1940-48 – President Morinigo was responsible for creating a Nazified Paraguayan Police Force and received an honorary degree from Fordham University at the end of his hearty reception in the U.S.
1962-75 – In the early years of the long Dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, he receives a total of $146 million of US and international military and economic aid.
The systematic massacre of the Ache (pronounced “achee”) Indians occurred even though Paraguay has no particular export potential (but see recently) or political significance. An independent Paraguay would still set the threat of a good example to the rest of South America, and so it too may not be free.
Slavery was widespread and officially tolerated. Striking absence of young Ache males. Refusal of medical care to the rest is a general and deliberate practice. The Indian reservation was run by US fundamentalist missionaries observed participating in Indian manhunts. Jack Stolz ran the New Tribes Mission, picked by the American Government presumably because of his anti-Indian racism. Paraguay was a haven for escaped Nazis like Joseph Mengele, the exterminating angel of Birkenau. The Nazis became the mentors of Paraguay’s prison guards passing on experience from concentration camps in Europe.
The Dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner continues for 35 years. And once the land has been correctly allocated by the Dictator and his international support in this process of violence, injustice and terror, theoutcome is that 2% of the population own 80% of the land. And now all the Institutions are correctly aligned, power can grant itself the luxury of free and fair elections.
It takes a further 19 years before the people of Paraguay are able in 2008 to elect Fernando Lugo, a man sympathetic to agrarian reform but who, at this point in Paraguayan history, only rules in partnership with less progressive Parties. It takes Power only 4 years to unseat him.
Paraguay has become the world’s fourth largest exporter of soybeans, with much of the land under the control of big business – Monsanto, Novartis and Dow AgroSciences – who are unhappy with Lugo’s restrictions on pesticides and the banning of new genetically modified varieties that threatened native versions.
With Lugo left uninformed, a demonstration against Landowners is brutally suppressed with 18 dead. Remembering what we have learned about modern Public Relations, if a U.S.-sponsored right wing Government performed an identical operation then this “brutal suppression” would be referred to as “restoring order” and no action would be taken.
But Lugo is not a U.S. client and so he is blamed, impeached and removed within a week. In spite of the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela describing the process as a coup, U.S. President Obama recognizes his successor.
As things stand, we can only hope that in the future Paraguay decisively elects a Government that acts in the interests of its people and that learns effective ways to insulate itself from the attempts by a Foreign Power to overthrow it.
Maybe Paraguay has a little to learn from a near neighbour to the South.