Editor’s Note: The Peasant Resistance of Santa Elina happened on August 9th , 1995, in Corumbiara, Rondônia. The peasants went to the battle with sticks, stones and old guns against a police troop and gunfighters under the command of the landownership and the governor, Valdir Raupp (PMDB).
The peasants were sleeping when the bandits invaded the area. After resisting and being surrendered the heroic peasants were tortured and humiliated. The sadistic invaders obliged some of them to eat the brain remains of those that had their skulls broken with rifle butts. The little Vanessa, 7 years old, was killed. All the hatred and horror, for the reaction disgrace, did not intimidate the peasants, but raised a legion of peasants ready to do everything for conquering the land and revenging their brothers.We release a LCP’s note from Rondônia and Western Amazônia on the battle anniversary.
LCP was the result of the heroic resistance of Corumbiara and it has always served and honoured those families and all poor peasants. With the Committee for Defense of Santa Elina’s Victims (Codevise), in 2010, after much struggle, LPC led hundreds of families who finally have conquered most of Santa Elina farms where the battle has occurred. The 1995 peasants’s dreams came true in the Revolutionary Areas: Zé Bentão, Renato Nathan, Maranatã 1 and 2, Alzira Monteiro and AlbertoCarvalho.
Nowadays, more than 600 families that live there continue resisting against the old State agencies that persecute, repress and hinder the people’s work as the State Secretary for the Environment Development (Sedam) and Chico Mendes Institute of Conservation of the Bio-Diversity (ICM-Bio) that impose absurd fines and block their registration forms at the Agency for Sanitary Agro-silvo-pastoril Defence (Idaron); as well as the Ministry of Agriculture that has pushed up credits for the cultivation of urucum – without any insurance or minimum price policies – causing huge losses to the families. Let alone the lack of farm machinery and technical assistance, ambulance and a school centre in the area.
Several peasants, with no land or a little land, keep following the same path, organizing themselves in land-taking as the settlement of Manoel Ribeiro where families fight for a piece of land since the end of 2018. This land-taking is part of the historic struggle for conquering the rest of the farms from the former Seringal Santa Elina complex.
The path against the crisis is to take possession of all pieces of land from the landownership! The landlords, thieves of the land, only bring misery, disgraces, exploitation to the peasants and do not even purchase their produce at the stores in the small villages. Only with the growing of the land-taking by the peasants there can be progress for the people. Corumbiara is a place maintained thanks to the struggle and work of the peasants from Vitória da União, Verde Seringal, Adriana, Vanessa from the former Santa Elina farm, among many others.
The peasants from Santa Elina have resolutely contributed to demarcate the way of the Agrarian Revolution, the only one able to destroy the landownership and start the building of a New Democracy and a new Brasil, united with the struggle of the workers and other workers from the countryside. More than ever, we must follow the path opened by the heroic resistance of Corumbiara.
Honour and glory to the heroes of Corumbiara: Sérgio Rodrigues Gomes, Manoel Ribeiro (Nelinho), Maria Bonita, Ari Pinheiro dos Santos, Alcindo Correia da Silva, Ênio Rocha Borges, Ercílio Oliveira Campos, José Marcondes da Silva, Nelci Ferreira, Odilon Feliciano, Oliveira Inácio Dutra, Jesus Ribeiro de Souza e Darli Martins Pereira!
