"PARAGUAY'S VICTORY FOR DEMOCRACY"
Volume 25 - May 6, 1999
Dear Readers,
On Tuesday I returned from a week-long visit to Paraguay, where I was working with "Jovenes Para La Democracia" (Youth for Democracy) the leaders of last March's dramatic protests that led to the ousting and exile of Paraguay's President. I know that the events of six weeks ago received very little attention in the US, but what just took place in that small corner of Latin America is a powerful story of courage, conviction and of a victory for the principle of democracy. This issue of "The Democracy Center On-Line" is dedicated to making that story more widely known.
Sincerely,
Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center
"PARAGUAY'S VICTORY FOR DEMOCRACY"
Paraguay is a country that few people elsewhere ever think about. If you can summon from memory two facts about the place that probably puts you two facts ahead of most everyone else. However, in the closing days of March, this small land-locked country in the heart of South America offered the world one of the century's great examples of democratic heroism. In the space of just five days the Vice-President was assassinated, the President was implicated as the likely mastermind, and thousands of Paraguay's young people waged a five day battle to oust him from office and protect their nation's democracy. They faced down tanks, endured a bloody massacre, and stood strong against calls by national leaders for them to quit. Their tenacity and bloodshed eventually forced the President to flee in exile. This is story of Paraguay's "Victory for Democracy".
THE BEGINNING - AN ASSASINATION
It began with an assassination. On Tuesday March 24th Paraguay's Vice President, Luis Maria Argaña, was driving through the capital city of Asunción on his way to work. Argaña was close to having the votes he needed in Paraguay's Congress to win impeachment and conviction against President Raúl Cubas. Months earlier President Cubas had cut short the prison term of General Lino Oviedo, the convicted leader of a 1996 coup attempted. The general's release set off a firestorm of public anger and the moves toward impeachment. Suddenly the Vice-President's car was forced off the road and sprayed with automatic weapon fire, leaving the popular Argaña dead from bullet wounds to his head and chest. Reaction was swift. Within hours, Asunción main plaza, straddled between the pink National Congress building on the one side and the twin-spired National Cathedral on the other, was filled with thousands of protesters, almost all of them in their teens and twenties.
Democracy is fragile property in Paraguay. For 35 years (from 1954 to 1989) the nation was ruled by the authoritarian, Alfredo Stroessner. Dissenters were rewarded with the methodic application of electric prods while the Orwellian message, "Stroesnner -- Peace -- Work -- Well-Being" flashed on and off in bold neon 24 hours a day in the city center. Americas' longest running dictatorship was brought to an end only after a military rebellion. In the decade since Paraguayans have guarded their delicate democracy with great care. With their Vice President murdered on the eve of the impeachment vote, Paraguayans knew what was at stake, with that knowledge falling hardest on the young. "I was 15 when Stroesnner fell," a young woman leader of the protests told me. "We grew up with the idea of liberty." Paraguay's young people dropped everything else they were doing and went to the Plaza to defend democracy.
TANKS, GARBAGE TRUCKS AND A MASSACRE
The President's response was equally swift, police on horseback beating the protesters with hard rubber truncheons. The Plaza only filled up more. The next day, amidst an emotional memorial service for the Vice President, the thousands of young people were joined in the Plaza by campesinos from the countryside. On Thursday, while thousands continued to occupy the plaza outside, the lower house of Congress voted a resolution of impeachment. On Friday, the Paraguayan Senate prepared for a showdown vote on conviction and President Cubas ordered the protesters out of the plaza. When they refused, events turned violent. Hundreds of backers of the President and General Oviedo began arriving at the Plaza, bringing pistols and rifles along with them. By nightfall the plaza was divided in two, with thousands of committed young people on one side and the armed and often drunk supporters of the President on the other.
At sunset the President ordered army tanks into the plaza, for what many expected would be a bloody massacre of the youth who remained. Asunción's quick-thinking mayor, upon hearing that the tanks were on their way, issued his own orders, commanding the city's fleet of garbage trucks to blockade the streets surrounding the plaza to prevent the tanks access. The Mayor told me he most expected a military coup was on its way. In the plaza the two warring factions first flung insults at one another, then rocks, and later molatov cocktails. Then armed snipers, supporters of the President and General, climbed to the top of several buildings adjacent to the plaza, opening fire. More than 200 young protesters were wounded, six were killed. The plaza was filled with bloody bodies being carried away by friends for emergency medical attention.
The next morning, with thousands of exhausted and bloodied young protesters continuing to occupy the plaza outside, the Senate voted a resolution of conviction. The Presidents response was silence. Senators left the Capitol Building wearing bullet-proof vests. The next morning, Palm Sunday, the young protesters celebrated mass in the cathedral as their vigil continued. One by one the six coffins of the dead were carried by their young friends to the plaza and to the mass. At the end of the service Paraguay's Archbishop asked the young people to leave the plaza, to risk no more danger. They refused and they waited, along with all Paraguayans, for news of what would happen next. At 6pm on that Sunday President Cubas announced that he would resign. Two hours later the head of the Congress was sworn in as President, in an inaugural marked by the presence of one of the wounded brought in on a stretcher. As President Cubas fled to Brazil and General Oviedo to Argentina, 50,000 young people crowded the plaza yelling, "democracy has won".
A SEASON FOR DEMOCRACY
The events of late March in Paraguay remind us that democracy is something more than bland electioneering. In some moments, in some places (the United States in the 1960s, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in the mid-1980s, The Philippines in 1986, Tianamen Square in 1988, and now add Paraguay in 1999) democracy is that dangerous, inspired, spontaneous demand that the people will decide the course of their own futures. In Paraguay now the young people from the plaza are turning to the difficult challenge of converting their hard-won democracy into something lasting and tangible in people's every day lives. The bonds they formed under fire are becoming organizations. Their demands are shifting to issues like youth unemployment, poor schools, and an end to rampant government corruption.
Each day the front page of Asunción's daily paper,
Las Noticias, runs the photos of the six dead young people
under the heading, "They gave their lives for democracy,
the country should never forget." It is unlikely that
this generation of young Paraguayans will ever forget the
events of last March. They have made a commitment
to democracy sealed in blood and have offered the rest of
the world an example that should not be missed.
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