Leaders of the tribe, some of whose members are still uncontacted, have written to the UN Global Compact saying they are ‘concerned and frustrated’ by the inclusion in it of a controversial Brazilian ranching company.

The company, Yaguarete Porá, was charged and fined for illegally clearing the Ayoreo’s forests, and concealing evidence of uncontacted Ayoreo living there. The Ayoreo have asked that it be expelled from the Global Compact.

The UN Global Compact was designed for companies ‘committed to aligning their operations with ten universally accepted principles,’ including respect for human and environmental rights.

A bulldozer clears forest belonging to Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, Paraguay

In its reply, the Global Compact has admitted that it has ‘neither the resources nor the mandate to conduct investigations into any of our participants’.

Yaguarete Porá won Survival International’s ‘Greenwashing Award’ in 2010 for ‘dressing up the wholesale destruction of a huge area of the Indians’ forest as a noble gesture for conservation’.

While some Ayoreo have been contacted by missionaries, a number remain hidden in the forest. But their land is being quickly destroyed to make way for cattle farming.

Yaguarete has angered the Ayoreo by promoting its membership of the UN Global Compact on its website, which the Ayoreo believe promotes a false image of corporate responsibility.

Dangl has previously written The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press, 2007), and contributed to Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Latin American Issues (McGraw-Hill, 2006). He has written about politics and social issues in Latin America for The Guardian Unlimited, The Nation Magazine, The Progressive, Utne Reader, CounterPunch, Alternet, Common Dreams, Z Magazine, La Estrella de Panama and more. While currently teaching Latin American history and politics and globalization at Burlington College in Vermont, he also works as editor of the news websites: Upside Down World, focusing on politics and social movements in Latin America (founded by Dangl), and Toward Freedom, a progressive perspective on world events.

In Dancing With Dynamite’s introduction, Dangl writes that “this book deals with the dances between today’s nominally left-leaning South American governments and the dynamic movements that helped pave their way to power in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, and Paraguay. The discussion surrounding the question of changing the world through taking state power or remaining autonomous has been going on for centuries. The vitality of South America’s new social movements, and the recent shift to the left in the halls of government power, make the region a timely subject of study within this ongoing debate. Though often overlooked in contemporary reporting and analysis on the region, this dance is a central force crafting many countries’ collective destiny.”

Dangl feels that US activists can learn much from studying this “dance,” telling Angola 3 News that “because South American social movements have been so successful in the past decade, I think it is important to learn and understand what’s been successful and to apply those strategies and tactics here, where we are facing very similar challenges.” Because the political climate in the US today is different from Latin America in many ways, Dangl argues that “these strategies and tactics shouldn’t just be taken and applied directly to our communities, but should instead be considered and made useful in our own context and realities.”

In the interview, Dangl cites several different lessons for US activists, including the need to “create the kind of social relationships within our own social movements that reflect the kind of world that we are fighting for every day. That’s been useful for neighborhood councils in El Alto, Bolivia where people work together every day, whether it’s to build roads, soccer fields, or pressure a mayor for better access to electricity and water. These kinds of social relations within the family and neighborhoods help to create the capacity to mobilize road blockades and protests when that’s needed.”

There are also lessons here for US activists seeking to push President Obama and other politicians further to the left, as Dangl thinks the question of “how to fight against a relative ally in political office without empowering the right” has been “negotiated very successfully throughout South America.”

Fortunately, US activists have already been learning from their neighbors to the south. In the book’s introduction, Dangl cites several examples, including “the 2008 occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago which drew from tactics in Argentina, the movements for access to water in Detroit and Atlanta, which reflected tactics and struggles in Bolivia, and the Take Back the Land movement in Florida, which organized homeless people to occupy a vacant lot and pairs homeless families with foreclosed homes, mirroring the tactics and philosophy of the landless movement in Brazil.”

When asked for a closing thought at the end of our interview, Dangl emphasized the larger global struggle against oppression by arguing that Dancing With Dynamite’s lessons extend well beyond the US and Latin America. “With what’s happened in Egypt with the overthrow of Mubarak, and what is going on right now in Madison,Wisconsin with the fight for collective bargaining, I think these struggles are related in the sense that they’re all about political power. With these recent examples, there is a shift in power from the government office to the streets, and recognizing that is important today in the fight for social change. In Madison, activists say they’ve been really inspired by activists in Egypt. Recognizing these common oppressors & common systems of exploitation, and working for solutions together across borders is really a solution for making the world a better place.”

The sounds of car horns, salsa music, children in playgrounds, barking dogs and occasional gun shots rise out of Catia, one of the largest slums of South America. Catia is a sea of multi-tiered, tin-roofed brick shacks that cling to the mountains around Caracas, Venezuela. Uncollected garbage rots in the streets and tangled wires pirating electricity weave from house to house. Sporadically rising out of this neighborhood are dilapidated concrete apartment buildings with laundry flapping from the balconies like flags. Much of the support for President Hugo Chavez… comes from neighborhoods like Catia.

Many chapters of the book open similarly, with poetic imagery that captures the street-level reality of the South American revolutions as he sets about interviewing social movement activists to find out what’s really going on with the so-called “Pink Tide” rising over the continent. Not surprisingly, Dangl has written a very different script from Oliver Stone, whose material is filtered through translators, refracted by a Hollywood lens and drawn exclusively from interviews with the presidents in their government palaces.

Dancing with Dynamite enters a growing field of books on South American politics, so it’ll face competition for space on the bookshelf. Nevertheless, this is a daring, you could say “explosive,” little book, and it stands out in a big way from other volumes on the subject, especially since the latter tend to follow the same Great Man narrative that Stone develops in his film. For example, Pirates of the Caribbean, by Tariq Ali (who co-authored the South of the Border script, along with Mark Weisbrot, co-director of Center for Economic and Policy Research, CEPR) focuses almost exclusively on the so-called “leftist” presidents of the region: Chavez, Castro, Morales and Correa.

A much better book is Nikolas Kozloff’s Revolution!: South America and the rise of the New Left. While Kozloff tends not to be too dazzled by the Great Men of History to investigate the social movements, the influence of the dominant narrative still shows through: “Though many social movements pressure governments from without, some have also merged with political parties themselves, creating a potent coalition to spearhead social change.”

Dangl challenges and ultimately refutes this popular assumption, widely held on the left outside of South America, that there is a common interest between the governments and the social movements of the region. The assumption is based, it seems, on very little but hope: hope that things are different in South America than they are here in the U.S, where a president elected as a “progressive” has proven himself to be, at best, entirely indifferent to the people struggling for justice, and at worst, their enemy.

That becomes increasingly clear to the reader of Dancing with Dynamite is that there are many striking parallels between the US and its southern neighbors: in South America, particularly Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay and Brazil, sharp conflicts are commonplace between left social movements and “progressive” governments that often only differ nominally from their right-wing predecessors. A confluence of interests between governments and organized movements in the region is the exception rather than the rule and Dangl goes so far as to argue that the governments of the region are “dancing with dynamite” because “the logic of social movements competes with that of the state.” By contrast to the assumptions made by Kozloff, Ali and others, Dangl’s conclusion is that “the state and governing party is, by its nature, a hegemonic force that generally aims to subsume, weaken or eliminate other movements and political forces that contest its power.” The book is offered as evidence to back up this statement, and it’s convincing.

Nevertheless, despite his sympathies toward the “autonomist” movements, Dangl shows himself willing to tip his hat to the state when appropriate: “While autonomist movements and actions are a focus of this book, the importance of state-created initiatives, social programs, and development projects aimed at empowering people and curtailing poverty should not be underestimated.” Dangl works in the tradition of the great historian Howard Zinn, keeping his focus on the common partners in this “dance” as he reveals how social movements have been more or less demobilized, set back or, in Ecuador, under direct, and sometimes violent, attack by many of the “progressive” governments.

Dangl’s earlier book, The Price of Fire, brought Bolivia’s struggles into focus, so it’s no surprise that he would pick up where he left off by dealing with this very complex political situation in the first chapter of Dancing with Dynamite entitled, “Bolivia’s Dance with Evo Morales.” Social movements played a major role in the election of one of South America’s first indigenous leaders, a man who also was a protagonist in those same movements. Dangl reveals through his interviews with social movement activists, community leaders and party militants of the official MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) Party, a problematic, complicated and contradictory relationship with the social movements.

Part of the problem is situational and structural, a simple result of what happens to the exercise of popular power when mediated by the State. If your community is organized to bring water to each home, a degree of “demobilization” is natural when that function is taken over by the state. What was a work built on personal, neighborly relations now becomes an anonymous enterprise and the personal bonds of neighbors are no longer “necessary.”As Pablo Mamani, an Aymaran sociologist at the Public University of El Alto framed the problem in an interview with Dangl: “Movements organized autonomously and created forms of self-governance before the MAS took power. If the party now directs those energies toward the state, it contributes to a level of demobilization.” Other activists Dangl interviewed argue that it also contributes to a certain level of political apathy.

Another factor contributing to that apathy, however, has been for members of the social movements to see their leaders jockeying for positions and high-paid sinecures in the new government. Many leaders of social movements have been seduced by power and money, “seeking better jobs, and more money in the government now, instead of focusing on meeting the demands of their bases.” As a result, Dangl notes that the MAS government “imposes direction and policy on coopted movements that are then used as part of a political machine to simply maintain centralized power and churn out votes.”

This also reflects what many argue to be a strategy from the beginning of the Morales government for the deactivation of the social movements. In fact Morales’ ambivalence toward the social movements has been evident since the beginning of his presidency. When I visited Bolivia just months after the Morales inauguration, a number of indigenous and social movement leaders expressed to me having felt, at best, ignored, and in some cases, betrayed by the new government.

In Cochabamba, Oscar Olivera, a main organizer of the infamous gas and water wars which brought down previous governments, told me, with a note of bitterness in his voice, that Evo had called him daily, often several times a day, before becoming president, but in the four months since he’d come to power, Oscar had yet to hear from him.

Already in April of 2006 rumors were abounding of government attempts to bribe, with money or power, or otherwise deactivate, the leadership of the movements.  In the intervening years more evidence of these conflicts has emerged, causing a great unease that mixes with the optimism of the Bolivian social movements. In interviews with members of the MAS, activists in various movements, and government officials, Dangl concludes starkly that Bolivia’s future depends on “how the movements navigate a rocky road filled with nepotism, corruption and cooptation, and how well they can rise above party politics and the adoration of a single leader.”

In Ecuador, another nation with a “progressive” president and a large indigenous population, the social movements are facing not cooptation, but frontal attacks by Rafael Correa, a president fond of the language of the “Socialism of the  Century” for dressing up his 21st century capitalist politics. “Correa turned his back on the indigenous people and Ecuadorian left almost immediately upon taking office,” Dangl tells us.

This coincides with US journalist Daniel Denvir’s wry observation that Correa is only known as a leftist outside of Ecuador. Also unknown outside of Ecuador are his authoritarian, controlling and insulting comments and behavior toward members of the social movements, particularly the environmentalists and indigenous people, both sectors that present obstacles to his extractivist capitalist policies. Correa commonly refers to members of both groups who refuse to go along with policies they consider reckless, invasive or destructive as “infantile.” In response, the social and indigenous movements have offered Correa tepid support, as noted in the recent “coup” or police uprising. Correa’s attacks on indigenous movements such as CONAIE has had the effect of pushing them “out of the political debate and calling on police repression to crack down on their dissent, Correa has worked to undermine the indigenous movement,” in Dangl’s words.

From Ecuador Dangl takes us to Argentina where a few years ago workers rose up against the neoliberal governments when the economy imploded in December of 2001. Workers began taking over factories, hotels and other businesses in direct actions. Piqueteros, groups of unemployed workers who had previously organized themselves into powerful popular organizations to demand justice, were exercising a growing power through the 1990s and through the crisis of December 2001. When President Nestor Kirchner (who died October 27 of this year) came to power on a progressive platform, he set out to coopt those movements he was able, and wear the others down by simply ignoring them, when possible, in what journalist Federico Schuster calls “ a strategy of wearing out the resistance” and dispersing it. Kirchner’s dual strategy worked and in Argentina today “one of the most expansive and momentous grassroots uprisings of the 21st century dissipated” and the groups that comprised it have mostly become, according to Dangl, “shadows of what they were in 2001 and 2002.”

Dangl examines Uruguay under the Frente Amplio (FA), a stunning example of coalition building and grassroots organizing for an electoral campaign (as is the Worker’s Party in neighboring Brazil), in his aptly titled chapter, “Turning Activists into Voters in Uruguay.” On the positive side, some democratic structures such as base committees and communal councils (Dangl doesn’t clearly distinguish these two) came into being through the electoral organizing, yet “when the logic of electoral politics takes precedence over the urgent demands of a population, the role of social movements as powerful political protagonists can be lost or confused.” As a result, the social movements of Uruguay are viewed by many as stagnant. Moreover, while base committees of the FA offer possibilities for citizens to participate more fully in their government, Dangl concludes that they can “also constrain the autonomy of communities.”

Dangl agrees with most observers that social movements have prospered and increased under the Chavez government in Venezuela, saying “a number of government initiatives and policies have empowered the grassroots in unprecedented ways and created space in which social movements can flex their muscles.” He visits health clinics, community radio stations, video collectives and, impressed as he is by what he sees, Dangl still wonders if “the Bolivarian Revolution can outlast Chavez.”

A centralized system such as Venezuela’s also tends to breed patronage. Many analysts have taken note of this and attribute it to the country’s dependency on a single resource administered by the state: oil. The problem antedates Chavez by some eighty years, and it’s one he’s alternately used to his advantage and also attempted to resolve by organizing communal councils and other decentralizing structures. Unfortunately, as Dangl notes, there is an ongoing resistance to these attempts from within the Chavez government itself, and the majority of Venezuelans are dependent upon the government for some form of employment or assistance, making the development of autonomist movements very difficult.

Nevertheless, autonomist organizations and movements do exist in Venezuela and Dangl has included three of them in this chapter, although briefly and not always by name: the factory workers who took over their valve-manufacturing plant (Inveval), campesinos who occupied and gained title to land in Cojedes, and Wayuu indigenous activists who fought against coal mining in Zulia. From what Dangl offers us, these are isolated events and not manifestations of vital and powerful autonomous social movements representing distinct, independent sectors of Venezuelan society. Certainly to delve into that would have required time and space beyond the twenty-five pages Dangl allotted to the chapter on Venezuela, but it would have been quite valuable to connect those dots.

In his chapter on Brazil Dangl examines one of the most significant and successful social movements as well as one of the more neoliberal governments among the South American nations he’s selected to analyze. Lula, praised by moderates and conservatives alike, left office with enough popularity to help bring his successor, Dilma Rousseff, to power. But the social movements haven’t been very happy with Lula, nor do they seem to be convinced of any further leftward movements on the part of his successor, Rouseff. Dangl affirms the wisdom of the Landless Movement (MST, for their initials in Portuguese) in its decision to maintain a distance from electoral politics, especially given that, as he points out, land reform actually slowed under the Lula administration. The MST comes off as exemplary for the way they have maintained a focus, energy and clear organizational strategy without being pulled away into electoral politics.

Dangl ends his examination of South America in Paraguay, where he opened his introduction. Fernando Lugo, a bishop formed in Liberation Theology, became president of this country in 2008 after an unending succession of presidents and dictators from the ruling Colorado Party, most notoriously Alfredo Stroessner. Despite the enthusiasm that greeted Lugo’s victory (my Argentinian friends and I drove all night to attend the inaugural celebrations, and were met there by joyous activists from all over South America), the new Paraguayan president has proven to be a great disappointment. One Paraguayan from the Frente Social y Popular, an organization which came into being to elect him, told me: “Lugo isn’t a fighter. He tries to make peace with everyone.” Unfortunately, he has made peace primarily with the great Brazilian soy farmers, the oligarchy, the notorious mafias that trade in black and gray market goods, and the Colorado Party, which maintains hold on the congress and most of the apparatus of the state, including security and military. Lugo, it seems, has made peace with everyone in the country but the social movements that continue to struggle for justice with very little aid or comfort from the man who was formerly known as “the Red Bishop of the Poor.”

By the end of the book, or from the vantage point of the US, it all looks so familiar: progressive presidents who usurp the energy of the social movements and channel it into their electoral campaigns turn out to be just another capitalist brand against whom the movements, if they maintain their clarity and independence, must engage in a new struggle. The story line repeats all over the Americas, and that’s just the point. “When connections are made across borders to identify both the systems of oppression and the strategies to overcome them, a better world will indeed be possible,” Dangl argues. With such parallels between the political situation in the US and in many South American countries, it’s fitting that Dangl would end his book in the US, with a focus on activists applying strategies and tactics from Latin America. Dangl examines the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, the anti-water privatization activists, particularly in Highland Park, Michigan, and the housing activists organized by Max Rameau in Miami, each engaged in struggles mirroring those taking place over the past decade in South America.

“Moving beyond traditional concepts of democracy and acting outside the logic of the state,” Dangl tells us, “has been beneficial to movements throughout history.” He continues: “Working toward Utopia within the autonomous territory of the movement means a new world can be created without the blessing of the state or capitalism, but according to the movement’s logic and reality.”

By the final chapter of Dancing with Dynamite and after a tour through a South America in upheaval, or resurrection, the reader might find these words convincing, even in the absence of massive concrete evidence of the existence of an actual social movement in the US. Those of us who lived through the ‘60s know that movements can appear almost overnight in an illuminating flash of self-conscious recognition when the constricting fabric of long-held delusions and stupefying apathy rips open as the result of a crisis to reveal a long-repressed reality.

Dancing with Dynamite is more than a simple romantic fascination with far-off, exotic revolutions. It offers a glimpse of what we might find beyond the crisis that has paralyzed us, the first inklings of that process that, should it come to fruition, is guaranteed to strike terror in the hearts of the Great Men of History.

I personally would question even the first assertion about a fetus or an embryo being a human being, but that’s not the point I wish to make here. I’d like to suggest that before a young American man or woman can enlist in the armed forces s/he must be told the following by the staff of the military recruitment office:

“The United States is at war [this statement is always factually correct]. You will likely be sent to a battlefield where you will be expected to do your best to terminate the lives of whole, separate, unique, living human beings you know nothing about and who have never done you or your country any harm. You may in the process lose an arm or a leg. Or your life. If you come home alive and with all your body parts intact there’s a good chance you will be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Do not expect the government to provide you particularly good care for that, or any care at all. In any case, you may wind up physically abusing your spouse and children and/or others, killing various individuals, abusing drugs and/or alcohol, and having an increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide. No matter how bad a condition you may be in, the Pentagon may send you back to the battlefield for another tour of duty. They call this ‘stop-loss’. Your only alternative may be to go AWOL. Do you have any friends in Canada? And don’t ever ask any of your officers what we’re fighting for. Even the generals don’t know. In fact, the generals especially don’t know. They would never have reached their high position if they had been able to go beyond the propaganda we’re all fed, the same propaganda that has influenced you to come to this office.”

Since for so many young people in recent years one of the determining factors in their enlistment has been the economy, this additional thought should be pointed out to them — “You are enlisting to fight, and perhaps die, for a country that can’t even provide you with a decent job, or any job at all.”

I fear for us all, but I especially fear for those already poor. How much lower can they go without being cannon fodder or electric chair fodder or street litter or prison stuffing or just plain lonely suicide?
– Carolyn Chute, novelist, Maine USA

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word … like “bribery”

I really did not know that I could still be so surprised, even shocked, by corruption in the Congress of the United States. I thought my coating of cynicism was already more than thick enough to be impervious to any new revelations. I was wrong. Consider the following.

Seven members of the House of Representatives steered hundreds of millions of dollars in largely no-bid contracts to clients of a lobbying firm, PMA Group. In fiscal year 2008 alone, the seven lawmakers sponsored $112 million worth of “earmarks” (construction and other projects paid for by the government) for PMA clients while accepting more than $350,000 in contributions from the firm’s clients and lobbyists.

Such behavior should be investigated by the House ethics committee, should it not? And it was. The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct issued a report stating unanimously that the Congressmembers had not violated any rules or laws. “Simply because a member sponsors an earmark for an entity that also happens to be a campaign contributor does not, on these two facts alone, support a claim that a member’s actions are being influenced by campaign contributions.”

Ethics watchdogs issued sharp denunciations, citing portions of the report that showed that the private companies themselves thought that their donations helped them win earmarks.

One of the seven Congressmembers investigated was Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.) The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), a government agency not composed of members of Congress, which conducts preliminary reviews, found probable cause that Visclosky sought contributions in exchange for steering federal contracts to contributors. The OCE was in possession of e-mails suggesting that Visclosky’s fundraisers were specifically targeted toward PMA’s clients who were seeking earmarks. Even though the OCE recommended that the more powerful House ethics committee subpoena Visclosky and his staff to answer questions under oath about his earmarking practice, the members of the House committee chose not to subpoena Visclosky or any of the pertinent records.

Wait, it gets better — The FBI actually raided the PMA offices as part of an investigation into whether the company had directed illegal campaign contributions to lawmakers who helped clients obtain earmarks, and in 2009 a federal grand jury issued subpoenas to Visclosky, one of his former aides, and his political committees.² But nothing — apparently nothing — could move the members of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct of the United States House of Representatives to condemn their comrades.

This is the kind of Congressional corruption that drives so many Americans — on the right and on the left — to think of forming a new party. At times, the thought hits me as well. But two factors interfere. One, the overwhelming role played by money in American electoral campaigns can trump the best of intentions. Wealthy elites have no need for any other party. The Democrats and Republicans serve their needs just fine, thank you.

And two, ideology. Gathering together a lot of people who are turned off by Congressional venality and amorality sounds good until the ideological shit hits the fan. There will undoubtedly be a wide range of ideological leanings in any such group because people who are serious about third parties like to be “non-sectarian” or “non-exclusionary”, but this typically leads to serious friction, disputes and splits. Even if you specify something like “the United States should get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible”, that can still take various conflicting forms; people’s politics are complicated, not to mention confused. To those who like to tell themselves and others that they don’t have any particular ideology I say this: If you have thoughts about why the world is the way it is, why society is the way it is, why people are the way they are, what a better way would look like, and if your thoughts are at all organized, that’s your ideology, even if it’s not wholly conscious as such. Better to organize those thoughts as best you can, become very conscious of them, and consciously avoid getting involved with a political party that is incompatible. It’s like a bad marriage.

Things are indeed polarizing in America. There’s The Tea Party on the right and The Coffee Party on the left. On the face of it, The Tea Party scarcely makes any sense. A seemingly burgeoning new movement semi-hysterically marching and screaming that their beloved free enterprise is threatened by the “socialist” Barack Obama. (What next, that he’s a committed “Marxist” or “communist”? They’ve probably already said that; if you’re going to be dumb you may as well go all the way and be retarded.)

A group of more mainstream conservatives gathered February 17 at a Virginia estate once owned by George Washington and called for a return to the principles of Washington’s time to fight the political battles that lie ahead. They produced a declaration, “The Mount Vernon Statement: Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century”. It is a short statement, a mere 546 words, yet the idea of “limited government” or “self-government” is referred to seven times. These people, no less than the Teapartyers, are obsessed with the idea that government intrusion into society of virtually any kind is harmful, or at least much inferior to what could be derived from “free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions”, as they put it. This is standard and familiar conservative doctrine to be sure, but now feeding and powering a whole new generation of right-wing activists.

To counter the arguments of these activists, progressives need to present their own doctrine about the role and value of government in people’s lives, a concise summary of which I just happen to have prepared in my essay: “The US invades, bombs and kills for it … but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?” It was written several years ago, as the examples I use make clear, but this matters not for the ideological principles have not changed. The essay concludes: “Activists have to remind the American people of what they’ve already learned but seem to have forgotten: that they don’t want more government, or less government; they don’t want big government, or small government; they want government on their side.”

Paraguay, Honduras, and Barack Obama

During his campaign for the presidency of Paraguay, former bishop Fernando Lugo promised to bring health care to the millions unable to afford it. A month after Lugo took office in August 2008, the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare (MSPBS) gradually began to make some public health services free, waiving fees for office, outpatient and emergency room visits. Later, hospital admission fees were eliminated, along with charges for intensive care, post-op incision care, treatment in an infant incubator, oxygen therapy, surgery and other services. In 2009, fees were removed for diagnostic tests in all specialties, and for dental and ophthalmological services. Almost all public health services in Paraguay are now free of charge. “What we are doing is making health care a right, regardless of a person’s ability to pay,” said the director general of the MSPBS.

After 61 years of rule by the right-wing Colorado Party, the Paraguayan left needs to institute various reforms to make sure that free health care is sustainable in the long term.³

So what would it take for free health care to reach the shores of the world’s only superpower? Well, a president who believed in it and who had some backbone. But every passing day brings us fresh evidence that the man has no backbone. The Republicans, or certain Democrats, or a powerful lobby, or Israel applies a little pressure and the man buckles. Like a shack in Haiti during a quake.

As to his beliefs … In May of last year I wrote in this report: “The problem, I’m increasingly afraid, is that the man doesn’t really believe strongly in anything, certainly not in controversial areas. He learned a long time ago how to take positions that avoid controversy, how to express opinions without clearly and firmly taking sides, how to talk eloquently without actually saying anything, how to leave his listeners’ heads filled with stirring clichés, platitudes, and slogans. And it worked. Oh how it worked! What could happen now, as President of the United States, to induce him to change his style?”

How long before Fernando Lugo lets slip some critical remarks about the behemoth to the north that tosses Paraguay into the ODE (Officially Designated Enemy) dumpster along with Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, et al.? Undoubtedly, there are any number of old-time right-wing military officers in Paraguay who are just itching to duplicate what happened in Honduras. I can hear them now — “We don’t need no stinkin’ socialist government with its stinkin’ communist free health care” — and just waiting for someone at the Pentagon to casually nod his head. And if that happens, the Obama administration will embrace the Paraguayan caudillos just as they’ve done with the Honduran golpistas, the latest show of support being the announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the resumption of aid and her urging Latin American countries to recognize the new Honduran government, despite its serious and daily violations of human rights.⁴

Help wanted for an animated political cartoon

I have written a script for a short video — estimated 5 to 10 minutes long, to be shown on YouTube and elsewhere on the Internet, tentatively entitled “Be nice to America. Or we’ll bring democracy to your country.” We need a cartoonist to draw the images and a technical person to create the movement using Adobe flash or other software, and to add the narration. Could be one person for both functions. The persons should be in basic agreement with the political ideas expressed in the script, which is available for a confidential reading upon request. Halfway decent pay. Write to: moc.loanull@6mulbb.

1. Washington Post, February 26, 2010.
2. Washington Post, February 27, 2010.
3. Inter Press Service, January 6, 2010.
4. Associated Press, March 5, 2010.

The devastation wreaked by the bulldozers has been caught on satellite photographs. They have been hired by a Brazilian company, Yaguarete Pora S.A., to clear the land to make way for cattle-ranching in northern Paraguay. They are alleged to be hired from Jacobo Kauenhowen, owner of a large bulldozer business in the nearby Mennonite colony of Loma Plata.

The bulldozers’ entry onto the tribe’s land is completely illegal after Yaguarete had its licence to work in the area suspended by the government.

The tribe, the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, is the only uncontacted tribe in South America outside the Amazon. Thousands of hectares of their land, in an area called the Chaco in northern Paraguay, were destroyed by Yaguarete and another company, River Plate SA, last year.

Some Totobiegosode have already been contacted and have relatives among those who are still uncontacted in the forest.

According to a local organisation supporting the Totobiegosode, Yaguarete has made it clear to them that ‘it does not respect indigenous rights nor Paraguay’s laws.’

Uncontacted tribes are exceedingly vulnerable to any kind of contact because of their lack of immunity to outsiders’ diseases. In an emergency report to the UN last year, Survival described the threat to the Totobiegosode as ‘the most serious threat to tribal peoples anywhere in the world.’

Survival director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘The bulldozers must be stopped and withdrawn from the Totobiegosode’s territory. What kind of government would stand by while this continues?’

In the early hours of May 1st, Sabino Augusto Montanaro, the Interior Minister in Paraguay during the repressive Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989), returned to his country after 20 years in Honduras. Doctors say 86-year-old Montanaro is suffering from senility and Parkinson’s disease. Montanaro’s lawyer Luis Troche said his client returned to the country not to apologize for his crimes or face justice, but because, “according to Paraguayan law, he is too old to go to jail.”

Montanaro served as a minister under Stroessner from 1966 to the end of the dictatorship, and played a key role in the regime’s repression, directing the abduction, torture and murder of political opponents of Stroessner. Now, upon his return to Paraguay, he faces various criminal charges, and thousands of angry citizens, many of whom greeted his return to the country with protests, and calls for the ex-minister’s imprisonment.

Martin Almada, a human rights lawyer and former political prisoner, discovered documents which prove that Montanaro played a key role in Operation Condor, a unified, cross-border network of repression coordinated by military dictatorships in the region throughout the 1970 and ‘80s.

In 2006, Stroessner died at age 93 in Brasilia without facing justice for the repression that took place under his watch, including the disappearance of some 400 people and the torture of 18,000, according to a Truth and Justice Commission.

Paraguayan Bishop Mario Melanio Medina told the ABC Color newspaper that Montanaro was Stroessner’s “right hand man” and “number one [in command] after Stroessner.”

Rubber Bullets and Memory

Around noon at the May 1st rally, some 1,000 protesters began marching toward the private hospital where Montaro was a patient. While pounding drums and yelling political chants, the marchers paraded down the middle of many streets that were empty due to the holiday. The chants and drumming increased in volume when the marchers passed the red headquarters of the Colorado Party, Stroessner’s party, which lost its 60-year long grip on the country with the 2008 election of Fernando Lugo.

The march reached a climax upon arriving at the hospital. Dozens of riot cops surrounded the building, protecting the ex-minister by creating a wall with their thick metal shields, while hundreds of victims, and family members of victims of Montanaro’s repression, rallied in the streets outside, demanding justice.

When the majority of the marchers arrived at the hospital, one group charged the front door, trying to break through the police line and get to Montanaro. The police responded with brutal force that left one man bloody and stunned.

As the numbers of protesters outside the hospital increased, news spread that a judge ordered Montanaro’s transfer from the private hospital to a police hospital. Protesters responded by gathering around the side of the hospital where ambulances leave and arrive. Police formed another wall in this section of the hospital to protect Montanaro’s ambulance and allow for his safe transferal.

When the gates opened, and the ambulance transporting Montanaro began to leave, police pushed protesters back, crashing night sticks and shields on the bodies of the marchers, who responded by throwing stones at the police and ambulance. Protesters managed to get to the ambulance, breaking its windows with rocks as the police repression increased and the ambulance sped off. Police dispersed the crowd with a barrage of rubber bullets that injured a number of protesters.

Later, a vigil including hundreds of people gathered in front of the police hospital. “We, the relatives of the victims, are going to mount a special vigilance so this criminal has no space nor privilege in which to hide, or to argue that he’s insane to escape justice,” said Rolando Goiburu, the son of Dr. Agustin Goiburu who was disappeared under Stroessner, according to EFE.

Earlier in the day President Lugo arrived to echo the protesters sentiments. He spoke of Montanaro’s return: “I promise that there will be justice, the same mistakes that previous governments made will not be repeated, and there won’t be any privileges for anyone.” He told protesters outside the hospital that this is a “good opportunity to recuperate historical memory.”

Judith Rolón, a daughter of Martín Rolón who was disappeared during the Stroessner dictatorship, said Montanaro “will not have peace until he says where the disappeared are.”

P-MAS is one of Latin America’s newest Socialist parties — it’s barely two years old, and the average age of its members is 25 — but it has already hit the radar screen of those following the political processes of Latin America. “Conociendo al P-MAS,” a book of interviews with founding members of the party, was published earlier this year in Paraguay, edited by Marta Harnecker and Federico Fuentes of the Francisco Miranda Center of Venezuela. More importantly, P-MAS has become a force to be reckoned with on the political stage of Paraguay. Party militants there have been hard at work, particularly in the cities, building support at the base.

If much of the socialism of the twentieth century was characterized by ideological splits, doctrinaire, internecine struggles, P-MAS hopes the “socialism of the twenty-first century” in Paraguay will be characterized by left unity in diversity with flexible, pluralistic ideologies formed out of practical experience, in the spirit of Karl Marx himself. And so it’s no surprise that members of P-MAS have in common an impatience with dogmatic, “black and white” thinking which has too often characterized segments of the left – not to mention the right. P-MAS seems to dance where angels fear to tread; it’s a party that takes risks even when it urges people to use caution.

Evidence for this latter is posted in the enormous party dining hall. Three posters in a window tell the story of a recent struggle led by the gays and lesbians of the party. One poster shows two men holding hands and, in Spanish, “I’m Happy! I’m Gay!” in large letters. Beneath, in smaller type, the explanation: “To be gay is normal; To be gay is a blessing; To be gay is natural; To be gay is to love and be free. If you’re gay, be happy!”

This was part of the gay and lesbian members’ recent campaign, called “Paragay: Campaign against Homophobia in Paraguay.” Beneath that poster is another, with multicolored condoms and the heading “They’re also arms against Capital” and the other poster with multicolored condoms reads “Taking care of yourself is also Revolutionary.”

“That was intense,” Aldo says as he notices me taking a photo of the posters. “Here in Paraguay, one of the most conservative countries in Latin America, people told us we were crazy to take that on. But we did because we thought we had to and it turned out great.”

More “reasonable” people have advised P-MAS to do all sorts of things they didn’t do, and they were also mostly wrong. For example, in the last election the older “wiser” left told P-MAS to tone down the socialist language as they entered the final laps of the electoral process. Aldo says that Tekojoja, the organization that became the party platform for Fernando Lugo to win the presidency, began to push aside other smaller parties of the Alianza Patriotica por el Cambio in the final sprint to the finish line and one way that it did that was by insisting that P-MAS turn down the volume. But Aldo maintains that they were wrong, especially in telling P-MAS to tone down the socialist rhetoric. “Like left parties often do here in Latin America, especially here in Paraguay, they tried to compete with the right by outspending them. One of those left parties spent two million dollars and got only 10,000 votes. We spent one tenth of that and came out with nearly 20,000 votes.” And, Aldo points out, that’s more than double what P-MAS got two years before in previous elections when they received 8,000 votes. “That proves,” he concludes, “that people like the language of the left. They agree with it. They want it.”

The socialist discourse isn’t the only criticism made of P-MAS. Ironically, they’ve also been accused of being too cozy with the right wing and receiving financing from US government agencies, in particular, USAID. These rumors are mostly raised by political parties in decline who see the P-MAS’s youthful energy and agressive work in the communities as a threat to their own power base. In an interview, one member of the Paraguayan Communist Party, who preferred to remain anonymous, made the accusation that P-MAS was funded by the CIA, but could offer no evidence nor refer to credible sources for his information. “I’ve heard that. That’s the rumor,” was all he could say, shrugging his shoulders.

In “Conociendo al P-MAS” Marta Harnecker raises the question of USAID funding with party members who acknowledge that the NGO out of which P-MAS emerged, Casa de Juventud (CJ, Youth House), like most NGOs in Paraguay, received some funding from USAID and a multitude of other international governmental and aid organizations. But in its earlier formation as the Revolutionary Socialist Nucleus (NRS), P-MAS separated from CJ and while P-MAS has maintained friendly relations with CJ and other NGOs funded by USAID and other international agencies, the party refuses such funding. P-MAS is funded by a combination of sales of its literature, t-shirts and such, contributions from its militant members, including elected officials who donate portions of their salaries, and money received from the electoral commission of the Paraguayan government, which disburses funds to all political parties that meet the minimal percentage of popular support to qualify.

Still others have criticized the class origins of members of P-MAS, saying its youthful members are “kids from the middle class who know nothing of poverty” (in the words of one angry member of an opposing political party in the Frente Social y Popular).

Juan de Dios laughs when he hears this criticism. He lives in the Republicano zone of the city, in the area known as “Bañado Sur” (“Bathed South”) so named for the fact that this low lying zone of the city has traditionally become a floodplain with the spring rains.

Juan’s house, like most houses in the flatlands around the dump, is home-made, but certainly a step up from the shacks made of cardboard and other recycled materials in which the dump workers live. Juan’s house is made chiefly of brick and mud with veins of gray cement in critical areas. Still, it’s by no standards “middle-class”: There’s no indoor plumbing and the open sewer runs along the street beside his house. As he shows me around the small, two-bedroom house in some stage of construction, he asks, “Does this look like the house of a petit-bourgeoisie?”

Walking up the alleyways near his house we have to zig-zag around the sewer stream and it’s only luck that today he’s upwind from the dump, visible from his house. Juan points to other houses in his neighborhood of “Bañado Sur” where other party members live before we take a walk to the dump to talk with the workers.

As we walk from the dump to Juan’s house where we’ll have lunch, we pass open pools of brown water Juan reminisces about the nearby lake which he describes as having been “crystalline” years ago when he was growing up. “People used to fish there and go swimming. It was a beautiful lake.”

It still is a beautiful lake, with ducks and cows wading in the water to graze on some of the plants rising out of the lake. But it’s no longer “crystalline” and certainly not a place where anyone would want to go swimming.

I ask if dengue has been a problem in the neighborhood and Juan chuckles. “No, that’s one advantage of all the pollution. Dengue mosquitos only breed in clean water. The water here is too polluted for them to grow in.”

Juan calls the workers on his cell phone as we approach the dump, an enormous mesa in a fenced area with a guard at the gate. “They’ve fenced in the dump since the city privatized it. We used to be able to go right up into the dump before it was privatized,” Juan explains. “Now they don’t let us in. We have to call the workers to meet outside the dump.”

In recent years the enormous garbage dump, located five or six blocks from Juan’s house, has been seen as a blessing: it has acted as a dike and prevented the flooding at the same time that it has also provided some 850 workers with employment, sifting through the dump in search of recyclable materials that they can sell. Juan de Dios is the general coordinator of the P-MAS in the neighborhood and he’s been “accompanying” the recyclers who, even while unionized, work in conditions their counterparts in Argentina call “inhuman.”

Now even that work is in danger since the dump has been privatized, leading to even more precarious conditions for the workers. The new company has argued that the dump is full and for the past month has been sending its trucks to dump at clandestine locations around the city. More than a third of the workers have quit going to work, preferring to stay home in their shacks, pieced together by lumber, sheetmetal, fiberglass and even cardboard rescued from the dump. Now the situation for all the workers has gone from “inhuman” to desperate. As Juan talks to the workers in a strange mix of Guaraní and Spanish, one of the workers describes his situation.

“He says his daughter asked him for money so she can buy lunch at school today. But he has four children and he hasn’t been able to give them anything for several days now,” Juan translates for me. The man’s brow is furrowed with worry as he continues the conversation in Guaraní and he and Juan discuss what options are available to the workers. If the situation doesn’t improve, the two or more thousands people, the recyclers and their families, will face starvation. Juan, as part of his mission of “accompanying” the workers in their struggle, will attend the meeting of the city council the following day to find out why the garbage trucks have stopped going to the dump.

Juan’s work with the recyclers is one of dozens of community projects in which the P-MAS works. As Aldo explains, “Most other parties only make the rounds in the neighborhoods once every four years, at election time. We live here in the neighborhoods and believe we have to maintain a constant presence to build a new society.” Thanks to this presence, Aldo said, P-MAS has grown exponentially while other parties have declined.

Back in the center of Asuncion, Aldo takes me to visit an important landmark in the development of the P-MAS, the Casa de Juventud (CJ), where Camilo Soares and others began to organize the party. It continues to serve as a youth center with its own radio station, Radio Rebelde, and it also is home to the Germinal Labor Studies Center. While P-MAS ended formal relations with the Casa over five years ago, they remain organizations working in close collaboration.

In the entryway of the CJ is a bronze plaque dedicated to General Stroessner in 1982. Beneath that plaque is a poster for the current educational campaign, “Campaign Against Oblivion and Silence.” Around the poster are images of the disappeared and tortured political prisoners of the Stroessner regime. A young woman who meets us in the hallway explains that this is a campaign the Casa is bringing into the schools all around the country.

“You have to understand that 70% of Paraguay is under thirty. Most of the country doesn’t even remember Stroessner. And if they ask their parents, their parents often won’t talk about it.”

Unlike other countries that participated in Plan Condor from the 1960s on, like Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile, where those responsible for crimes against humanity are now being tried, Paraguay has done nothing toward bringing the torturers and murderers to justice. “They continue in power. Many of those who designed the program are still in the government to this day, in positions of authority.”

Officially, 4,000 were disappeared, but Aldo says that number is far from accurate.

“When they disappeared someone, they often disappeared their whole family. In fact they sometimes disappeared whole communities. There are towns where everyone was disappeared, and no witnesses remain.”

The Campaign against Oblivion and Silence is a small step toward keeping alive the issue of the disappeared, but it is at least a step. As Aldo shows me around the Casa he continues talking about the dictatorship.

“People think that the dictatorship ended in 1989 when a coup drove Stroessner from power but that isn’t the case. The Colorado Party, Stroessner’s party, remained in power…”

“Until last month,” I said, finishing his statement, and referring to the August 15th inauguration of Fernando Lugo as president, who brought the more than six decade long rule of the military and the Colorado party to an end.

Aldo nodded. “Yes, the dictatorship remained in power in the executive until last week. But it still remains in power in the legislative and judicial branches.”

In this context, Lugo’s supporters realize that they’re racing against the clock. The P-MAS continues its work, building support for the new government in the poorest neighborhoods of the cities of Paraguay. Given recent events in the country, especially Lugo’s Sept. 2 revelations of a coup plot against him, the new president could do worse than to take a cue from the P-MAS as he picks his way through the minefields of Paraguayan society. He could up the ante, turn up the rhetoric and back his words up with clear actions aimed at getting the country back into the hands of his people. With soy and cattle oligarchies, organized crime and a suspicious U.S. government prepared to join forces against any change, this new priest-turned-president may also need a miracle or two along the way if he decides to take a turn to the left — but he’ll be able to count on the P-MAS to watch his back.

Fernando Lugo became a priest in 1977 and the following year went off to Ecuador where he worked among the indigenous people in the province of Bolívar under the renowned liberation theologian, Bishop Leonidas Proaño Villalba. Lugo returned to his native Paraguay in 1982 and eventually became bishop of San Pedro, the poorest department of Paraguay. He received special permission to leave that post as bishop in order to run for the presidency, which he won on April 20th of this year.

I got my first inkling of what Lugo’s election would mean for the people of Paraguay when I arrived at the border on the morning of the inauguration. My friends and I ended up separating at the border so I crossed alone. I handed my passport to the woman behind the large plate glass and she opened it and thumbed through it, stopping at the last page before she handed it back.

“Where’s your visa?” she asked.

“Visa?”I responded. “I thought you got a visa at the border.”

She shook her head. “No. Your government requires you to get a visa in advance. You have to go back to the Paraguayan Consulate to get a visa.”

Then she noticed my t-shirt. I was wearing a t-shirt with a drawing by my friend, Diego Rios, of the Cuban patriot and martyr, Jose Martí.

“Why do you want to go to Paraguay?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I had planned to go to the inauguration of President Lugo,” I responded, my voice dropping as I spoke.

By now two other officials had gathered around her window, a young man who was seated at the desk beside her and who now leaned over to her window, and another, taller woman, entering from the other office, who appeared to be their superior. The three of them exchanged a few words and then the taller woman waved me to the door and told me to come into the office.

“Jose Martí,” she said as I walked in. “What do you think of him?”

I told her I admired him for his struggle for Cuban independence and that I hoped one day all of Latin America would be free and united. And that was why I thought it was so important to be present for the inauguration of President Lugo. She smiled, nodded approvingly and invited me into the office.

In the office the three of them began discussing my situation.

“He needs a visa,” the first woman said.

“Yes,” said the taller woman,” but we can’t give him one here.”

“Well, we could just let him in,” the young man said.

The taller woman dismissed the idea with the wave of her hand. “No. He could get in trouble when he arrived. And he’d certainly get in trouble when he left Paraguay.”

It went on like this for a moment until the woman at the desk suggested giving me a transit visa. The tall woman nodded and they set to work, looking through the stamps until they found the right one.

While they processed me, I watched Lugo on television which was on in the office, the image moving about on the screen from a distracted camera person, shooting from too great a distance from the stage where Lugo was speaking.

The taller woman noticed I was watching and she pointed at Lugo, his image dancing back and forth as the camera tried to find his focus.

“We love our president,” she said, and then she handed me my passport.

I took a cab the twenty or so miles into Asunción. I asked the driver what he thought of the new president. “Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we? But he has promised to give his presidential salary to the poor. That’s a first for this country. Maybe they’ll rob less than all the others.” He shrugged and turned back to focus on his driving.

We couldn’t get near the Plaza de Independencia so I got out seven or eight blocks away and walked to the plaza, passing blocks and blocks of soldiers filling the outlying streets. It looked more like a military coup than an inauguration.

I found myself walking beside a woman and her daughter who were also unfamiliar with Asunción and who had come in just for the celebrations. We were both lost so we stopped to ask a soldier. Her subservient posture, and the slight bow she made as she asked directions to the Plaza de Independencia, revealed that Paraguayans still haven’t fully recovered from their fear of the police and military who terrorized the country under the Stroessner dictatorship and over sixty years of one-party rule.

“Soldiers will never again be sent out to kill campesinos,” Lugo promised, but the uniformed men who passed through the crowds nevertheless drew quiet, suspicious looks. Their olive green uniforms still in some sense symbolized the forty-year-long Stroessner dictatorship.

By the time we arrived in the Plaza the inauguration had ended and a few minutes later the new President rode by, followed by guards on horseback.

Lugo had broken all protocol by dressing in sandals and a typical Paraguayan shirt, an aopo’i, and he began his speech in Guarani, the indigenous language spoken by over 95% of the people of Paraguay.

The leaders of the “Pink Tide” arrived in force, most notably Presidents Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Michelle Bachelet, Tabaré Vázquez, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In addition, two elders of Liberation Theology, Gustavo Gutierrez and Leonardo Boff appeared, along with Fr. Ernesto Cardenal. Eduardo Galeano also made an appearance.

But more importantly, the plaza was full of tens of thousands of the people who had brought Fernando Lugo to power: the indigenous and campesinos from distant parts of the country as well as the slum dwellers who had ventured into the Plaza from their shacks made of cardboard, wood from pallets and roofed with corrugated fiberglass or sheetmetal held down by stones, old boards, rusting bicycle frames. These structures line dirt roads that twist down toward Rio Paraguana and house a large number of the quarter or so Paraguayans who live on something like one US dollar per day.

In the shade of the trees in the plaza people sat, sharing their maté tea, talking and laughing. I’d missed the elation of Lugo’s speech, but the crowd was still wearing smiles everywhere and people were posing for pictures they could carry away to remember the historic moment of transition when the Colorado Party fell from power after 61 years of rule.

Nevertheless, the sense of hope was anything but drunken or delirious. The people I met and with whom I spoke mentioned that they were indeed optimistic, but also cautious in their optimism, much like the taxi driver who had delivered me as close as he could to the plaza. “I’m hopeful that we’ll see changes here,” a young woman told me,”but we’ll have to see, won’t we?”

The crowd was composed of a broad mix of people from tribal indigenous to mestizo; well-heeled urbanites and campesinos in traditional sandals; businessmen in suits and street vendors in rags; young kids with piercings and tatoos and elders walking with the aid of their middle-aged children. Lugo’s support clearly crosses all lines drawn across Paraguayan society and he seems to have inspired a cautious optimism even among members of the Colorado Party.

I joined the crowd leaving the Plaza and by chance I ended up in a demonstration led by, and almost wholly composed of, members of the P-MAS Socialist Party (Movement toward Socialism Party). I was on my way to find a hotel at the time, so I was glad for the company. The young people who form the core of the P-MAS are among the most enthusiastic of Lugo’s supporters. Their party was founded two years ago to promote the Socialism of the 21st Century and it has grown dramatically, especially among the youth. Although they won no seats in the parliament (which the party attributed to fraud), several members won relatively high posts in the new government, including Camilo Soares, who was named Minister of National Emergencies, and two other members named as vice-ministers of culture and of youth.

That night I went to the free concert in front of the National Palace. The high point was the arrival of Chavez and Lugo, who took seats in the audience and eventually took the stage, not with speeches, but with poetry recitals and songs.

Chavez, of course, went first, reciting a long poem to Bolivar, “Por aquí pasa,” by Venezuelan Alberto Torrealba. Chavez was accompanied by the quintet of Venezuelan singer and member of parliament, Cristóbal Jiménez. Later, Chavez returned with President Lugo to sing a reggae version of Mercedes Sosa’s song, “Todo Cambia,” arranged by Lugo’s head of Security, Marcial Congo, a long-haired, bearded man who looked to be pushing sixty. The group accompanying them was led by rock musician Rolando Chaparro who had begun his set with a soulful rock guitar version of Paraguay’s National Anthem,

I started leaving after the set with Lugo and Chavez, thinking that the event had reached its high point, when I ran into Elena, AN older woman from P-MAS who I’d met earlier in the day.

I asked her about the party and she confessed that she was involved because her daughter was a member. I admitted to being surprised that any party claiming to be “socialist” could find members at this juncture in history, so soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the turn of China toward capitalism.

“We’ve organized on issues that are relevant to people, especially the poor people of Paraguay, who are the majority. That is, Paraguay is a poor country. I mean it’s rich in the sense that you can drop a seed anywhere and it will grow, but the people here are very poor,” she explained.

Angel, the white haired Uruguayan who runs the hotel where I was staying, had put it this way: “Here in Paraguay there are only two classes of people: Those with shoes, and those without. That’s it. There’s no middle class. And the poor are the poorest in the world.”

Elena elaborated on the situation of the country. “Of six million Paraguayans, a million and a half live outside the country, working in Argentina or Spain or elsewhere. The Colorado Party (which governed Paraguay for over sixty years) is a genocidal party because under their rule ten children per day died as a result of preventable illnesses. We have 45,000 children suffering from malnutrition. They’re malnourished from the womb on so that they aren’t able to develop intellectually. [The poor] live on a dollar [4,000 guaranís] a day. If milk costs $.75 [3,000 guaranís], how can they live on that? How are they supposed to provide milk for their children? Meanwhile, the rich keep getting richer. You go to their neighborhoods and it looks like something out of Hollywood. They have three or four cars and trucks.

“That’s why we formed an alliance, “Patriotic Alliance for Change” [Alianza Patriotica por el Cambio] to get Lugo elected, and within that alliance is the Party of the Movement to Socialism, P-MAS.”

“I’m the mother of one of the founders of that party. The parents and grandparents of the youth who founded this party are involved because this is going to be a hard struggle. Very difficult, indeed. Because the struggle against capital isn’t easy. But we have to fight so that everyone is able to live well and eat well every day. ”

“What we want is work and dignity for the people of Paraguay. That’s what we’re fighting for.”

“And so today we’re celebrating. This is a celebration of the people of Paraguay because we won, not with guns, but with votes, a battle against a party of genocide.”

Elena continued. “I’ll give you an example. A friend of mine is in the hospital today with her malnourished child. It’s a hospital with everything you could ask for. But the baby is allergic to wheat and requires a special kind of milk. The milk costs 80,000 guaranís ($20) a liter. Where is she going to get that kind of money? We’re hoping that tomorrow President Lugo is going to do what he really has to do…”

“We’re all going to be with him in this struggle because we don’t want any more of this suffering.”

I ask Elena how it was that they managed to found a socialist party just two years ago, nearly fifteen years after the collapse of the USSR and the “end of history.” She said “it was the young people [who founded the party]. All very young people. And they believe in socialism. We’re big and we’re growing. There are 6,000 militants in Asunción, but we’re a national presence and have chapters all over the country.”

As I ask again how the party was founded, she referred to the “villas miserias” (lit. “miserable villages”). “Look at the houses. They’re made out of cardboard and things rescued from the garbage. That’s why there’s so much sickness like dengue, borne from the dirty water in the marginal neighborhoods. And you know, for them, dengue [fever] is deadly. They die from dengue. And they die from tuberculosis because tuberculosis is a disease from poverty, you know. They’re undernourished and susceptible to such diseases which kill them. And so we’re working against all this and we want to make Paraguay an example [to the world].”

The party, Elena explains, started organizing around school bus tickets because the poor couldn’t afford transport to school. They’ve since been organizing for university bus tickets, as well as for community kitchens and cultural events in the poor neighborhoods.

“Each neighborhood has a nucleus of the party, but we organize in popular assemblies around the needs that the local people have. That’s how we hope to build the socialism of the 21st century.”

Earlier in the day, Fernando Lugo summed up the sentiment of Elena and all those who had supported him to become president. “I refuse to live in a country where some can’t sleep because of fear and others can’t sleep because they’re hungry.”

Two of Lugo’s economic advisors are Leonardo Boff, the liberation theologian, and Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist. While Boff has stressed the need for small family and community-based agriculture to provide local sustanance and a move away from the export model of agriculture, Stiglitz has suggested an intensification of export agriculture with a focus on organic production (currently, Paraguay leads the world in the export of organic sugar), tropical fruits and taxation of those exports to fund “social investments” like education and healthcare. It’s likely that Lugo will take this apparently contradictory advice and implement both models to guarantee Paraguay’s food security as well as bring tax money into the treasury to pay for much needed social programs.

Policies like these will be popular and deepen the nation’s trust in their president who has come to power with the great good will of his people. In order to retain that trust and good will, Lugo will have to bring the project of the kingdom of God down to earth with practical proposals that will activate the enormous mass of people, still terrified of the military and suffering from all the ill effects of hunger and neglect.

As one local writer put it, “The party is over and it’s time to get to work. Today hope has won. May it continue for a long time to come.”

As much of the rest of Latin America shifts to the left, Paraguay remains a key ally of Washington, a human rights nightmare and example of the amorphous and survivalist qualities of the Latin American right. In the April 20th presidential elections, Blanca Ovelar and Lino Oviedo, two representatives of Paraguay’s old right will come head to head with Fernando Lugo, a new face, and possibly a new beginning for the Paraguayan left.

Former Education Minister Blanca Ovelar, is carrying the torch of the 60-year rule of the Colorado, or Red Party, and General Lino Oviedo- nicknamed the “Bonsai horseman” for his short stature — is an ex-Colorado Party member himself, and until recently was serving prison time for an attempted coup. Alternately called “the Bishop of the Poor” by his supporters, and “the Red Bishop” by his right-wing opponents, Lugo is leading in the polls, and may do the same in the elections — if he can out maneuver the gargantuan resources and corrupt politics of his opponents.

Lugo: The Bishop of the Poor

Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez was born in 1951. As a young man, he taught in a rural school district which, according to reporter Andrew Nickson at Open Democracy, “was so remote that he was able to escape the usual rule that teachers had to be members of the Colorado Party.”¹ In 1977, Lugo was ordained as a Catholic priest, and worked as a missionary in indigenous communities in Ecuador until 1982. He then spent 10 years studying at the Vatican, at which time he was appointed head of the Divine Word order in Paraguay. In 1994 he became the Bishop of the Paraguayan department of San Pedro. Though Lugo was frequently away from Paraguay, he did not avoid the repercussions of the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship and its conservative influence. In fact, three of Lugo’s brothers were exiled and the conservative Catholic hierarchy pressured him to resign as bishop due to his support for landless families’ settlements on large estates owned by absent elites.

However, Lugo’s resignation as bishop also allowed him to realize his ambitions as a presidential contender. On December 25, 2006, Lugo announced he would run for president in the 2008 contest. As a candidate, he is riding the waves of discontent of a population that’s tired of Paraguayan business as usual. After leading a march and rally in early 2006 protesting the civil rights abuses committed by president Duarte Frutos, his popularity rose.

At first, Lugo’s candidacy was impeded by the fact that the Vatican did not accept his resignation, which allowed Colorado party members to claim that his candidacy would be unconstitutional, as clergy members can’t hold political office in Paraguay. However, a legal team soon established that this was not the case, and he has become “a disturbingly credible threat to the Colorados.”²

On September 17, 2007 Lugo created a seven party opposition coalition called the Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC), and on October 31, 2007, he registered himself as a presidential candidate of the Christian Democrat Party (PDC) to participate in the primaries of the opposition group which is a part of the APC.³ Senator Juan Ramirez Montalbetti, a Lugo supporter, has said that the election day of April 20, 2008 will be approached as “a day of war” to protect votes in the face the maneuvers in which “officialist” Colorados are experts.⁴

The Paraguayan Right

The current political landscape of the Paraguayan right is shaped significantly by the 35-year dictatorial rule of General Alfredo Stroessner, a mustachioed man described by Graham Greene as looking like “the amiable well-fed host of a Bavarian bierstube,” who maintained power through a mixture of brutal repression, corruption and cronyism. After 61 years, the Colorado Party, which Stroessner was a part of, has had the longest continuous run in power of any political party in the world.⁵

Stroessner’s reign dominated the second half of the last century in Paraguay, and casts a dark shadow into this one. Originally elected in 1954 to fill a vacancy, Stroessner was “re-elected” seven times through a state-of-siege law in the constitution and with the aid of the military and the Colorado Party. The Colorado Party had already ruled Paraguay from 1947 until 1962, as a one-Party state in which all other political parties were illegal.⁶ It also served in tandem as one of the “twin pillars” supporting the Stroessner regime (the other pillar being the military).⁷ Stroessner collaborated with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and the military junta in Argentina to orchestrate a regional crackdown on political opponents through a mixture of kidnapping, torture and murder. In 1989, the transition to democracy pushed the hard-line Stronistas out of power. Though a new constitution created in 1992 established a democracy and new legal protections of rights, the Colorado Party has continued its rule over Paraguay.

The Colorado Party’s vast system of clientelism — offering public jobs to people to gain political support — is entirely reliant on state programs and public services. It is effective because of the country’s high unemployment rate: one of citizens’ few prospects for employment is through the Colorado Party, whether in such positions as a road construction worker, teacher or mayor. Though many citizens view the Party as corrupt and ineffective, supporting it often means receiving a salary. The Colorado Party employs some 200,000 people, 95% of whom are members of the Party.⁸

Yet another Colorado Party Candidate, Nicanor Duarte Frutos was elected president in 2003. The current leader of the Colorado Party is president Nicanor Duarte Frutos, who joined the Colorado Party when he was just 14.⁹ Duarte, a fiery, gravel-voiced public speaker who styled himself a populist, grassroots politician, campaigned in 2003 on promises to fight crime and corruption and to create public works jobs. However, during his presidency, rising crime and high-profile kidnappings have drawn criticism.

In the middle of the current “pink tide” of Latin American populist governments, Frutos allied himself with the United States during the majority of his presidency. According to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Washington, with its nightmares of a communist haven replaced by fears of terrorist funding, has lavished Paraguay with democratization projects (read military training), which have helped keep “the Brazilian military at bay while effectively intimidating the armed peasant groups into submission.” Renewed cooperation has been felicitous for the security self-interests of both parties, and promises to continue. He signed an energy agreement with Chavez, and supports the Bank of the South, the project for economic integration among South American nations as pushed by Chavez.¹⁰ Duarte has made populist gestures publicly, notably condemning “lawless capitalism” in a UNESCO assembly.¹¹

Recently, Duarte has cooled his relations with Washington and warmed up to Caracas — if for no other reason that, in Latin America, it’s popular to do so.

The Red Queen and the Bonsai Horseman

In the current electoral field for the presidential election, Lugo’s opposition is represented by the massive state and social apparatus of the Colorado Party, as well as newer, right-wing opposition parties.

Ironically, the shift in economy from public works and government spending to the booming agricultural export business has eroded some support for the Colorado Party. The newly strengthened left and the emergent new right are evidence that, according to political analyst Milda Rivola, “Economic times have changed… The idea of the state as the country’s biggest employer no longer works,” she said.¹² That is exactly where the interests that form the new right come into play.

“Bonsai horseman” General Lino Oviedo, a former presidential hopeful is another representative of the old right. Ironically, Oviedo originally rose to political fame in Paraguay as an upholder of democratic values by participating in the uprising that overthrew Stroessner. Yet after Oviedo disobeyed a presidential order to step down as commander of the army in April of 1996, he began to resemble the militaristic caudillo of the past.

Oviedo, who left the Colorado Party in 2005, was until recently, exiled for his participation in a foiled coup in 1996. Still popular however, Oviedo continues to be a presidential contender, and was pardoned for his coup attempt on October 30, 2007. This brought his National Union of Ethical Citizens Party (UNACE) back in to the fray with all the symbolism of a martyred military hero it can muster.¹³

Supported most loyally by extremely rich and extremely poor constituents, Oviedo has campaigned stridently against gays and, according to Uruguayan political analyst Raul Zibechi, “threatens to defeat his opponents with ‘vote-shots,’ with the same impetus he used in 1989 to defeat dictator Alfredo Stroessner with ‘gunshots.’”¹⁴

Oviedo is currently running as a lone-wolf, in contrast to the momentum of alliances that supported Lugo as a candidate. Oviedo recently said, “I just propose a government program consensus regardless of alliance…coalition or whatever.” Very much the victim of this earlier comment, he promotes “a judicial guarantee of public order,” and says that whoever wants to rule alone will be boycotted. When asked what country model Paraguay must follow, Oviedo said with confident ambivalence, “Neither Right nor Left nor center, but progress… Neither neoliberal nor populist, communist, nor authoritarian, but a legal and democratic government, where neither the rich benefit off the deterioration of the poor, nor the poor benefit off the deterioration of the rich.” He also promises a new constitution, and to restructure the state government.¹⁵

New candidates have also entered the arena. In lieu of Duarte’s inability to run, Blanca Ovelar, a former minister of education, is playing a new populist “Social Democrat” face of the Colorado Party. Ovelar, who speaks in a smooth professorial tone, proposes to use educational reform to pull the country out of poverty. At a campaign rally for Colorado Party presidential candidate Blanca Ovelar, journalist Charles Lane met Colorado supporters wearing the signature red shirts. One supporter said, “Our parents were Coloradoans, I was born Colorado, and I will die Colorado.” Ovelar’s loyalty to Duarte and the party have negatively affected her popularity.¹⁴ When asked if they were paid directly by the party, the Coloradoans said no, but admitted to having other benefits. “I was twice elected mayor and my wife has a job with the government,” one responded. Elsewhere another supporter told the journalist that the fastest route to the hospital is through the Colorado Party.¹⁶.

In Paraguay, women make up 49.6 percent of the population, yet only 10 percent of congressional seats are held by women. Women were given the right to vote in 1961, but the first woman to hold the position of minister was appointed in 1989, and only 10 percent of the cabinet is presently made up of women, one of the smallest percentages in Latin America.¹⁷ While Ovelar postures herself as “the first woman president of Paraguay, breaking with the ‘machista’ tradition,” her appeal doesn’t seem to resonate with Paraguayan women.

Angélica Cano, of Parlamento Mujer, a political advocacy forum for women, told IPS News that the Colorado Party is simply using Ovelar’s gender as political capital: “When a political project has run out of male representatives that can sustain it, it calls in a woman to legitimize a model that is already obsolete.” According to Maggy Balbuena, of the rural womens’ organization CONAMURI, Ovelar “actually represents … 60 years of domination by the Colorado Party, 60 years of poverty and injustice. I think it would be very hard for her to reverse that long history,” Balbuena told IPS News, “and I don’t think she can change it all just because she’s a woman.”

Former Vice President Luis Castiglioni, on the other hand, renounced his post to run as a closer ally to Washington and the agricultural industry, and to push more neoliberal plans.¹⁰ Castiglioni, who lost the Colorado Party primary, as well as Ovelar, represent the new right wing of the Colorado Party. According to Paraguayan sociologist Tomas Palau, in spite of the differences between the parties of the new right, “their goal is to continue operating with impunity and making huge profits.” A continuation of right-wing rule in any form is likely to be disastrous for the country’s human rights, environment and over half of Paraguayans who live under the poverty line.¹⁸

Meanwhile, the left’s main option in the midst of this heavily right-wing election season is Fernando Lugo. Lugo represents a wide coalition of opposition forces whose interests probably don’t coincide past the rejection of Colorado rule. Neither experienced nor completely radical, Palau says Lugo is “more befuddled than a yuppie in the middle of the jungle.”

The New Right and Current Popular Struggles in Paraguay

As the years passed since the Stroessner era, new interests affecting electoral politics have pushed their way into the Paraguayan landscape. According to Palau, powerful interests in Paraguay can be summarized into four groups: 1) The oligarchy (soy growers and cattle ranchers who depend on paramilitaries to allow them to expand), 2) The narco-traffickers who pay off politicians, 3) The lumpen business class that relies on international trade and black market goods,⁸ and 4) the transnational corporations that produce soy, cotton and sugar. The parties are simple transmitters of those interests.¹⁹ In turn, these sectors create non-governmental interest groups that can pressure conservative sectors likely to do them favors. While non-governmental groups don’t necessarily present candidates, they are vocal proponents of the parties they support.

On the other hand, in the past twenty years, campesino organizations including the Mesa Co-ordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas (MCNOC) and the Federación Nacional Campesina (FNC) have increased demands for reform of the corrupt party favors of the Stroessner regimes’ “land reform.” As Paraguayan farmers have found themselves increasingly confronted by Brazilian farmers buying up land for industrial agriculture and speculation, the movement has become more radical.¹

The fastest growing sector of the sources of power, and the one that has been and will likely continue to be at the forefront of national and international political and business interests and social conflict in the coming years is the agrofuel industry. This “gold rush” — so-called by the chief executive of Cargill — is sweeping over the once diverse jungles and small farms of eastern Paraguay like a vast and toxic genetically modified tsunami.

Paraguay is the world’s fourth largest exporter of soybeans, and soy production has increased exponentially in recent years, reaching a record 6.5m tons in 2006-2007, due to rising demand worldwide for meat and cattle feed, as well as the booming agrofuels (also known as biodiesel) industry. As multinational agro-producers gain more and more stake in the production of soy, corn, wheat, sunflower and rapeseed in Paraguay, they too look to both the old and the new right to protect their land, production and trade interests.

Managing this gargantuan agro-industry in Latin America are transnational seed and agro-chemical companies including Monsanto, Pioneer, Syngenta, Dupont, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Bunge. International financial institutions and development banks have promoted and bankrolled the agro-export of monoculture crops. The profits have united political and corporate entities from Brazil, the US and Paraguay, and increased the importance of Paraguay’s cooperation with international business.

In Paraguay especially, the expansion of the soy industry has occurred in tandem with violent oppression of small farmers and indigenous communities who occupy the vast land holdings of the wealthy. Most rural Paraguayans cultivate diverse subsistence crops on small plots of ten to twenty hectares, but do not have titles to their land or receive assistance from the state.¹ The Colorado Party administration has represented the soy growers in this conflict by using the police and judicial system to punish campesino leaders. To this effect, protests have been criminalized, and campesino leaders have been linked to delinquency, kidnappings and a supposed guerilla movement linked to the Colombian FARC.²⁰ A report compiled by the Paraguayan-based human rights organization SERPAJ concluded “that with public forces in its hands, the alliance of the Public Prosecutor, and the Supreme Court as a guarantee of impunity, has created a campaign of massive repression of the campesino sector, in order to facilitate and guarantee the expansion of genetically modified soy in the country.”²¹

Since the 1980s, national military and paramilitary groups connected to large agribusinesses and landowners have evicted almost 100,000 small farmers from their homes and fields and forced the relocation of countless indigenous communities in favor of soy fields. More than 100 campesino leaders have been assassinated; only one of the cases was investigated, resulting in the conviction of the assassin. In the same period, more than 2,000 others have faced trumped-up charges for their objections to the industry.

The vast majority of Paraguayan farmers, however, have been poisoned off their land either intentionally or as a side effect of the more than 24 million liters of hazardous pesticides dumped by soy cultivation in Paraguay every year. When farmers saw their animals die, crops withering, families sickening and wells contaminated, most packed up and moved to the city.²²

The devastation caused by agro-industries created some of the most grave human rights violations since Stroessner’s reign. Press reports say that when crops are fumigated “school classes are often cancelled on days of crop spraying on the field twenty meters away because the children faint from the smell.” Since 2002, the deaths of five small children in rural areas have been documented.¹

A report produced by the Committee of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of the United Nations stated that “the expansion of the cultivation of soy has brought with it the indiscriminate use of toxic pesticides, provoking death and sickness in children and adults, contamination of water, disappearance of ecosystems and damage to the traditional nutritional resources of the communities.”²⁰ A social investigation carried out last year found that, in the four departments where soy production is the highest, 78% of families in rural communities near soy fields showed a health problem caused by the frequent crop spraying in the soy fields, 63% of which was due to contaminated water.¹⁹

As opposition to the soy industry builds among farmers and human rights groups, presidential candidates are posturing themselves either against soy expansion or in favor of it. Lugo’s promise of land reform addresses this issue.²³, (3-27-2008). Playing up the populist rhetoric of Colorado Party, presidential candidate Blanca Ovelar has said that as president she will change agro-legislation and fight against the development of a “soy fatherland.”²⁴ At the same time, the majority of Lugo’s base is made up of farmers who have been hurt by the industrial soy companies.

As the election nears, the Duarte administration has made particularly vicious attacks on the political rights of social organizations. In February and March of 2008, three candidates of the Patriotic Socialist Alliance Party were arrested for visiting land occupied by campesinos, a political leader of the Tekojoja Popular Movement was assassinated under unclear circumstances, and the media published articles about supposed guerrilla connections to two campesino organizations with candidates in the upcoming elections.²⁰ According to a recent article in LaSojaMata.org written by social analysts based in Paraguay, “As the election nears, greater acts of violence and criminalization are generated against critical sectors and the opposition.”²⁰

On Wednesday, April 9, a drive by shooting seriously injured radio commentator Alfredo Avalos, and killed his partner, Silvana Rodríguez.²⁵ Avalos is a leader in the leftist movement Tekojoja, which is part of the coalition supporting Lugo. The attack took place in the town Curuguaty in the Canindeyúby state which is 250km northeast of the capital, Asunción. Journalist Dawn Paley wrote that the Paraguayan news outlet Jaku’éke explained “death threats to the Alliance Campaign are being followed through.”²⁶ Lugo told Reuters²⁷ that this violence was “in keeping with the fear campaign led by those who are afraid of losing power.” Paley reported that Carrillo Iramain, an organizer in Canindeyúby, said “there are constant telephone messages, indirect messages and direct threats happening in these final days [before the elections]. This is an area where fear rules.” According to Reuters, this is the second politically motivated murder of a Tekojoja organizer in two months.²⁸

Lugo’s Proposals Rattle Colorado Rule

Lugo has recently promised to implement land reform, fight corruption and the conservative forces of the Colorado Party.²⁹ The presidential contender has also pledged to renegotiate the treaty of Itaipu, the biggest plant for hydroelectric power in the world, producing 20% of Brazil’s electricity. This renegotiation plan would secure more of the massive financial and electric bounty of this project for Paraguay rather than primarily benefiting Brazil. If Brazil refuses to negotiate for better terms for Paraguay, Lugo has promised to take the case to the International Court of Justice. Analyst Raul Zibechi points out that though Lugo may win the presidency, his political bloc may gain only a minority in Congress with the Colorado Party having the majority.¹⁴

Lugo has also campaigned on a platform that allies itself with the poor majority of the country. He was quoted in Open Democracy as saying, “There are too many differences between the small group of 500 families who live with a first-world standard of living while the great majority live in a poverty that borders on misery.” Indeed, his alliances with the Catholic Church may be a key to broad support as the institution is viewed as clean of the rampant corruption in the country.¹

He also aligns himself closer to leftist presidents like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales than his opponents, and is more anti-imperialist at least in his rhetoric. The Council on Hemispheric Affairs quoted Lugo as saying, “Paraguay is feeling the new winds growing across the region.”³⁰ Similarly, author Richard Gott points out that a victory for Lugo in Paraguay, “will signal that the new mood in Latin America is not just the creation of a competent economist in Ecuador, a charismatic colonel in Venezuela, or a couple of union leaders in Brazil and Bolivia, but the result of a heartfelt and deep-rooted desire for change.”³¹

On March 24, Lugo told Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color that as president he would be against a free trade agreement with the US: “I would rather try to keep deepening regional integration through adhesion and work with the South Common Market (MERCOSUR).” He also advocated for agrarian reform, saying, “Every Paraguayan citizen has the right to be settled on his own land.”

Lugo: A Step in the Right Direction

While Fernando Lugo is the only candidate that represents change from the Colorado regime, for many Paraguayans he is at most a step in the right direction, and does not represent a new face in the pantheon of leftist leaders being elected across the continent. As a centrist, Lugo finds himself in the perhaps uncomfortable position of being a radical alternative to the 60 year Colorado rule. Lugo is evidence that to be considered a “leftist” in Paraguay only requires having political views that are “less right.”

Though many see Lugo as someone who has experience with rural social conflicts and connections with the campesino movement, it would be a mistake to see him (as many on the right do) as “the red bishop,” a radical heir to the liberation theology movement. In fact, when Oviedo’s popularity was on the rise last September, Lugo even said he could work with Oviedo as a vice president, or vice versa.

Lugo has been careful to distance himself from leaders who have used natural resources to fund new government programs. “Paraguay,” he says ” … cannot be like Venezuela because it has no oil. Nor can it be like Bolivia because it has no natural gas and it can’t be like Chile because it has no copper.” Pragmatic as his assessment may be, Lugo doesn’t seem to think nor desire that Paraguay’s government can be like that of these countries either. Lugo has taken pains to maintain a friendly distance from Caracas, and has not used anti-Washington rhetoric to stir up his supporters. Though Lugo praised the social aspect of Chavez’s government, he criticized the “strong dose of statism, totally at the service of one person … which is dangerous for a real democracy.”

In terms of economic changes, Lugo seems unlikely to cause too many ripples. In fact, in a distinctly Paraguayan fashion, caving in to Washington’s pressure to privatize resources and public services could be in Lugo’s, and the new right’s, agenda. The clientilism of the Colorado Party relies almost entirely on the state, and is therefore in opposition to neoliberal policies favoring corporate control of services. Unlike other countries in the region where neoliberalism has flourished, many Paraguayan roads, water and electricity systems remain under state control. Right-wing proponents of neoliberalism advocate corporate control of public services and further deregulation of the economy. This large, cumbersome political apparatus could be the Colorado Party’s downfall, as splits within threaten to kill the old, statist right.³²

However, Lugo has also seen no conflict in Chilean president Michelle Bachelet’s Socialist government signing a free-trade agreement with the United States. During a visit to Washington on June 18, 2007 Lugo gave a speech at George Washington University titled “Political Alternatives to the World’s Longest Ruling Party.” The Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported that “What Lugo seems to be saying is that he wants access to the U.S. market, as well as to be a beneficiary of Chávez’s now well known generosity.”

On the other hand, if Lugo does win, there is no guarantee that he would be able to make any changes. If he wins the April 20 election, he will not take office until August; plenty of time for the defeated Colorados to strategize on how to use their likely congressional majority to their benefit. This would allow plenty of time, too, for Lugo’s aggregate political alliance of socialists, farmer and indigenous groups, liberals and ex-Colorados to crumble into in-fighting.

Count Down to the Election

An April 9th election poll published in the Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color, and conducted by First Análisis y Estudios, showed that Lugo is in the lead with 33.6% support of those polled. Oviedo came in second with 27.4%, Blance Ovelar in third with 24.6%. Current president Nicanor Duarte won the 2003 election with 37.1% of the votes.³³

As Lugo leads in the polls right now, the Colorado Party is deeply worried. If the opposition wins, Duarte has said he believes the Coloradoans will be “chased down as the Jews were in the time of Hitler,” which is ironic in light of the Colorado Party’s alliance with the axis during World War II. As political analyst Marcelo Lacchi puts it, “For the first time in 20 years, the Colorados are facing the possibility of losing and they’re worried.” The party is abysmally divided between Oviedo, Ovelar and even Lugo with the election rapidly approaching. Yet, Lacchi reminds us, similar divisions were in place in the 1998 elections, and the results were the re-unification of the party and a Colorado win. “There is still a large part of Colorado voters who haven’t been captivated and mobilised,” he said.¹²

The Colorado Party has never lost a presidential election, and once the usual tools of employment, bribes and threats are in place, things could look very different. However, writes Zibechi, if the Colorado Party apparatus can’t be set in motion, it’s possible that this election could be different. He points out that “the crisis within the Party, the enormous unpopularity of Duarte, and the appearance on the scene of a center-left candidate who can break the eternal two-party split between the Red and the Liberal Parties” as three reasons to expect the unexpected in this historic election.¹⁴

For more information, see “New Versus Old Right in Paraguay’s Elections” by the same authors in the January/February issue of NACLA Report on the Americas and “Paraguay’s Peculiar Politics” by Teo Ballvé, editor of Nacla News.

1. Nickson, Andrew. “Paraguay: Fernando Lugo vs the Colorado machine.” Open Democracy (02-28-2008).
2. Schaeffer, Jenna. “Is Paraguay Set to be the Next Latin American Country to Lean to the Left?” Council on Hemispheric Affairs (06-29-2007).
3. “Lugo se postula por la Democracia Cristiana” ABC Color.
4. “Opposition Opens Space for Debate in Paraguay.” Prensa Latina. (11-07-08).
5. Gimlette, John. At The Tomb of the Inflatable Pig. Knopf (01-06-2004).
6. “Paraguay: Opposition Parties.” Library of Congress Studies. (1988).
7. “The Twin Pillars of the Stroessner Regime.” Library of Congress Studies (1988).
8. Zibechi, Raúl. “Paraguay’s Hour of Change.” IRC Americas Program. (09-24-2007).
9. “Country Profile: Paraguay.” BBC (03-01-2008).
10. Stefanoni, Pablo. “¿Fin de época en Paraguay?: Entre la esperanza y el escepticismo.” Yacaré (06-2007).
11. “Nicanor condena el “capitalismo desaforado” en asamblea de UNESCO.” ABC Color.
12. “Paraguay rulers face election fight.” www.tvnz.co.nz (3-29-2008).
13. Plummer, Robert, “Profile: Lino Oviedo“, BBC News, (6-28-2004).
14. Zibechi, Raúl. “Paraguay: Elections, Yellow Fever, and a Meddling Ambassador.” IRC Americas Program (3-13-2008).
15. Lino Oviedo Website and ABC Color.
16. Lane, Charles. “I was born Colorado, and I will die Colorado.” Pulitzer Center, The Soy Bean Wars, (8-17-2007)
17. Vargas, David. “Elections-Paraguay: Women Unimpressed by Female Candidate.” IPS News, (4-10-2008).
18. Machain, Andrea “Paraguay president full of promises.” BBC News, (8-16-2003).
19. Interview with Tomas Palau.
20. Marco Castillo, Regina Kretschmer, Javiera Rulli, Gaby Schwartzmann. “Paraguay: Campesino Leader Charged For Confronting Crop Spraying.” LaSojamata.org, (3-27-2008).
21. Misión internacional de observación al Paraguay, Informe 2006, p. 6; SERPAJ Paraguay.
22. Howard, April and Dangl, Benjamin “The Multinational Beanfield War: Soy cultivation spells doom for Paraguayan campesinos.” In These Times, (4-12-2007).
23. “Paraguay: Land Reform for Sure, Says Lugo.” Prensa Latina
24. “Contra la patria sojera.” ABC Color, (4-10-2008).
25. “Radio commentator seriously injured in shooting attack 12 days before elections.” Reporters Without Borders, (4-10-2008).
26. Paley, Dawn. “Ni una muerte más! Elections in Paraguay.” The Dominion, (4-9-2008).
27. “Attack on activist stirs fear before Paraguay vote.” Reuters. (4-9-2008).
28. “Se eleva alarma por violencia electoral en Paraguay.” Reuters. (4-9-2008).
29. “Paraguay: Land Reform for Sure, Says Lugo.” Prensa Latina, (3-27-2008).
30. Schaeffer, Jenna. “Is Paraguay Set to be the Next Latin American Country to Lean to the Left?” Council on Hemispheric Affairs (06-29-2007).
31. Gott, Richard. “Rise of the Red Bishop.” The Guardian. (4-10-2008).
32. Based on phone interview with Marco Castillo.
33. “Former Bishop Lugo Still Ahead in Paraguay.” Angus Reid Global Monitor. (4-9-2008).

A source in the Paraguayan president’s office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Neil had met with President Nicanor Duarte “along with a delegation from the Universal Peace Federation,” a group associated with Moon. According to its website, the UPF “is a global alliance of individuals and organizations dedicated to building a world of peace, a world in which everyone can live in freedom, harmony, cooperation, and co-prosperity for all.”

Meanwhile, back home, late last year, a number of news reports confirmed that the U.S. Department of Education’s Inspector General was looking into “allegations that federal money is being spent inappropriately on technology sold to schools” by Ignite!Learning, a company founded by Neil Bush.

Bush urges conference attendees to be ‘transformers of their societies’

In a statement issued on February 27, headlined “Call for Increased Collaboration in Paraguay,” Dr. Thomas G. Walsh, the Secretary General of UPF, said that Bush called on people to become “transformers of their societies” during a speech at an International Leadership Conference entitled “Toward a New Paradigm of Leadership and Government in Times of World Crisis,” held in late February at the Excelsior Hotel in Asuncion, Paraguay.

According to Walsh, Bush “spoke of a `culture of service’ and a vision of uniting individuals and organizations to promote peace and the common good, calling service `an essential component of any complete life.’”

The conference, following on the heels of one in January in Uruguay, “featured presentations from UPF’s peacebuilding curriculum,” Dr. Walsh’s statement read. Topics included God’s Ideal for Peace, presented by Thomas Field, director of UPI for Latin America; Spirituality and Leadership by Jorge Guidenzoph, President of the Uruguayan National Conference on Leadership; the Cause and Origin of Conflicts, by Ricardo de Sena, Director of UPF’s Office of UN Relations; the Principles of Reconciliation, by Dr. Antonio Betancourt, director of UPF’s Office of Government Relations; and Character Education, by Lic. Jesus Gonzalez, President of the International Educational Foundation.

A photo worth …

A photo from Getty Images by AFP/Getty Images showed Neil Bush leaving the presidential palace after a meeting with President Duarte on February 28, 2008.

Getty Images captioned the photo: “5 days ago: Neil Bush (C), younger brother of US President George W. Bush, leaves the presidential palace after a meeting with Paraguayan President Nicaron Duarte in Asuncion, on February 28, 2008. Bush is in Paraguay with a delegation of the Federation for Universal Peace, headed by South Korean reverend Sun Myung Moon.”

One veteran Moon watcher filled in the blanks for Talk2Action:

From left to right, the first person is Dr. Thomas G. Walsh, the Secretary General of UPF;

Second from the left is Antonio Betancourt, a “long time Moon follower” who currently is the Director of Government Relations of UPF International and “Character Education,” and who was a major player in “what was formerly called the Summit Council for World Peace or Summit Council, …a group active in Moon’s effort to unite North and South Korea, to save the ‘Fatherland’ and to form Moon’s sovereign nation”;

Third from the left is Chang Shik Yang, the Continental Director of the Unification Church now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU). Yang “played a lead role in the development of Moon’s black minister snagging unit, the American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC), and also is Moon’s top man in the Middle East.”

Fourth is Neil Bush;

On the far right is Larry Moffitt who is the Vice President of editorial operations for United Press International (UPI), a news service owned and operated by Rev. Moon.

The ‘greatest weirdest Bush Conspiracy’

Neil Bush’s trip to Paraguay is all the more interesting when considered against the backdrop of what columnist Ken Layne called the “greatest weirdest Bush Conspiracy.” In a recent piece headlined “The Bushes and the Moons,” Layne wrote:

The story goes like this: George W. Bush and/or George H.W. Bush bought hundreds of thousands of acres in Paraguay, adjoining a similar spread owned by the Unification Church’s Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Both massive parcels are hidden within a remote South American wilderness atop the world’s biggest freshwater aquifer adjoining a secret U.S. military airbase. Oh, and there’s a special non-extradition law to protect the Bush/Moon families as they enjoy their old age and run drug/weapons smuggling rings, safe from American justice. And they’ll own all the drinking water in the world, or something.

Travels with Moon

Two years ago, Neil Bush, along with Rev. Moon, visited the Philippines and Taiwan. While in the Manila, Bush was present for the inaugural convocation of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), and he joined Moon in meeting with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The Manila Bulletin reported: “Together with peace leaders that included Neil Bush … Moon arrived yesterday as part of a 100-day tour that is taking him to 100 cities and 67 nations and covering a journey of almost 100,000 miles.”

Ignite’s COW

At home, Neil Bush is best known for his 1980s involvement in the Silverado Savings and Loan debacle, which cost taxpayers more than $1 billion; the lurid details of a messy divorce from Sharon Bush, his wife of 23 years; and his mother Barbara Bush’s shameless demand that her contribution to a Hurricane Katrina relief foundation, working with those who had to be relocated to Texas, be used by local schools to acquire Ignite! products.

Ignite sells what it calls a “Curriculum on Wheels (COW),” a cart-mounted video projector and hard drive loaded with video content to help teach math, social studies, and science, which costs about $3,800, not including yearly costs for licensing the content, eSchool News pointed out.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, had called for the inquiry. According to eSchool News, “CREW contends school districts are using federal dollars inappropriately to purchase technology from” Bush’s Austin, Texas-based company. CREW also claimed that “there is no proof the company’s products are effective and claim[ed] that schools in at least three states are using the products mainly as a result of political considerations.”

Ignite! Learning’s president, Ken Leonard, issued a statement denying the group’s allegations:

“While Ignite! Learning welcomes accountability for ensuring that public school expenditures are in compliance with appropriation guidelines, Ignite! Learning has no knowledge of any customer that has procured our curriculum solutions through means which are other than completely ethical.

According to a CREW press release, “Ignite also has a program called Adopt-a-Cow in which corporations buy the equipment and donate it to schools or to charities supporting school districts. An Ignite spokesman said seven Cows were donated last year to the Fund for Public Schools in New York City.”

CREW also “obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act request showing that the Katy Independent School District west of Houston used $250,000 in state and federal Hurricane Katrina relief money last year to buy the Curriculum on Wheels.”