[News] Dispatch From Paraguay: Hope Reigns at Dawn of Fernando Lugo Presidency

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Dispatch From Paraguay: Hope Reigns at Dawn of Fernando Lugo Presidency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1434/1/

Written by Clifton Ross
Wednesday, 20 August 2008

My Argentinean friends and I had driven eighteen 
hours straight from Buenos Aires trying to get to 
Paraguay in time for the inauguration of Fernando 
Lugo into the presidency. We weren't alone; for 
several days people had been arriving from all 
over the continent to witness the historic event 
of another South American left-leaning leader, 
coming from outside the one or two-party 
political structure, breaking that ossified 
structure to win the executive office. This 
happened in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez in 1998, 
and has since been repeated in Uruguay with 
Tabaré Vázquez and the Frente Amplio; in Bolivia 
with Evo Morales and MAS; in Ecuador with Rafael 
Correa and Alianza País, to name only a few of 
the more exact, parallel examples, and now with 
Fr. Fernando Lugo and Alianza Patriotica por el 
Cambio. Nevertheless, Lugo stands out from these 
other third party leftist leaders: he is also a 
priest in the tradition of the Theology of Liberation.

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."

Clifton Ross is the translator and co-editor with 
Ben Clarke of "Voice of Fire: Communiques and 
Interviews from the Zapatista National Liberation 
Army." He has also written, edited or translated 
a half dozen other books of poetry, fiction, 
interviews and translations from Latin America. 
Most recently, Ross wrote, directed and produced 
"Venezuela: Revolution from the Inside Out," a 
feature-length documentary released May 20 of 
this year and available from PM Press 
(www.pmpress.org). He can be reached at 
<mailto:clifross1 at yahoo.com>clifross1 at yahoo.com.




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