Editor’s note : We publish below the Marreta and Working League’s Manifest, dated March, 31st, 2019, that has been handed out to the masses in Brumadinho and Belo Horizonte as well as during the workers’s protests and people’s movements that charge justice for the ones affected by the dam distruption, and punishment for the responsibles for one more heinous crime against the people and Nation.

Marreta

Pain and revolt! One more crime against the people and Nation.

A little more than three months after the criminal disruption of Vale’s Barragem de Fundão /BHP Billiton/Samarco, in Mariana, that has killed 19 people, destroyed the village of Bento Rodrigues, hit thousands of families, destroyed small farms, plantations, animal husbandry, woods, water sources, streams and the whole bio-diversity of Doce River and its estuary in the Atlantic Ocean, and keeps causing new victims, a new disruption of a Vale’s dam has been one more heinous crime against the people and the environment.

According to family members, nearly 500 persons were murdered and buried under tonnes of mud and mining tailings. The destruction of the natural surroundings, with large areas covered with mud, is definitive. Similarly, the Paraopeba River is dead. This is the situation of those affected people: they cannot return to the places where they lived and used to make their income. Because if there are technical means for its recovery, the necessary cost and time will never be priority for Vale and the governments. The imperialist countries have already cleaned their rivers and lakes but Brasil and the Third World are the trash can for the rich countries. And the scarce resources aimed at the recovery of the environment have been either squandered or stolen by the governing authorities.

Pressed by the commotion and revolt of the population, the media monopoly has been repeating this is unacceptable, the authorities talk about punishment, impose large fines, say they will never permit it to happen again. The mining company directors have the nerve to come up crying in sorrow and making moving speeches on their compromises with the victims, “ to compensate everything and everybody”.

However, everything is a lie! The same has happened to Mariana. Three years have passed and the mining companies have not compensated the people, they have not provided the new promised houses, they have not paid the fines and keep being unpunished. Vale continues ‘buying’ politicians, inspectors and press people so that it keeps taking away iron ore the way it used to do in Brumadinho and in other hundreds of mines in the country. Without people’s mobilization and organization in defence of their rights and interests, as well as their natural resources, nothing will ever change!

Vale, killer and terrorist

On January 29th it was announced the prison of 5 persons of Vale’s middle ranking as being the responsible for the technical reports that certified the safety for the mining activity in Brumadinho. It was just playing with words, for everything continues as it is, so that the sharks and real responsible ones keep being unpunished. Moreover, who have authorized or permitted the functioning of a canteen and an administrative centre right below a mountain of residues?

What value does it have for them the life of a worker?

The multibillionaire Vale has announced it would “donate” R$ 100.000 to each of the affected families. Scoundrels! They believe they will hinder the workers’ and people’s anger with a bit of money.

The government has promised to release the FGTS for the families. Cynics! This money belongs to the workers! The infamous employment “reform” the politicians have imposed to the Brazilian workers in 2017 limits the value of the compensation to 50 times the worker’s salary when he dies in service of the company, as it has happened to hundreds of workers in Brumadinho.

All governments are accomplices of the mining enterprises. We demand the immediate dismounting of all dams with residues in the country.

Pimentel government has passed a law 2.946/2015 that loosened the environment licensing for the mining companies. And the government has not taken any concrete attitude concerning the liability and punishment of Vale/BHP/Billiton/Samarco. On the contrary, it has engaged itself so that the mining companies would resume as fast as possible their activities after Mariana’s crime.

The present governor of Minas, Romeu Zema, during his electoral campaign, declared that the mining companies have much difficulty to obtain the environment licensing and he would change it. As a matter of fact, two days before Brumadinho’s crime, Zema announced an expansion of the mining exploration by Ballourec in the same area. Bolsonaro has hollered during his whole campaign against the “bureaucratisation”, affirming he would finish with the inspection of the “Shiite environmentalists”.

When a tragedy occurs and crime becomes wide open for people to view, the government and Vale start playing a game to blame each other. Vale’s board of directors is responsible for such a genocide and the governing authorities are accomplices!

According to the Nationalo Agency of Waters (ANA) there are presently more than 24 thousand dams for various purposes on the national territory. Seven hundred ninety out of them are intended to mining residues. And there are on the whole 31 bodies that cover 154 employees for supervising all those dams. And the government further increases the criminal activity by establishing that the enterprise itself should exercise the supervision of its activity.

There are technologies for processing dry iron ore. Why are not the mining companies obliged to adopt them? Because the murderous dams are cheaper and the old State and their ruling government are accomplices. The mining companies only think of their billionaire profits and it is much cheaper for those exploiters to buy half a dozen politicians, TV stations and bury the people under tonnes of mud.

In the imperialist countries the mineral exploration has to follow very severe rules. In the dominated countries, like ours, for those exploiting sharks the people are worth nothing!

It is no use demanding more accuracy in the inspection nor expect anything from these rulers because, after the commotion moment pass, they go back to the same game of covering the crimes of the large enterprises. Can we trust that other residue dams will be inspected from now on?

How can one qualify such neinous crime, serial and purposeful? The residue dams are like triggered bombs and planned crimes. Their disruption is a real terrorist assault against our people and the environment. Vale’s directors are the main criminals and the rulers are their accomplices!

We demand the stoppage of all mining activities for the disassembling of all residue dams in the country and not a few as Vale has proposed. We demand punishment for Vale’s directors, prison for those criminals who are against humanity and against our nation!

Brasil: more than 500 years of robbery of our natural resources

Brasil is a semicolonial country. Our independence is a lie, we are a lie as a republic. We have been for 500 years a productor and exporter of raw material for the old metropolis and the present world imperialist power countries. Mining companies and landlords are privileged tools of the imperialism besides the banks and transnational corporations in the country for the plundering of our natural resources and exploitation of our people’s work. This infamous Vale, former Vale do Rio Doce, was founded for this purpose. Rede Globo, Globo Network, with his “agro, the industry that is the wealth of the country” advertisement, is the glorification of it.

So that one can have an idea of the privileges this sector enjoys in the country: the whole export of raw material which reaches the figure of a hundred of billion dollars every year, not even one cent of duty has been paid to the government treasury.

The ruling classes – the great bourgeoisie and its fractions, compradora and bureaucratic, and the landownership – and their shift governing authorities implement the national subjugation. On its essence it is the policy that has been implemented – in a growing form – since the establishment of the 1964 military regime, passing by all governments from the different parties up to the current president who never gets tired of stating his condition as a lackey of the Yankee imperialism.

It was Bolsonaro’s decision to bring the murderous troops of Israel Army, that have for decades been bombing and cowardly attacking the heroic Palestinian people, under the US sponsorship. They came to Brumadinho with the equipment they have used for searching tunnels of the Palestinian resistance but that were useless for the mud rescues, according to the Fire Department command. It was a mere marketing ploy, trying to clean their hands covered with the blood of the invincible Palestinian people.

And more than that: why to bring 136 militants to spend 4 days in the country if they could have sent a technical group to operate the “ so fabulous” equipment they were saying to own? One hundred thirty six militaries of a genocide Army! Within the background of the implementation of the militarization of the Latin American continent and with management to deploy it in Brasil – as Bolsonaro has shamelessly defended it – the US seeks to naturalize the presence of military troops in the national territory and shape the public opinion as favourable to the installation of military base in our country. Genocide Israel Army, Go Home!

Nationalize and industrialize all our Natural resources

What our country needs is to nationalize all its natural resources, industrialize them to guarantee employment and welfare for our people besides propelling the Nation progress.

We demand punishment for those responsible for one more heinous crime!
For the immediate end of all residue dams!
Justice for the dead, mutilated and injured, members of the families and those affected by Vale in Brumadinho!
Justice for the dead, mutilates and injured, members of the families and those affected by Vale/BHP Billiton/Samarco in Mariana!
Down the robbery of our natural wealth!
Nationalization and industrialization of the natural resources of the country!