Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay’s Next President

While escaping the heat of the Paraguayan sun by sitting in the shade of an orange tree, farmer union leader Tomas Zayas explains, “If Lugo is elected, it will open a door for more changes in the future, but that’s all. We’ll take what we can get.”


As much of the rest of Latin America shifts to the left, Paraguay remains a key ally of Washington, a human rights nightmare and example of the amorphous and survivalist qualities of the Latin American right. In the April 20th presidential elections, Blanca Ovelar and Lino Oviedo, two representatives of Paraguay’s old right will come head to head with Fernando Lugo, a new face, and possibly a new beginning for the Paraguayan left.


Former Education Minister Blanca Ovelar, is carrying the torch of the 60-year rule of the Colorado, or Red Party, and General Lino Oviedo- nicknamed the “Bonsai horseman” for his short stature - is an ex-Colorado Party member himself, and until recently was serving prison time for an attempted coup. Alternately called “the Bishop of the Poor” by his supporters, and “the Red Bishop” by his right-wing opponents, Lugo is leading in the polls, and may do the same in the elections - if he can out maneuver the gargantuan resources and corrupt politics of his opponents.


Lugo: The Bishop of the Poor

Lugo Waxes Patriotic at a RallyFernando Armindo Lugo Méndez was born in 1951. As a young man, he taught in a rural school district which, according to reporter Nick Andrews at Open Democracy, “was so remote that he was able to escape the usual rule that teachers had to be members of the Colorado Party.”<1> In 1977, Lugo was ordained as a Catholic priest, and worked as a missionary in indigenous communities in Ecuador until 1982. He then spent 10 years studying at the Vatican, at which time he appointed head of the Divine Word order in Paraguay. In 1994 he became the Bishop of the Paraguayan department of San Pedro. Though Lugo was frequently away from Paraguay, he did not avoid the repercussions of the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship and its conservative influence. In fact, three of Lugo’s brothers were exiled and the conservative Catholic hierarchy pressured him to resign as bishop due to his support for landless families’ settlements on large estates owned by absent elites.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1218/1/

Isn't that why he bought a pig farm down there?