CIA in Paraguay, or How to Get Rid of a President

[Paul Rigby]

Hope and change in South America:

CIA in Paraguay, or How to Get Rid of a President

Nil Nikandrov (Russia)

http://orientalreview.org/2010/10/29/cia...president/

Paraguay’s current president Fernando Lugo used to be known as “the bishop of the poor”. He made a fairly quick career in the Roman Catholic church’s hierarchy, became a bishop, and later was overwhelmingly voted in as the country’s president. Inaugurated on August 15, 2008, he planned to bring profound changes to Paraguay including a departure from his predecessor’s markedly ruinous neoliberal course and an alliance with the populist leaders seeking to build the XXI century socialism. From the outset, however, Lugo’s plans ran into serious roadblocks. For example, his agrarian reform had to be put on hold for years because the pro-presidential fraction in the parliament was unable to break the resistance mounted by the legislature’s majority which upheld the interests of land proprietors. Moreover, the political agenda in Paraguay was overshadowed by the fact that the country was permanently confronted with a threat of a military coup.

Tensions in Paraguay intensified when Lugo said he would not renew the military cooperation agreement with the US. The announcement left the US embassy in Asunción, which did not expect to face defiance of such magnitude, in a state of shock.Lugo’s decision rendered fruitless years of Washington’s efforts aimed at implementing the Pentagon’s New Horizons program. Some 500 US servicemen were to be deployed in Paraguay in its framework, ostensibly to let US marines get used to the local climate and to carry out joint exercises with the country’s own army. The actual objective that loomed behind the program was to enable the Pentagon to occupy for at least a decade the Mariscal Estigarribia base sited at a distance of just 200 km from the populist Bolivia. Paraguay used to host US southern command’s forces in the past, the operations being disguised as humanitarian missions meant to provide health care to the population or to build schools in rural areas. In practice, the Pentagon used Paraguay’s territory to carry out reconnaissance in the border zone of the three countries – Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina – and to create the infrastructures the US could rely on to dispatch troops en masse in the case of a regional crisis.

Washington cited the presence of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah cells in the region as the reason for its activities, but obviously hoped to gain positions from which it could hold at gunpoint the populist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia rather than sought to counter the mythical terrorist groups. Besides, Washington tends to be concerned over the attempts made by the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) to establish a regional defense system to which the US is not invited.

Lugo rejected the New Horizons upon getting familiarized with the materials supplied by his Unasur colleagues – he learned that the US had launched an attack against a FARC camp in Ecuador’s border zone from a base in Columbia. Allowing Washington to use the territory of Paraguay for military escapes did not sound like a good idea.

Regretting Lugo’s decision, US ambassador to Paraguay Liliana Ayalde expressed the hope that other cooperation programs – both military and civilian – would not be affected. Tentatively, she was worried about Paraguay’s program of officer corps training and weapons acquisitions. The country’s potential turn to populist regimes or to Brazil and Argentina in military affairs would no doubt be perceived by Washington as a foreign-politics fiasco.

The US embassy and its intelligence staff were from the start angered by Lugo’s gravitating to the populist regimes. For Washington, the prospects of a strategic alliance between the Paraguayan president and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) look frightening considering that already back in the 1970ies Henry Kissinger warned about the importance of the continent to the US plans for global dominance.

Lugo had to face a real war as a reaction to his independent course. A propaganda campaign targeting him swept across the continent: the media portrayed the former priest’s lifestyle as reckless debauchery, alleged he had a number of children born out of wedlock, and charged him with tolerance to corruption in his inner circle. Papers wrote that Lugo enjoyed the living standards of an oligarch while posing as the champion of the cause of the disadvantaged and that he called for class struggle from a jacuzzi. CIA agents in the Paraguayan media floated the myth that Lugo had for a long time been on the agency’s payroll and claimed that CIA defector Philipp Agee exposed Lugo’s uncle as a CIA agent. Some media went so far as to say that practically all of Lugo’s relatives had ties with US agencies, the US Department of State, or USAID. The smear campaign did prompt a part of Paraguay’s population to revoke their support for the president.

For no legible reason, Marxist-Bolivarian guerrilla groups suddenly surfaced in Paraguay. The Paraguayan People’s Army – Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo – occasionally attacked the police or robbed grocery stores while the media elaborately linked it to Columbia’s FARC and ELN. The group’s invisible leaders churned out demagogic statements, showered Lugo with threats, and even promised a reward for killing him. The ado reeked of Hollywood but the group was subjected to a no-nonsense hunt assisted by the CIA and Columbia’s Presidential Intelligence Service (DAS). Influencers worked hard to convince Lugo that the problem could not be handled without Washington’s help and that the US military presence had a stabilizing impact on the country. Lugo eventually gave in and consented to a state of emergency in the north of Paraguay.

Information was leaked to the media in August – September, 2010 that Lugo – normally a healthy and energetic macho immune to any kind of nervousness – had cancer. The forms of cancer mentioned were lymphoma, lymphosarcoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, etc. Lugo’s doctors released reassuring statements that the president’s life was not in danger and that chemotherapy would help as Lugo went to Brazil several times for treatment. Officials maintain that the president is sure to recover, that his grip on the presidential power remains firm, and that he will pass the presidency to his successor in August, 2013 in accord with the country’s constitution. Only US ambassador Liliana Ayalde did come up with a dissonant statement which seemed to indicate that Lugo had been written off.

At the moment Lugo looks embattled by the decease. He lost hair after chemotherapy, his speech shed its former assertive tone, and he looks much older than he did recently. There is an impression that the president has difficulty concealing his emotions and realizes what the origin of his health problems could be. In contrast, his perpetual opponent Federico Franco is on the rise. He has quite a few friends at the US embassy and, needless to say, regards the New Horizons as an excellent project. For him, it is just a matter of time.

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

[Magda Hassan]

All the records of operation Condor reside in Paraguay.

[Keith Millea]

Another one bites the dust!

June 25, 2012

Machinations in Paraguay

Obama's Second Latin American Coup?

by SHAMUS COOKE

The recent coup against Paraguay's democratically elected president is not only a blow to democracy, but an attack against the working and poor population that supported and elected President Fernando Lugo, whom they see as a bulwark against the wealthy elite who've dominated the country for decades.

The U.S. mainstream media and politicians are not calling the events in Paraguay a coup, since the president is being "legally impeached" by the elite-dominated Paraguayan Congress.

But as economist Mark Weisbrot explained in the Guardian:

"The Congress of Paraguay is trying to oust the president, Fernando Lugo, by means of an impeachment proceeding for which he was given less than 24 hours to prepare and only two hours to present a defense. It appears that a decision to convict him has already been written…The main trigger for the impeachment is an armed clash between peasants fighting for land rights with police…But this violent confrontation is merely a pretext, as it is clear that the president had no responsibility for what happened. Nor have Lugo's opponents presented any evidence for their charges in today's trial.' President Lugo proposed an investigation into the incident; the opposition was not interested, preferring their rigged judicial proceedings."

What was the real reason the right-wing Paraguay Senate wanted to expel their democratically elected president? Another article by the Guardian makes this clear:

"The president was also tried on four other charges: that he improperly allowed leftist parties to hold a political meeting in an army base in 2009; that he allowed about 3,000 squatters [landless peasants] to illegally invade a large Brazilian-owned soybean farm; that his government failed to capture members of a [leftist] guerrilla group, the Paraguayan People's Army… and that he signed an international [leftist] protocol without properly submitting it to congress for approval."

The article adds that the president's former political allies were "…upset after he gave a majority of cabinet ministry posts to leftist allies, and handed a minority to the moderates…The political split had become sharply clear as Lugo publicly acknowledged recently that he would support leftist candidates in future elections."

It's obvious that the President's real crimes are that he chose to ally himself more closely with Paraguay's left, which in reality means the working and poor masses of the country, who, like other Latin American countries, choose socialism as their form of political expression.

Although Paraguay's elite lost control of the presidency when Lugo was elected, they used their stranglehold over the Senate to reverse the gains made by Paraguay's poor. This is similar to the situation in Egypt: when the old regime of the wealthy elite lost their president/dictator, they used their control of the judiciary in an attempt to reverse the gains of the revolution.

Is it fair to blame the Obama administration for the recent coup in Paraguay? Yes, but it takes an introductory lesson on U.S. Latin American relations to understand why. Paraguay's right wing a tiny wealthy elite has a long-standing relationship with the United States, which has backed dictatorships for decades in the country a common pattern in most Latin American countries.

The United States promotes the interests of the wealthy of these mostly-poor countries, and in turn, these elite-run countries are obedient to the pro-corporate foreign policy of the United States (The Open Veins of Latin America is an excellent book that outlines the history).

Paraguay's elite is incapable of acting so boldly without first consulting the United States, since neighboring countries are overwhelmingly hostile to such an act because they fear a U.S.-backed coup in their own countries.

Paraguay's elite has only the military for internal support, which for decades has been funded and trained by the United States. President Lugo did not fully sever the U.S. military's links to his country. According to Wikipedia, "The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) provides technical assistance and training to help modernize and professionalize the [Paraguay]military…"

In short, it is not remotely possible for Paraguay's elite to act without assurance from the United States that it would continue to receive U.S. political and financial support; the elite now needs a steady flow of guns and tanks to defend itself from the poor of Paraguay.
The Latin American countries surrounding Paraguay denounced the events as they unfolded and made an emergency trip to the country in an attempt to stop them. What was the Obama administration's response? Business Week explains:

"As Paraguay's Senate conducted the impeachment trial, the U.S. State Department had said that it was watching the situation closely."
"We understand that Paraguay's Senate has voted to impeach President Lugo," said Darla Jordan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs…"We urge all Paraguayans to act peacefully, with calm and responsibility, in the spirit of Paraguay's democratic principles."

Obama might as well have said: "We support the right-wing coup against the elected president of Paraguay." Watching a crime against democracy happen even if it is "watched closely" and failing to denounce it makes one complicit in the act. The State Department's carefully crafted words are meant to give implicit support to the new illegal regime in Paraguay.

Obama acted as he did because Lugo turned left, away from corporate interests, towards Paraguay's poor. Lugo had also more closely aligned himself with regional governments which had worked towards economic independence from the United States. Most importantly perhaps is that, in 2009, President Lugo forbid the building of a planned U.S. military base in Paraguay.

What was the response of Paraguay's working and poor people to their new dictatorship? They amassed outside of the Congress and were attacked by riot police and water cannons. It is unlikely that they will sit on their hands during this episode, since President Lugo had raised their hopes of having a more humane existence.

President Lugo has unfortunately given his opponents an advantage by accepting the rulings that he himself called a coup, allowing himself to be replaced by a Senate-appointed president. But Paraguay's working and poor people will act with more boldness, in line with the social movements across Latin America that have struck heavy blows against the power of their wealthy elite.

President Obama's devious actions towards Paraguay reaffirm which side of the wealth divide he stands on. His first coup in Honduras sparked the outrage of the entire hemisphere; this one will confirm to Latin Americans that neither Republicans nor Democrats care anything about democracy.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org) He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/25/o...ican-coup/

[Magda Hassan]

Not quite going to plan though. Few countries have recognised the illegitimate government. None of the neighbours who have with drawn their ambassadors and shunned the new 'President' in public. :hobbyhorse:

Ousted Paraguay president to establish parallel cabinet

Former Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo will set up a parallel cabinet with ministers loyal to him, Augusto Dos Santos, the country's former minister of social communication said. Lugo said he would resign from his position as president of regional bloc UNASUR, but would try to upstage the country's new leaders at an upcoming summit. He also called Paraguay's new government "bogus" and said it had "no legitimacy." Lugo was ousted by the country's Senate Friday, prompting a cascade of negative reactions from Paraguay's neighbors, with many leaders saying they will not recognize the new government.

Lizzie Phelan
10 hours ago
PARAGUAY: Illegitimate President Franco is clearly shaken by the wide ranging condemnation by Latin American leaders of the coup, to the extent that he is asking legitimate President Lugo that he ousted to help him de-escalate the tension! Ohhhh the irony

[Keith Millea]

"George Bush the Little",owns 10,000 acres of prime Paraguay land.I suspect the Bush crime family didn't want no leftist land reformer running the country.

https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...-criminals

[Magda Hassan]

I'm sure that was a purely unintended benefit there Keith :mexican:

[Jan Klimkowski]

Crimes against the Business of Bush....

[Magda Hassan]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3847[/ATTACH]

[Jan Klimkowski]

Is that Giorgio Osborne in the middle?

[Keith Millea]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3847[/ATTACH]

Little George knows who his friends are........