New Paraguayan president vows to fight inequality

Fernando Lugo Méndez was sworn in as president of the Republic of Paraguay on Aug. 15. His electoral party, formed by the union of various organizations whose political ideology ranges from center left to right, is called the Patriotic Alliance for Change. Lugo ran against former President Nicanor Duarte of the Colorado Party.

The victory of the PAC effectively ends 61 years of control by the Colorados, a party of the elite that kept Paraguay in a state of permanent corruption and misery for the majority of the population. According to sources, 60 percent live below the poverty level in this country of almost seven million people.

Until he resigned his post in 2006, Lugo had been a Catholic bishop working in a poor community, where he practiced the teachings of liberation theology. The popular cleric left the church position to get more involved in politics and run for president.

Lugo delivered the first few sentences of his inaugural speech in Guaraní, an Indigenous language and the second official language of the country. Thanks to a live broadcast of the inauguration by TeleSur, the world was able to watch the complete ceremony and hear Lugo’s moving and poetic words.

His speech delineated the program Lugo wants to implement. Without rhetoric, he spoke to millions of Paraguayans who have been excluded from society, many of whom have been forced to emigrate for lack of jobs. The speech was directed to them and to the Indigenous, the peasants and to children living on the streets.

“Today an exclusive Paraguay, a secretive Paraguay, a Paraguay with a reputation for corruption, ends; today the history begins of a Paraguay whose authorities will be implacable against the thieves who [prey upon] its people.

“Compatriots: We today begin the intensity of our task: collective leadership. We dream of a socially just Paraguay. Where never again such inequality will exist that turns people against each other. So much inequality, that it generates satiety and hunger at the same time.

“We must say it: The greatest social and political investment of this government will be reflected in a very simple figure: a healthy and well educated child. What other starting point could be more favorable than planting the seeds for the future?”

Lugo’s first day included sending a warm embrace to the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, to whom he expressed gratitude “for the Paraguayans who went to the island to become professionals.”

The following day, he met with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to strengthen bilateral relations and sign 12 agreements, including cooperation on energy, food security, sovereignty, education, health and communications.

Venezuela, in turn, expects that the new administration of Paraguay will approve its entrance into the Southern Common Market, Mercosur, which the Duarte government had blocked.

As a visible sign of change, Margarita Mbywangi, chief of the Ache tribe, was named minister for Indigenous affairs. Mbywangi explained she had been captured in the jungle as a little girl, enslaved and sold to perform hard work. She now promises to work to improve the lives of the Indigenous people.

In the old Paraguay, reporters were not allowed to investigate corruption in the government. Now a new department, the National Ministry of Information and Communication for Development, has been created to assure that the public gets information in a transparent manner, inaugurating an “open door” policy in terms of communication from the state.

Paraguay will now also be a part of the Cuban and Venezuelan initiative providing the New Television of the South, or TeleSur.

The new president is very hopeful that the process of regional integration sweeping the South will bring about great changes. He stated that, “When one faces unacceptable social inequalities—where an agricultural exporting sector comprising 7 percent of the total population of a country with more than 6 million inhabitants owns no less than 93 percent of the arable land, while 93 percent of the population lives on the other 7 percent—nobody can doubt that the consequences are devastating.”

A key element on the agenda of the new administration is to renegotiate the terms of its agreements with neighboring Brazil and Argentina regarding revenues from two hydroelectric dams, Itaipu and Yaciretá. These agreements were signed under previous administrations when all three countries were subservient to imperialist financial interests. Paraguay wound up with smaller revenues.

For example, the 1973 agreement on Itaipu, which spans the Paraná River between Brazil and Paraguay and is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, stipulated that the two countries had a 50-50 right to the generated energy. However, Paraguay is much smaller and less industrialized than its colossal neighbor. Paraguay has only used 17 percent, selling the rest to Brazil at a very disadvantageous price.

Now talks on sharing these resources are being planned between Paraguay and the governments of Brazil and Argentina. The political situation in South America has improved and, with the exception of Colombia, has been marked by solidarity and willingness to cooperate.

The task of the new Paraguayan president will not be easy. There have been decades of government corruption, starting with the infamous 35-year right-wing military dictatorship of U.S. ally Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, which ended in 1989, and continued by the Colorado Party. The Brazilian oligarchy, backed by U.S. financial interests, has stolen land and resources from Paraguay. And the PAC itself encompasses a right-wing sector. It all points to a rocky road.

However, the masses, the majority of them very poor, are the ones who will be decisive. Health and education programs are slated to begin soon with the aid of Venezuela. They will help develop and uplift the people whose lives had been shattered by misery, but whose hopes for a better future made them break with the Colorado’s corruption. They have joined the millions of dispossessed throughout Latin America who are standing up, pledging to never again let imperialism, with its new face of neoliberalism, ruin their lives.

As President Lugo said at the end of his inaugural speech: “Paraguay has awakened.”