Media lies & US coup can't drown out Lugo the Paraguay land reformer

Tony Gosling tony at cultureshop.org.uk
Sat Aug 25 01:13:03 BST 2012 


Seven ways of reporting on a coup: the overthrow of Paraguayan president Lugo

http://wallofcontroversy.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/seven-ways-of-reporting-on-a-coup-the-overthrow-of-paraguayan-president-lugo/
There is one person whose important opinion has 
been strangely absent during the last few weeks 
of turmoil in Paraguay: that person being, of 
course, Fernando Lugo himself. On Thursday [July 
12th] Lugo broke his silence giving an exclusive 
interview on Russia Today:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXIsvCjgZv0

RT: Mr. President, right after you were voted out 
of office, you spoke as if you were resigning of 
your own accord. You also looked as if you 
weren’t quite yourself. Later we saw a more 
energetic Lugo, like the one we see now. So why 
did you fail to be as convincing in your 
resistance to the coup in those first hours?

FL: I saw people out in the square. They wanted 
me to go because of the ministers. I knew that a 
new massacre was being prepared. I am a convicted 
pacifist. I didn’t want to see any Paraguayan 
lose their blood as a result of violence. That is 
why we went along with this illegal and unfair 
process. It was a politically-charged trial 
disguised as a constitutional process. As one MP 
said, it all looked like a circus designed to 
depose a democratically-elected president.

Weekend Edition July 13-15, 2012
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/13/return-of-the-coups/http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/13/return-of-the-coups/print>
[]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/13/return-of-the-coups/
 From Honduras to Paraguay


Return of the Coups

by GABRIEL ROSSMAN

On June 22, the Paraguayan Congress impeached 
President Fernando Lugo, a progressive who 
assumed office in 2008. Although technically 
legal, Lugo’s removal threatens the very 
integrity of democracy in Paraguay. It is the 
latest in a disconcerting series of attacks 
against progressive governments in South America 
that highlights the vulnerability of its nascent 
democratic institutions and calls into question 
the trend of democratization in the region.

Lugo’s victorious election campaign was historic. 
It ended more than 60 years of dominance by the 
Colorado Party. This right-wing coalition of 
landed and military elites used violence and 
coercion to dominate Paraguay through the 
extensive state bureaucracy created by dictator 
Alfredo Strossner, a Colorado strongman who ruled 
from 1954 to 1989. The Party’s legitimacy 
gradually eroded through its land-grabs and 
corruption scandals involving high-level 
officials. It was also implicated in political 
assassinations, most notably that of Vice 
President Luis Maria Argana in 1999, after which 
President Raul Cubas was forced to resign and flee the country.

Lugo, a progressive who proposed numerous social 
reforms, was widely known in Paraguay as the 
“bishop of the poor.” Pledging to fight 
corruption, reduce poverty, and enact agrarian 
reform in a country where 38 percent of people 
live in poverty and 2 percent of the population 
controls 75 percent of fertile land, Lugo won 41 
percent of the popular vote in 2008, beating out 
the Colorado candidate by 10 percentage points. 
Despite this electoral success, the conservative 
legislature and the tenuous coalition of 
center-right parties that helped bring him to 
power systematically frustrated Lugo’s progressive efforts at reform.

The Impeachment

Lugo was impeached on grounds of “malfeasance” 
after 17 people were killed in a clash between 
police and landless squatters protesting land 
inequality. This legal formality, however, 
obscures the fact that Lugo’s ouster, 
long-desired by those who opposed his democratic 
reforms, was politically motivated.

A leaked 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable claimed that 
the “shared goal” of General Lino Oviedo and 
ex-President Nicanor Frutos, both Colorado party 
members, was “to change the current political 
equation, break the political deadlock in 
Congress, impeach Lugo and regain their own 
political relevance.” The cable, which was 
classified as “secret,” includes this prophetic 
sentence: “Oviedo’s dream scenario involves 
legally impeaching Lugo, even if on spurious grounds.”

South American governments from all across the 
political spectrum immediately condemned Lugo’s 
abrupt removal (he was given less than 24 hours 
notice and just two hours to defend himself). 
Mercosur suspended Paraguay and refused to 
recognize the new government. Venezuela 
unilaterally halted all fuel shipments to 
Asuncion. Brazil and Mexico withdrew their 
ambassadors, as did Colombia, whose president, 
Juan Manuel Santos, is a staunch conservative. 
Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner 
publicly called Lugo’s impeachment a “coup d’état.”

Regional Trend?

The removal of Lugo is particularly disturbing 
because it is the latest in a series of actions 
against progressive populist governments in Latin 
America. In a 2009 coup, democratically elected 
Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who had raised 
the national minimum wage despite strong 
opposition from the business elite, was removed 
at gunpoint. In 2010, Ecuadorean President Rafael 
Correa was tear-gassed, assaulted, and held 
captive by insurgent police officers in an 
attempted coup that ended in a shootout.

An international fact-finding team arrived in 
Asuncion on Monday to collect information on the 
events leading up to the impeachment, Lugo’s 
satellite government, and the major players in 
the recent events. The U.S. State Department said 
it was “quite concerned” about the rapidity of 
Lugo’s impeachment. The United States is unlikely 
to take a more definitive stance until the OAS 
team submits its report in the coming days.

One thing is certain: few people want a repeat of 
what happened in Honduras. Since the 2009 coup, 
political dissidents have been assassinated, 
minorities have been targeted, and violence and 
disorder have ensued. Honduras now has the world’s highest homicide rate.

The fact-finding mission’s report should 
elucidate the details of a political upheaval 
that remains opaque. So far, there is no 
indication that any outside powers played a role in the coup.

The impeachment’s rapidity and the vote’s 
unprecedented margin (in the House of 
Representatives, the vote was 73 in favor and 1 
against impeachment) suggest that Lugo’s 
impeachment was not a response to his 
“malfeasance” surrounding the killings by the 
police. It was coordinated and politically 
motivated, likely by domestic landowning and 
business elites, with powerful allies in 
Congress, who opposed Lugo’s progressive agenda 
and preferred a return to the right-wing Colorado party.

Ironically, the state that has benefitted the 
most from Lugo’s ouster may be Venezuela. 
Venezuela was selected to replace Paraguay in 
Mercosur after Paraguay’s membership was suspended.

Gabriel Rossman is an intern with Foreign Policy 
in Focus, where this essay originally appeared.

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