VZCZCXRO3619
PP RUEHRG
DE RUEHSO #0367/01 1221705
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 021705Z MAY 07
FM AMCONSUL SAO PAULO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 6855
INFO RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA 7987
RUEHAC/AMEMBASSY ASUNCION 2995
RUEHBU/AMEMBASSY BUENOS AIRES 2718
RUEHMN/AMEMBASSY MONTEVIDEO 2329
RUEHLP/AMEMBASSY LA PAZ 3335
RUEHSG/AMEMBASSY SANTIAGO 2041
RUEHRG/AMCONSUL RECIFE 3538
RUEHRI/AMCONSUL RIO DE JANEIRO 8021
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUCPDOC/USDOC WASHDC 2769
RUEHRC/USDA FAS WASHDC 0678
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC
RUEHC/DEPT OF LABOR WASHDC
RHMFISS/CDR USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 SAO PAULO 000367 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA/BSC, DRL/IL, INR/IAA, INR/R/AA 
STATE PASS USTR FOR CRONIN 
STATE PASS EXIMBANK 
STATE PASS OPIC FOR DMORONESE, NRIVERA, CVERVENNE 
NSC FOR FEARS 
TREASURY FOR OASIA, DAS LEE AND JHOEK 
USDOC FOR 4332/ITA/MAC/WH/OLAC 
USDOC FOR 3134/ITA/USCS/OIO/WH/RD 
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD 
DOL FOR ILAB 
USAID FOR LAC/AA 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: EAGR ELAB PGOV PINS PINR BR
SUBJECT: MST'S "RED APRIL" OFFERS LOTS OF THEATER BUT NOT MUCH 
SUBSTANCE 
 
REF: (A) SAO PAULO 150; (B) 06 BRASILIA 1138; 
 
     (C) 06 SAO PAULO 332 
 
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED - PLEASE PROTECT ACCORDINGLY 
 
------- 
SUMMARY 
------- 
 
¶1.  Summary: (SBU) Actions by the Rural Landless Workers' Movement 
(MST) this year in observance of "Red April" have been characterized 
by strident rhetoric but less property destruction than last year. 
While they have generated some attention, the land invasions and 
occupations do not appear to have a particular focus or objective. 
In most cases, MST militants have occupied private farms or estates 
but have withdrawn after a brief period, often without even waiting 
for the judicial order directing them to vacate the property. 
Takeovers of the GoB's land reform office in several cities have 
likewise not generated significant trouble.  Sugar plantations in 
Sao Paulo state have been a particular target this year, due in part 
perhaps to the heightened profile of the sugar industry as a result 
of the increased international interest in sugarcane-based ethanol. 
MST leaders have made a conscious decision to elevate the tone of 
their attacks against President Lula, who has long been considered, 
if not exactly one of their own, at least an MST sympathizer and 
protector.  The landless people assert that Lula owes them for their 
past support in his five presidential campaigns and during the 2005 
political corruption scandals.  However, according to one insider, 
the Lula administration and the MST made an agreement back in 2003 
which the government has largely honored and the MST has not. 
Accusing the movement of "hypocrisy," this erstwhile champion of the 
landless asserted that MST leaders routinely flatter GoB officials 
in private as they seek more funding for their initiatives, while at 
the same time publicly confronting the government with ugly rhetoric 
and provocative land invasions.  End Summary. 
 
---------------------- 
COMMEMORATING THE DEAD 
---------------------- 
 
¶2.  (U) "Red April" is an annual observance by the Landless Movement 
to commemorate an April 1996 confrontation between MST militants and 
state Military Police in the northern state of Para that left 19 
landless people dead.  Every April, MST conducts a series of 
activities designed to raise public consciousness of the need for 
agrarian reform and to pressure the government to distribute more 
land and provide settlements for landless people.  This year, the 
movement has invaded 81 farms and other properties spread across 21 
states of Brazil's 26 states, with an emphasis on the impoverished 
northeast and the more prosperous southeast.  This is a significant 
increase over the 28 land invasions carried out in 2006 and the 44 
in 2005.  It has also briefly occupied the facilities of the 
National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) in 
Brasilia and elsewhere and of the Sao Paulo State Land Institute 
(ITESP) in the troubled Pontal do Paranapanema (see ref A).  In the 
southern state of Parana, MST has attacked tollbooths on public 
highways, driven away the collectors, and allowed motorists to pass 
through for free, while at the same time setting up stands to sell 
food, drinks and other items.  In Santa Catarina, also in the south, 
approximately 500 families briefly occupied a 10,000-hectare Army 
facility. 
 
¶3.  (U) In almost all cases, MST militants withdrew from the 
properties after only a short occupation (and before the inevitable 
 
SAO PAULO 00000367  002 OF 004 
 
 
court order was issued), suggesting that they were more interested 
in attracting attention than in serious confrontations with 
landowners or police.  The fact that the ownership of many of the 
properties targeted is not in dispute, and that few can be 
considered idle or unproductive - two normal conditions for its 
redistribution) - offers another indication that the MST is not 
seriously attempting to engage the government on land reform.  It is 
worth noting that, unlike last year, when assaults on agri-business 
facilities led to damage estimated at USD 400,000 (ref C), this 
year's MST activities have not involved any significant destruction 
of private property. 
 
¶4.  (U) Throughout the month of April, Sao Paulo also saw several 
invasions of abandoned buildings by members of the National Union 
for Popular Housing (UNMP), an urban equivalent of the MST that 
advocates on behalf of the homeless, generating some concern that 
the two movements were joining forces.  However, leaders of both MST 
and UNMP were quick to deny any such intention, calling their 
concurrent actions "a coincidence."  UNMP stressed that it has 
nothing to do with Red April, but is simply pressing the claim of 
Sao Paulo's poor to adequate housing.  According to press reports, 
Sao Paulo state is home to some 4 million inhabitants of "irregular 
parcels, favelas (makeshift urban slums), swamps, and unsafe areas," 
as well as 2 million tenement-dwellers and another 2 million camping 
out in friends' and relatives' apartments.  When heavy rains cause 
the rivers to rise and flood the city' periphery, the homeless are 
among the most seriously affected. 
 
------------------ 
BREAKING WITH LULA 
------------------ 
 
¶5.  (U) The MST is an autonomous social movement affiliated with 
President Lula's Workers' Party (PT).  As such, while movement 
leaders have criticized the federal government for a lack of 
progress on land reform and redistribution, they have generally 
spared Lula personally.  However, there are signs that this might be 
changing.  In a recent press interview, MST national director and 
spokesman Joao Pedro Stedile argued that Lula has "debts" with the 
MST and that he and the PT need to "return to their historical 
commitments" and reduce the "rightist influence" in the government. 
MST supported Lula in his three unsuccessful presidential bids as 
well as his victorious 2002 campaign.  Though sometimes critical of 
Lula's orthodox macroeconomic policies, the MST joined the United 
Workers' Center (CUT) and the National Students' Union (UNE) at the 
height of the 2005 political corruption scandals to defend Lula's 
government and denounce the opposition.  The movement then went on 
to support Lula's re-election in 2006. 
 
¶6.  (U) Now, however, MST's patience appears to be wearing thin. 
During his post-election Cabinet shuffle, Lula left in place the 
Minister of Agricultural Development, Guilherme Cassel, who has been 
blamed by the movement for the slow pace of land reform.  Then, 
after the POTUS visit in March and the signing of the MOU on 
biofuels cooperation, amid widespread talk of expanding sugar 
cultivation nationwide to meet an anticipated increase in demand and 
exploit Brazil's leadership in the production of sugarcane-based 
ethanol, Lula delivered public remarks in which he characterized the 
sugar growers and mill owners as "national heroes."  The MST has 
long considered the sugar-growers a prime adversary because of their 
practice of "monoculture and their treatment of workers, which some 
have compared to slave labor.  In his labor union days, Lula often 
marched with the MST.  As a politician, he has long been one of the 
sugar industry's harshest critics, and movement leaders found his 
 
SAO PAULO 00000367  003 OF 004 
 
 
sudden about-face anything but encouraging.  Among other properties, 
MST invaded a significant number of sugar plantations in western Sao 
Paulo state this year, possibly in an attempt to take advantage of 
all the attention focused on the industry due to the ethanol boom. 
Sao Paulo state, which is approximately the size of Minnesota and 
Iowa combined, has 3.66 million hectares of sugar cultivation and 
produces more than 60 percent of Brazil's ethanol.  At the same 
time, the state has about three times as much pasture land as crop 
land, and the pasture land, though very inefficiently used, with an 
extremely low density of animals per hectare, does not receive 
nearly as much attention from the landless movement as does the crop 
land. 
 
------------------------- 
A FORMER SUPPORTER SPEAKS 
------------------------- 
 
¶7.  (U) Poloffs and Political Assistant met April 20 with former PT 
Federal Deputy Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh (1987-91, 1995-2007), now an 
attorney in private practice.  Greenhalgh was one of only a handful 
of Federal Deputies openly affiliated with the MST, some of whose 
members he had defended as a lawyer.  As head of the Chamber of 
Deputies' Human Rights Commission, he was the PT's choice for 
President of the lower house in February 2005, but, in a setback for 
the Lula administration, was defeated by backbencher Severino 
Cavalcanti (Progressivist Party -Pernambuco) after a PT dissident 
entered the fray.  However, he failed to win re-election in the 2006 
elections despite the PT's strong showing nationwide (83 seats out 
of 513, second-highest) and in Sao Paulo state (14 out of 70, also 
second-highest). 
 
¶8.  (SBU) Asked about the MST's recent activities, Greenhalgh 
(please protect) said he had been present at meetings between the 
movement and the Lula administration in 2003 when the two sides had 
negotiated a modus vivendi. From his perspective, the government had 
upheld its side of the agreement, but MST had not.  The government 
had provided considerable funding to various NGO which supported MST 
initiatives, or, in some cases, had passed the money directly to the 
movement.  It had also established some settlements for the 
landless.  The MST, however, had continued to adopt a 
confrontational pose, invading property and routinely employing ugly 
rhetoric.  Greenhalgh accused the MST of hypocrisy in pretending to 
militate against the government while adopting a soft, flattering 
tone in private discussions as it attempted to gain access to more 
funding.  This led him to distance himself from the movement, many 
of whose members decided in turn not to vote for his re-election. 
He listed the lack of MST support as one factor that contributed to 
his unexpected defeat.  Greenhalgh also noted that though the 
movement is affiliated with the PT, some of its regional leaders and 
local leaders are strongly influenced by former Senator and 2006 
Presidential candidate Heloisa Helena and members of the Socialism 
and Liberty Party (PSOL), which she formed after being expelled in 
2003 from the PT after criticizing Lula's orthodox economic 
policies. 
 
------- 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶9.  (SBU) The good news is that despite increased activity this 
year, the MST and similar organizations did not commit the sort of 
wanton destruction of property as in 2006, which included not only 
the attacks on agri-business facilities but also an invasion of 
Congress (ref B) carried out by the Movement for the Liberation of 
 
SAO PAULO 00000367  004 OF 004 
 
 
the Landless (MLST), accompanied by major vandalism.  Nevertheless, 
the movement continues to generate considerable concern, especially 
in the business community.  For example, the CEO of International 
Paper (please protect) in Brazil told the Consul General recently 
that MST represents one of the biggest problems for his company, a 
major foreign investor which is in the process of building a 
billion-dollar wood pulp and paper manufacturing plant in a small 
town in Mato Grosso do Sul state, a site of frequent MST activity. 
Also of concern is the fact that, while criticizing the land 
invasions and calling for the law to be upheld, the federal 
government does not seem interested in trying to work constructively 
to address MST's grievances; Lula and his advisors apparently 
believe they have already done more than enough. 
 
¶10.  (SBU) Like other social movements of the PT's left wing, the 
MST seems belatedly to be coming to the conclusion that Lula is a 
traitor to his class and that his centrist policies, far from being 
temporary, tactical measures (as some claim he led them to believe), 
represent the direction in which he wants to lead the country.  The 
group's occupations of sugar plantations is no accident; one the one 
hand, MST views the industry as among the worst perpetrators of 
abusive labor practices, while on the other, they are aware of its 
high visibility due to the current focus on increased ethanol 
production.  For his part, Lula recognizes that production of 
sugarcane-based ethanol is one area where Brazil has a clear 
advantage over its competitors, and he may well see the biofuels 
boom as an important part of his legacy if only the country can 
attract the necessary foreign investment.  Seen in this light, his 
decision to praise the sugar-growers and ignore the landless people 
should come as no surprise.  End Comment. 
 
¶11.  (U) This cable was coordinated/cleared with Embassy Brasilia. 
 
MCMULLEN