A NOVA DEMOCRACIA BRASIL: The North of the popular struggle

A NOVA DEMOCRACIA BRASIL:

The North of the popular struggle

The relentless persecution, siege, imprisonment, torture and murder against the peasants of the Manoel Ribeiro Camp have not broken the resistance of the masses in struggle. On the contrary, this heroic resistance has not only defeated the military siege – preventing the massacre desired by the reactionary forces – but has also generated broad national and international solidarity, with unprecedented proportions until now, as is clear in the Petition underway drafted by the Brazilian Center for Solidarity to the Peoples (Cebraspo) and the Brazilian Association of People’s Lawyers (Abrapo). In other words, the independent mobilization of the popular masses, in defense of their concrete interests, is affirmed through this forceful example as the only consistent way to combat the genocidal military government of Bolsonaro/generals, as we have always said in our editorials.

The worsening of the pandemic cannot be a reason to demobilize the popular struggle. Now, it is precisely this calamitous situation that requires the firm action of unions, associations, community organizations, popular movements, universities, intellectuals, and all those who have a real commitment to the fate of our country. What is happening, right now, in Colombia, serves as an example and, at the same time, a warning: the powder fuse that has crossed South America, particularly since 2019, will not fail to reach Brazil.

Those who propose the path of waiting and institutional fronts do, in fact, serve the reaction. On one side, it is frustration and resentment with the unfulfilled promises of the New Republic that explain the adhesion of a still considerable portion of the population to Bolsonaro. On the other hand, the cowardice of the parliamentary opposition to the government, expressed in the CPI, which so far has served more to mobilize the Genocida’s bases than to encourage the population to speak out against him. Pazuello’s testimony was remarkable in this sense. A confessed defendant, the Butcher lied at will, and was treated with deference by “Their Excellencies,” who knelt before the Army High Command’s demand (only ratified by Supreme Court Justice Lewandowski) that their man be neither arrested nor demoralized. Three days later, the same man gave a speech without a mask to a green-yellow crowd at a coup act in Rio de Janeiro. This is the “consequence” of the traditional liberal right, whose class nature has always been to betray. They reap, with this, complete demoralization.

Those who think that the clamors of the extreme right for an “institutional rupture” do not find echoes in society are mistaken. We live in an unstable balance: Bolsonaro, the Genocidal, does not have the strength to carry out a coup d’état, but neither does the parliamentary opposition. This is clearly a transitory, fragile situation, whose conclusion has not yet been decided. The potential entry into the scene of popular protest could be the factor that breaks this balance. It is not ruled out that Bolsonaro, in this case, could use the mobilization to precipitate a barrage, playing masses against masses. Therefore, it is necessary to unleash right now, and by all means, the broadest campaign of agitation, propaganda and action among the millions of unemployed and hungry, to call on them with energy to fight for land, for a roof, for food, for vaccines. This will be the only force capable of stopping the military coup in progress, or resisting it if it takes the open form. The history of the 20th century, particularly in South America, attests that “military devices”, “legalistic officers”, “leadership agreements”, etc., cannot stop fascism. This was the bitter experience in our countries, as in Jango’s Brazil or Allende’s Chile, the highest expression of reformism and of the “peaceful road to socialism” at that time. Its tragic outcome was the bombing of La Moneda Palace, after the reaction was sure that the masses had been disarmed, both militarily and ideologically. To repeat this path today would be more than a mistake: it would be a crime.

Therefore, the Brazilian people must follow, defend and propagandize the heroic peasant struggle in the state of Rondônia, which waves the red flag of the Agrarian Revolution against the joint action of the state and federal governments and all their apparatus of espionage and death. The defense of the League of Poor Peasants, and of the Manoel Ribeiro Camp in particular, is the priority task of all consequent democrats in Brazil. There it is expressed a firm decision that does not negotiate nor bows to blackmails and aggressions. And in the face of the new bloodthirsty plan of Governor Marcos Rocha, with the reinforcement of federal forces sent by the genocidal Bolsonaro, against the campers and on behalf of the landowners, moving his war paraphernalia and closing the siege with hundreds of troops, by unanimous vote of his Popular Assembly, the hundreds of peasants, under the direction of the LCP, operated the silent retreat into the night, passing unscathed under the beards of the “intelligence” services and special commands waiting for the order for the assault, disappearing into the darkness. The assault on the encampment ended in the unusual and pathetic scene of war: the avalentoed soldadesca, armed to the teeth, in front of an undaunted and hoisted rag with the inscriptions “We will return stronger and more prepared!”

The peasant resistance in the Amazon is, in fact, the North of the struggle of all the Brazilian people.

(IMAGE)

Banner left before the peasants of the Manoel Ribeiro Camp carried out the silent retreat. Photo: Reproduction