(Santiago, 28 January 2013). Within the framework of the People’s summit in January 2013, we, the delegates of CLOC VC, express our heartfelt regret and indignation following the murder of the director of MST Brazil and Coordinator of the Luiz Maranhão encampment at the industrial park in Usina Cambiaba, Campos dos Goytacazes-RJ. Cícero Guedes dos Santos, aged 54, was shot in the head more than ten times by gunmen in the early hours of the 25 January, in Campos dos Goytacazes. He had attended a meeting in the encampment the previous night and was shot while cycling home during an ambush in the Zumbi dos Palmares settlement. Cicero was one of the National Heads of the MST in Rio de Janeiro.

We unite in solidarity with our comrades in MST and with Cicero’s family as we express our deepest outrage. This type of action by gunmen and paramilitaries has, lamentably, become common practice throughout the continent, in which landowners, agrobusinesses and multinationals work in favour of organised crime because this type of violence serves the interests of their aim to privatise nature, the concentration of land and food production.

We demand that the relevant authorities take the appropriate measures to ensure the safety of Cicero’s family and comrades, and that they launch an investigation which will guarantee that the material and intellectual perpetrators of this crime are judged and sentenced.

We also call upon the government to proceed with the expropriation of Usina Cambahyba (a complex of seven haciendas covering a total of 3.500 hectares).

The violence that comes from landowners’ power can only end when the Integral Agrarian Reform becomes a reality.

America Fights

CLOC-La Via Campesina