Anti-government protesters march during an opposition rally, marking a year since President Santiago Pena’s inauguration, in Asuncion, Paraguay, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024. Credit: AP/Jorge Saenz
She had garnered the third-most votes in last year’s legislative elections. But in a vote that rights groups said violated due process, she was ejected by allies of former President Horacio Cartes, a powerful cigarette tycoon sanctioned by the Biden administration for corruption who remains president of the Colorado party.
“We don’t see the popular will being reflected in our representative bodies,” González said. “That’s why we’re demonstrating today.”
The government has chalked her expulsion up to the will of Congress, where the Colorado party has a majority. In June, the party removed a lawmaker from its ranks who had similarly spoken out against Cartes’ alleged corruption.
Last week, Paraguay even demanded that the United States accelerate the departure of its ambassador after the White House imposed sanctions on a tobacco company that it alleged had paid millions of dollars to Cartes.
Cartes denies the allegations.
When Paraguay’s senate last month rushed through a contentious bill that expands government powers to audit nonprofits, the former mayor of Asunción raised alarm, recalling the symbolic triumph of 1991.
“Let’s remember the moment we knocked down the statue,” Carlos Filizzola said, “for its symbolism against what the dictatorship was.”
The government said the bill aims to boost scrutiny of NGO finances to counter money laundering. Critics said it mimics so-called nonprofit transparency measures in place from Russia to Venezuela that send a chill through civil society. The United Nations appealed to Paraguay’s lower house to reject it.
Experts argue that the past is still present in Paraguay because the government hasn’t reckoned with the legacy of Stroessner, who entrenched the small South American country’s highly unequal distribution of land ownership and turned Paraguay into a smuggling hub.
His enduring influence was never more obvious than in 2018, when Paraguay elected then-President Mario Abdo Benítez, the son of Stroessner’s personal secretary who had served as a pallbearer at the dictator’s 2006 funeral.
“The totalitarian control of Stroessner created a real identification between political party and the state,” said historian Milda Rivarola. “That’s what made the Paraguayan political regime so special, the only country on the continent that never really had a progressive government.”
Paraguay’s left-wing opposition party held power just once — from 2008-2012 — before its president’s impeachment.
“In our country, this history of the dictatorship is hidden, there’s no policy of memory,” said Rogelio Goiburú, who oversees efforts to recover victims’ remains for the Justice Ministry and whose father was disappeared by the dictatorship.
Efforts to bring justice to those responsible for crimes against humanity have been far more extensive in neighboring Argentina, where courts have convicted hundreds of military officers of dictatorship-era crimes and forensic teams have identified 800 victims.
But in Paraguay, there have been no blockbuster trials of junta leaders. Public schools — many still decorated with plaques paying tribute to Stroessner — avoid mention of the 20th-century dictatorship in national history lessons.
The remains of just four victims have been identified with the help of Argentine researchers. Goiburú said the Justice Ministry commission has no budget or state support.
“I’m still putting up with everything because of that motto, ‘Never Again.’ We do this so we don’t lose our memory, so this doesn’t happen again,” he said from a riverside park in dilapidated downtown Asunción. In 1991, Filizzola, the former mayor, named it Plaza of the Disappeared.
“That’s why we have to continue,” he said.
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66cd2ea5a7574bd1ab7312bf875f785f&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsday.com%2Fnews%2Fnation%2Fparaguay-democracy-congress-corruption-horacio-cartes-biden-stroessner-k83589&c=16027888091270489498&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-08-15 07:17:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
