The word landlord doesn't really describe "地主" accurately enough, since they weren't just rent seeking parasites, they were more like feudal lords who had power over every aspect of life in the village, with all the exploitation and violence that implies. That's why villagers were so brutal towards most of their landlords because they were frequently engaged in beatings, sexual assault, psychological abuse, dispossession of peasants etc with complete impunity. They were far worse than some petit bourgeois failson who inherited an apartment building from their car dealership dad or something (though they go to gulag too).

They were brought to trial and sentenced before their own tenants who testified as witnesses

"Uhh, if you like your landlord, you'll be able to keep your landlord"

Let's be fair here, I'm pretty sure those were overwhelmingly kangaroo trials (something that Che, for example, took great pains to avoid by making sure judge and jury weren't personally the victims of a given defendant). I don't actually have a problem with them being kangaroo trials, because they served an urgent social utility of dissolving a worse-than-worthless class that was forcing peasants to pay literally like 9/10 of their harvest as rent, but it was definitely more of a country-wide mob justice thing than trials in any sort of orderly or fair sense. At least, that's my understanding of what happened.

Are there good documentaries, articles or books about this that I can forward to people I know?