Reminder of the man who was reamed by the right-wing filthy, violent clown party in Paraguay:
Chávez, Lula ... and Lugo
Paraguay has become the latest Latin American country to throw out a rightwing president in favour of a reforming leftwinger. But does former priest Fernando Lugo, a man with little political experience, stand any real chance of transforming his battered country? He talked to Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Hugh O'Shaughnessy
The Guardian, Wednesday 2 July 2008
~snip~
After five centuries, the discontent of the indigenous people is beginning to boil over. This is despite the efforts of the US, which for 50 years has tried to smother the drive for change: either directly, using boycotts and bayonets - as in Cuba, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Grenada - or indirectly, through the use of local military surrogates - as in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. The dangerous ideas of the Catholic liberation theologians were a particular target for Washington.
But recently the combination of increasing prices for the region's exports of oil, minerals and food, and a waning of the once strong US influence in the region has helped to throw up a generation of new, more confident leaders in Latin America. Hugo Chávez was elected and re-elected in Venezuela, as was Lula in Brazil. Cristina Kirchner followed her husband Néstor to power in Argentina. Verónica Michelle Bachelet was elected in Chile, Tabaré Vásquez in Uruguay, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. And now, Lugo in Paraguay.
Until he resigned in January 2005, Lugo - full name, Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez - was the bishop of San Pedro Apóstol del Ycuamandiyú. This is a poverty-stricken area of 380,000 people, more than 90% of them Catholics, somewhere in the wilderness to the north of Asunción. It is the Paraguayan equivalent of Father Ted's Craggy Island. Many of Lugo's flock were illiterate and went hungry most of the time. The native language, Guaraní, is used in many homes, rather than Spanish.
These people - like most Paraguayans - got little support from the baleful one-party regime of the Colorado party, which has been in power for 61 years - ever since the late General Alfredo Stroessner took power in 1954. Stroessner was president until 1989, bolstered by a large and efficient gang of spies, torturers and con men, and the unfailing support of the western powers. Stroessner lived in the gothic presidential palace where he maintained an insatiable appetite for pubescent girls. Under his rule, Paraguay became a byword for dirty deeds, filth and, of course, smuggling. Drug trading was rife for decades while babies were freely on sale for £25,000 a throw. The profits made maintained lawyers, judges and traffickers in style. Meanwhile Stroessner's enemies lived and died in prison (one, the communist leader Ananías Maidana, remained in the same cell for 19 years).
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/03/religion.catholicism