BRAZIL'S LANDLESS MOVEMENT - BACK ON THE MOVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 BRASILIA 000873

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PHUM PGOV EAGR SOCI BR
SUBJECT: BRAZIL'S LANDLESS MOVEMENT - BACK ON THE MOVE

REF: A. 03 BRASILIA 2375


B. 03 BRASILIA 2428

C. 03 BRASILIA 3739

D. 03 SAO PAULO 0924

E. 03 BRASILIA 3066


1. (SBU) SUMMARY. After months of relative quiet, Brazil's
Landless Movement (MST) has initiated a wave of land
occupations timed to coincide with the anniversary of a 1996
massacre. Many occupations are in the northeastern state of
Pernambuco, where other groups besides MST are active. In
Bahia, the invasion of a cellulose plantation pits the
administration's populist impulses against its need to
protect agribusiness investments. MST's best known leader
called for a "Red April" of actions, but later toned down his
rhetoric, saying MST is not trying to undermine the
government but is impatient with slow progress on the
National Agrarian Reform Plan. The government has now
authorized R$1.7 billion (about US$570 million) to get the
National Plan back on track, but it is not clear if or when
the money will actually be made available. MST's
high-profile activities attract great attention but at
present are neither as numerous nor as violent as in the late
1990s. With the Lula administration torn between its support
for agrarian reform and its responsibilities to agribusiness,
public security, and fiscal austerity, there may be some
modest progress made, but MST will not reduce its pressure.
END SUMMARY.

APRIL OCCUPATIONS BECOMING AN ANNUAL RITE
--------------

2. (SBU) On April 17, 1996, nineteen landless activists were
killed by police in the town of Eldorado do Carajas in the
northern Brazilian state of Para. (N.b., only two of 145
defendants were ever convicted, and they remain free on
appeal.) The massacre gained international attention and was
a watershed for the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST),
radicalizing it further and turning it against the Cardoso
government. MST, established in 1984, is Brazil's primary
agitator for agrarian reform (refs A, B). Its demands are
built around the proven tactic of occupation of farmland by
hundreds of landless families until the government cedes
title. In its early years, MST typically occupied lands that
were unproductive or where title was in doubt, but after the
1996 massacre, the movement became far more belligerent and
just as likely to invade government buildings, productive
farms, or land owned by multinationals in order to score
political points.


3. (SBU) In recent years, MST has organized growing waves of
occupations and demonstrations in late-March/early-April to
coincide with the anniversary of the 1996 massacre. Since
mid-March, MST and other groups have carried out a
coordinated campaign of at least 53 land invasions (the
number grows daily) in fourteen states involving 15,000
landless families, plus road blockades and demonstrations.
Much of the activity is in the northeastern state of
Pernambuco, where many of the 25 reported occupations are led
not by MST but by FETAPE ("Pernambuco State Agricultural
Workers' Federation"),a rival organization that has tactical
and ideological differences with MST.

PERNAMBUCO - LATEST HOTBED OF OCCUPATIONS
--------------

4. (SBU) FETAPE has organized a reported 19 occupations in
Pernambuco in recent weeks --it claims to have mobilized
1,900 families-- but is careful to set up its camps outside
target plantations to avoid running afoul of MP 2183. This
Presidential Decree, issued by a frustrated President Cardoso
in May 2000 and still in force, bars for two years the
government from expropriating and redistributing lands that
are illegally occupied. The Decree sharply reduced land
invasions, forcing activists to develop alternatives --such
as setting up camps along roadsides or at plantation gates,
or occupying government offices. FETAPE President Aristides
dos Santos says his organization now has a total of 153 camps
in Pernambuco comprising 9,400 families, but because of MP
2183, it has not occupied any of the 95 unproductive farms
that it is pressing the state to expropriate.


5. (SBU) MST's leader in Pernambuco, Jaime Amorim, has no
such compunctions. MST has occupied six farms this month,
essentially taking them off the table for redistribution for
two years. MST may be particularly radicalized in Pernambuco
precisely because of intense competition from other activist
groups. Not only FETAPE, but also MAST, MLST, MPA, MTBST,
MTB, MTL, MTR, MTRUB, OLC, UAPE, and COOPTERRA are active, to
greater or lesser degrees. OLC ("Organization for Struggle
in the Fields"),for example, is more likely to occupy
productive large-scale farms. Amorim blames the government
for Pernambuco troubles, saying "INCRA (the GoB's agrarian
reform agency) did not expropriate either occupied or
unoccupied areas". INCRA's state director Joao Farias
(himself a former MST activist) is more sympathetic to
FETAPE's tactic of providing the state with lists of likely
farms, rather than occupying them outright. Farias told us
that the immediate situation is not as explosive as depicted
in the press, but if unaddressed, Pernambuco's agrarian
crisis is a "potential powder keg".


6. (SBU) The land problem in Pernambuco is rooted in its
historical sugar economy that promoted the creation of
enormous plantations worked by families of cane-cutters who
subsisted on their own small plots. Since the 1980s, sugar
mills have been failing, leaving an estimated 50,000 families
with neither land nor steady wage employment. The result is
a corps of hungry underemployed fieldworkers who have swelled
the ranks of MST and the other landless organizations.
Worse, the GoB's INCRA is chronically underfunded and has not
resettled a single landless family in Pernambuco in 2004
(though its officials say it is processing sites that it
hopes to redistribute later this year). INCRA's Farias told
us that only 11,500 families have been resettled in
Pernambuco in the past forty years --perhaps 20% of the
landless.

BAHIA - AGRIBUSINESS TRUMPS OCCUPATION
--------------

7. (SBU) In what is reportedly the largest-ever land invasion
in the state of Bahia, on 4 April, 2,500 families organized
by MST seized a 53-acre plantation near Porto Seguro,
destroying eucalyptus trees (a source of cellulose for paper
products). The farm is owned by Veracel (a joint venture
with a Swedish-Finnish partner),and supplies the firm's new
nearby pulp mill, soon to be the world's largest. Last year,
Lula met with Veracel officials to laud their decision to
invest US$1.25 billion in the Bahia operation --the largest
single foreign investment during his administration. The GoB
condemned the Veracel occupation, calling it bad for Brazil
and bad for business, adding that the government would never
expropriate the site. On April 8, MST appeared ready to call
off the invasion in return for an INCRA pledge to speed
redistribution of 12,000 acres already expropriated. MST
periodically seizes productive farms, particularly those
owned by multinationals (in 2003 it occupied several Monsanto
sites to protest the cultivation of biotech crops - ref D).

NATIONAL PLAN - LESS THAN HOPED
--------------

8. (SBU) Lula's commitment to the landless dates to the early
1980s when the PT party and MST grew up together. During his
1994 presidential campaign he said, "With a single pen
stroke, I'll give you so much land you won't be able to
occupy it". As President, he has learned that the problem is
not so easily solved. In November 2003, Lula unveiled his
National Agrarian Reform Plan (ref C),pledging to resettle
400,000 landless families by the end of his term in December

2006. The plan's novelty was to link land distribution to
measures making the farms viable, such as technical
assistance, infrastructure, and credit. The National Plan is
good on paper but is far from being fulfilled. According to
statistics released by the GoB's agrarian reform agency
INCRA, only 36,800 families were resettled in 2003
(two-thirds of them in the Amazon region). This left the
administration far short of its goal of resettling 60,000
families in its first year and means that it will have to
resettle 121,000 families in each of the next three years to
reach the goal of 400,000 families.

MST LEADER'S RED HOT RHETORIC...
--------------

9. (SBU) Joao Pedro Stedile, MST's founder and best-known
leader, often makes unhelpful comments (last year he called
for 'war on landowners'),announcing recently, "April will be
a red month. We are going to make life hell. April will
catch fire." Listening to sharp criticism during a later
congressional hearing, Stedile backtracked, saying he meant
"to 'pester' the government not make its life hell" and that
"Red April refers to our flags". MST, he said, "does not
seek to destabilize the government but to spur debate". He
also apologized for a comment by fellow MST leader Jaime
Amorim that "for every one of us they kill, we'll kill ten."
Stedile noted that "it is stupid for us to use violence
because we end up paying. The ones who die are on our side."
In an April 5 interview he explained that after the November
2003 announcement of the National Plan, MST did not halt its
invasions because of any truce with the GoB, but rather
focused on (non-invasion) activities, such as organizing its
base and developing its training programs. MST, he said,
ended 2003 with 200,000 families camped at 700 sites. True
to form, he added, "The government should give signals that
it is on the side of the poor against the rich". He also
listed Lula's best ministers as ForMin Celso Amorim ("has the
courage to confront the gringos, wins 'Brazilian of the Year'
award"); and Environment Minister Marina Silva ("defends our
people from Monsanto and the handful of loggers who want to
control the Amazon").

...AND THE GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSE
--------------

10. (SBU) On April 2, Lula appeared to respond to Stedile's
"Red April" comments by announcing that R$1.7 billion (about
US$570 million) would be allocated to the Ministry of
Agrarian Development to support the National Plan. Denying
that he was acting only because MST was the squeaky wheel, he
said, "Agrarian reform is an issue of social justice, we will
not be forced into it by the shouters". Lula recommitted his
government to fulfill the Plan's targets, and Agrarian
Development Minister Rossetto added that Lula had promised
funding for 115,000 settlements in 2004.


11. (SBU) INCRA's Chief of Staff, Viviane Coimbra, told us
that the National Plan is sound and INCRA can meet the
resettlement goal "if we get the funding". But she is not
optimistic that even the 2004 money would be forthcoming in
this tight fiscal environment. She does not believe the Plan
will be fulfilled. Stedile sounded a bit more charitable,
saying, "The main thing about (Lula's) announcement was not
the amount of money, but the government's declaration that
resources will not be an obstacle to meeting the goal of
400,000 families." Opposition Senator Alvaro Dias (PSDB),
who chaired the hearing at which Stedile appeared, feels that
the R$1.7 billion is not sufficient and that in any case
INCRA lacks structure and competence to carry out the Plan,
noting, "There is a large pocket of poverty in the
countryside and social pressure will be even greater if the
Plan is not successful". He pointed out that land
occupations damage the agribusiness sector that accounted for
42% of Brazil's exports last year.

COMMENT - BLOODY LAND DISPUTES HAVE BEEN BLOODIER
-------------- --------------

12. (SBU) The bout of national angst sparked by MST's
March/April invasions has become an annual event, generating
attention for the landless and criticism from the press. But
this year is running about the same as last year in terms of
numbers of invasions and violence, and far below the peak
1998-1999 period, when memories of the 1996 massacre were
fresh and MST was in open conflict with the Cardoso
government. The following are GoB statistics (similar
statistics compiled by the Catholic Church's Pastoral Land
Commission show the same trends but run higher in absolute
numbers):

YEAR: 1999 2002 2003 2004
TOTAL ANNUAL OCCUPATIONS: 502 183 202
OCCUPATIONS IN MARCH: 101 7 30 40
DEATHS IN AGRARIAN CONFLICTS: 101 20 42 2


13. (SBU) Lula's competing impulses --defending agrarian
reform while also supporting agribusiness, public security,
and fiscal austerity-- will be on display in the coming weeks
as MST's "Red April" reaches its climax. Expect continued
hardline rhetoric from landless leaders, matched by lip
service from administration officials on both sides of the
issue. Some budget resources are likely to be freed for
agrarian reform, though not enough to meet the National
Plan's targets. On the other hand, MST will offer no truce
in its land invasions --it never does-- whether or not the
government meets its demands.


14. (U) This report was coordinated with Amconsul Recife.
HRINAK