We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article published by A Nova Democracia (AND).

Attack by goons murders 3 peasants and leaves 6 injured in an MST settlement in São Paulo (SP)

Goons murdered three peasants and injured six others on Friday night, January 10, in a shooting attack against the Olga Benário settlement, organized by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Tremembé (SP).

The gang arrived around 11 pm in cars and motorbikes and began shooting at the peasants, including children and elderly. The central target of the attack was the leader Valdir do Nascimento (Valdirzão), murdered with several headshots. The attack follows the same modus operandi as other attacks carried out by far-right paramilitary groups in the countryside.

In addition to Valdir, the young Gleison Barbosa de Carvalho, 29 years old, and his brother, Denis Carvalho, 29, died. Denis was hospitalized in an induced coma, but did not survive and died today, January 11. All the injured were taken to the Taubaté Regional Hospital and the Tremembé Emergency Room.

MST: ‘Years of constant attacks’

The MST stated, in a statement, that “the Olga Benário Settlement faces an intense dispute with real estate speculation aimed at leisure tourism, due to its strategic location in the Vale do Paraíba region”.

This was not the first attack on the settlement, according to the MST. “For years, the settled families have been suffering constant threats and coercion, even after several complaints made to State and federal agencies, which continue without an effective response to guarantee the safety and permanence of these families in the territory.”

The MST also stated that it is: “outraged by the violence and the lack of public security policies in the territories, which put the lives of so many at constant risk”.

Government speaks out

The Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA) of the Luiz Inácio (PT) government gave a timid statement on the case, in which it promised to work “with the (São Paulo state) secretaries Guilherme Derrite, Gilberto Kassab, with the delegate Osvaldo Nico Gonçalves and also with the director general of the Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues”, reported minister Paulo Teixeira, in a note.

It is unlikely that the São Paulo government will provide good service to the case, given the police and reactionary history of the Secretary of Public Security, Guilherme Derrite), and the big landlord character of governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans). In 2022 and 2023, the governor of São Paulo gave, with a 90% discount, public lands grabbed by big landlords in the west of Paranapanema, one of the focuses of the struggle for land in SP. The sale was part of a scheme done for the land-grabbing big landlords to buy the land, regularizing their illegal possession.

The same is expected regarding the Federal Police (FP), a body known for its repression on the poor peasants. In 2024, FP agents repressed, together with a paramilitary band, poor peasants in Machadinho D’Oeste, a region in the northeast of Rondônia. The case was reported exclusively by the newspaper A Nova Democracia, which reported that the peasants were surrounded and beaten by goons and then handed over to Federal Police agents; the agents have beaten the peasants again and arrested one of them.

Government avoids give a national character to the case

The government avoided treating the São Paulo case as part of a national reality in which goons and big landlords freely carry out armed attacks against poor rural peoples.

The comparison was avoided despite clear evidence that the goons attack against the Olga Benário settlement followed the same methods as assaults by goons and big landlords against peasants led by the League of Poor Peasants (LCP) in Barro Branco, Jaqueira (Pernambuco) and against the lands and retaken of lands by indigenous Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe of Potiraguá (Bahia), Guarani-Kaiowá of Douradina (Mato Grosso do Sul) and Avá-Guarani of Terra Roxa (Paraná).

In all those cases, the goons and big landlords arrived heavily armed on cars, trucks and motorcycles, at night or dawn, sometimes accompanied by military police, and invaded the territory while shooting.

In Potiraguá, paramilitaries murdered the Nega Pataxó indigenous leader. In Douradina, more than 10 indigenous people were injured. In the Terra Roxa region, a 7-year-old child along with a 14-year-old teenager and two young people aged 25 and 28 were shot at. In the Barro Branco region, paramilitaries affiliated with the “Invasão Zero” movement shot a student of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and two other peasants, but the group’s leadership and another henchman had to be hospitalized for gunshot wounds.

In addition to these typical attacks by organized paramilitary groups, peoples of the countryside have suffered from the arbitrary action by official State repression apparatuses. For months now, peasants at the Nova Esperança Camp, in Nova Brasilândia (Rondônia), have been under a real siege by Military Police (MP) troops. The military tried to expel the peasants and blocked the entry of food and water into the region even without a court order.

There is also a critical situation for thousands of peasant families in Messias, evicted in October 2024 from the Renato Nathan Revolutionary Area (built in 2009) by a war operation by the Brazilian State in favor of the interests of the big landlords of the Utinga Leão Plant.

The government’s strategy is to do not treat the case as something national to avoid admitting that there is, in the Brazilian countryside, an undeclared war between paramilitary bands of goons and far-right big landlords on the one side, and poor peasants, indigenous people and Quilombolas struggling for land on the other side.

In, ,