Statement from Social Organizations and Grassroots Movements in Bahia and Brazil
The Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra: CPT) of Bahia, the Association of Lawyers for Rural Workers in the State of Bahia and representatives from the 34 Social Organizations and Grassroots Movements from around the country who attended the 6th Meeting between CESE and the Social Movements, which took place in Salvador, Bahia on 13 and 14 March, 2017 (listed below), hereby denounce the escalation of agrarian conflicts, the increase in violence in the Bahian and Brazil rural areas and the even more worrying developments that this suggests.
We received with indignation news of the Military Police’s violent and arbitrary imprisonment of five peasant workers from the Common Pasture Lands of the Porteira de Santa Cruz Community in the municipality of Serra Dourada. These are Sérgio Pereira de Jesus, Antônio de Jesus, José Pereira de Jesus, João José da Silva and Geneildo dos Santos Silva, fathers of respected families, victims of calumnies made by their tormenters, whose “crime” was to defend the land on which they have planted and grown food for their own subsistence and for that of their families for years, through community pasturing, making common use of fallow public land, now targeted by the “learned magistrate” from Minas Gerais. The unfounded accusations – theft, possession of a weapon, qualified damage to property, wrongful possession, criminal association – blatantly false, yet with pre-trial detention decreed, reveal yet more about what is happening in the country in terms of the of the judicialization of conflicts, the progressive criminalization of social struggles and their leaders and the institutional reversals through the generalized and specific losses of the hard-won rights of the 1988 “Citizen” Constitution and the 1989 Constitution of the State of Bahia.
This is not an isolated case; it is only the most recent and intense. Partial data from the CPT’s “Dom Tomás Balduíno” Document Centre reveal that in 2016 Bahia was ranked third in the states with the most rural Brazilian conflicts, with 11%, only below the two Amazonian states. The main victims were Traditional Quilombola Communities and Common Pasture Lands. The causes of these conflicts were mining enterprises (31.7% of the state total) and wind energy, as well as agribusiness expansion, which has given up its tactic of grabbing lands, instead putting violent pressure on communities, focusing on their leaders.
Consequently, in 2016, there were more killings in the Bahian rural areas – 04, of which three were land related: in April, João Pereira – “João Bigode”, 56 years old, leader of the Santana community which covers the Tijuaçu quilombola territory in the municipality of Antônio Gonçalves; in May, Alexsandro dos Santos, 40 years old, leader of the São Francisco do Paraguaçú Quilombola Community, in the municipality of Cachoeira; in November, Luiz Viana Lima – “Luizão Tupinambá”, 54 years old, indigenous leader of the Indigenous Land of Tupinambá da Serra do Padeiro in the municipality of Buerarema. The fourth was related to water: in February Marcus Vinicius de Oliveira – “Marcus Matraga”, 57 years old, environmentalist and a retired university professor who denounced the destruction of mangroves for the farming of prawns in the community of Pirajuía in the municipality of Jaquaripe. In 2016, in Brazil, there were 61 killings in the rural areas, 11 more than in 2015. In a little over two months of this year, 06 people have already been murdered, 02 of whom were leaders.
If the violence and racism against peasants, landless rural workers and traditional peoples is a constant in the history of Brazil, since its first colonization against indigenous peoples, it is evident that the successive coups that have occurred against the people, since the first suspension of President Dilma, favour the intensification of agrarian conflicts. The illegitimacy of the coup-making government, not elected, and full of the corrupt, is the required condition for an avalanche of institutional changes in favour of capital, against social rights, as seen in the Social Security and Labour Reforms. In the rural areas, as well as the potential disaster of the end to Rural Social Security, the setbacks to legislation for the grassroots population’s right to land and territories, added to the handing over of approximately 40 million hectares of land to outsiders, will lead to even greater violence against peoples from the land, the waters and the forests. Statements such as that made by the new Minister of Justice from the rural caucus, Osmar Serraglio, that “lands don’t fill bellies” create ever increasing concern about the derision with which they treat our original peoples and their territorial rights, guaranteed under the Constitution. They will not pass!
Once again, and again and again, those who fight to defend their fundamental rights are the victims of tyranny and neglect from a State hostage to capital. In Bahia, added to the scrapping of INCRA and FUNAI, we have seen the bias and lethargy of the Department of Agrarian Development (Coordenação de Desenvolvimento Agrário: CDA) in the regularization of traditional territories, which causes violent conflicts and unjust decisions, such as those that victimise the Porteira de Santa Cruz Community.
The organizations that endorse this statement call on society to demonstrate effective solidarity with the communities involved, disseminating appropriate information about them and calling on the state to return to its long-abandoned republican attitude, given the semblance of democracy that we are experiencing. Further, we add to this call the growing number of disgruntled social organizations and citizens, mobilized against the current attempted coup-makers of the Three Powers of the Republic.
On International Women’s Day, we reassert that, despite progress made, there is not a great deal to commemorate, since women in all environments continue to be oppressed by machismo, sexism, racism and the patriarchy, which still prevails. With those who are no longer silent and who take part in this struggle, and with all the grassroots sectors in this dark moment of our history, we shout Temer Out! No fewer rights! No fewer!
Salvador, 14 March, 2017