A soft coup in South America

[Judi Lynn]

July 12, 2012
A soft coup in South America

The questionable removal of President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay by the country’s Senate, nine months before the end of his five-year-term in April 2013, raises questions about the state of democracy in South America, much as the coup in Honduras did three years ago for Central America. For a region with a recent transition to democracy, this is worrisome. For a country like Paraguay, dominated until 2008 by 61 years of uninterrupted rule by the Colorado party of General Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), that veritable archetype of the Latin American dictator, this is especially so.

Twenty-odd years into democratic transition and consolidation in Latin America, we were hearing that democracy had stabilised, that the concern was no longer of coups, but of the quality of democracy and the latter’s ability to deliver the goods and services citizens expected. Free and fair elections were taking place, alternation in power was the rule and civil liberties and press freedom were respected. The real challenge now, we were told, was how to move from these “low-intensity democracies”, to governments that ensured not just the respect of political and civil rights, but also those of social and economic ones. Latin America’s economic boom over the past decade and the social policies of some governments around the region were starting to make that happen, in a part of the world that continues to have the most unequal distribution of income anywhere.

~snip~
So, how did Paraguay fare under President Lugo? Was the country going down the drain, to “hell in a hand-basket” under the ministrations of the good bishop?

Well, not really. Although hit, like every other country, by the Great Recession of 2008-2009, in 2010, the Paraguayan economy grew 14.5 per cent, one of the highest rates in the world, comparable to the rates clocked by Singapore or some of the Gulf Emirates, and Paraguay’s highest in 30 years. It grew again at 6 per cent in 2011, and prospects are upbeat for this year as well. In other words, the country is booming, and doing better than it ever did in the past. This is largely driven by the cultivation of soya, of which Paraguay has become the fourth largest producer in the world, with 8.4 million tonnes in 2011, and some $1.5 billion in exports, much of it to China. President Lugo, aware of the significance of the Indian market for soya as well, had visited India in May. It is said that soya has become so significant that it has replaced smuggling as Paraguay’s main economic activity.

More:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article3628430.ece

[ocpagu]

1. Also in the article:

"The bottom line is that Mr. Lugo, a former man of the cloth, known as “the bishop of the poor”, and not one to share in the customs and habits of the Paraguayan elite (no ties and pinstripe suits for him), a provincial and unsophisticated lot as it is, was disliked by the parliamentarians, who decided to get rid of him. The bearded, Mao-suit clad, liberation-theology-supporting priest just wasn’t their type, no matter what the people wanted. And this leads to the alleged reason for his highly irregular ouster, that is, “poor performance"."

When this happens, the media, right-wingers and pseudo-leftists call these kind of presidents of "populists". I recall a DUer has called him that. I wonder what did Lugo do in office that could be classified as "populism"... in Paraguay, the elites, their puppet representatives in Congress, in the Supreme Court and the media successfully played the "bolivarianization" card, accusing Lugo of being a Hugo Chávez's puppet. The concentration of Paraguayan media outlets in the hands of a few families allows the "single speech", inciting fear and hate. This situation is not really very different from the other Latin American countries.

They tried to do the same thing in Brazil, presenting Lula as an acolyte of Bolivarianism, but the Brazilian media is no longer as influent as they were in the past, and Lula could count on a majority in Congress - that being the only reason why he hasn't been impeached (there were several attempts). Any leftist president in Latin America will have to face accusations of being "populist" (whatever that means...), will have to deal with coup mongers and will never be fairly treated by the press.

[Peace Patriot]

2. No, it ain't about "habits and customs of the elite" (Lugo did not fit in).

The article is well worth reading and makes many good points, but their para about the elite simply not liking Lugo and that being the "bottom line" of this coup, is what I call "journalistic fingerpainting"--making up whatever crapola you can think of, because you don't have sufficient facts, sources and on-the-ground contacts; OR, doing this (idly speculating, making things up) deliberately as "spin" as the result of pressure from some outside entity (editor? media owner? CIA?).

The CIA's purpose would be to point away from U.S. involvement in this coup. And, considering past and recent U.S. history in LatAm, that is my suspect for the influence on this paragraph.

It is important to "follow the money," as Deep Throat said, and I would amend it to say, "also follow the corporate/war profiteer interests." Lugo was no more thrown out than the new regime started making deals with the Pentagon to put U.S. "boots on the ground" in Paraguay (something Lugo opposed). Clearly, U.S. strategists want Paraguay as a launching pad for making trouble in the region (as Honduras once was and is now becoming again, in Central America--more U.S. military bases, etc., post-coup.)

Also, the U.S. and the transglobal corporate monsters and war profiteers that it serves have no more fervent desire in LatAm than to break up the unity of the vast leftist democracy movement that has achieved leftist, "New Deal"-type governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, recently Peru, and, until the two coups, Honduras and Paraguay. These governments are (or, in the case of the coups, were) working closely together on goals of social justice, peace, prosperity and independence/sovereignty (esp. re the U.S. and its global corporate monstrosities). Their unity makes it very difficult for the U.S. to subvert and subdue individual countries. It is very like labor union solidarity and is probably modeled on that kind of people-driven strength, since one of its key leaders, Lula da Silva, was a steelworkers' organizer. (He was imprisoned and tortured by the U.S.-backed fascist junta in Brazil because of it.)

Though the Obama/Clinton and (very important) Panetta (Bush Senior associate) team is a subtler player than the Bush Junta (which failed, spectacularly, in LatAm, due to its crude methods), their goals are the same. What we have seen, thus far, of current U.S. (Obama/Clinton but mostly Panetta) methods, is subversion. (We are seeing this also in the Middle East.) This means far better intelligence about whom to subvert (the weak points in a country, the bribable, the blackmailable), more patient masterminding, smarter use of the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars devoted to the fascist cause in LatAm (all of it), smarter infiltration into militaries, police forces, political groups and governments (and possibly also into some leftist groups), smarter use of the propaganda media (all corporate media) and so on. It also involves the U.S.'s actual contrivance of false and stolen elections (Honduras, Haiti), and U.S. collusion on stolen elections (Mexico and possibly Panama and Guatemala).

Colombia is such a bloody mess after the infusion of $7 BILLION in U.S. military "aid," that it's gone way beyond mere stolen elections into vast murder and mayhem, with trade unionists and other advocates of the poor as the targets. (Honduras and Mexico are now on that path--murder and mayhem making civil life impossible and elections meaningless.) And I'm not sure about Chile--the loss of the presidency to the rightwing there might be more attributable to weakness in the socialist party that had been in power than to U.S. meddling. I'm also not sure if Chile's voting system has been privatized, as it has been here. (Are Chileans that stupid? I hope not.)

The Obama/Clinton/Panetta strategy in LatAm is to subvert democracy rather than to overtly overthrow leftist governments (as the Bushwhacks tried to do in Venezuela in '02, and in Bolivia in '08--both failures). And it seems to be succeeding, as they pick off the weakest members of the new leftist alliance (Honduras and Paraguay and they're working on El Salvador--in all three cases, using false "constitutional crises" as the excuse--the one in Honduras clearly designed in Washington DC and probably the prototype). We'll see how "master-mindish" it is, when it comes to the stronger targets (Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina) and the medium-strength targets (Bolivia, Ecuador). Frankly, I think that the leftist democracy movement in LatAm is stronger than Panetta and will survive his machinations but they may very well have to face war with the U.S. if the decision is made by our corporate/war profiteer rulers that LatAm's resources and slave labor must be acquired, at any cost, to enhance their vast wealth and power. The U.S. presidential election in 2012 will NOT be decided by the people of the U.S. but by the powerbrokers evaluating Leon Panetta. (Can their goals be achieved without overt war?)

[Bacchus4.0]

3. journalistic finger painting, irony, and you

"--making up whatever crapola you can think of, because you don't have sufficient facts, sources and on-the-ground contacts"