With more than a “wink and a nod” from their collegial “caudillo del Norte,” Donald Trump, seven right-wing South American leaders have launched the Forum for the Progress of South America (PROSUR), which aims to eradicate all vestiges of Venezuela’s late president, Hugo Chavez, and Brazil’s wrongfully-imprisoned past president, Inacio Lula da Silva. PROSUR seeks to replace the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which was created by Chavez and Lula in 208 to counteract traditional American hegemonism in Latin America enforced by the neo-colonial Organization of American States (OAS).

Leaders from seven right-wing South American governments – Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, and Guyana – recently gathered in Santiago, Chile, under the auspices of billionaire Chilean president Sebastian Pinera, to sign an accord creating PROSUR. One of the goals of the new bloc is to integrate the defense, security, and crime prevention infrastructures of the members. If that sounds like an embryonic recreation of the infamous Operation CONDOR of the 1960s and 70s, it very much has such potential. CONDOR was an alliance of the intelligence and security services of South American military dictatorships, nurtured by the CIA, that is believed to have been responsible for 60,000 murders, 30,000 “disappeared,” 400,000 wrongful imprisonments, and countless acts of torture.

Bolivia and Uruguay, members of UNASUR that support Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, against the Central Intelligence Agency-groomed and -installed presidential pretender, Juan Guaido, did not join PROSUR, and, instead, elected observer status in the group.

Pinera and Colombia’s right-wing and narco/paramilitary-backed president, Ivan Duque, were the architects behind PROSUR. Seeing a chance to bury the legacies of Chavez and Lula, the two presidents invited all but Maduro’s government to join the pact.

Ecuador, which joined PROSUR, served as the headquarters of UNASUR. In 2014, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa opened the $65 million headquarters in Quito. Today, with right-wing governments and, as with the cases of Brazil and Colombia, far-right wing governments, taking over most of South America, the UNASUR headquarters sits largely abandoned. Moreno ordered UNASUR to abandon the building and promised to turn it into a university. After UNASUR Secretary General Ernesto Samper left his post in 2017, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru suspended their membership in the bloc, dealing it a fatal blow.

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno quickly abandoned his commitment to the ideals of Correa, Lula, and Chavez and embraced the caudillo politics of the right-wing South America presidents. Moreno, whose first name is in honor of Vladimir Lenin, plunged a knife into UNASUR when he said it was the creation of “perverse politicking of the self-styled 21st-century socialists.” After Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru withdrew from UNASUR, with the obvious prodding of the Trump administration, the stage was set for creating a new right-wing and pro-US alliance of neo-fascists, grifters, and oligarchs.

Moreno, who served as Correa’s vice president, has abandoned the socialist policies of his predecessor. Moreno not only welcomed US Vice President Mike Pence to Ecuador with open arms but sought the re-opening of the former US intelligence airbase at Manta, which had been closed by Correa in 2009. Moreno’s defense minister announced that what would replace the Manta airbase would be a “Security Cooperation Office.” In 2018, Moreno withdrew Ecuador from one of Chavez’s most-prized creations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).

Ironically, Moreno, who bears the first name of the founder of the world’s first Communist nation, reversed many of Correa’s policies aimed at reducing the influence of Ecuador’s oligarchs and banks. Correa, who now lives in exile in Belgium, faces imprisonment in Ecuador in a political jihad launched by Moreno that is not unlike that of the Brazilian right-wing that targeted Lula and his successor, Dilma Rousseff. Present at the inauguration of PROSUR in Santiago was Argentine president Mauricio Macri, the one-time business partner of Donald Trump, who has done everything possible to imprison his predecessor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Now an Argentine senator, Kirchner and her husband, the late President Nestor Kirchner, were partners of Chavez, Lula, and Correa in creating UNASUR.

Uruguyan president Tabaré Vázquez, who sent an observer delegation to PROSUR’s inaugural summit in Chile without joining the group, criticized the new group at a United Nations conference in Buenos Aires. Vázquez said that South America already had regional organizations, including the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELADE), and the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI). However, like Moreno of Ecuador, Vázquez criticized the creation of UNASUR, saying, it “had a certain political ideology.”

Presidents Mario Abdo Benitez of Paraguay Martin Vizcarra of Peru have also steered their countries firmly into the right-wing camp. Both presidents joined their colleagues in Santiago for the PROSUR summit.

One surprise leader who signed on to PROSUR in Santiago was David Granger, the president of Guyana. Granger, as a former Brigadier General in the Guyana Defense Force, likely felt at home with individuals like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, a former Brazilian paratrooper whose spoken Brazilian Portuguese reflects that of an uncouth Army veteran combined with a street thug. Granger has made common cause with ExxonMobil to lay claim to oil reserves in Guyana’s Exclusive Economic Zone, which are also claimed by Venezuela. Granger has brandished his right-wing allegiances by ignoring Guyana’s Constitution and postponing a March 19, 2019 required election to 2020. It was the defection of Granger’s coalition government’s parliamentary backbencher, Charrandas Persaud, to the opposition in a no-confidence vote that originally triggered the election. Rather than comply with the Constitution, Granger’s government, accused Persaud of being a US citizen, not eligible to sit in parliament. Persaud also received death threats. Yet, according to the Western corporate media, Guyana is being threatened by an “undemocratic” Maduro government in Venezuela.

Just as PROSUR seeks to eliminate the vestiges of Chavez, Lula, Correa, and Kirchner in South America, there has been an attempt by Washington to also wipe out two other Chavez regional projects, ALBA and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Both organizations include Venezuela’s allies in the Caribbean region. Trump recently invited the leaders of five Caribbean nations – Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia – to his Mar-a-Lago billionaires’ club in Palm Beach to seek their commitment to isolate the Maduro government of Venezuela and support the Guaido puppet regime. In order to entice the leaders to sever all financial links with Venezuela, including their participation in the PetroCaribe program that provided them with subsidized Venezuelan gasoline and oil, Trump offered nebulous loan guarantees through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a Wall Street contrivance with major national debt pitfalls attached.

Trump has a major real estate project in the Dominican Republic. Allen Chastanet, the prime minister of Saint Lucia, is the incoming chairman of the Caribbean Community. He will be expected to wean away from Venezuela its last remaining allies in the organization.

Trump and his team of neocons, including national security adviser John Bolton and Venezuela regime change envoy Elliott Abrams, who was convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal and who benefited from a cover-up bolstered by Attorney General William Barr, will now concentrate their efforts on overthrowing Maduro and subjecting his last remaining allies, Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, Uruguay, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada to regime change operations.

Beginning in the early 2000s, another plan was devised by US national security planners ensconced in their faux academia “think tanks.” Their plan was simple: overthrow anti-American elected leaders in Latin America through the courts. In effect, lawyers and judges, not generals, caudillos, or military juntas, would carry out coups by abusing constitutional provisions and laws as a clever ruse.

Under Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on the old tried and true method of promoting coups via the façade of a “popular” rebellion. After the 1973 CIA-directed coup in Chile, which saw Socialist president Salvador Allende die in a hail of bullets fired from aircraft and tanks at the La Moneda presidential palace, the CIA began to look at other avenues to overthrow presidents in the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, CIA-influenced media, including the dubious Wikipedia, have insisted Allende committed suicide with an AK-47 assault rifle presented to him by Cuban leader Fidel Castro. However, nature would later provide the evidence that Allende was assassinated. The proof came in a 300-page top secret report found in the debris of the house of a former military officer. The house had been destroyed in the 2011 Chilean earthquake. The story of Allende’s “suicide” was spread around CIA-friendly media to mask the agency’s role in yet another assassination of a foreign leader. The CIA’s media manipulation was honed during its pre-eminent role in covering up the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King. For the CIA, however, assassinations were costly in terms of the agency’s public image, so some other method of dispatching targeted leaders was in order.

A formerly CONFIDENTIAL CIA "Intelligence Memorandum," dated December 29, 1975, concluded that Latin America had to be weaned away from "Third Worldism." The conclusion was based on the votes of certain Latin American countries that had voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism. The countries were Brazil, Cuba, Grenada, Guyana, and Mexico. Eleven other countries in the Western Hemisphere abstained.

As the bloody coups in Chile, the Dominican Republic, and other countries showed, there had to be a simpler and less lethal way for the US to bring about undemocratic changes in governments in the hemisphere.

If the CIA were able to infiltrate a nation’s judiciary and law enforcement structures — the latter having already been thoroughly subsumed through CIA-financed “training programs” – it could bring spurious charges against targeted heads of state. This form of coup d’état would become known as “lawfare.”

The leader of the French left, Jean Luc Melenchon, recently condemned the use of lawfare against former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula, as he is popularly known, has been imprisoned since April 2018 on trumped up charges of corruption. Melenchon told the Brazilian press that “lawfare is now used in all countries to get rid of progressive leaders. This is what they did with Lula.” Melenchon added, “the judge [Sergio Moro] who condemned Lula is now a minister [minister of justice and public security] of Jair Bolsonaro, the new president of Brazil.” Lula was sentenced to 12 years in prison on politically-motivated money-laundering charges ginned up by Moro and other neo-fascists in the Brazilian judiciary. Bolsonaro, a champion of Brazil’s former military dictatorship and an admirer of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Donald Trump, has vowed to keep Lula in prison. Lula would have defeated Bolsonaro for the presidency had he been released from prison and allowed to run for political office. However, Moro and his fellow lawfare practitioners ensured that appeals to the Brazilian Supreme Court for Lula’s release were all dead-on-arrival.

Melenchon also stated “Lula has been a direct victim of accusations to destroy his work and image, built in more than 40 years of public life.” British human rights attorney Geoffrey Robertson QC echoed Melenchon in comments made to the “New Internationalist” in January 2018. Robertson cited the “extraordinarily aggressive measures” taken to imprison Lula and prevent him from running for president. Robertson cited as Lula’s enemies the judiciary, media, and “the great sinews of wealth and power in Brazil.”

Lawfare coups have been embraced by both Republican and Democratic administrations over almost two decades. The first example of a coup by semi-constitutional fiat was the February 28, 2004 forced removal from office of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. US Marines and American mercenaries escorted Aristide and his party from the presidential palace to a white plane with no other markings except for an American flag on the tail. The United States claimed Aristide voluntarily resigned his office, something that Aristide and his advisers vehemently denied. Aristide was literally tossed off the plane, along with his wife, in Bangui, Central African Republic. Through the abuse of “national emergency” provisions, the United States installed Haiti’s Supreme Court Chief Justice, Boniface Alexandre, in the presidential palace. The coup began after CIA-supported rebels and narcotics-gangs seized control of northern Haiti and marched to the capital of Port-au-Prince with the intention of ousting Aristide.

The second lawfare coup was against Honduras’s president, Manuel Zelaya. Staged on June 28, 2009, the coup was approved in advance by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as leaked cables from the US embassy in Tegucigalpa attest. Coup leader Roberto Micheletti cited the Honduran Constitution and a decision by the Supreme Court as providing legitimacy for Zelaya being marched from his home in his pajamas to a waiting plane that flew him to Costa Rica. The military junta that replaced Zelaya said that his letter of resignation had been approved by the National Assembly. Zelaya declared the letter to be a forgery.

The third major lawfare coup came in 2012. Paraguay's democratically-elected president, Fernando Lugo, was ousted in a political impeachment carried out by right-wing forces in the Paraguayan Congress and Senate, with the full support of the US-trained and equipped Paraguayan military. From Washington, Secretary Clinton moved hastily to recognize the right-wing vice president, Federico Franco, and his new right-wing government to replace the center-left government of Lugo. As with Haiti and Honduras, the Paraguayan coup was accomplished with the thin veneer of the constitution.

In 2016, it was Brazil’s turn in the lawfare arena. The impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff of the left-wing Workers' Party ensured that Michel Temer, her right-wing vice president, assumed the presidency. Without Rousseff in the presidential palace, her predecessor, Lula, became fair game for the right-wing.

Next on the American hit list was Venezuela. On December 6, 2015, the US-backed rightist opposition won control over the National Assembly. The rightists immediately commenced procedures to remove progressive socialist President Nicolas Maduro from power through dubious “constitutional” means. However, the plan faltered in Venezuela. In reaction, Washington applied crippling economic sanctions on the country, something that was to be repeated by the Trump administration against both Venezuela and the democratically-elected government of President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.

Pro-democracy forces in Latin America and elsewhere no longer have to worry about sudden troop movements and tanks converging on presidential palaces, but armies of judges and lawyers armed with nothing more than constitutional provisions and criminal codes stretched to the point of incredulity.

The move followed the decision last week by Mario Abdo Benitez, the newly elected president of the South American state, to reverse an earlier order to relocate Paraguay’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Benitez’ predecessor, Horacio Cortes, had followed the Trump administration’s decision earlier this year in May to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Trump’s declaration on the embassy issue sparked international condemnation because it lends support to the Israeli state’s controversial claim to Jerusalem as its sole capital. International consensus views the final status of Jerusalem to be a matter of historic negotiations to be worked out between Palestinians and Israelis.

Significantly, only a handful of UN member states have followed suit in Washington’s embassy decision, Guatemala and Paraguay being two of them.

Now that Paraguay’s President Benitez has reversed the earlier embassy decision by his predecessor, both Israel and the US have shown their acute consternation, no doubt because it undermines the political momentum Trump and Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu intended to generate among other nations to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Israel has threatened to close its embassy in Paraguay’s capital, Asuncion. And Mike Pence was reportedly hot on the phone to Benitez last week urging him to “remember past commitments and the historic relations the country has with both Israel and the United States”.

Given the backsliding from the US over a wide range of its own past commitments, Washington’s exhortation to Paraguay rings decidedly hollow. Withdrawing from the Iran nuclear accord, the Paris Climate Agreement, NAFTA, TPP, and trashing its promise not to expand NATO forces towards Russia’s borders, are just some of the “commitments” that the US has shown a self-serving disdain for.

But it was the oblique, sonorous mention of “historic relations” made by Pence to the Paraguayan leader that is intriguing, if not a sign of gross insensitivity in this White House. The vice president didn’t spell out what he meant. But given the history between the three states, much of it sinister, it was an unfortunate allusion by Pence. It is hardly an impetus for finding agreement on the Jerusalem embassy issue.

Firstly, there is Paraguay’s dark and not-too-distant past of military dictatorship under Alfredo Stroenesser. Under his decades-long rule with an iron-fist, Paraguay gained the moniker of being a “poor man’s Nazi regime”. The comparison was not merely rhetorical.

Stroenesser was notorious for running death squads and torture centers against political opponents. Thousands were disappeared or murdered under his regime (1954-1989). Moreover, the oppression was conducted as part of the US-led Operation Condor program in which the CIA recruited South American dictatorships to eliminate emerging socialist movements. During the 1970s, Stroenesser was a key player in the fascist Operation Condor along with Chile’s Augusto Pinochet and the other US-backed military juntas of Argentina and Brazil.

So for Mike Pence to pontificate to Paraguay as having historic obligations to the United States is stomach-wrenching. How Pence expects favors from that nation now for its dubious Middle East policies is frankly bizarre in its ignorance of past American-sponsored barbarity in Paraguay. Mike Twopence a better name.

As for Israel, the “historic relationship” that Pence adverts to is also woefully problematic.

Paraguay was one of the main South American destinations for Nazi war criminals fleeing justice following the Second World War. The infamous ratlines run out of Europe, from Spain and Italy, were used to spirit top Nazi commanders into hiding on the other side of the Atlantic.

As many as 10,000 Nazi officers were reckoned to have evaded war crimes prosecutions by availing of this route. Some of them were aided in their escape by the newly formed American CIA and its Gehlen Organization run by Hitler’s former spymaster Major General Reinhard Gehlen who was recruited by the Americans to wage clandestine war against the Soviet Union.

Among the most wanted Nazis who fled to South America were Adolf Eichmann, Walter Rauff and Josef Mengele. Eichmann was captured by Israeli intelligence officers in Argentina in 1960, and subsequently executed two years later in Israel after conviction for war crimes.

Rauff, who as an SS colonel organized mobile gas chambers to kill East European Jews, reportedly died from natural causes in 1984 while living in Chile under the protection of the US-backed Pinochet regime.

Mengele, the SS Doctor known as the “Angel of Death” due to his macabre and sadistic experiments on Auschwitz inmates, including pregnant women and children, lived for many years in Paraguay under the protected patronage of dictator Stroenesser. Mengele eventually died from a brain hemorrhage in 1979 after moving to Brazil.

Here is where the current Paraguayan president’s own family history becomes uncomfortable. Mario Abdo Benitez’ father was a private secretary to the old Nazi-loving dictator during much of his despotic reign.

There is no suggestion that the incumbent 46-year-old Paraguayan leader has any personal affiliation to the crimes of the past committed in his country, nor shares his father’s association with Stroessner and the latter’s affinity for Nazism.

“I am proud that the victims who suffered mistreatment and torture at that time are working with me today," Abdo Benitez told AFP. “This is another era. If I had been rejected, they would not be with me.”

But one factor that may be influencing President Abdo Benitez is that he has Arab heritage owing to his father’s ancestry as Lebanese.

Any such concern by Benitez for Palestinian national rights is of course legitimate and principled. One does not have to be Arab to share the grievances of Palestinians in being denied a claim to national sovereignty and in particular their historic claim to East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

When the former Paraguayan president, Horacio Cortes, made the decision to relocate his country’s embassy to Jerusalem it was in May. The previous month, Benitez won the national election. He was thus president-elect when the embassy decision was hastily made by the outgoing administration. At the time, Benitez strongly voiced his opposition to that questionable last-minute ruling. Following his inauguration to office in August, the new president has hence moved to reverse the embassy relocation.

It therefore seems that President Benitez is simply reversing an earlier decision which was not constitutionally sound.

The pressure by Washington and Israel on Paraguay over the embassy matter is thus unwarranted. President Benitez said his decision to move the embassy back to Tel Aviv was to show that “Paraguay is a country of laws and principles”.

Lobbying by VP Mike Pence is blatant interference by the US in the internal politics of this South American state.

But so clumsy is Pence in this interference that his bluster about “historic relationships” dredges up a lot of sinister specters from the past with regard to the United States and its involvement with fascist regimes and Nazi war criminals.

The Robinson 44 helicopter crash that killed Lino Oviedo, one of the Paraguayan presidential candidates, briefly became a world sensation… The crash happened during the night of 2 and 3 February this year as Oviedo returned to Asunción following several meetings with voters in the north of the country. The route in its entirety was no more than 200 kilometres and the helicopter was being flown by a former military pilot experienced in night flights. The third person on board was Oviedo's bodyguard, who was completely trusted by the retired general and leader of the National Union of Ethical Citizens (UNACE) party. The helicopter took off in favourable weather conditions with a cloudy front just visible over the horizon. 

The first stage of the flight passed normally and the helicopter's progress was monitored by the control centre at Asunción airport, which checked the radio link several times. Suddenly, the radio went silent. Attempts to re-establish contact with the helicopter proved useless. A rescue group was sent out in the early hours of the morning to search for Oviedo and his fellow travellers. A radio beacon mounted in the helicopter meant that the crash site could be located quickly. Mutilated bodies and fragments of the helicopter were discovered in a palm grove, and rescuers were surprised to find the remains scattered in a fan-shaped pattern 100-150 metres from the area where the helicopter's cabin and engine had embedded themselves into the ground. This circumstance has given rise to the idea that Oviedo was the victim of an assassination attempt using an explosive device. 

In the first official, rather cautious, reports concerning Oviedo's death, the idea that it was an act of terrorism was not ruled out. The dynamic and contentious politician often referred to as the last Paraguayan caudillo had a lot of enemies. A career serviceman, Oviedo broke into the country's political life in February 1989 as one of the key players in the overthrow of the dictator Stroessner. From 1993 through to 1996, Oviedo was in charge of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. According to his enemies, it was during this period that he laid the foundations for his financial prosperity, providing cover for smugglers and drug cartels. His attempts to convert his popularity among the people into a presidency were unsuccessful. Rivals triumphed and never forgave Oviedo for his behind-the-scenes methods of struggle, his attempts to organise coups d'Etat and his use of violence against opponents. As a result – his search for political asylum in Brazil and then Argentina, and his ten-year prison sentence in a Paraguayan prison which he did not serve in full due to «good behaviour». 

Oviedo, who would have turned 69 this year, said that his participation in the 2013 elections was his final attempt to become president. He was in third place in the popularity ratings among voters and was doing everything possible to turn the tide in his favour. Oviedo's pre-election efforts were met with a hostile reaction from his main rivals, whom he labelled using the word «Mafia». First and foremost Oviedo was referring to the Colorado Party, which was in power during the Stroessner dictatorship. Oviedo himself during the 1980s belonged to a movement of «traditionalists» in the party who were interested in the theory of the «third path» advocated by Argentinian President Juan Perón at the end of the 1940s. In 2002, Oviedo created his party UNACE, which was joined by many ex-members of the Colorado Party. Horacio Cartes, the Colorado Party's presidential candidate, believed that Oviedo's potential for attracting voters with moderately conservative views was extremely dangerous, as these are the voters traditionally relied on by the Colorado Party. Hence the reason why the fierceness of the confrontation between Cartes and Oviedo was on the increase on the run up to the elections on 21 April 2013. 

Speaking of his chances of victory, Oviedo continuously said that he would become president as long as he was not killed by the «Mafia». In fact, Oviedo had hinted at the Mafia origins of Horatio Cartes' multi-millions that had enabled him to «hire» the Colorado Party in order to realise his presidential ambitions. Oviedo talked about this in his final interview, which he gave to the Guyra Campana radio station just a few hours before his death. What is interesting is that Cartes' «mafiosity» has not raised any doubts in the American intelligence agency. There has been quite a lot of information in WikiLeaks documents about Cartes' illegal operations laundering drug money, financing drug shipments to America, Brazil and Argentina, as well as contraband alcohol and tobacco products. During a regional meeting between representatives of the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), specific details were discussed regarding a complex operation to obtain incriminating information on Cartes. That this information was obtained is beyond doubt. American intelligence agencies run the show on the continent just as they do at home. But how exactly was this incriminating evidence used? If we are to believe statements made by the millionaire, he has never had a problem visiting America either on business matters or for a holiday. So a «compromise agreement» has definitely been reached, and it is not difficult to guess at its content. Despite all of his millions, Cartes is dangling on a fishhook. 

It should be mentioned that the US embassy never had such «loyal» regard for Lino Oviedo. What were the American intelligence officers saying about him at their headquarters and State Department? Here are some extracts from dispatches sent to the State Department in April 2008: «He is a strong leader prone to messianism. He is known for his mental instability, his anti-democratic and violent tendencies, and his ability to deceive and manipulate. He is a pragmatist who believes that a relationship with the United States is a necessary evil. Oviedo maintains an anti-American stance, although he goes after America's blessing (when resolving his own issues). He is a populist and is more in sympathy with authoritarian right-wing forces than left. He is extremely ambitious and yearns for power. He is unmanageable» The key word here is «unmanageable». 

In the CIA's file on Oviedo, which was passed on to the parliamentary commission investigating the activities of drug cartels in Brazil, there was information about the Paraguayan's involvement in the illegal trade of drugs, arms and contraband operations. It also alleged that Oviedo had managed to scrape together capital to the tune of one billion dollars. The file particularly stressed the fact that he had a negative influence on Brazilian businessmen and corrupted them with easy money. The credibility of this kind of information demands to be rechecked. American intelligence agencies often use questionable, as well as deliberately falsified, information in order to «justify» the persecution of undesirables. Such undesirables included Oviedo. It is possible to suppose that the CIA handing the file over to Brazil was a targeted action aimed at compromising Oviedo in the eyes of Brazilian politicians and members of the military. From the very start of his activities he preferred to focus on Brazil, America's main strategic opponent in the Western Hemisphere, and so as far as CIA agents were concerned he did not deserve any kind of leniency. 

Presidential candidate Efrain Alegre and vice-presidential candidate Rafael Felizolla are taking part in the election campaign as a duo from the ruling Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA). They are both former ministers from Fernando Lugo's government. Alegre dealt with construction and communication issues, while Felizolla was in charge of domestic policy. The US embassy has had no problems with them of an ideological or criminal nature, which explains their conflict-free inclusion in the election process. Left-wing parties accuse Alegre and Felizolla of collaborating with structures of «American domination» in Paraguay. Neither politician has come out with any weighty denials of this charge: is there any point drawing the voters' attention to such a delicate issue? 

However, it is possible to talk about Felizolla's political career in more detail. He first came to the attention of the US embassy in 2005. Felizolla had taken part in a seminar dedicated to strengthening the relationship between Paraguay and Venezuela. He talked quite critically about Washington's policies, but spoke approvingly of Chávez's government as well as the activities of «populists» such as Lula, Kirchner and other left-wing Latin American leaders. Despite «isolated immature attacks», Felizolla as a «young, promising politician» began to be invited to receptions at the US embassy. Before his appointment as Interior Minister, Fernando Lugo «received advice» from the US ambassador. And suddenly Felizolla became one of the most popular ministers in Lugo's government. It was through him that the Americans reformed the country's political and intelligence agencies, infiltrating them with their own agents, carried out special operations against «Arab terrorists» in the Tri-Border Area, and dealt with the «Marxist guerilla movement» in Paraguay, as well as the disruptive influence of «the emissaries of Chavez, Ortega and others». 

Victory for the Authentic Radical Liberal Party in the presidential elections is a possibility. They have the opportunity, considering that without even waiting for her husband’s funeral, Lino Oviedo's widow has already announced that his UNACE party will be supporting the «Alegre-Felizolla duo». Bearing all this in mind, Washington cannot lose. Work has been done with the favourites in the election race and the necessary guarantees have been obtained, there is not going to be any unexpected surprises.

According to a formerly SECRET CIA Directorate of Intelligence’s Office of African and Latin American Analysis research paper, uncovered from the U.S. National Archives and dated August 1985, the CIA never planned for a non-member of the conservative Colorado Party from ever succeeding long-time Paraguayan dictator General Alfredo Stroessner. 

The Paraguayan dictator, who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989 with the backing of the CIA and the Pentagon, was one of America’s staunchest Latin American allies. Stroessner, a Colorado Party stalwart, supported the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and sent Paraguayan military officer to the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia for training. Stroessner also participated in Operation CONDOR, Henry Kissinger’s brainchild that saw Paraguay, along with six other Latin American nations – Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay — coordinate cross-border state terror and assassination operations against leftist officials and labor and student leaders, and even offered to send Paraguayan troops to fight with the United States in South Vietnam.

After Stroessner was ousted in a bloody military coup in 1989 over fears he was grooming one of his two sons as his successor. Stroessner was ousted by Colorado Party member General Andres Rodriqguez, who ruled until 1993. Rodriguez was succeeded by a series of Colorado Party politicians – Juan Carlos Wasmosy, Raul Cubas, Luis Gonzalez, and Nicanor Duarte, until Lugo, the Marxist «liberation theology» former Roman Catholic bishop, was elected president in 2008. The leader of the Patriotic Alliance for Change, Lugo was the first non-Colorado Party member to serve as president since 1948. 

Lugo was ousted in a politicized impeachment process engineered by the Colorado Party and supported by Vice President Federico Franco of the very much misnamed Authentic Radical Liberal Party, which is neither «radical» nor «liberal» but represents Paraguay’s business elite and is a member of Liberal International, which includes other pro-business «liberals» such as British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats, in coalition with Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, and German Free Democratic Party of Guido Westerwelle, who serves in right-wing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet as foreign minister

The CIA research paper, titled «Paraguay: Potential Successors to Stoessner,»states that in 1985, «the 72-year-old President Alfred [sic] Stroessner is not expected to leave office anytime soon». In fact, Stroessner was ousted in a coup some three and a half years after the CIA’s faulty prognostication. However, the CIA did anticipate that Stroessner’s eventual successors would only come from the ranks of the corrupt Colorado Party.

The CIA document states «leading contenders, in our judgment, include Supreme Court Chief Justice and traditionalist Colorado politician Luis Argana; veteran traditionalist Colorado leaders Edgar Insfran and Juan Manuel Frutos; the Defense Minister, Maj. Gen. Gaspar Martinez; and a respected senior military officer, Gen. Gerardo Johannsen».

The CIA gave all these Colorado politicians a clean bill of health by stating, «any of these men would be likely to maintain Paraguay’s pro-West foreign policy». In the CIA’s world, any leader, no matter how blood thirsty and dictatorial, was fine as long as they remained pro-Western. It is the same construct that was used by the Obama administration to drive from power Manuel Zelaya of Honduras and Lugo and be replaced by more pro-Western leaders. And the same «institutional coup» template is being used to stage a constitutional crisis in El Salvador between the ARENA right-wing opposition-dominated Supreme Court and the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation (FMLN) party of President Mauricio Funes. 

And the CIA’s document predicted to ascension to power post-Stroessner of General Rodriguez, who ousted Stroessner in 1989. The document states: «A likely key power broker during a transition would be Maj. Gen. Andres Rodriguez, an Army corps commander whose power is second only to Stroessner’s». That sentence is followed by a redaction, sometimes an indicator that a named individual has an intelligence asset relationship with the CIA. The paragraph continues, «Because of his notoriety, we believe he [Rodriguez] would operate behind the scenes in a transition, rather than seek the presidency». The document iterates that if Rodriguez were to assume power in a political vacuum situation it «might lead Rodriguez to seize power and impose a tough authoritarian government» and that «relations between such a regime and the United States would probably be subject to strains over human rights and drug trafficking». In fact, after Rodriguez seized power in 1989 from Stroessner in a textbook Latin American coup, bereft of a succession struggle, Washington maintained good relations with Paraguay. 

The CIA clearly favored Chief Justice Argana as an eventual successor to Stroessner based solely on «his ability to avoid antagonizing military leaders as he has risen in the [Colorado] party ranks». The CIA analysts pointed out that Argana, according to U.S. embassy officials in Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital, was not considered «honest,» pointing to his past links with General Rodriguez. 

The CIA also appeared to favor the chief of the powerful Rural Welfare Institute [the former Land Reform Agency], Senator Juan Manuel Frutos, the son of a former president. He was described as «tenaciously anti-Communist,» a pre-requisite for American support. It was the controversial issue of land reform and providing arable land to Paraguay’s poor campesinos that sparked the institutional coup against Lugo. Paraguay’s wealthy landowners, most Colorado Party supporters, are averse to any kind of land reform that would see the nation’s landless peasants provided with useful acreage for growing crops and thus competing with the monopolistic landowners. 

The CIA sounded a discordant note on Defense Minister Gaspar Martinez, reporting that the U.S. embassy had reported in 1983 that Martinez had «amassed large sums of money». The remainder of the paragraph on Martinez’s money is redacted. 

However, a clue to what was redacted may be found in a letter, dated March 5, 1985, from the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, Charles Rangel of New York, to CIA director William J. Casey. The letter states: «The Washington Post of February 27, 1985, reports that your agency has provided Senators Alphonse M. D’Amato and Arlen Specter with a report alleging the involvement of the notorious Nazi war criminal, Josef Mengele, in the narcotics traffic in Paraguay around 1970. Would you kindly provide this Committee with that report?»

The CIA paid little heed to the Paraguayan opposition parties, including the Liberal Party and the Radical Liberal Party, authorized «opposition» parties with little organization, manpower, or finances. The illegal National Accord of four opposition parties – the Christian Democrats, Authentic Radical Liberals, the Popular Colorado Movement, and the Revolutionary Febrerista Party – were also seen as weak and suffering from years in exile, mainly in Argentina. In hindsight, weakness by the exiled opposition, including current President Franco’s Authentic Radical Liberals, made them ripe for co-option by agencies like the CIA.

A 1983 Spanish-language broadcast by Radio Moscow, translated into English by the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, appears to provide more realistic intelligence about the situation in Paraguay than can be found in the CIA’s own intelligence report on the country. The Radio Moscow report was on the following issue: «Director of Paraguayan Communist Party’s bulletin Adelante, on torture carried out by Stroessner regime. Says that CIA agents are training Paraguayan police personnel on various methods of torture».

Considering today’s penchant of the United States for torture, it can also be assumed that the clock will soon be set back in Paraguay to the CIA’s «good old days».

The same moment we made this statement: President Lugo impeachment has been done, disguising it as a strictly and cynically “constitutional” act, with an "indicted” political trial in which the most fundamental basis of the right of defense were violated, the “Parliamentary Coup” was performed. This fact should take us to analyze the new methods through which traditional powers run their “adjustments” in order to avoid losing the power they have gained through years of manipulation. Latin Americans should bear this in mind, indeed. The last attempt of traditional coup took place in Venezuela on 04/09/2002, and it ended up failing on 04/14, when Hugo Chávez regained power. As from then, the new coup models have been more subtle: Market Coup (another concept to Political Science coming from Latin America), the case of Alfonsín (occurred in Europe with Italy) to the coups in Argentina in 2001, which ended up in Fernando De la Rúa´s resignation under pressure of his legislators and leaders of his political party UCR; and the case in Honduras, 2009 when the congress revoked José Manuel Zelaya Rosales on the grounds of treason to his country and other offences. This takes us to conclude that demo liberal democracies show one Achilles heel which has been even worse with the unquestionable success of globalization, as the concentration of economic powers do not further need the “support” of national militia, but of more civilized tools. Therefore, with the control of mass media, political and economic pressures are able to put “things in place” by using pseudo legal strategies thereto.

Paraguay could not easily escape from 60 years of tyranny of Alfredo Stroessner with a bipartisan system ran to guarantee the power of conservative parties, composed by landowners and prominent businessmen. President Lugo, was able to break up with another rule of the conservatives as he joined the continental view of “Big Nation” refused by this power (last 06/22, the senator who was heading the impeachment show announced in a local radio program in Córdoba that the Paraguayan Congress denied the UNASUR and that they would take President Lugo to court for signing the PROTOCOL OF USHUAIA, on the basis of democratic commitment of MERCOSUR, along with Bolivia and Chile). We should add as “a testimony, a piece of evidence” that this same "Paraguayan Senate" still considers Taiwan Island as a representative of the people of China – being this just an example to show the Cold War mind of these conservative members of Paraguayan politics. Moreover, Lugo has been rather arrogant in certain decisions which have not been easily forgotten; e.g., the veto of the admission of a humanitarian mission which was commanded by the American militia as a result of the scandal in the region on the military agreement between USA and Colombia. In addition, there was a freezing of the Estigarribia Military Base built during Stroessner´s tyranny, together with the presence of American militia and continued during “democracy” until the arrival of Fernando Lugo – who invited Bolivian President Evo Morales to the base in order to show that there was not any North American militia in the premises (I personally reported this in 2005).

This devastating chapter of Latin American history does not end up with the consolidation of a new Coup, but with its Regional geopolitical projection; Paraguay is in the center of this geo economic group called MERCOSUR, and this slip back clearly means an extremely critical situation for the continental ideas of most of the countries in the region, but mainly this means serious damage to its most important partners: Argentina and Brazil. This is highly detrimental to Brazil’s aspirations to consolidate itself as a continental leader and to strengthen its global projection as a member of the BRICS, as it might be seen as incapable of keeping peace in the borders with a partner who supplies it with energy from Itaypu Damn. We should even add to this step backward the recent creation of the so called Pacific Alliance with its objectives as a worldwide power being seriously questioned.

On the other side of the story this means to Latin America a strong attention call on methods used for reestablishing the old political conditions based on social conflicts. For example, people assassinated in Curuguaty (main argument for the impeachment) when some cops were trying to proceed with an eviction order in a place which was full of farmers claiming rights on land and they were attacked by sniper rifles (Who set them up?). This resulted in: 17 casualties; 6 policemen and 11 farmers with a dozen of them injured. This eviction was run by the GEO Special Forces of the National Police Force, being it an elite group trained in Colombia, under Uribe´s administration, for the fight against counter-insurgency. Isn´t it hard to understand why highly trained cops were easily led to an alleged trap set by farmers? Even more, among the dead cops was the chief officer, Erven Lovera, brother of Lieutenant Alcides Lovera, chief security of President Lugo (a clear mafia message). It is necessary to understand how new intervention models are framed on the basis of social conflicts, even more when we see the police force conflict in Bolivia is worsening. This issue calls for a close outlook because of its upcoming institutional consequences.

We can assure you that this geopolitics and geo-economics coup is a step backward in the consolidation and expansion of MERCOSUR (let´s bear in mind that the Paraguayan Senate blocked Venezuela from entering a Common Market). Paraguay is a Mediterranean country, which connects the region through its long water gate rivers, strengthens its importance as food producer, with great power of hydraulic energy. It holds the key of land path among Mercosur´s partners and makes part, together with Bolivia, of the characteristic geography of the countries joining the Atlantic with the Pacific, having its territory great significance for the Guarini Aquifer Region. (Let me remind you that future wars will be over water supply, World Bank´s concept). Another relevant military-strategic issue is the Triple Frontier as in the last years the Southern Command has pointed the need to have greater participation in controlling the so called international terrorist groups and the drug dealers.

All said takes me to the simplest conclusion that if the regional organizations: Mercosur and UNASUR, its Defense Council, are not successful in controlling these measures taken by Paraguayan oligarchic groups, as during Bolivian crisis (Camba separatism) and the Ecuadorian-Colombian conflict, the importance of the latter shall be mere rhetoric and the consolidation of the continental model of current multi-polarity shall be stopped. Then, Brazil will have to lower its aspirations as leader of the region to a mere privileged partnership with the North American Power (USA is back to the region with this coup and the Pacific alliance), as it is hard to believe that the Paraguayan Senate took the decision of impeachment without the support of the American power. All in all, this means a path of no return and a direct attack to the heart of Unasur. We cannot remain aloof to this situation, indeed.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, who is married to arch-neoconservative and Israel supporter Robert Kagan, one of the chief architects of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, refused to call the Paraguayan Congress’s rapid impeachment and the Senate’s conviction and removal of Lugo a coup. The right-wing governments of Canada, Spain, and Germany quickly recognized the Franco government even as Latin American nations moved to isolate it diplomatically and economically.

The Obama administration has put a «civilian» imprimatur on America’s coups in Latin America, opting to involve governmental branches, such as legislatures and courts, to carry out its covert operations in the Western Hemisphere. Just as drone attacks and targeted assassinations have become a hallmark of the Obama doctrine, for Latin America the internally-launched «autogolpe,» or self coup by government insiders, is preferable to ordering tanks on to the streets, dissolving parliament and the Supreme Court, and turning over power to a military junta of generals and colonels. 

Latin American nations now recognize the core of the Obama doctrine for putting one of its loyalists in power and ousting a leader not favorable to Washington’s policies – if the legislative and judicial branches of a government can be used to «constitutionally» eject an executive from power, the United States will recognize the change as constitutional and in keeping with the «democratic process.»

Honduras, and, now, Paraguay serve as stark examples of the Obama doctrine in practice. 

As was the case with Zelaya in Honduras, Lugo took on the vested elite and wealthy landowners in Paraguay. After Paraguay’s legislature, which represents the ruling class that exercised absolute power during three decades of rule by military strongman General Alfredo Stroessner, ousted Lugo, Paraguay’s government shifted from «center-left» to «center-right.» 

One of the first states to recognize the Franco regime was the Vatican. Lugo, a former Roman Catholic bishop, was a burr in the saddle of Pope Benedict XVI, primarily because of Lugo’s adherence to Marxist-based liberation theology, which emphasizes the plight of the poor and landless peasants over the interests of the super-wealthy oligarchies that had relied during the Cold War on military juntas installed largely by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to protect their interests.

Lugo’s Liberal Party allies bristled at the president’s failure to respond to the invasion of farms owned by wealthy landowners by landless peasants. The bourgeois conservative and thoroughly misnamed Authentic Radical Liberal Party, of which Franco is a member, formed an ad hoc congressional coalition with the fascist Colorado Party, long dominated by Stroessner, to depose Lugo through a lightning-fast impeachment and removal by the Congress. 

A June 15 gun battle in Curuguaty in Canindeyu department between landless peasants and police, the latter acting on behalf of elite landowners, resulted in 17 deaths, including six police officers, and provided a catalyst for Congress to move against Lugo. Some 100 families had occupied the land of a wealthy Colorado Party supporter. The landless campesinos charged that the land had been illegally seized during the Stroessner dictatorship and re-distributed to his political cronies. The National Federation of Campesinos of Paraguay claims that 80 percent of usable farmland in Paraguay is owned by the upper one percent of all Paraguyans. The land occupied by the poor campesinos in Canindeyu is owned by Blas Riquelma, a former Colorado Party Senator and Stroessner ally who is also one of Paraguay’s richest men. Riquelma owns a chain of supermarkets and food companies and much of his land is used for soya production. 

Not surprisingly, during the siege of the peasants, police special warfare units and helicopters flown by the military’s Special Operations Forces, which are trained and equipped by the United States, used tear gas and flame throwers on the occupying campesinos. Lugo immediately fired his Interior Minister Carlos Filizzola for the violence. Lugo’s grip on power appeared tpo already be slipping when he named Ruben Candia of the Colorado Party and a suspected conspirator in a plot to overthrow Lugo in 2011 as the new Interior Minister.

Not once did the Obama administration condemn the use of brute force in Canindeyu. On June 25, in an op-ed in The New York Times, former President Jimmy Carter lamented that the United States had «abandoned its role as the global champion of human rights.» It was clear that after the Obama administration’s support for the 2009 Honduran coup, it had not changed its policy of interfering in the domestic affairs of Latin American nations and had embarked on a new form of imperialistic «gunboat diplomacy.»

Lugo, who has been battling lymphatic cancer, was always seen as vulnerable to his enemies, most notably due to his illness and paternity suits brought against him while he was a priest. But with Lugo’s cancer in remission and Lugo accepting responsibility for fathering two children, his enemies did not want to wait for the next presidential election in April 2013. Instead, they engineered a soft coup. Paraguay’s heretofore politically-strong military and the Roman Catholic Church pledged support to Franco and his cabinet.

The Obama administration also was out of step with most Latin American nations that refused to recognize the Franco regime in Paraguay. Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, all governed by center-right governments, withdrew their ambassadors from Asuncion. Progressive governments in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Peru, Uruguay, and El Salvador refused to recognize the Paraguayan regime. Costa Rica also refused recognition. Venezuela pulled out its ambassador from Asuncion and cut off oil shipments to Paraguay. Franco was banned from attending the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) summit in Mendoza, Argentina and the group suspended Paraguay’s membership, opting, instead to invite Lugo to attend the summit. To further isolate the Franco regime, Lugo planned an early hand over of Paraguay’s chairmanship of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to Peru.

The U.S. Southern Command’s (SOUTHCOM) role in the Paraguay events are uncertain, however, if the Honduras coup is any indication, the Pentagon was active in advising the soft coup plotters as they prepared for their move against the campesinos in Canindeyu and Lugo. The Pentagon maintains access facilities in Paraguay and in nearby Argentina and Chile. 

Latin America is trying to break free from decades of domination by the yanquis from the north. As witnessed in Honduras, and now, Paraguay, the insidious interference by Uncle Sam in the domestic affairs of the nations of the Western Hemisphere will not be relegated to the ash heap of history any time soon.

The bloody incident in Curuguaty immediately drew response from the Paraguayan legislature, with the parliamentarians and senators, mostly representatives of right-centrist parties, charging that president Lugo had lost his grip on the situation and was unable to run the country. Even the Liberal Party which upheld Lugo's candidacy in the 2008 elections distanced itself from its former protégé. Overall, Lugo faced an impeachment which he described as the parliament's “express coup”. 

Lugo's legal counselors were given practically no time to prepare for his defense vis-a-vis the parliament, but, in fact, it was clear that the critics of the president had no intention to dive into details and the senate's verdict was a forgone conclusion. The whole operation which led to the displacement of Lugo was carefully planned so as to rule out an unbiased parliamentary inquiry and was implemented as a snap offensive. No doubt, part of the motivation behind the rush was to have Lugo ousted before Paraguay's UNASUR peers could convene for consultations and decide on a set of measures in his support.  

The victory must have been easy for the coordinators of the plot from the US embassy in Asunción. It is true that Lugo's presidency was fairly nominal as the parliament, the police, and the army in Paraguay were on the side of the opposition. Having thrived on USAID funding for decades a cohort of NGOs were prepared to orchestrate mass protests if the anti-Lugo plan stalled but did not have to, and – apart from the death toll in Curuguaty – the overthrowing of the legitimate president in Paraguay deserves to be listed as an exemplary case on the record of the US intelligence community. 

A team of UNASUR envoys headed by the organization's secretary general, Venezuelan Alí Rodríguez Araque, toured Paraguay, met with Lugo and with a parliamentary delegation, and witnessed the impeachment procedure, but were unable to redirect the developments. The Paraguayan Senators showed little regard for the visitors, not to say that they were openly hostile. Lugo, it must be noted, showed a complete lack of will to par the challenge – contrary to his initial pledge to defend himself at the parliamentary hearings, he simply watched them on TV from his residence. Citing his commitment to law, the president being lawlessly ejected accepted the impeachment ruling (to which only four senators said No). Lugo's inaction can be largely attributed to his having no leverage under the circumstances: over the three years of his presidency, he failed to build a popular support base and, when the pressure peaked, still had no party of his own or a populist movement to back him. Street protests demonstrating support for Lugo erupted incoherently on the impeachment day but were dispersed by the police which used water machines, tear gas, and rubber bullets against the crowds. 

Paraguayan vice president Federico Franco who was sworn in without delay as Lugo was out is to stay in office until the ousted president's term expires in August, 2013. The elections are due the same month, and Washington openly favors Colorado party leader Horacio Cartes, a businessmen whom, according to ABC Color, US DEA briefly suspected of money laundering and complicity with drug cartels. The twist in Cartes' reputation is reflected in some of the cables put on display by WikiLeaks, and chances are US agencies have assembled such a stockpile of reports implicating Cartes that Washington should have no difficulty keeping him – like quite a few Latin American presidents – under tight control. 

While Lugo's unfinished term was marked with Paraguay's sluggish drift towards Latin American populist regimes, the right-conservative takeover promises that the country will fully submit to the US dictate. The agenda looming on the horizon likely includes efforts to destabilize UNASUR by forming within the alliance a dissenting bloc to balance the influences of Brazil, Venezuela, and Ecuador. It can be expected as well that new life will be breathed into Washington's other project – the bracketing within some sort of a new union of Chili, Peru, Columbia, and Mexico – in order to weaken Brazil internationally.

UNAUR secretary general Alí Rodríguez Araque said the dismissal of Lugo was unconstitutional and was tantamount to a disguised coup, and further stressed that many of Latin American governments would deny recognition to Franco. Brazilian president Dilma Rouseff cited the charters of UNASUR and MECOSUR to suggest expelling Paraguay from the groups over the violation of democratic norms. Argentine's Cristina Kirchner also opined that sanctions against Paraguay would be appropriate. She described the developments in the country as a coup and mentioned in the context the coup attempts against R. Correa and E. Morales and the putsch in which M. Zelaya had been deposed in Honduras. The Argentinian leader stated firmly that such undemocratic phenomena are unacceptable for the region and said action would be taken in line with the decisions to be made by MECOSUR. Ecuadoran president R. Correa expressed support for D. Rousseff's call to put to work the provisions of the UNASUR charter which warrant various forms of pressure – non-recognition of the corresponding governments, exclusion of countries guilty of undemocratic conduct from the alliance, and the closure of borders – as punishment for putschists. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega contributed similar statements on the issue. 

Prospects for a serious investigation into the shooting incident in Paraguay are bleak. The bloodshed helped the opponents of F. Lugo by adding credibility to their grievances list, while the majority of Latin America watchers discern parallels between the recent Paraguayan drama and the April, 2002 shooting at the Llaguno Bridge in Caracas. In the latter case, snipers randomly fired on anti-Chavez protesters, Chavez's supporters, and whoever happened to pass by. The incident was blamed on the forces under Chavez's command, but curious circumstances surfaced later: for example, a CNN correspondent managed to record an interview with the army officers opposing Chavez who, as it transpired, were aware of the planned sniper attack and the imminent fatalities. 

Several versions of the Curuguaty shooting incident are found on the web. One potential explanation is that the responsibility lay with Blas Riquelme who hired the snipers via his army connections but then, however, it remains unclear why the snipers fired on the police. An alternative version is that the episode was a provocation staged by the Paraguayan People's Army, a shadow group supposedly forged by the police to fight extremists. This hypothetic origin may be the reason why the army lives on despite the intense work being done in Paraguay by invited US and Colombian anti-terrorism experts. 

Alvarado Godoy wrote on the site titled Descubriendo Verdades (Disclosing the Truth) that the whole episode had been “montaje fabricado”, essentially a show following a certain blueprint. He claims to have information that the operation involved US Navy Seals who stayed in Paraguay to train the country's marines (Fusna). The storyline does not sound exotic considering how often US citizens get caught with sniper rifles across Latin America, as recently in Argentine and Bolivia. The CIA, DEA, and the US Defense Intelligence Agency routinely hire contractors to pull off covert operations with firearms being used. 

The straightforward forecast is that the pattern successfully tested by the US in Honduras and Paraguay – the pseudo-constitutional displacement of defiant leaders – will be extensively replicated in Latin America over the coming years. Yet, Washington would be naïve to believe that the accompanying violence can be contained. In Honduras, the puppet government of P. Lobo clings to power at the cost of waging a terror campaign which already took hundreds of lives of progressive politicians, journalists, trade union activists, student and Indian leaders, and that almost surely is what the future holds for Paraguay. 

Suddenly one of the Argentine officers exclaimed: “There are undeclared boxes here!” The check revealed that about one third of the cargos were not mentioned in the invoices. The military and defense attaches, Colonels Edwin Passmore and Mark Alcott tried to reach an “amicable settlement”. Let’s not make a fuss about nothing! We are partners, we should trust each other!

But the thing is that a similar incident with considerable surplus of military cargo on board of an American military aircraft took place in the Ezeiza airport in August 2010.Then US Ambassador in Argentina Vilma Martinez resolved the conflict. She admitted that the claims of custom officers were grounded and ordered an immediate return of the aircraft to North Carolina with the all the cargo onboard. She said she was ashamed of such a behavior of the US military men. In Argentina her words were taken as a reflection of a hidden fight between the Pentagon and the State Department for the right to determine the US’ policy in South America.   

Now – a suspicious repetition. Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández ordered to act strictly in compliance with the national law and to do everything to have the “valise” checked. Americans were given time to think over the only possible decision.

Next day after intensive consultations with Pentagon and the State Department the US embassy had to bow to pressure. Argentineansopenedtheundeclaredcontainer. Inside they found devices for secret communication, encryption and audio interception, GPS, software and a wide range of psychotropic and narcotic substances. According to Argentinean experts, all these devices and materials were intended for intelligence and diversionary work. The opening of the “valise”, its contents as well as boxes with smuggled weapons (“the property of 7^th Special Forces Group”) – all this was shown on the national TV. In order to prevent the escalation of the conflict, the Argentinean authorities allowed the US Boeing to leave the country with the “legal part of cargo” and the instructors.

The history of the 7^th Special Forces Groupwas written in blood.  The group was formed 18 months after the victory of Fidel Castro on Cuba. The group was put in charge of the Central and South America. The “service record” of this group includes training of “death squads” for putting down the revolts in Honduras and Salvador, fighting drug cartels in Columbia, Bolivia and Peru. The group members took part in the “Just Cause” operation in Panama (overthrowing of president Noriega), invasion to Grenada (liquidation of the socialist government). The group’s regular training missions in Argentina and other countries of South America can be regarded as a preparation for similar operations in the “zone of responsibility” in future.

Argentinean political analysts could not miss the fact that “foreign military experts” with a wide experience of repression campaigns were allowed to train the students of the Federal police showing them “the latest methods of releasing hostages and fighting kidnapping”. In Argentina such operations within the Defense and Interior ministries are illegal. In the years of the military dictatorship this kind of “cooperation” led to hard consequences: 30,000 killed and missing-in-action! The US instructors were directly involved in it. Many Argentinean officers underwent training in the “School of the Americas” where the main subject was “Manual de Interrogatorio” (“Interrogation manual”).

The scandal in Ezeiza did not let the instructors of 7^th Special Forces Groupshare their experience of using the latest version of the manual with Argentinean policemen. But it is never late. In October, when the presidential elections are to be held in Argentina the US embassy and “the fifth column” will do their best not to let “populist” Cristina be reelected for the second term in Casa Rosada.

All countries members of UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) expressed their solidarity with Argentinean authorities over the events in the airport of Buenos Aires. Bolivia’s President Evo Morales said that the presence of these US planes was “an attack to South America’s sovereignty and not only to Argentina,” he also said that the presence of an Air Force plane carrying unauthorized materials in Argentina “demonstrates how the United States negotiates with drugs all around the world”. That is why the US does not have a moral right to speak about our nations’ fighting this evil, he added. Morales said that the delivery of weapons to Argentina was aimed at destabilization, overthrowing of democracy and legally elected constitutional governments in the region.

The Venezuelan president  Hugo Chavez  said the following: "I am absolutely sure that plane gringo who came to Buenos Aires and wanted to enter here illegally in violation of the laws and everything (…) is that they will do everything possible so that Cristina does not follow the front of the Argentine government".  During the first election campaign of Cristina  Fernándezthe US security forces also made such attempts.  

Then a memorable incident with the “detection” of case with $800,000 at the border control happened. It was claimed that the case’s owner, an American-Venezuelan entrepreneur Antonini Wilson was going to hand over the smuggled money to Cristina Fernández for her election purposes.

Wilsonmanaged to escape punishment and leave the country using a reserve passport. He brought his dollars back home and became “a star” of an international scandal aimed at compromising Cristina. She named all this staging, information mess and accusations in her address as “a garbage operation” against her. In fact all the people who witnessed in the US court were either the workers of agents of the FBI. CIA residents in Buenos Aires and Karakas were collecting “evidence” to prove that it was PDVSA – Venezuelan state oil company that financed Cristina’s election campaign.  

After the incident at the Ezeiza airport in Februarysome Argentine mass media wrote that Fernández had revenged for the garbage operation against her. She could not forgive the offenses caused by the administration of Obama. One of the most frequent quotes (obtained from WikiLeaks) is a query made by the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the US embassy in Buenos Aires about “physical and psychological health of Cristina”. A humiliating context of this document is unlikely to be compensated by routine apologizes. May be that is why Argentina is not on the list of the South American states Barack Obama is to visit in March. The US president plans to visit  Brazil, Chile and Salvador.  

In a week after the airport incident reporters mainly lost interest in it. High ranking officials of the State Department and Pentagon also softened their anti-Argentine comments: “This was just a misunderstanding”. But the Internet discussion around a mystery cargo on board of Globemaster III № 77187 is going on.  Uncontrolled presence of the US air forces in the region assumes a threatening character for South American countries. Pentagon planes are quite at home in the air and in the airports of the continent. They make flights undercover of various agreements signed in different time and under different excuses. Almost every airdrome in South America has a reserved site to offer landing to a US combat aircraft. The cargos and passengers on these planes are not checked so meticulously, as it was at the Ezeiza airport. How can it be different? We should trust our partner, who took a heavy burden of fighting drug cartels and terrorism in the Western hemisphere.

The history of secret operations of the Pentagon in South America is far from being over. The boxes with unregistered weapons at Ezeiza remind me of some episodes of the war against “the Red expansion”. In order to compromise the leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (1951–1954) Americans made caches with Soviet arms on the territory of the country to accuse the insubordinate president of collaboration with the Red Empire.

Now the times have changed. It is likely the Venezuelan President Hugh Chavez is the candidate N1 for such accusations. He was already accused of supplying weapons to guerillas of FARC in Columbia, Zapatistas in Mexico, rebellions in Paraguay and Peru. On one the websites I came across a version that the weapons from Globemaster III plane were intended for the Mapuche indigenous people in Chile and Argentine, who are actively demanding the autonomy and have a plan to establish their own state of Mapu from the Atlantic coast to Pacific coast. This is a touchy issue for many people in Chile and Argentina and a “detection” of a cache with weapons from Chavez or of a laptop with secret plans of the Mapuche leaders may come as a bombshell.

In the valise of Globemaster III they found a brochure with a phrase written in 15 languages: “I am a soldier of the US army. Please tell my embassy that I was arrested in your country”.I would not be surprised in this phrase was also translated in the Mapudungun language.

Tensions in Paraguay intensified when Lugo said he would not renew the military cooperation agreement with the US. The announcement left the US embassy in Asunción, which did not expect to face defiance of such magnitude, in a state of shock.Lugo's decision rendered fruitless years of Washington's efforts aimed at implementing the Pentagon's New Horizons program. Some 500 US servicemen were to be deployed in Paraguay in its framework, ostensibly to let US marines get used to the local climate and to carry out joint exercises with the country's own army. The actual objective that loomed behind the program was to enable the Pentagon to occupy for at least a decade the Mariscal Estigarribia base sited at a distance of just 200 km from the populist Bolivia. Paraguayused to host US southern command's forces in the past, the operations being disguised as humanitarian missions meant to provide healthcare to the population or to build schools in rural areas. In practice, the Pentagon used Paraguay's territory to carry out reconnaissance in the border zone of the three countries – Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina – and to create the infrastructures the US could rely on to dispatch troops en masse in the case of a regional crisis.

Washingtoncited the presence of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah cells in the region as the reason for its activities, but obviously hoped to gain positions from which it could hold at gunpoint the populist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia rather than sought to counter the mythical terrorist groups. Besides, Washington tends to be concerned over the attempts made by the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) to establish a regional defense system to which the US is not invited.

Lugo rejected the New Horizons upon getting familiarized with the materials supplied by his Unasur colleagues – he learned that the US had launched an attack against a FARC camp in Ecuador's border zone from a base in Columbia. Allowing Washington to use the territory of Paraguay for military escapes did not sound like a good idea.

Regretting Lugo's decision, US ambassador to Paraguay Liliana Ayalde expressed the hope that other cooperation programs – both military and civilian – would not be affected. Tentatively, she was worried about Paraguay's program of officer corps training and weapons acquisitions. The country's potential turn to populist regimes or to Brazil and Argentina in military affairs would no doubt be perceived by Washington as a foreign-politics fiasco.

The US embassy and its intelligence staff were from the start angered by Lugo's gravitating to the populist regimes. For Washington, the prospects of a strategic alliance between the Paraguayan president and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) look frightening considering that already back in the 1970ies Henry Kissinger warned about the importance of the continent to the US plans for global dominance.

Lugohad to face a real war as a reaction to his independent course. A propaganda campaign targeting him swept across the continent: the media portrayed the former priest's lifestyle as reckless debauchery, alleged he had a number of children born out of wedlock, and charged him with tolerance to corruption in his inner circle. Papers wrote that Lugo enjoyed the living standards of an oligarch while posing as the champion of the cause of the disadvantaged and that he called for class struggle from a jacuzzi. CIA agents in the Paraguayan media floated the myth that Lugo had for a long time been on the agency's payroll and claimed that CIA defector Philipp Agee exposed Lugo's uncle as a CIA agent. Some media went so far as to say that practically all of Lugo's relatives had ties with US agencies, the US Department of State, or USAID. The smear campaign did prompt a part of Paraguay's population to revoke their support for the president.

For no legible reason, Marxist-Bolivarian guerrilla groups suddenly surfaced in Paraguay. The Paraguayan People's Army – Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo – occasionally attacked the police or robbed grocery stores while the media elaborately linked it to Columbia's FARC and ELN. The group's invisible leaders churned out demagogic statements, showered Lugo with threats, and even promised a reward for killing him. The ado reeked of Hollywood but the group was subjected to a no-nonsense hunt assisted by the CIA and Columbia's Presidential Intelligence Service (DAS). Influencers worked hard to convince Lugo that the problem could not be handled without Washington's help and that the US military presence had a stabilizing impact on the country. Lugo eventually gave in and consented to a state of emergency in the north of Paraguay.

Information was leaked to the media in August – September, 2010 that Lugo – normally a healthy and energetic macho immune to any kind of nervousness – had cancer. The forms of cancer mentioned were lymphoma, lymphosarcoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, etc. Lugo's doctors released reassuring statements that the president's life was not in danger and that chemotherapy would help as Lugo went to Brazil several times for treatment. Officials maintain that the president is sure to recover, that his grip on the presidential power remains firm, and that he will pass the presidency to his successor in August, 2013 in accord with the country's constitution. Only US ambassador Liliana Ayalde did come up with a dissonant statement which seemed to indicate that Lugo had been written off.

At the moment Lugo looks embattled by the decease. He lost hair after chemotherapy, his speech shed its former assertive tone, and he looks much older than he did recently. There is an impression that the president has difficulty concealing his emotions and realizes what the origin of his health problems could be. In contrast, his perpetual opponent Federico Franco is on the rise. He has quite a few friends at the US embassy and, needless to say, regards the New Horizons as an excellent project. For him, it is just a matter of time.