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First off, let me reemphasize that any statements made here
are my opinions and experiences alone and in no way reflect the position of the
US Government, or of the Peace Corps. I
feel compelled to write this post in response to concerns by my friends and
family about the situation in Paraguay.
I am going to do my best to simply explain the events and provide links
to informative articles (some of which are on Wikipedia- not the most reliable,
but handy for getting the gist of things), while avoiding any commentary on the
politics involved. Volunteers have been
requested to avoid publicly giving opinions on the situation, and I want to
abide by that request.
On Friday night, June 26th,
Paraguay experienced a rapid change in leadership (some are calling it a
political coup). Paraguay’s Senate voted to impeach President Lugo in a vote of 39 for
and 4 against. Amongst other things,
they cited an event that had happened a few weeks earlier on June 15th. There was a clash (resulting in 17 deaths) between
the police and landless farmers who were occupying land
that had been given to the current owner under questionable legal circumstances by the
dictator Alfredo Stroessner decades earlier. Historically, Lugo’s
presidency was significant in part because it was the first time that a
“president from one party peacefully transferred power to another”
ending over 60 years of rule by one party.
There is much controversy over the
legality of the impeachment, in part due to the speed at which the whole thing
took place. Most people (including me
while I was at a neighbors house trying out a new venenos caseros for her
garden) heard about the plans for impeachment on Thursday morning. By the time he was voted out on Friday night,
he had had under 24 hours to prepare, and just two hours to mount a defense. The vise president Federico Franco (who is of a different political
party than Lugo), was sworn-in shortly thereafter.
So what does this mean? Well, there are (mostly) peaceful protests
centered in Asuncion, and more planed later this week all over the country. Lugo is encouraging protesters to remain
peaceful, but is not accepting the verdict. One concern that I have heard repeatedly is the well-founded worry that this
might make Paraguay even more isolated (for a visual explanation of this see
the map half way down this page). Ambassadors have been called home from half a
dozen South American governments.
I am safe. Mostly, life is just going on as normal. My neighbors still have their fields to hoe,
and their cows to milk. The only difference
is that people are keeping their radios close and those few people with TVs are
now very popular. Like a telanovela,
each development is discussed extensively over terere or if it’s a cold day, over mate. Peace Corps Volunteers, of course, refrain
from giving opinions on the situation so as to not strain relationships with
host country nationals.
There are other things I wanted to
talk about, but this post is heavy enough. Future topics might include the challenge of
being far away when there are deaths in the family (I have lost two
grandparents in the past 4 moths), the fabulous craziness that is the festivalof San Juan (I am unfamiliar with the women’s games that are listed, but I definitely saw
lots of fire soccer balls, burning effigies, and greased climbing poles at the
party I went to), more angst on being lgbt and closeted, the
possibility of maybe extending my time in Paraguay by a year, and the fact that
my hens are FINALLY laying eggs. So stay
tuned!
**UPDATE: NPR did a story on Paraguay. Here is the link.
**UPDATE: NPR did a story on Paraguay. Here is the link.
