We publish an unofficial translation of the latest Editorial byA Nova Democracia.

The public statement by the League of Poor Peasants (LCP) from this week, entitled “Peasant self-defense confronts and defeats the attack of the paramilitary hordes “Invasão Zero””, is itself a major political event. In it, the peasant movement once again called on the rural poor to defend, with arms, the land for those who live and work on it; and also described the defeat that the peasants imposed on the horde of Bolsonarist paramilitaries of the “Invasão Zero” in Barro Branco (Jaqueira, Pernambuco), a confrontation that left five Bolsonarist paramilitaries wounded, among them, the state president of that band, who was hit by “hot led”, as LCP said. At the conclusion of its statement, the movement shouted: “You are taking your cowardly war to the poor in the countryside, so it is war that you will have!”.

This is a great event, because it brings to the public a great armed confrontation existing in the countryside: on the one hand, the Bolsonaro paramilitary hordes, which throughout the Bolsonaro government, with its political and financial sponsorship, they organized themselves into several paramilitary “movements” of which “Invasão Zero” stands out having armed themselves with hundreds and thousands of weapons for war under the cover of being members of weapons collections and hunters clubs; on the other hand, there are the rural poor, peasants without land or with little land, indigenous people and Quilombolas who struggle for land, who do not accept being slaves to the latifundium or becoming beggars in the cities and persist in the struggle, using several forms of self-defense, the condition to continue advancing the struggle for land and territory.

The Peasant Battle of Barro Branco, by defeating the Bolsonarist paramilitary hordes of the “Invasão Zero” and declaring from everywhere that this is the only way for all the poor in the countryside to conquer the land for those who work it, also showing what the only way to combat the extreme right is. The collusion – the path chosen by the current government – with “moderate Bolsonaro supporters” such as Mr. Arthur Lira and Mr. José Múcio (both linked to “Invasão Zero”), giving them all the political power has not prevented the gangs of the latifundium to continue to kill, torture and commit all possible crimes against the rural poor: on the contrary, it has grown with the deafening silence of the “authorities” who call themselves “left-wing”. Although they are not new and have always been suppressed by the reactionary press monopolies, we must ask: what will the “progressive” gentlemen, some of whom are accustomed to the farce and the good life, do in these episodes in which the peasant masses take up arms to defend their lands, their families and their rights? With indigenous people and Quilombolas also increasing their resistance? Will they show solidarity with the peasants and raise their voices against the Bolsonarist paramilitaries or will they drop the mask of false anti-fascists? Will they defend the justice and legitimacy of the secular and traditional sacred march of the peasant struggle for land – already long ago abandoned by the leadership of opportunist and yellow unionists – and join the Agrarian Revolution?

Armed peasant self-defense is not a taboo in the history of the country; in many cases it is a spontaneous phenomenon in the struggle for land. These struggles and movements, which no matter how far they go, end up either being dispersed in the isolation of struggles in regions distant from each other and processed at different times, or they are led to agreements with big landlords and their governments, agreements that never were nor will be fulfilled, in episodes in which the masses end up deceived by opportunistic organizations that serve the system of exploitation, oppression of the people and subjugation of the Nation to imperialism. These tragic outcomes were due to the fact that, in most cases throughout our colonial history, the leaders were not from the poorest classes; and throughout the history of our contemporary society, it was and is due to the absence of a proletarian leadership and strategy, supported by the worker-peasant alliance and the leadership of the revolutionary party of the proletariat that lead the struggle to conquer democratic political Power, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist, the only way for the interests of peasants and other poor people in the countryside, workers and toilers and small owners in the city to be definitively assured. That’s a fact. However, what such a statement brings to light again, and this is not natural or fortuitous, is that today the poor in the countryside have a revolutionary peasant movement equipped with a strategy, a revolutionary program of a proletarian nature to transform the countryside and the forms of struggle that allow them to win and triumph, even in a protracted struggle and despite the enormous imbalance of forces; and that this organization is increasingly giving revolutionary direction in the struggle for land, whether directly or indirectly, by functioning to propel other popular and democratic forces in the struggle for land, to their honest leadership, which exists and encompasses thousands of millions of peasants in struggle, urging them to also follow the path of the Agrarian Revolution, which is reflected in the increasing weight of this great slogan in popular protests and demonstrations in large urban centers – which must work as a resonance box of this struggle, where the true Revolution rises and strengths.

This is the revolutionary struggle. Let us, therefore, take part of it, in support of the poor peasants, the proletariat, the small and medium owners of the city and the countryside, women of the people, students and honest intellectuals. It’s the Agrarian Revolution!, base and first stage of the New Democratic Revolution.

In,