By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 30 2004 (IPS)

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is facing an unusual dilemma for a leftist political leader: whether or not to take part in a rally celebrating International Workers Day on May 1, either in Sao Paulo or in Sao Bernardo do Campo, the city where he emerged as a trade union leader in the 1970s.

In the past few months, the fear of being booed and jeered by the public has kept Lula, the leader of the leftist Workers’ Party (PT), away from the crowds that cheered and embraced him in the streets and in demonstrations and rallies in 2003, his first year in office.

But with respect to May 1, what worries the president is not so much rejection of himself, but of his government, because polls show that he remains highly popular, unlike his administration.

This ”red April” – as the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) described this month’s campaign of demonstrations and land occupations, in allusion to the movement’s red flags – the clamour from different sectors voicing their economic and social demands intensified.

At the same time, there were upsurges of urban violence and conflicts between indigenous people and illegal miners invading their territory.

The new minimum salary will go into effect on May 1. A decision was finally reached Thursday, after it was repeatedly postponed due to the difficulty of reconciling the political need for a significant increase and the restrictions imposed by the government’s fiscal austerity.

Lula had promised to double the real value of the minimum wage by the time his four-year term ends in 2006.

The faster, more effective land reform announced by Lula has also lagged. So far, only a small proportion of the 400,000 landless families that his government promised to settle on small farms of their own by 2006 have benefited from the government’s agrarian reform programme.

The MST, the powerful movement of poor peasant farmers and rural labourers which granted the government, which it sees as an ally, a ”truce” last year, has staged 100 ”occupations” of rural estates since late March, in a new offensive aimed at speeding up the redistribution of rural property, which is heavily concentrated in a few hands in Brazil.

What analysts have described as the ”radicalisation” of the country’s largest rural movement led it to violate its own rules by invading several estates considered productive, instead of limiting itself to ”idle” lands where the MST usually sets up its camps.

The movement’s activists even occupied part of a eucalyptus plantation belonging to a transnational company that produces paper and cellulose.

The new wave of land occupations brought an outcry from landowners who complained about the government’s failure to crack down on illegal actions by the landless and demanded that the Lula administration take measures to ease the tension in the countryside, to prevent a drop in investment in agriculture, the engine of the Brazilian economy and the country’s exports.

”Red April”, in the view of MST leader Joao Pedro Stédile, was a broad mobilisation of many sectors, not only peasant farmers, which is to culminate on Saturday May 1 with protests demanding changes in the government’s economic policy.

On Apr. 19, some 7,000 homeless activists occupied several buildings in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, including an abandoned military police barracks, demanding affordable housing for their families.

Strikes were also held this month by public employees, who were calling for a significant rise in the minimum monthly wage, rather than the mere 8.3 percent increase that the government announced on Thursday.

In addition, indigenous leaders from around the country staged a demonstration this month in Brasilia, the capital, urging the president to sign the document that would formally create the Raposa Sierra del Sol reserve, which is home to five indigenous groups in northern Brazil.

The indigenous question, another area in which the government has failed to take an active stance, according to human rights groups, was catapulted into the headlines two weeks ago when it was reported that members of the Cinta Larga (‘wide belt’) indigenous community had killed 29 ‘garimpeiros’ or informal miners who were illegally extracting diamonds in their territory.

Anthropologists and activists had long been warning authorities of the tension in the territory of the Cinta Largas, who made their first contact with outsiders only 30 years ago. Their numbers have plunged due to frequent conflicts with garimpeiros, who brought diseases and often abused local Indians.

New outbreaks of urban violence also led to increased pressure on the government. In the second and third weeks of April, Rio de Janeiro once again lived under a mantle of fear when a drug trafficking gang attempted to occupy Rocinha, the city’s largest ‘favela’ (shantytown), which is controlled by a rival drug gang.

The firefights between the two gangs, and between the drug traffickers and police, continued for several days, and at least a dozen people were killed, fuelling demands for intervention by the armed forces and for higher spending on public security.

Thus, Saturday May 1 will not be a day of celebration for the former metal-worker and trade unionist who became Brazil’s first leftist president 16 months ago, but a day of demands and complaints, which the current economic stagnation makes even harder to address.

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