Adapted from AND n. 174
On August 9th, 2020, were completed 25 years of the Heroic Resistance of Santa Elina, which took place in the municipality of Corumbiara, state of Rondonia. A peasant battle that, on August 9th, 1995, established with blood and heroism a milestone in the struggle for land in our country.
In those 25 years of Santa Elina Battle we have rescued the history full of bravery and honour of the peasant masses that, with decision and armed with sticks, stones, rudimentary hunting rifles, faced the police hords that attacked the families camped in Santa Elinas’s land with murderous will, at the behest of the state manager, Valdir Raupp- PMDB.
The reactonaries have found, however, fierce resistance of brave men, women, seniors and children. It was an uneven but strong fight, in the middle of the forest, at dawn.
Police and gunmen attacked the campsite muted when many were still sleeping. The peasants resisted until they were ran out of ammunition. Due to the warlike superiority of the attackers, the campsite was stormed by the repression troops who unloaded all their bestiality.
Afeter being surrended, the peasants were brutally tortured. Subjected to the most heinous harassment at gunpoint, some were forced to ingest the brains of others who had their skulls broken to butts. The most prominent leaders of the resistance were persecuted, tortured and executed. The little Vanessa, only seven years old, fell with a rifle shot.
A concentration camp was set up by hooded MilitaryPolice (PM) who threatened, humiliated and beat the peasants. Th image of this camp imortalized the scenario of landowning terror in Brasil and the acts the yielded the condemnation of the Brazilian State by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
All this hatred and virulent repression of the landlords and the old State’s agents against the peasants are the result of the dread they have of the masses in struggle who, with their simplicity and apparent naivety, stood up with unbreakable strength and firmness. They screamed and stirred: even if the thing thickens, this land is ours!
Water divisor
Santa Elina Battle, even in its relative situation of spontaneous movement, has created conditions for the development of the new combative peasant movement, changing into a water divisor in the struggle for the land in our country. Exactly because it was the proof that the people, exercising the just revolutionary violence, in opposition to the unjust and genocide violence of the old State, is capable to conquer their right an maintain their heads up. It is the materialization that rebelling is fair. Santa Elina Battle and all its developments are enemies of the electoral opportunism and its vain promises. They are the evidence that the organized people can destroy the old and build up the new. In addition to being the clear proof that reactionary elections change nothing for the people.
A latent exemple that the peasants are a fortress and the peasant-worker alliance is able to perform the most difficult works, Santa Elina Battle has placed new tasks for the combative peasant movement and caused a great struggle to be opened in its direction, displaying the determination of some and the vacillation and betrayal of others.
The hard and combative core of resistance, forged in the fire of battle, continued searching to deepen, in general, the balance of that struggle and the struggle for the land in the country, strengthened the ties with the class workers and the trade union movement in the cities, trod the path to build and reinforced the peasant-worker alliance and the combative peasant movement, supporting the flag of the Agrarian Revolution and for an Agrarian Programme of radical transformation in the countryside. This profound ideological and practical clash has paved the way that led to the founding of the League of Poor Peasants (LCP).
The battle continues
In mid-2010, the remnants of the heroic resistance of Corumbiara, organized by the Santa Elina Victims Defense Committee (Codevise) and with the support of LCP resumed and rallied the Corte Popular (People’s Land Cut) in the lands of Santa Elina. In what is now the Revolutionary Zone Zé Bento, they continue to resist the attacks, so much of the opportunism that, with manoeuvres tries, at all costs, to divide them, as of the landownership that with its bands of gunmen tried to expel them from their lands on several occasions without success. They resist, they fight, they produce!
On the other hand, the commanders and executers of the crimes against the peasants on August 9th, 1995, in the lands of Santa Elina, still enjoy impunity and the same safe-conduct until today that allow crimes against the peasant masses to continue to be committed, without those responsible being punished or their actions investigated.
In a farse of judgement, two peasant leaders and two PM soldiers were convicted and arrested. And the biggest culprits remain unpunished: José Ventura Pereira, lieutenant-colonel who commanded the murderous troops; Valdir Raupp (PMDB), then Rondonia governor; Wellington Luiz Barros, PM general commander at the time and Antenor Duarte, landlord who ordered the crimes. In 2015, in a hearing of Santa Elina peasants on damages, a substitute judge affirmed there was no massacre and the barbaric crimes had already been prescribed.
In August, 1995, Lula/PT, then a candidate to presidency, visited what was left of the camp and promised: “If one day I become president of Brasil, I will cut the farm Santa Elina for the families, punish the responsible for the massacre and pay compensation to the victms” After 13 years of the PT administration and its shameful departure, none of this has been accomplished.
If today half of the Santa Elina farm is in the hands of the peasants, this is due exclusively to the struggle of the families organized by Codevise and by LCP.
