Today the Lula led government in Brazil wearing the mask of Socialism or disguising itself as a champion of the poor peasantry, is patronising the big landowners and jumping to the bandwagon of the Imperialists. A Nova Democracia (New Democracy) has done intensive and accurate investigation into the true character of President Lula or his reforms.
The agriculture monopoly Suzano Papel e Celulose unleashed a merciless invasion of the community of Jussaral in Urbano Santos, Maranhão. The peasants suffered fatal blows by gunmen of the company and the company has struck down fences and trampled on the lands of the community with tractors.
Suzano is the largest producer of eucalyptus pulp in the world, and propagates that its plantations are green and that it is preserving the biodiversity of the rain forests of Brazil. In reality the plantations of the company have created shortage of water for the community. The water resources are dissipated and infected with pesticides from the plantation.
Suzano has claimed for 30 years that it owns the land of the peasants, and has threatened them multiple times. 80 families live in the area, and the community has existed for over a hundred years. Strangely, earlier, another agricultural company offered money to the president of the Union of Residents of the Jussaral Community, Raimundo Rodrigues, for the land of the community. He refused the offer, and was then threatened by the company. According to the investigation of the journalist Antenor Ferreira, 70% of the plantations of Suzano in Maranhão are on illegal land. Suzano has a reputation for of land grabbing in other states, such as in Espírito Santo, where 200 peasant families occupied land of the company in April.
Suzano Papel e Celulose, which manufactures paper and pulp, materials seen as essential for replacing plastic in for example packaging, recently announced it will invest R$ 16 million (USD 3.3 M) on ”bio-economy” projects together with the National Service for Industrial Learning (Senai). The old Brazilian State aims to become a ”world leader” in this sector in the name of ”sustainability”. Sustainability is however an illusion as these new projects represent more intensive land grabbing backing prospects of the imperialists. The Lula government welcomes the plunder of the vast natural resources and the exploitation of the Brazilian people in the mask of ”green re-industrialization”.
Mining companies and the large estate in Brazil continue their attacks against poor peasants. in states such as Pará, Amazonas or Minas Gerais ,paving way for big landowners to displace the peasants from the lands ,to place them within their strangleholds in conditions of semi-slavery ,in their mines and estates.
On July 7, the Canadian mining company Belo Sun in Pará which belongs to the Forbes & Manhattan investment fund wants to embark on a mega gold extraction project. To pressure the peasantry to vacate the land, they threatened them with firearms. On July 3rd, the indigenous peasants of Nova Yvu Vera were attacked with tear gas by the Military Police (MP). This peasant community has been victims of attacks of the MP or armed groups financed by bosses since April. They are facing attacks because they demand the land where large companies are located and the companies are entering their land. An arrest of 10 leaders plants seeds for, 20-30 leaders to be born. preserving the spirit of struggle for the land like an inextinguishable flame. While the attacks are intensifying, the resistance of the poor peasants has scaled soaring heights with land occupations in various parts of Brazil, a frequent occurrence.
In the territory of the Yanomami indigenous people a mining company is creating division between the peasantry belonging to the indigenous people and other parts of the peasants against each other over the problem of the land. A Novia Democraia adds that “the conflicts have been intensified as a direct reflection of the lack of solution to the situation of the peasant (the so- called “agrarian reform” is archived) and the unstoppable struggle against the gold mining in TI Yanomam] through operations that only point to mining gold, without punishment to the millionaire articulators of operations, such as the landowners and the military”.
These companies capitalise on the semi-feudal conditions with semi-feudality which remains the base of the capitalist large estate, crystallising in its forms and is used by the great capital for greater accumulation.” One of the combing operations displaced 83 peasants, along with their children in the Pará, Paraná, Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo. These peasants survived without drinking water and in abyssymal conditions. Quoting A Novia Democracia “the definitive cure is much deeper than a simple matter of ‘isolated cases’ and requires resolving the very end of the land tenure and distribution system, a measure outside of any government of the old Brazilian bureaucratic-landowner State and today only raised and applied by authentically democratic popular movements, especially in the countryside.”
Sao Paulo Forum
On June 29, the opening of the 26th Meeting of the ghostly Forum of São Paulo took place. Branded by the extreme right as the resurrection of communism and the Revolution in Latin America, the Forum is a sheer manifestation of the most unyielding opportunists and reformists of the subcontinent gather, professing anti-Yankee phraseology and championing parliamentary road.In his speech at the inaugural session, Gleise clarified that Luiz Inácio’s presence there was an opportunity to show that the São Paulo Forum is not what it is projected: it is not revolutionary or Marxist.. “It is a lie to claim that the Forum of São Paulo is a secret organization that supports or participates in armed or insurrectionary movements”, he declared, in order to immediately distinguish it from anything communist. “We are for peace, democracy and justice”, she reaffirmed. This peace is that of police operations undertaken in the favelas, and the democracy where the reactionary Armed Forces as the determinants.
In this sense, at the present time, two paths – or two tactics – are applicable both diametrically opposed. The first is tactic of regulating the struggles of the masses which advocates compromising for what is possible within the framework of the current opportunist agreement in government with the ruling classes, to demand less and to garner as much faith as possible in the policies of the government and reactionary institutions; the tactic that stifles the revolutionary fervour or energy reducing them to mere submission is better than struggle. Such tactics hinder or obstruct masses from treading on the revolutionary path.
Lenin, in 1917, had already warned the opportunists of their veering towards compromise “If even the experience of the Kornilov revolt [referring to the counterrevolutionary offensive headed by the tsarist general Kornilov] has taught the “democrats” nothing, and they continue the destructive policy of vacillation and compromise, we say that nothing is more ruinous to the proletarian revolution than these vacillations.”
The second path, is the revolutionary one: igniting revolts, to apply the tactics and forms of struggle of the revolutionary proletariat in such a that mobilisations are able crystallise radicalism and permit the masses to guage the destructive role of each reactionary institution of the old State in the course of the struggle, as well as of opportunism, inside and outside the government elevating politicization and organization, consolidating the revolutionary forces.
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Harsh Thakor is a freelance journalist who has studied liberation Movements .Thanks information from Rd Herald and A Novia Democracia (New Democracy)
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