The Deposition of Lugo in Paraguay and the Brasiguayo Question

Chapter 6 The Deposition of Lugo in Paraguay and the Brasiguayo Question In an interview he gave to Folha, at the HQ of his business group in Asun- ción, this Santa Catarina man born in the small town of Videira called the peasants who surround his farm ‘delinquents’, praised the dictator Alfre- do Stroessner’s government (‘At that time you could sleep with the win- dow open and no one stole from you, we’ve only been getting worse since then’) and said that it is useless to deal with the landless on the basis of diplomacy, that they have to be treated ‘as a bad guy’s woman, who only obeys the use of a stick’. Interview with Tranquilo Favero, Paraguay’s largest soybean planter, 2012 I want you to feel at home; beyond the protocol, I will repeat what I al- ready said: use and abuse Paraguay … everything with Brazil, nothing against Brazil. Horacio Cartes to Brazilian entrepreneurs, 2014 1 Introduction Paraguay has been briefly touched by the progressive tide but has also suffered from the contradictions inherent in the process. The election of Fernando Lugo in 2008 was the first political alternation in the country after six decades of Colorado rule, including the region’s longest dictatorship, from 1954 to 1989. Identified as a progressive, Lugo’s main electoral promise was agrarian reform. However, the government faced stiff obstacles to advancement on that front, hardened by the recent prosperity of soybean agri-business of Brazilian origin known as brasiguayos. Although the presence of Brazilians in the country is not recent, their central role in soybean expansion has given it another dimension. During the govern- ments of the Workers Party (PT), the Brazilian state encouraged brasiguayos progress through lines of credit and political support, but this helped to stiffen the opposition faced by Brazil’s ally, the Lugo government in Paraguay, and affected its ability to democratize access to land. As a result, the position of the © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, �� | doi:10.1163/9789004419056_008 <UN> Deposition of Lugo in Paraguay and the Brasiguayo Question 139 Lugo government was weakened in the face of interests that started the impeachment, which Brazilian diplomacy was then unable to stop. It is a para- doxical situation: Brazilian government support for economic sectors that oppose desired political change ends up reversing that change. Viewed from the prism of the brasiguayo issue, the impeachment in Paraguay explains the contradictions of Brazilian regional policy and South American progressivism, inherent to the pretence of articulating political change and economic conservatism. 2 The Agrarian Question and Brazilian Presence in Paraguay The brasiguayo issue is rooted in the confluence of two aspects of independent Paraguayan history: the agrarian question and the influence of Brazil. In his- torical perspective, both are related to the outcome of the War of the Triple Alliance (1865–1870), a decisive episode in the formation of contemporary Paraguay that affected social relations in rural areas as well as the country’s international position. In its present form of expression, the consolidation of brasiguayo power arises from the convergence of economic and geopolitical interests between the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner from 1954 to 1989 and Brazilian foreign policy in that period. Although the nature of the relations of production prevailing in Paraguay before the War of the Triple Alliance is a controversial subject, in the country and abroad (Pastore 1949; Rivarola 2010; White 1984), an understanding that the war drastically altered the existing relations of production prevails among scholars of the agrarian question. Until then, peasant-oriented ways of life were dominant, in a country where state ownership of the land predominated and there was no oligarchy linked to the latifundia – a unique case on the con- tinent. The outcome of the war aborted the relatively autonomous course of the Paraguayan state, which was then incorporated into the sphere of influence of its neighbors, starting with Argentina. In the process, the mercantile conversion of land use backed the formation of a ruling class analogous to that of other countries in the region, as well as the massive acquisition of land by foreigners. From the point of view of relations with Brazil, historiographic consensus points to a change in the orientation of Paraguayan foreign policy by the Al- fredo Stroessner regime (1954–1989), which would progressively strengthen ties with its Portuguese-speaking neighbor to the detriment of Argentina (Moraes 2001). American interference in the 1954 coup was reportedly to <UN>.

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