Bishop in Paraguay runs for president

Source: Mercury News

Bishop in Paraguay runs for president
By BILL CORMIER Associated Press Writer
Article Launched: 07/13/2007 12:11:17 AM PDT



Former Roman Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo delivers a speech... (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz, FILE)

ASUNCION, Paraguay—A charismatic leader dubbed the "Bishop of the Poor" is an early favorite to make history as the first man to serve as a Roman Catholic bishop, then be elected president of his country.

The Vatican is not pleased, and it's not alone: Fernando Lugo's candidacy not only tests the church's strict prohibition on clergy seeking political office, it also challenges the established elites in Paraguay. The nation's poor majority feels disenfranchised after 60 years of unbroken rule by President Nicanor Duarte's Colorado Party.

Although there's a long way to go before next April's presidential election, polls show Lugo has support from nearly 40 percent of voters, 10 percentage points ahead of his closest rival. Thousands turn out at his rallies, sometimes on horse-drawn wagons, chanting "Lugo, si!" at his vows to end one-party rule.

Like many Paraguayans, Lugo blames the Colorados for the struggling economy, rampant corruption and politics that favor rich elites in the landlocked, agrarian nation.



Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_6364540?nclick_check=1

Lugos, si! :woohoo:

is in South America. It is utterly transforming the continent, and will have (is having) profound impacts on US/South American relations, and economics, and, hopefully it will lead to political and social change here, with the South Americans showing us the way.

For so many decades and centuries, we have lectured them on democracy and human rights--very often completely hypocritically, since the U.S. was supporting fascist dictatorships and their heinous crimes--and have dominated and exploited them, and created vast poverty and untold suffering. But now South America is arising as the region which actually takes democracy and humanitarian values seriously, while we can't seem to throw off the fascist/corporate coup which is turning US into a "banana republic."

Such irony.

Through a combination of long hard work on democratic institutions--most especially on transparent elections--and awesome grass roots organization--good, progressive, leftist (majorityist) governments have been elected in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and, to the north, Nicaragua, with strong leftist movements in Paraguay, Peru and Mexico. Of these, I expected Peru or Mexico--both of which recently came very close to electing true leftists as president--to be the first to join the revolution. But it looks like that kudo will go to Paraguay.

Fernando Lugo is one of the very best leaders to arise in South America--quite on a par with Chavez in Venezuela, Correa in Ecuador, Morales in Bolivia, and Kirchner in Argentina. Of these, he most resembles Morales in personality and background. There is something absolutely genuine about him--a man who is entering politics with the very pure purpose of pulling the vast poor population of Paraguay together as a political force, so that their power and representation of their interests in government is a true and democratic reflection of their numbers. They are the majority. Their will--their numbers and their votes--should outweigh wealth and privilege. Morales--the first indigenous president of Bolivia (--and the first 100% indian to become president of any Latin American country, as far as I know)--has a similar kind of selflessness and evident spirituality. When Morales was elected, ten thousand Andes indians came down out of the mountains and invested him as their leader in a special religious ceremony. Lugo's spirituality is, obviously, Christian, but both of them seem moved by deep humanitarianism that transcends religious differences, and, together, these two spiritual traditions have tremendous power.

ALL of these new South American leaders seem to have this power--the combined inspiration of Liberation Theology (identification with the struggles of the poor), on the Catholic side, and the reverence for the natural world and belief in the "commons," as well as the warrior courage, of the native religions. Add the tough and visionary political analysis of the Bolivarian revolution, which started in Venezuela--based on the aspirations of revolutionary hero Simon Bolivar (for whom Bolivia is named), who dreamt of a "United States of South America"--and you have the makings of an entirely new and transformed political culture in South America. Most of important of all, these new leaders--Chavez, Correa, Morales, Kirchner and now Lugo, and to some extent the leaders of Brazil (Lula da Silva), Chile (Michele Batchelet), Uruguay (Vazquez), and Nicaragua (Ortega)--represent a huge social movement that has been built from the ground up. The PEOPLE have found the leaders that they want and need--not the other way around. The PEOPLE--the vast poor majority--is, at long last, coming into its RIGHTFUL power, and the leaders who best represent them have arisen from their ranks. This is why I laugh (when I'm not crying) about the Bushites' absurd propaganda that Hugo Chavez is a "dictator." Chavez is part of a revolutionary social movement that far transcends his individual power and position as president of Venezuela. This movement WOULD NOT PERMIT HIM to be a dictator. If he WERE a "dictator," he would not be repeatedly winning popular elections with over 60% of the vote! If he WERE a "dictator," the people of the region and THEIR leftist leaders would shun him! And far from shunning him, they embrace him--openly and in defiance of Bush and his filthy, murderous cabal.

The reasons for the "dictator" slur are twofold, a) to keep us here in the north ignorant of this leftist revolution (we might get ideas from it!), and b) to coincide with rotten Negropontian plots being hatched in Colombia, to assassinate these new leaders, destabilize the region, and topple these democracies. The Bushites keep playing the old murderous, fascist game. They are an empty desert of ideas. The people of South America have outwitted and outpaced them. But they keep trying, and they may, indeed, cause considerable trouble, but they will lose in the end. Country after country is choosing independence from the U.S., self-determination, social justice, human rights and regional identity and cooperation. There are, in short, too many leaders TO assassinate, and not enough fascists to achieve and maintain dictatorships in so many countries. As in Iraq, the Bushites just don't have enough troops to dominate a determined indigenous population. In the case of Iraq, the result is tragically violent. But that will not, and cannot, happen in South America, which has fought so hard to achieve democracy and peaceful change. The democratic consensus in South America is too strong.

One other thing that makes me very happy about Lugo's decision--he has resisted pressure from this fascist Pope, whose motives , in my opinion, have nothing to do with keeping religion and politics separate, and everything to do with preventing social justice in South America. With previous popes, I wouldn't be so sure. With this, I have little doubt of his ill motives. He is bad news. (Imagine throwing over four decades of progress on ecumenical understanding among religions, by coming out with that fascist statement the other day about the Catholic Church being "the only true Christian church" and everyone else being "in error." The sooner Catholics overthrow this despicable monarchy that their church has become, the better!) (Maybe the triumph of Liberation Theology in South America will help that along.)

Paraguay: Is Another Brazilian Neighbor Veering to the Left?
Written by Jenna Schaeffer
Monday, 02 July 2007

~snip~
The Colorado Party has controlled Paraguay since 1947, including the decades-long venal and brutal dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner.
(snip)

Almost 50% of Paraguay's population lives on less than $2 a day and 38% of the citizenry are either unemployed or under-employed. Decades of rule by the Colorados have enriched the wealthy at the expense of the indigenous population and ordinary Paraguayans. This disenfranchised majority in Paraguay views Lugo as "The Bishop of the Poor," and as their only chance to build change from the bottom up with an honest administration that could lead Paraguay into the future.

In 2006, over 50,000 demonstrators took over the capital, Asunción, to protest against Colorado rule. Unionized workers, as well as leftist and indigenous organizations, began to unite behind Lugo, who is from one of Paraguay's poorest areas and who has often spoken out forcefully against poverty and inequality.

The "Bishop of the Poor" has praised Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez for his work to help Venezuela's poverty-grasped population. Still, Lugo has made an effort to distance himself from other populist leaders in Latin America by focusing more explicitly on social inequality in Paraguay.

Lugo challenged the country's traditional elite, questioning why "there are so many differences between the 500 families who live with a first-world standard of living while the great majority live in a poverty that borders on misery."
(snip/...)

http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/8410/1/



Shopping in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

PARAGUAY: Stroessner's Death Closes Dark Chapter of History
By Raúl Pierri

MONTEVIDEO, Aug 16 (IPS) - A group of Paraguayan human rights activists and government officials had met Wednesday morning in Asunción to inaugurate a museum in what was once a torture centre of the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. But suddenly the news arrived: The elderly former dictator was dead.

The coincidence was interpreted by human rights lawyer and former political prisoner Martín Almada as a sign of the end of an era and the start of another in which the coming generations would have the mission of clarifying what happened during the bloody reign of General Stroessner, who governed Paraguay with an iron fist from 1954 to 1989.

At the age of 93, and weighing just 45 kilos, Stroessner died Wednesday in exile in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. He had spent several days in intensive care, with pneumonia, after a hernia operation.

"We were surprised when he died right on the day that we were opening the ‘Museum of Memory, the Dictatorship and Democracy' in the place where the Dirección Nacional de Asuntos Técnicos, better known as 'la Técnica', operated a clandestine torture centre starting in 1956, with support from the United States," Almada, winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2002, told IPS.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961) "had sent Colonel Robert Thierry to ‘la Técnica' to teach torture techniques," said the activist, who in 1992 discovered the "archives of terror" -- a vast collection of secret documents shedding light on the fate of tens of thousands of Latin Americans who were kidnapped, tortured and killed by the security forces of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
(snip/...)

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34367

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BUSH'S VACATION GET-AWAY IN PARAGUAY?

Deanna Spingola
December 7, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

Countries with huge populations of indigenous, brown-skinned "enemies" seem particularly vulnerable to resource pilfering, together with the atrocities and massacres that accompany such activities. After all, they are "uncivilized" and standing in the way of our "national interests," without appreciation or vision for what their resources could produce in our insatiable, more sophisticated society. Incredulous Americans, comfy at home, don't like hearing about the bloody, gory details. However, there are astute foreign leaders, though U.S. media-demonized, who won't readily acquiesce to economic assailants or conform to globalist demands. In addition to the Middle East, the resource-rich countries of South America have been especially targeted.

Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador and Bolivia are fighting against United States control and hegemony, preferring, instead, to control their own country and resources. Their duly-elected, populist, egalitarian leaders, compassionately concerned about their own people, though deserving of admiration, would never receive respect from the greedy globalists. Rather they will be summarily accused of inciting unrest or supporting terrorists so that when our government announces that a regime change is essential, by military force or by Washington-directed election-riggers, obedient U.S. citizens will readily assent. For decades, America has attempted to influence politics in South America for our own national and business interests through such projects as Operation Condor.

The U.S., under the pretext of fighting terrorism, has conducted military exercises in Paraguay since July 2005 after threatening to withhold millions of dollars in aid if Paraguay failed to allow hundreds of our military, along with our planes, weapons and ammunition, into their country.<1> Ex-Secretary of Defense (War) Donald Rumsfeld, ironically the current owner of Mount Misery, visited Paraguay in August 2005. He said that Cuba and Venezuela were somehow instrumental in creating tensions in Bolivia. Although he claims keen perception into the internal problems of foreign countries, he apparently was deliberately inept with his own responsibilities. An audit revealed on September 10, 2001, that $2.6 trillion was missing in some pentagon accounts. This was conveniently forgotten with the horrifically distracting events of 9/11.<2> That sum, plus another $1 trillion, disappeared under Dov Zakheim's* watch, the Pentagon Comptroller appointed by Bush in May 2001. Zakheim, like so many others, has left "through the traditional revolving door for government-corporate insiders"<3> and gone on to greener pastures. *(CFR)
(snip)

Ninety thousand (90,000) poor families have been displaced from their soybean producing land for rejecting Monsanto's genetically manipulated soybeans. "On June 24, 2005, in Tekojoja, Paraguay, hired policemen and soy producers kicked 270 people off their land, burned down fifty-four homes, arrested 130 people and killed two."<10> "As a result of the rapid expansion of genetically modified soybeans into the area, peasants and indigenous people in Eastern Paraguay have become the targets of land evictions, pesticide poisoning and assassinations."
(snip)

The Nazi war criminal, Joseph Mengele, Auschwitz's notorious "Angel of Death" managed to fake and finance his way out of Germany by 1949 and headed for Buenos Aires, Argentina, a country stricken with serious economic problems but sympathetic and relatively safe for Nazis. The country was divided between the poverty-stricken and the affluent with an active black market.

After ascertaining that people might be looking for him in Argentina and because of enhanced financial opportunities, Mengele fled to Paraguay, a haven for Nazi war criminals. The government had been overthrown by Alfredo Stroessner in 1954.<22> Mengele was approved for Paraguayan citizenship on November 27, 1959 under his own name.<23> Unlike Argentina, Paraguay and West Germany had no formal extradition agreement between them. Mengele, like many other war criminals, was never brought to justice....
(snip/...)

http://www.newswithviews.com/Spingola/deanna60.htm

Damn Colorado!

The church ends up playing both sides in Latin America and elsewhere.

It sounds like he's the sort of liberation theologist that pope ratzenberg built a career on pushing out of the church.

However, it's amazing that a guy like this became a bishop.

zap them first!

Don't forget El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero.

From his very last sermon:

~snip~
We have lived through a tremendously tragic week. I could not give you the facts before, but a week ago last Saturday, on 15 March, one of the largest and most distressing military operations was carried out in the countryside. The villages affected were La Laguna, Plan de Ocotes and El Rosario. The operation brought tragedy: a lot of ranches were burned, there was looting, and-inevitably-people were killed. In La Laguna, the attackers killed a married couple, Ernesto Navas and Audelia Mejia de Navas, their little children, Martin and Hilda, thirteen and seven years old, and eleven more peasants.

Other deaths have been reported, but we do not know the names of the dead. In Plan de Ocotes, two children and four peasants were killed, including two women. In El Rosario, three more peasants were killed. That was last Saturday.

Last Sunday, the following were assassinated in Arcatao by four members of ORDEN: peasants Marcelino Serrano, Vincente Ayala, twenty-four years old, and his son, Freddy. That same day, Fernando Hernandez Navarro, a peasant, was assassinated in Galera de Jutiapa, when he fled from the military.

Last Monday, 17 March, was a tremendously violent day. Bombs exploded in the capital as well as in the interior of the country. The damage was very substantial at the headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture. The campus of the national university was under armed siege from dawn until 7 P.M. Throughout the day, constant bursts of machine-gun fire were heard in the university area. The archbishop's office intervened to protect people who found themselves caught inside.

On the Hacienda Colima, eighteen persons died, at least fifteen of whom were peasants. The administrator and the grocer of the ranch also died. The armed forces confirmed that there was a confrontation. A film of the events appeared on TV, and many analyzed interesting aspects of the situation.

At least fifty people died in serious incidents that day: in the capital, seven persons died in events at the Colonia Santa Lucia; on the outskirts of Tecnillantas, five people died; and in the area of the rubbish dump, after the evacuation of the site by the military, were found the bodies of four workers who had been captured in that action.

Sixteen peasants died in the village of Montepeque, thirty-eight kilometers along the road to Suchitoto. That same day, two students at the University of Central America were captured in Tecnillantas: Mario Nelson and Miguel Alberto Rodriguez Velado, who were brothers. The first one, after four days of illegal detention, was handed over to the courts. Not so his brother, who was wounded and is still held in illegal detention. Legal Aid is intervening on his behalf.
Amnesty International issued a press release in which it described the repression of the peasants, especially in the area of Chalatenango. The week's events confirm this report in spite of the fact the government denies it. As I entered the church, I was given a cable that says, "Amnesty International confirmed today that in El Salvador human rights are violated to extremes that have not been seen in other countries." That is what Patricio Fuentes (spokesman for the urgent action section for Central America in Swedish Amnesty International) said at a press conference in Managua, Nicaragua.

Fuentes confirmed that, during two weeks of investigations he carried out in El Salvador, he was able to establish that there had been eighty-three political assassinations between 10 and 14 March. He pointed out that Amnesty International recently condemned the government of El Salvador, alleging that it was responsible for six hundred political assassinations. The Salvadorean government defended itself against the charges, arguing that Amnesty International based its condemnation on unproved assumptions.

Fuentes said that Amnesty had established that in El Salvador human rights are violated to a worse degree than the repression in Chile after the coupe d'etat. The Salvadorean government also said that the six hundred dead were the result of armed confrontations between army troops and guerrillas. Fuentes said that during his stay u l El Salvador, he could see that the victims had been tortured before their deaths and mutilated afterward.

The spokesman of Amnesty International said that the victims' bodies characteristically appeared with the thumbs tied behind their backs. Corrosive liquids had been applied to the corpses to prevent identification of the victims by their relatives and to prevent international condemnation, the spokesman added. Nevertheless, the bodies were exhumed and the dead have been identified. Fuentes said that the repression carried out by the Salvadorean army was aimed at breaking the popular organizations through the assassination of their leaders in both town and country.

According to the spokesman of Amnesty International, at least three thousand five hundred peasants have fled from their homes to the capital to escape persecution. "We have complete lists in London and Sweden of young children and women who have been assassinated for being organized," Fuentes stated....

I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, "Thou shalt not kill." No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.

The church preaches your liberation just as we have studied it in just as we have studied it in the holy Bible today. It is a liberation that has, above all else, respect for the dignity of the person, hope for humanity's common good, and the transcendence that looks before all to God and only from God derives its hope and its strength.

From The Church and Human Liberation, March 14, 1980.

http://www.haverford.edu/relg/faculty/amcguire/romero.html



Shot in the heart, killed while celebrating mass

Oh, that's a hot one, all right!

23 Jul 2007
El Salvador denies Romero assassination responsibility, seeks his beatification


The El Salvador government says that it will seek the beatification of murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero but denies any responsibility for his death saying that his killer has already been tried.

Mercury News reports that El Salvador Security and Justice Vice Minister Astor Escalante announced the decision during a meeting with supporters of the archbishop at the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights' offices in Washington last week.

Deputy Foreign Minister Eduardo Calix confirmed the decision Friday in an interview with the Associated Press in El Salvador.

"The state can't accept responsibility because there was a clear person responsible for the killing, and that person was tried," Escalante said.

A Salvadoran court found former death squad member Alvaro Saravia guilty of fatally shooting Romero in the late 1980s. Saravia was released from prison with a 1993 amnesty after El Salvador's 1992 peace accords.
(snip/...)

http://www.cathnews.com/news/707/124.php

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The P.O.S.'s granted amnesty to the priest-slayer, then have the unmitigated audacity to suggest they are not in any way connected, whatsoever.

Filthy, loathesome right-wing assholes.



Photo of the right-wing Piece of Shit, who is
probably living in Florida right now, where he
moved, during the Reagan Presidency, probably
imagining he would be greeted with traditional
right-wing bouquets of flowers.

~snip~
The U.N. Commission on the Truth for El Salvador and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights both concluded after separate investigations that Saravia was actively involved in planning and carrying out the assassination. However, to date, no person -- in El Salvador or elsewhere -- has been held responsible, criminally or civilly, for the Archbishop’s assassination.
Saravia has lived in the United States since at least 1987 when he was jailed for 14 months on immigration charges. Saravia’s arrest came on the heels of a request by Salvadoran prosecutors for Saravia’s extradition for his role in the Romero assassination. The Salvadoran Supreme Court later withdrew the extradition request in a decision denounced as dubious and politically motivated by the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and many other human rights organizations. Saravia was released from federal prison on bond in 1988 following the Salvadoran Court’s decision and has since lived in California and Florida. Amnesty International and other groups have denounced Saravia’s presence here.

August 24th to the 27th, CJA participated in a damages hearing in the case against Saravia. During the hearing CJA presented evidence against Saravia as one of the conspirators in the assassination of Archbishop Romero. We put on testimony from several Salvadorans as well as American experts who talked about the assassination as well as the impact of his death.

On September 3, 2004 Judge Wanger issued a historic decision holding Alvaro Saravia responsible for his role in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Judge Wanger ordered Saravia to pay $10 million to the plaintiff, a relative of the Archbishop, who has still not been identified for security reasons.

Until this ruling, no single individual had been held responsible for the assassination, one of the most heinous and shocking murders of the last part of the 20th century.

In announcing the monetary award, Judge Wanger stated that "the damages are of a magnitude that is hardly describable."

Judge Wanger ruled that the evidence clearly established Saravia’s responsibility for organizing the murder. He also determined that the murder constitutes a crime against humanity, because it was part of a widespread and systematic attack intended to terrorize a civilian population. As Judge Wanger stated:

"Here the evidence shows that there was a consistent and unabating regime that was in control of El Salvador, and that this regime essentially functioned as a militarily-controlled government." The government perpetrated "systematic violations of human rights for the purpose of perpetuating the oligarchy and the military government."

He also concluded that what happened in El Salvador was the "antithesis of due process" and that there could not be a better example of extrajudicial killing than the killing of Archbishop Romero.
(snip/...)

http://www.cja.org/cases/romero.shtml

from the episcopate prior to his candidacy), and the Vatican declined the laicization he sought in response to that threat:

Former Paraguay bishop wins backing for presidential bid
The Associated Press
Published: July 15, 2007

ASUNCION, Paraguay: More than a dozen leftist labor, farm and political organizations agreed Sunday to back a former Roman Catholic bishop in next year's presidential election.

The groups said they hope to ensure Fernando Lugo, a charismatic leader dubbed the "Bishop of the Poor," will appear on the April 2008 ballot even if he fails to gain the backing of a coalition of opposition parties.

"We held an assembly with almost 2,000 delegates from across the country to support Monsignor Lugo in his presidential bid," said Pedro Parra, the leader of Paraguay's largest labor coalition, the National Workers Central.

But an alliance of political parties, led by Authentic Radical Liberals, the country's main opposition party, could not agree Sunday on whether to back Lugo. Some members of the alliance said they needed more time to consider options, noting the deadline to register candidates is Nov. 28.

More:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/16/america/LA-POL-Paraguay-Bishop-for-President.php