Article from JLO # 17 (jan./Fev/97)

In less than ten days during ambushes against occupations, thugs from large landed state killed almost 20 rural workers in states of Pará and Paraná in three episodes only comparable to the massacres of Corumbiara, in state of Rondônia, and Eldorado dos Carajás in Amazonian state of Pará. As if this would not sufficient, in Santo Antônio das Missões, in state of Rio Grande do Sul, 5,000 landless peasants were expelled from a federal highway (BR-285) belonging to very Union. Incident similar took place in 29 January on Pontal do Paranapanema where the vice-president of the UDR (Ruralist Democratic Union) commanded a gang of large landowners entrenched whom opened fire against the unarmed "sem-terras" (landless) from Concórdia Farm.

Making use of these recent conflicts for making new aggressions on landless peasants, the ministers Nelson Jobim and Raul Jungmann started the execution of the biggest operation of disarmament organised in Brazil since the past decade against rural workers while they allow that the large landowners reorganize a paramilitary army armed to the teeth with heavy weapons imported from Paraguay.

Foreseen firstly to comprise only southern Pará, the disarmament operation will must stretch to states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and São Paulo, and, in a third moment, to the whole of Brazil.

The operation is linked to bill from the congressman Roberto Jefferson (PPB-RJ) for criminalizing the arm carrying, that is to say: to impose a criminal penalty for anyone that is caught using arms without consent from the capitalist state. According to one of seventeen amendments of bill, the period of detention of whoever has arms illegally will double from two to four years. In order that there is no doubt that the project is directed against the landless masses and in favour of armed owners, the chief director of Federal Police, Vicente Chelotti, made clear when carrying arms is illegal: "The legalised arms will be able not be with the bearer, but in his residence." (O Estado de São Paulo, 23 January). Just like it happens to other legal relations in capitalism — system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned —, in this case the right only serve to defend the farmers and his security guards that arm themselves with rifles and machine guns in their residences (large land estates) against sem-terras "land invaders" ("residenceless"). And Jungmann added, "Only disarming is not sufficient. It is necessary to pass resources to the State in order that will be took conditions of combating rural violence" (O Estado de São Paulo, 17 January).

Since at the end of the past year, the Government and bourgeois press has made a demagogical campaign about the increase of Rural Territorial Tax (ITR) stipulated in the Provisional Measure whose reporter is nobody less than the grand landowner from Pará, Jáder Barbalho (PMDB). Acclaimed by clergy brought together around the National Confederation of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB), in the person of a great but worn of cassock landowner, "like the first step for solving the land-reform problem" (O Estado de São Paulo, 29 November), the measure approved foresees the taxation of large land states with percentage of until 20% a year over the land valuation, preserving unchanged the percentage table for lands regarded productive that, in reporter’s opinion, includes even ‘pasture areas’ [sic!]".

In practise, "With new rules proposed by the government, only one out of four Brazilian rural owner will pay more than ten dollars a year. From 3,2 millions of proprieties recorded in Institute of Colonisation and Land Reform (INCRA), 62% are tax-free ones, 13% will pay until ten dollars a year — the minimum value for paying of the ITR, according to the Inland Revenue — and 11% will pay the maximum: 50 dollars." (O Estado de São Paulo, 11 December). In other words, as much the productive large land states as unproductive ones, now better disguised as "pasture area", will continue completely tax-free. In their turn, the landowners will continue to use their unproductive land for speculation, whether for obtaining resources on loan without exchange expectancy or for overvaluing them in transactions with the INCRA, most times with the aid of the MST in prearranged invasions. Instead of promoting the land reform, the government indeed stimulates — and what a stimulus! — the agrarian speculation and the valorisation of unproductive land and tax evasion.

As if this would not sufficient, the minister Raul Jungmann, on the eve of the reelection voting, decided to indulge the insatiable appetite of the ruralist bench giving them greater privileges as well as renewing the "precatórios" (debts resulting from judicial lawsuit for the INCRA expropriations) that opnly this year have already exceeded the figure of 1, 24 billion of dollars. The benefit that should be included in the same Provisional Measure, would be the exchange of precatórios for Agrarian Debt Bills (TDAs), that would bring about a colossal increase of Government debt to the landownership. This would promote the valorisation of "precatórios" around 24% a year or 2% a month. While a legion of 5 millions of poor peasant families wander across the country in search of a span of land for planting their survival, the great landowners who has been compensated for speculating the land for decades, receive now the reward of still greater indemnities. "The judiciary determines that interests regarding the TDA’s revenue (6% above TR), moratorium’s interests of 6% (for delay in payment) and compensatory interests of 12% (for time that the land got hindered) are added over the values from INCRA debts (debts of state for landowner), which result in a very exceptional investment" (O Estado de São Paulo, 29 November).

This operation was not immediately brought into effect only because in the very government the piece of news of "precatórios" overvaluation leaked, causing the dissatisfaction of non-forewarned sectors of the bourgeoisie. The manoeuvre was barred and postponed for a near future when everyone could to be ready to benefit from situation.

By the way, it is thanks to reconciliation policy adopted by the MST leadership that the government and bosses can give presents one another with so huge financial orgy. The overwhelming majority of the MST-led land invasions comes from agreement between the INCRA and farmers interested in valorisation of their properties expropriated for land reform purposes. In this way, owning great expanse of unproductive land is a very profitable deal, especially when the MST gives a hand so that this land goes up in value. Money that could be invested in purchase of raw materials, seeds, tractors, animals (improvements without which the usage of land is impossible) and that should be put in the service of poor peasants, ends up always into the fat pocket of the landowners.

A consistent policy of land reform in Brazil must be associated with the concession of cheap credit to small farmers and co-operatives of poor peasants as well as machinery, fertilisers and favourable conditions of transportation and marketing of goods at prices accessible and arranged with the needs of the urban proletariat. But in order that this happens, it is necessary to put in agenda the following things: 1) nationalisation of land (expropriation of properties from foreign capital set up in Brazil); 2) expropriation of great landowners of productive and unproductive lands, without indemnity and 3) disregard for all state-owned debt to parasitic large land state. This tasks are connected with the struggle for taking power by the proletariat and the struggle for formation of a Worker and Peasant Government.

While he cancels billionaire debts from sugar mill owners and bankers, makes the land expropriations quite lucrative and is responsible for more than four massacres of landless in less than two years of term of office, President Cardoso and his lackeys still have the brass of posing as sponsors of land reform. However, it is thanks to inexistence of any classist opposition against his policy on the part of the CUT and the MST that the pro-imperialist government advances against the proletariat and sets off a great operation of disarmament supported by these treacherous leaderships.

All this offensive against the peasanty only is possible because the policy from the MST leadership is contrary to independent organization of poor peasants for resist to more attacks. When already is quite clear that the Cardoso Government and its puppets governors are in the service of landownership, the MST leadership claims for a disarmament carried out by government itself that is represented by murderer of the landless. After asking workers for voting in the PFL (Party of Liberal Front) candidates on Pontal do Paranapanema, after guiding the withdrawl from the INCRA headquarters in São Paulo without that the governor needs to send one only policeman into this institute, now the MST leadership meets with Secretaries of Justice and Public Security from Governor Covas to apply for perform the disarmament in Pontal.

On disoccupation of the INCRA headquarters, Gilmar Mauro, the MST leader, directed the immediate withdrawal of the sem-terras as soon as the judicial order was issued, pleading that "we aren’t going to play the government game. It wish that we resist to brand us as radical" (O Estado de São Paulo, 23 January). After suspending the occupations in Pontal since October of past year — time sufficient to landownership calmly reorganise the UDR, to go on to the offensive in São Paulo and the other states and to assassinate almost twenty the landless, the MST is really afraid of branding as "radical"! This means that the MST leadership is too compromised with Covas, Cardoso, and the bourgeois justice and public opinion to disobey a judicial order. While he worries about unimportant things such as bad image of being considered a delinquent, the government disarms the peasanty and the landownership butchers the landless.

To José Rainha, Jr. (The MST leader in São Paulo), the problem of countryside violence exists because "the government doesn’t take concrete measures to disarmament" (O Estado de São Paulo, 19 January). On 20January, he came together again with the Covas’ secretaries for asking an intervention in order to promote the disarmament in Pontal do Paranapanema.

Instead of denouncing that the disarmament is only a justification for dismantling the occupations and preparing new attacks against defenceless victims of the paramilitary armies from landowners and murderous battalions from the government. Adopting the same policy of the PT and the CUT leaderships, Gilmar Mauro, Zé Rainha and Stédile deceive the victims about character of their executioners. The petty bourgeois policy of supporting the disarmament is the nasty betrayal against the landless. It is not only reactionary but also criminal. It is reactionary because, with airs of petty bourgeois pacifism, opposes to advance of the arming of the proletariat bound for social revolution; it is criminal because only will result in more bloodshed of rural workers by capitalists armed to the teeth and helped by pacifists from the MST, the CUT and the CPT (Pastoral Commitee of Land).

To Marxist revolutionaries, its obligation is not only to denounce the illusions of disarmament cherished by treacherous leaderships who introduce confusion into mass movement but also to hoist the proposal of arming all people, of calling up and organization of workers and peasants militias for destroying the bourgeois state. Denouncing the reformists who used to advocate the disarmament in beginning of century, Lenin alerts, "A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social Democrats are urged to ‘demand’ ‘disarmament’! That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: ‘arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie.’ These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before" (V.I. Lenin, The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution, emphasis added).

The MST policy is contrary to revolutionary methods. Besides serving to confuse the landless before its class enemies, deceiving as for real interests of the capitalist, murderous state that is political and military representative of the lan-downership, this policy is also serve to prevent any reaction from victims, however slight it may be, before the future mas-sacres. The MST calls the jackals for disarming the workers exactly after several massacres (Carandiru, Candelária, Vigário Geral, Corumbiara, Eldorado dos Carajás, São Francisco, Ourilândia, Rio Bonito do Iguaçu) and when occupations independent and contrary to the MST defeatist posture begin springing up in the whole Brazil.