WORLD WORLDWIDE BRAZIL News Journal Update - (en) Brazil, FARJ: Landslides on the coast of SP: Climate, economic and social disaster! (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The month of February was marked by the so-called "extreme weather events" on the

north coast of São Paulo, which so far left more than 60 people dead and more
than 3,000 people homeless, mainly in the city of São Sebastião. The growth in
the intensity and quantity of these events has been haunting the whole world and
the landslides of this Carnival are yet another symptom of the effects of the
ecological destruction generated by capitalism. These events mainly affect the
poorest: the victims were workers who lived on the slopes, most of them black
workers, in a region full of beaches and mansions.
The tragedy on the coast of São Paulo is not an isolated case. Before this
episode, there were more than 30 deaths in Greater São Paulo and in the interior
of the state as a result of the rains since December. In Minas Gerais, 22 people
died in this rainy season. In the state of Rio de Janeiro, six deaths were
recorded in 24 hours during a storm earlier this month. States such as Ceará and
Pernambuco are also experiencing floods, while a severe drought hits Rio Grande
do Sul, affecting food production.

The climate crisis affects the entire globe and meanwhile, governments in turn
present idealistic solutions, such as "environmental awareness and education" in
the abstract, without touching the private property system and the extractive
looting promoted by large multinationals, which keeps the classes oppressed
hostages of climate and social crises. They continue to feed the machine of the
capitalist and imperialist system, which destroys biomes in a predatory manner
(mainly in the countries of the global south) and pushes the poorest towards the
most dangerous places from an environmental point of view.

On the periphery of the international capitalist system, the States do not even
act in a palliative way. In Brazil, despite numerous warnings, there is permanent
neglect of prevention and minimal measures to contain damage, which highlights
the role of this body in maintaining social, environmental and economic
inequalities. In the case of the São Paulo tragedy, several studies indicated the
need for containment works on the Rio-Santos highway, as well as the need to
relocate residents from risk areas, but nothing was done. The city of São
Sebastião, for example, has an oil terminal and part of these resources, which
should be used to prevent disasters like this one, are used for other purposes.
Since 2013, the federal budget for disaster prevention has dropped from R$11.46
billion to R$1.17 billion[1].

This period coincides with the growing pressure of the financial system on the
public budget and the deepening of the neoliberal assault against social rights.
There is no possibility of minimal assistance from this point of view, without
breaking with the neoliberal blackmail of the banking and financial system, which
strangles the budget of social services. Such an impasse is also political, since
it is not possible, in the spirit of the "broad front", to keep antagonistic
interests, such as those of traditional peoples and agribusiness/mining in
harmony, without harming the poorest in this "alliance".

One of the State's responses, in addition to palliative and temporary assistance
to victims, has been social control and repression, leading police officers to
guarantee the security of private property, in order to avoid looting in this
moment of desperation and revolt, in addition to forced eviction of the
population through a court order without any alternative protection or relocation
of residents. The tragedy that was already established in the place takes on more
dramatic proportions as the State violently forces the removal of these people
without presenting housing alternatives.

This tragedy is yet another example that these extreme weather events mainly
affect the most precarious population and neglected by the ruling classes. When
the right to land and work is taken away, male and female workers, traditional
populations such as caiçaras and native peoples, are thrown to the margins of
what once was their territory. The maps of the region are evident: On one side,
summer houses and elitist tourism spaces, unoccupied most of the year; on the
other, in the steep areas of Serra do Mar, the population that largely works for
these elites. Due to real estate speculation and the tourism industry, this
working population is pushed into landslide zones and other hazards. The
Rio-Santos Highway works as a wall between the richest and the precarious
population, implementing a kind of social apartheid.

While capitalist speculation and the State advance in their projects of
elitization of coastal areas, with few actions other than the most urgent, the
popular response has been self-organization through chains of solidarity to
remove people from landslides, as well as campaigns via social movements. social
services to raise funds for the affected populations. Class solidarity was
evident at that moment, and the contempt of the ruling classes for the most
precarious population was clear, with the departure of the richest people in
helicopters from the region and the generalized increase in prices of basic
inputs by large traders.

There is no solution to this climate problem without deepening the critique and
destruction of the capitalist-statist system in the long term. As long as there
is social and economic inequality, those most affected by environmental disasters
and climate change will always be salaried workers, traditional peoples and other
members of the oppressed classes. Due to their own class condition, the
bourgeoisie and the ruling classes have no interest in solving the climate crisis.

There is an urgent need for a model of society organization with an ecological,
balanced and socialist bias, in which all men and women have access to housing
planned and managed by workers' bodies, and decide directly on issues related to
their territories. This transformation is only possible with the
self-organization of peoples who, in addition to guiding economic transformations
against Capital and administration under the State, can also reflect on how to
make use of nature in an integrated way, guiding equality and a better life for
all peoples and living beings. Placing political, economic and social resources
in the hands of the working class and oppressed peoples is central to overcoming
this serious socio-environmental impasse.

In the short and medium term, we believe that it is necessary to build a
socialist, libertarian and international political program that impels the
oppressed classes to constitute or radicalize their organizations of struggle,
territories and forms of association towards models that can face the unbridled
destruction by Capitalism and the nation-state, with a view to overcoming it. All
social spaces and popular movements need to pay attention to climate and
environmental issues, linking the struggle for social and economic reforms to
ecological issues that always affect the poorest. At the same time, we need to
break with the blackmail of the financial system that strangles the basic budget
of social services and demand basic measures of prevention and reaction, which
can be activated in case of emergency.

Still in the tactical and immediate field, we need to strengthen the construction
of support networks, solidarity and popular action, which can handle the
prevention of disasters, denunciation and construction of territorial spaces that
are safe for the oppressed classes. This struggle involves the defense of urban
and agrarian reform, as well as control of land by popular movements in the
countryside and in the city.

Historically, anarchists defend the struggle for federalist, libertarian and
internationalist self-management that confronts domination over peoples and over
nature. It is with this horizon in mind that we continue to work to destroy this
system of death and completely transform social and ecological relations!

Coletivo Mineiro Popular Anarchista
Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro
Anarchist Organization Libertarian Socialism
Libertarian Struggle

[1]https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2023/02/20/verba-prevista-para-prevencao-de-desastres-e-a-menor-em-14-anos.ghtml
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