American friend Federico Franco has been installed instead.

Good on you OBAMA, you are my hero...

It is obvious that some countries should remain poor for ever. There you have Paraguay, here you have Wayana.

What’s Behind Last Week's ‘Coup’ in Paraguay?

Latin American analysts draw connections between agribusiness and the Paraguayan elite

by ALTILIO BORON AND IDILIO MENDEZ GRIMALDI (TRANSLATED BY JAY HARTLING)

Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo at the World Economic Forum in 2010. Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org) / Edgar Alberto Domínguez Cataño [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Last Friday Paraguay’s president Fernando Lugo was impeached by congress in a move condemned by the landlocked country’s South American neighbours as a coup d’état. “The coups have returned, but disguised,” saidCuban president Raúl Castro. Canada, Germany and Spain are reported to have recognized the new government despite the objections of mostLatin American governments.

Jay Hartling, an independent journalist from Halifax living in El Salvador, translated the following two articles from Spanish to help explain to English-speaking audiences the powerful influence of multinational agribusiness corporations on the political situation in Paraguay.

LUGO AND THE CONNECTION TO AGRO-INDUSTRY:  By Atilio Boron

Last Friday (June 22, 2012), the Paraguayan Congress rushed through one of the most blatant acts of fraud in the political history of Latin America: the removal of President Fernando Lugo, in a summary trial that appeared more like a political lynching than a constitutional process. 

With a speed proportional to its illegitimacy, the most corrupt Senate in the Americas (and that’s saying a lot!), found him guilty of “poor performance” of his functions as President because of the tragic deaths that occurred in an eviction of landless farmers in Curuguaty. 

This massacre was a trap devised by a right wing that has waited since Lugo assumed the presidency in 2008 for the right moment to get rid of his government, which, despite not affecting its interests, opened a space for social protest and popular organization that was incompatible with the dominance of the ruling class. The eternal dishonour attached to being the leader of this institutional coup belongs to Mr. Aldo Zucolillo, the director and owner of the daily newspaper ABC Color, and the lofty leader of the sinister Interamerican Press Society (SIP).1 

The coup in Paraguay imitates the 2009 coup directed against Mel Zelaya in Honduras,with the exceptional difference that Mr. Zelaya was removed from his house by the military at the point of a bayonet.  Zucolillo, “illegitimate child” of the Stroessner era 2 – is the same as various others of his type in the rest of the region – an unscrupulous businessman who developed his wealth under “freedom of the press” and the improbable “independent journalism”, the loincloth that doesn’t hide what Paraguayan economist Idilio Mendez Grimaldi says -- that Zucolillo is the main partner of Cargill in Paraguay, one of the largest agro-industrial transnationals in the world.” 

ABC Color launched an intense campaign prior to the coup d’etat, preparing a political climate that permitted Lugo’s express political hanging.  

The leadership of Cargill and Monsanto in the “democracide” perpetrated in Paraguay is scandalous. Mendez Grimaldi, in a detailed analysis of the sistematic plunder of Paraguay by Cargill and Monsanto, notes the following:  

· Agro-industrial transnationals in Paraguay pay almost zero taxes, due to their ferocious protection in Congress, which is dominated by the Right.  

· Tax collection in Paraguay is just under 13% of GDP.  

· 60% of taxes collected by the Paraguayan state are the IVA [similar to GST].  

· Large-scale landowners do not pay taxes.  Land taxes represent scarcely 0.04% of taxes

collected – about $5 million, according to a study by the World Bank.

· Agro-industry produces an income equal to 30% of GDP, which represents approximately $6 billion.  

· 85% of all land in Paraguay – approximately 30 million hectares – is in the hands of 2% of the population, who also dominate the national political stage. The “2%” make their money in extractive industries and land speculation; have tight ties to the transnational financial sector; and, in one way or another, are linked to agro-industry. 

Due to the operation of these conditions in the country, where perks and bribes are the engines of the accumulation of capital, it was very unlikely that Lugo could stabilize power without constructing a powerful social base. 

Nonetheless, and despite the numerous warnings of allies inside and outside Paraguay, the ousted president did not undertake the homework of consolidating a broad-based and heterogenous social movement with the same enthusiasm that brought him to power in 2008.

His support in congress was minimal.  Only four senators opposed the parliamentary coup, and he didn’t have much more support in the lower house.  His only strength to discourage his bitter enemies was his ability to mobilize in the streets.  However, he stubbornly resisted this, even though a wide range of sectors and regional governments were willing to accompany him. 

Unfortunately, he missed his opportunity, and throughout his mandate made continuous concessions to the Right, ignoring the fact that it didn’t matter how many concessions he made – they would never accept his presidency as legitimate. 

His concessions to the corrupt Paraguayan oligarchy only served to embolden them, and did nothing to pacify their virulent opposition.  And, despite making these concessions, Lugo was still considered a bothersome intrusion, even though he promulgated, instead of vetoing, anti-terrorist laws requested by “the Embassy” – another important protagonist in his downfall. 

The US embassy, together with the agro-industrial transnationals and the oligarchy, made up the gang that dominated Congress. The Paraguayan Right worked hand in glove with Washington to impede, among other things, the entrance of Venezuela in Mercosur [Mercado Comun del Sur, or Common Market of the South; a political and economic alliance between Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina]. 

The first declarations made by Lugo’s illegitimate successor, Federico Franco, are proof of this.  Mr. Franco publicly assured the White House that the Paraguayan Senate would not vote in favour of Venezuela’s entrance to Mercosur. What the usurper didn’t realize is that there is a higher probability that it will be HIS country that will be left out of Mercosur, UNASUR and other regional organizations.3  

Meanwhile, several countries have released statements saying they would not recognize the new government of Paraguay (Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Nicaragua, El Salvador), several have suspended relations with Paraguay and recalled their ambassadors, and others are in the process of consideration. 

In addition to recalling its ambassador, Venezuela has cut all petrol shipments to Paraguay.  Canada, the US, Great Britain and Spain have all announced their support of the “new” government.4

Lugo realized too late what little democracy there really is in the institutionality of the capitalist state, which removed him in a tragicomic political show trial that violated with impunity all standards of due process. 

His strange reaction that validated the legal monstrosity perpetrated against him seemed more like the actions of some bishop forgiving a humble parishioner of a minor sin than that of a popular president stripped of his office by a gang of looters. Why did he not call on the people to resist, surrounding the congressional building with a human wall to prevent the coup d’etat?

Let this be a lesson for all of the people of Latin America and the Caribbean: only the mobilization and popular organization of the people can guarantee the stability of governments interested in enacting a project of social transformation, no matter how moderate or accommodating it is in its reformist proposals, as it was in the case of Lugo. The oligarchy and imperialism will never stop conspiring and acting. 

And, if at times it seems as if they are resigned to the advancement of a government elected by a popular majority, this appearance is deceiving – more illusion than real, as we have just seen one more time in the case of our suffering brother of a country, Paraguay.

Shame on you Obama. You are not different from any other Neo-Nazi anglo.