners and by the old State. We highlight the deaths of comrade Zé Bentão, revolutionary leader of the League, and comrade Renato Nathan, teacher and militant. Zé Bentão was ambushed and Renato Nathan was murdered and tagged as a guerrilla fighter for having cartography maps at his house. We recently highlighted the death of comrade Fernando, eye witness of the Pau D’Arco slaughter, who watched the deaths of his comrades and his boyfriend, all killed by the police and gunmen, the death of comrade Jerlei, cowardly murdered at the behest of latifundio, unarmed and not being able to resist, and the death of comrade Roberto, a merchant who supported the League and was also brutally and cowardly murdered.

But not even the slaughters committed by the old State were able to stop the Agrarian Revolution. Months After the Pau D’Arco slaughter, the Santa Lúcia Farm was reconquered by the LCP. The threats against the camps at Santa Elina old Farm fortified the thirst of justice and resistance from the peasants. The old State will not peacefully eliminate the enemies of the ruling classes. Because of this resistance and persistence in the correct path of taking all the land from the latifundio, the rotten media also tries to defame the LCP, accusing them of terrorism, conducting guerrillas and even of torture, repeating the words of bureaucrats and landowners. But the brazilian people know that peasants are not terrorists, they know that the League consists of families fighting for their right to land, fighting for a better and fairer Brazil, without latifundios and without servitude. The ones that own the power (landowners) are the true terrorists who kill and dismember families, as they did by murdering Renato Nathan, Fernando and Jerlei. They are the ones that torture and threat peasants, residents of camps and the nearby population, and murder merchants who support the League.

We are in a fascistization process of the old State, so it is not surprising that, at this point, the butcher Marcos Rocha, state governor of Rondônia, and the genocidal Jair Bolsonaro unite to somehow try to put an end to LCP with the excuse that they — in a butchery and genocidal way — are “containing terrorism”. Such actions have already begun with the attacks on Manoel Ribeiro Camp and Tiago dos Santos Camp, with the persecutions, sieges, and the murder of peasants throughout the year. They call this “peace in the rural area”, the so-called “peace” that is showered with the blood of war against the people.

This “peace in the rural area” does not come without a prelude or without an end. The ongoing military coup and the decay of bourgeois institutions are the prelude to those attacks. They did not start yesterday, neither are an exclusive project of Bolsonaro, but they come from the decay of bourgeois “democracy” and by the resurgence of a worldwide counterrevolutionary project. The generals and Bolsonaro play the role of reorganizing the chaos of the failure to mediate class conflicts by the parasitic state through the exacerbation of the repression of progressive forces. The goal of all of this would be to eliminate all brazilian revolutionary forces and to silence all democratic demands, but we know that they have never and will never succeed at this.

Brazilian people are already tired of hearing these old accusations of terrorism as an excuse to repress and kill our people, the same accusations used for the cruel torture and murder of the militants who resisted the Dictatorship, as all of you know. This same excuse was used to justify the successive arrests and tortures of Marighella, the Lapa Slaughter (Massacre da Lapa), the torture and arrest of the young Manoel Lisboa and his assassination

We know this is all a lie. Should we let the lie prevail? Should we let them accuse peasants armed with hoes, sticks, rocks and common hunting weapons, who defend themselves against forces paid by the latifundio when they attack them, of terrorism? And for what? To use this as a reason for further massacres? The duty of progressive forces is to fight these old State lies, to actively fight them, to unite around the defense of the LCP! We must condemn the latifundio and declare that its time has passed, that it is expired and latifúndio must be eradicated! We must denounce the old State, which perpetuates an ongoing genocide that has already ended 400,000 lives, also for its crimes against poor peasants!

We, together, give the comrades of the League of the Poor Peasants all of our support and solidarity and we know that history will show that Bolsonaro and Marcos Rocha, as well as all reactionaries, are paper tigers — history has already defeated them.

We call for the defense of LCP by all democratic forces of Brazil and the whole world and declare this a matter of utmost urgency. We know the Peasants will never bow down and we will not bow either, we will not cower in the face of the announced threat. Marighella once said: “It is not rational to renounce being free.” We say the same and we will defend the freedom of rebellion against the injustices that exist in our nation above all things.

DEATH TO THE LATIFUNDIO!

HAIL THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION!

TOTAL AND UNRESTRICTED SUPPORT TO THE LEAGUE OF THE POOR PEASANTS!

IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL!

Signed by

Grupo de Estudos Ao Povo Brasileiro

Coletivo COMBATE(r)

João Carvalho

Comitê Solidário Popular Anani

Movimento Amazonas Vermelho

Coletivo Carcará

Grupo de Estudos Autonomia Popular

Grupo 9 de Maio

Levante Popular Antifascista-Maranhão

Labareda Podcast

Periódico El Pueblo

Comitê Sanitário de Defesa Popular-Bahia

Unidade Vermelha-Bahia

Revista Amigo do Povo

CEPS Songun

Lucas Rúbio

Coletivo Onças Pintadas

Coletivo Mangue Vermelho-MV

Coletivo Fala Alto

Solarwaver

Executiva Nacional dos Estudantes de Pedagogia

Edições Ciências Revolucionárias

RevoluStore

Padre Júlio Lancelotti

Vladimir Safatle

Associação Democrática Brasileira-ADB

Suspeito Mídia

Movimento PPGE/UFPE na luta

Yatahaze

Podcast Aqui Há Dragões

Caio Castellucci

Carlos Latuff

Revista Veias Abertas

União Reconstrução Comunista-URC

Grupo de Estudos Pedro Pomar

Leoni (Carlos Leoni Siqueira Júnior)

Banda Palafitas

Comitê Sanitário de Defesa Popular-Recife

Gabriela B.

Comitê Sanitário de Defesa Popular-Natal

Coletivo Estudantes do Povo

Insurgência Podcast

Ameaça Vermelha

Vinoli

El Efecto

Zamiliano

Bonde do Che

Programa de Emancipação Social-PES

Campanha Brasil pela Segunda e Definitiva Independência

Célula Comunista de Trabalhadores-CCT

Teia dos Povos

Communist Workers Front (Organizing Committee)

People’s War Media (Canada)

Guiding Thoughts Publishers (Canada)

People’s School — Greater Toronto Area

Laborwave

Revolutionary Studies Committee — Ottawa

Leonel Brizola Neto

Primitivo 1917

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor (emeritus) MIT, Laureate Professor University of Arizona

Lucas Acrata

Seremos Resistência

Espiritualidade Mercantil

Página Planejamento Estatal

Sovietes FC

Fael Primeiro

Memeria Gourmet

Memexpropriados

Centralismo Democrático é Top

Banda Ivan Motosserra Surf & Trash

Palmeiras Antifascista

J. Moufawad-Paul, York University

UFF para o Povo

Revista Opera

Centro de Estudos da Ideia Juche — Brasil

Cineclube Marighella

TraduAgindo

Comitê Sanitário de Defesa Popular-Campina Grande

Ação Antifascista São Paulo

Tyler Shipley

Groupe Révolutionnaire Charlatan (France)

Acervo Crítico

Christian Drunker, professor titular do Instituto de Psicologia da Universidade de São Paulo

Casa da resistência/FOB — BA

Coletivo Negro Minervino de Oliveira

Serve the People Media (Norway)

Struggle Committees (Norway)

Margarete Leta — Professora titular da Arquitetura/UFMG

Coletivo Comunitário Caxxyri-Manaus

Anti Imperialist Action Ireland

Coletivo Porcomunas

Coringão Antifa