Paraguay vulnerable to Chavez-like leader

YAGUARON, Paraguay — A feisty populist former priest could win next April's Paraguayan elections and become Hugo Chavez's new ally in this country bordering Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. The rise of Fernando Lugo, who was active in liberation theology movement within the Catholic Church, illustrates the inadequacies of Latin America's democratic systems, which periodically give rise to left-wing movements fueled by social resentment.

I came to Yaguaron, a sleepy town to the south of Asuncion that seems frozen in the 18th century, to shoot a documentary on authoritarianism in Latin America. My focus has been on Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, a fascinating man who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist in the first half of the 19th century and is partly responsible for this country's despotic tradition. I was surprised to find people, from peasants to schoolteachers, who still express admiration for a leader who built his regime on the notion that Paraguay should be cut off from the rest of the world and ordered all Paraguayans to touch their hat brims when they met him.

A modern-day version of Francia might be in the offering. A coalition known as the Concertacion Nacional thinks that Lugo could be the answer to the corrupt politics of the Colorado Party, which has ruled this country for more than six decades. In response to a system that has pushed many people to make a living through smuggling, including drugs, Lugo's supporters propose a combination of socialist and nationalist policies under their firebrand leader who, like his Venezuelan mentor, Chavez, promises "social justice." Paraguay's tragedy is that their diagnosis is right — and their remedy a recipe for disaster.

Yes, the nation has suffocated under the Colorado Party of which Alfredo Stroessner, the dictator who held power for 35 years until 1989, was the central character. And, yes, the democratic system that has followed Stroessner has done little to make itself legitimate in the eyes of ordinary Paraguayans. Apart from the traditional soybean, cotton and meat exports, few legal economic opportunities have opened up under a coterie of politicians, soldiers and established business interests who decide everything.

Few things can be more telling with regard to the farce that is Paraguayan politics than the fact that the current president, Nicanor Duarte, is willing to talk to Lino Oviedo, a general who served a jail sentence for attempting a military coup, to persuade him to step into the presidential fray in order to stop Lugo.