Paraguay’s Illusion By Alvaro Vargas Llosa

October 01, 2007

YAGUARON, Paraguay—A feisty populist former priest could win next April’s Paraguayan elections and become Hugo Chavez’s new ally in this country bordering Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. The rise of Fernando Lugo, who was active in liberation theology movement within the Catholic Church, illustrates the inadequacies of Latin America’s democratic systems, which periodically give rise to left-wing movements fueled by social resentment.

I came to Yaguaron, a sleepy town to the south of Asuncion that seems frozen in the 18th century, to shoot a documentary on authoritarianism in Latin America. My focus has been on Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, a fascinating man who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist in the first half of the 19th century and is partly responsible for this country’s despotic tradition. I was surprised to find people, from peasants to schoolteachers, who still express admiration for a leader who built his regime on the notion that Paraguay should be cut off from the rest of the world and ordered all Paraguayans to touch their hat brims when they met him.

A modern-day version of Dr. Francia might be in the offering. A coalition known as the Concertacion Nacional thinks that Lugo could be the answer to the corrupt politics of the Colorado Party, which has ruled this country for more than six decades. In response to a system that has pushed many people to make a living through smuggling, including drugs, Lugo’s supporters propose a combination of socialist and nationalist policies under their firebrand leader who, like his Venezuelan mentor, Chavez, promises “social justice.” Paraguay’s tragedy is that their diagnosis is right—and their remedy a recipe for disaster.

Yes, the nation has suffocated under the Colorado Party of which Alfredo Stroessner, the dictator who held power for 35 years until 1989, was the central character. And, yes, the democratic system that has followed Stroessner has done little to make itself legitimate in the eyes of ordinary Paraguayans. Apart from the traditional soybean, cotton and meat exports, few legal economic opportunities have opened up under a coterie of politicians, soldiers and established business interests who decide everything.

Few things can be more telling with regard to the farce that is Paraguayan politics than the fact that the current president, Nicanor Duarte, is willing to talk to Lino Oviedo, a general who served a jail sentence for attempting a military coup, to persuade him to step into the presidential fray in order to stop Lugo.

This is precisely the kind of environment in which Latin American populism thrives. Paraguayans see Lugo as something of the redeemer, a spiritual figure capable of towering above the discredited institutions to set things right. His supporters fail to see that populist policies—based on concentrating power in the president’s hands, placing companies under government control, weakening commercial ties with the outside world—are responsible for their condition in the first place. For instance, many Paraguayans blame the free-trade policies of the South American common market for their poverty when, in fact, that regional arrangement is a monument to bureaucratic obstacles limiting the free flow of people, goods and services. (I can attest to that after traveling between Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay with a multinational TV crew.)

Roberto, a grower of the herb yerba mate who lives near Yaguaron, tells me that Paraguayans “need another Stroessner to stop Lugo.” He is one of those who fall into the trap of thinking that the alternative to left-wing populism is right-wing authoritarianism. “He did some nasty things to some people,” Roberto acknowledges of the late dictator, “but there was order in the country.”

Stroessner did some nasty things all right, as a quick visit to “La Tecnica”—now a museum but once a prison on Asuncion’s Chile Street where his henchmen tortured Martin Almada, a nonviolent left-wing activist, in the 1970s—shows in gruesome detail. But no, Roberto, there was no real order in Paraguay. The best proof is that two decades after the general was expelled from power, the nation is debating whether to bring in a military thug or opt for a populist former priest, two extremes that guarantee that this landlocked country will not be stable for quite some time.

Charles V. Peña is Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute as well as a senior fellow with the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, senior fellow with the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute, and an adviser on the Straus Military Reform Project.

William Ratliff is Adjunct Fellow at the Independent Institute, Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and a frequent writer on Chinese and Cuban foreign policies.

Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Full Biography and Recent Publications

Jonathan J. Bean is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor of History at Southern Illinois University, and editor of the forthcoming book, Race and Liberty: The Classical Liberal Tradition of Civil Rights.

Anthony Gregory is a Research Analyst at The Independent Institute. He earned his bachelor's degree in American history from the University of California at Berkeley and gave the undergraduate history commencement speech in 2003. In addition to his work with the Independent Institute, he regularly writes for numerous news and commentary web sites, including LewRockwell.com, Future of Freedom Foundation, and the Rational Review.
Full Biography and Recent Publications

Dominick T. Armentano is professor emeritus in economics at the University of Hartford (Connecticut) and a research fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. He is author of Antitrust & Monopoly (Independent Institute, 1998).

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is director of The Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute. He is a native of Peru and received his B.S.C. in international history from the London School of Economics. He is widely published and has lectured on world economic and political issues including at the Mont Pelerin Society, Naumann Foundation (Germany), FAES Foundation (Spain), Brazilian Institute of Business Studies, Fundación Libertad (Argentina), CEDICE Foundation (Venezuela), Florida International University, and the Ecuadorian Chamber of Commerce. He is the author of the Independent Institute books The Che Guevara Myth and Liberty for Latin America. Full biography and recent publications.

Pierre Lemieux is an economist and co-director of the Economics and Liberty Research Group at the Université du Québec en Outaouais and a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

Alexander Tabarrok is research director at The Independent Institute, associate professor of economics at George Mason University, editor of the Independent Institute books, Entrepreneurial Economics, The Voluntary City (with D. Beito and P. Gordon), and Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime.

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent Institute, author of Against Leviathan and Crisis and Leviathan, and editor of the scholarly quarterly journal, The Independent Review. Click here for a bio on Dr. Higgs, the noted economist and historian.

William Marina is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., and Professor Emeritus of History at Florida Atlantic University.

David T. Beito is a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute, Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama, and co-editor of the book, The Voluntary City: Choice, Community and Civil Society.

William Marina and David T. Beito belong to "Liberty and Power," a group blog at the History News Network.

For further articles and studies, see the Center on Peace & Liberty and OnPower.org.

Nicolas Heidorn is a public policy intern at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

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