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C O N F I D E N T I A L LIMA 002323 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/24/2016 
TAGS: PE PGOV PHUM PINR PREL SNAR
SUBJECT: OLLANTA HUMALA - THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL UNREST 
 
REF: A. LIMA 2000 
     ¶B. LIMA 2009 
     ¶C. LIMA 2126 
    ...
id: 114649
date: 7/6/2007 23:31
refid: 07LIMA2323
origin: Embassy Lima
classification: CONFIDENTIAL
destination: 07LIMA2000|07LIMA2009|07LIMA2126|07LIMA2236
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C O N F I D E N T I A L LIMA 002323 

SIPDIS 

SIPDIS 

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/24/2016 
TAGS: PE PGOV PHUM PINR PREL SNAR
SUBJECT: OLLANTA HUMALA - THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL UNREST 

REF: A. LIMA 2000 
     ¶B. LIMA 2009 
     ¶C. LIMA 2126 
     ¶D. LIMA 2236 

Classified By: Classified By:  A/DCM V. Wunder, for Reasons 1.4 (c,d) 

¶1.  (C) Summary:  Ambassador Struble paid a cordial 
farewell call on Ollanta Humala, president of the 
Nationalist Party of Peru (PNP) on July 3.  Humala said 
the Garcia administration's indifference to Peru's social 
problems was causing mounting unrest in the country. 
Humala noted his growing alliance with striking workers, 
protesting regional defense fronts and other frustrated 
Peruvians, predicting he would soon lead a broad-based 
political movement in favor of his goal of radical change. 
The nationalist leader said it would be bad for the country 
if Garcia were pushed out of office early, but the 
President was risking such an outcome by turning his 
back on electoral promises.  Humala admitted his party 
had experienced growing pains.  He lamented the 
coalition with the UPP and said his nationalists had no 
interest in proposals by the center-right Unidad Nacional 
for opposition control of the Congress.  Reflecting a 
continued anti-systemic outlook, Humala said he would 
not hesitate to walk away from the nationalist 
Congressional bloc if they discredit his movement.  He 
expressed concern that his reputation had become 
entangled with the fate of Puno regional President 
Fuentes because of the latter's strong embrace of Hugo 
Chavez.  Humala said he was trying to rally leftist 
support for Fuentes and to advise the regional president, 
but was uncertain whether he would succeed. 
(Ambassador's comment: Humala exuded an excited 
belief that things are moving his way.  Many of the 
movements now flocking to him, however, are 
opportunists angling for a deal.  I expect many of them 
will be peeled off by the GOP in coming weeks.  Humala 
retains most of the advantages he brought to last year's 
strong electoral showing -- confidence, conviction, 
charm, credibility with the poor and a handsome dark 
face in a country where most national leaders look 
unmistakably European.  He also, however, is still 
burdened with the same disadvantages.  Those include a 
military-molded personality that demands complete 
obedience and eschews compromise, association with the 
locally unpopular Hugo Chavez, and a certain naivet, 
about the motives of some who rally to his banner.  End 
Comment.)  End Summary. 

-------------------------- 
The Cause of Social Unrest 
-------------------------- 
¶2.  (C) Ambassador Struble met with Ollanta Humala and 
his wife Nadine Heredia, the PNP's head of international 
relations, for one hour on July 3.  The tone of the meeting 
was cordial and open.  Humala said social tensions in 
Peru's interior are rising, prompted by the recognition that 
the GOP is unable -- or perhaps unwilling -- to fulfill 
campaign promises to address the social crisis in the 
countryside. Little had been done, for example, to fix 
crumbling roads, reform corrupt courts, or address Peru's 
twin problems of discrimination and exclusion. 
According to Humala, the GOP had focused instead on 
advancing the narrow self-interests of the ruling elite; in 
the words of Heredia, the governing party "was not 
Aprista but Alanista."  Ollanta said that it would not be 
good for Peru if Garcia were forced out of the Presidency 
short of term.  However, Humala seemed to believe that 
Garcia was doomed to fall unless he changed his ways. 

¶3.  (C) Humala cited congressional approval of the PTPA 
as an example of how the GOP pandered to the rich.  Free 
trade, he argued, benefited only a portion of Peruvian 
society and created hardships for small agricultural 
producers.  The treaty, moreover, lacked legitimacy in 
Peru because it was passed without public debate and was 
the creation of a party -- former president Toledo's Peru 
Possible -- that had practically ceased to exist. 

¶4.  (C) Humala saw public frustration at the gap between 
governmental rhetoric and reality as the fuel for a 
growing number of protests throughout Peru, with 
historically inarticulate groups -- workers, campesinos, 
and indigenous communities -- forming for the first time 
coalitions across regional, ethnic, and economic lines.  In 
the midst of this ferment, PNP party members were 
working at the district level to shape a common agenda 
that would unite protesters into a broad-based political 
movement.  For Humala, GOP dithering in addressing 
social problems in the mountains and in the jungles was 
creating an army of potential recruits for the PNP. 
Nadine Heredia noted that political observers had made 
much of Humala's failure to win regional presidencies in 
the November 2006 regional/municipal elections.  She 
suggested that the various regional "defense fronts" 
leading strikes and protests now underway in the jungle 
and highlands represented popular power.  They were 
seeking out Humala, as were some regional Presidents, 
the striking miners in Casaplaca and other aggrieved 
groups.  She predicted that they would coalesce into a 
new national opposition led by Humala.  Both Ollanta 
and Nadine were visibly excited by these strikes and 
protests 

------------------------- 
The Problem of Governance 
------------------------- 

¶5.  (C) Humala admitted that organizing and 
administering a national political party was hard work, 
and he said that "criticizing is one thing, managing 
another," as evidenced by the fate of fellow radical 
Hernan Fuentes, regional president of Puno.  Humala said 
Fuentes faced stiff challenges in delivering good 
government in Puno -- a lack of talented technocrats, 
regional infighting, and a restive and extremist Aymara 
community -- but Fuentes had made the situation worse. 
Though Fuentes was not elected on the PNP banner, 
Humala admitted that nationalists would be tarnished 
by the Puno President's failure; Fuentes strong embrace 
of Bolivarianism (reftels A and D) and Hugo Chavez led 
many people to identify him with Ollanta.  (Humala said 
that his own identification with Chavez was exaggerated, 
though he added that he admires the Venezuelan leader 
and considers him a friend.)  Humala said that he would 
soon meet with Fuentes to advise that he spend more time 
fixing broken public services.  Humala had also called 
Jose Quintana, who lost to Fuentes by only one 
percentage point, to urge that he help Fuentes in the name 
of leftist solidarity; there was too much bad blood 
between the men, though, and a rapprochement seemed 
impossible. 

¶6.  (C)  Humala said that the PNP erred by aligning with 
the Union for Peru (UPP) after the 2006 elections.  The 
UPP was better organized and more experienced than the 
PNP and represented both groups in the Congress' 
governing body.  UPP used those advantages to mislead 
and betray the PNP, pushing the nationalist agenda to the 
side.  Relations were much better now that the parties had 
ended their formal coalition.  As a result of the earlier 
experience, Humala said, he was completely disinterested 
in proposals by the center-right Unidad Nacional that the 
opposition form a joint slate to take the Presidency of 
Congress.  What do we have in common with Unidad 
Nacional?, he asked rhetorically.  Humala recognized that 
the PNP could fall prey to the same public discontent 
directed at the traditional parties and said he would not 
hesitate to walk away from his deputies if they discredit 
the movement.  All the same, he argued that only the PNP 
offered a genuine ideological choice within the Peruvian 
Congress and predicted that the PNP's focus on grass- 
roots organization would prevent his party from ignoring 
broad sectors of the society. 

------------------------ 
Radicalism not Extremism 
------------------------ 

¶7.  (SBU) Humala characterized himself as a radical, but 
not an extremist, defining the two terms as follows:  A 
radical believes the status quo is unjust but offers 
concrete proposals to remedy the situation.  An extremist 
likewise believes society is unjust, but only tears down 
and does not seek to build up.  Ollanta reiterated his 
support for free elections and democracy.  He said he had 
a positive political program that sought, for example, to 
redefine the relationship between the state and foreign 
capital and to promote economic development -- as long 
as regulations protecting the environment and the rights 
of workers were enforced.  In his view, the GOP's 
counter-narcotics program needed to be redesigned to 
find markets for legal coca, a solution that would 
undercut the appeal of both the Shining Path and narco- 
traffickers.  If those kinds of reforms were not made, 
extremist groups -- who oppose any kind of economic 
development -- would grow stronger.  Humala 
maintained that he was not anti-US -- though he opposed 
aspects of US policy -- and that he recognized the 
preeminent role the US plays in Latin America. 

¶8.  (SBU) Comment: Humala's sweeping analysis of 
Peruvian politics sometimes stumbled over facts.  The 
Ambassador pointed out, for example, that the PTPA had 
been debated extensively in congressional committees. 
Humala's claim that regional protests are coalescing also 
is suspect and ignores both the wide difference over goals 
in disparate social movements and the government's 
success in addressing local complaints (see septel). 
Humala's endorsement of electoral democracy was 
welcome, but there may be more than a little opportunism 
in his stance: many observes suspect he has already been 
eclipsed in the nationalist movement by his brother 
Antuaro, whose political platform is racist, violent, and 
anti-democratic (reftels B and C).  The Humala family 
remains an important force within Peru's radical left, and 
the Humalas have shown a willingness to talk to Embassy 
officials.  Post plans to continue to take advantage of their 
garrulousness.  End Comment. 
STRUBLE 

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