Paraguay's Forgotten Coup
Paraguay's Forgotten Coup
Did a bloody confrontation over land rights lead to a coup against the country's former President Fernando Lugo?
People and Power Last updated: 26 Dec 2013 18:56
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By filmmaker Reed Lindsay
I first went to Paraguay in September 2002, and was shocked by the country's stark inequalities and seemingly brazen corruption.
One narrow street separated the Senate building from a vast slum of tin-roofed shanties. The economy was propped up by the smuggling of cigarettes and other contraband. And in the latest of a series of scandals, the president at the time was discovered to have been using a stolen BMW as his personal limousine. The brutal 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner had come to an end in 1989, but his Colorado Party was still firmly in power, causing many Paraguayans to question the benefits of their fledgling democracy.
But in the countryside, landless campesinos were taking full advantage of the dictatorship's demise. They were organising road-blocking protests and occupying land claimed by powerful businessmen and politicians, acts of defiance that would have been unthinkable under the iron-fisted rule of Stroessner.
However, as in many other Latin American countries, the battle over land in Paraguay played out in relative obscurity.
A decade later, the conflict between campesinos and landowners has taken centre stage politically like nowhere else in the hemisphere, bringing down a president and changing the course of a nation.
More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2013/12/paraguay-forgotten-coup-2013122585659847327.html