Posted on 08/16/2008 5:07:39 AM PDT by decimon
ASUNCION (AFP) - An ex-bishop who ended 61 years of one-party conservative rule in Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, was sworn in Friday as his nation's president, further swelling the ranks of leftwing leaders in South America.
Ideologically aligned leaders, including Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Argentina's Cristina Kirchner, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Ecuador's Rafael Correa attended the ceremony in Asuncion
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
This is inevitable given the disparity in wealth on this continent. Unfortunately,the economic model adopted by the leftists is doomed to more failure and the poor will remain poor— or poorer.
Yeah, I know. That’s why I said the BEST we can hope for is he cleans up corruption and gets out before he does too much socialist damage.
I think we all know what the worst is—the Zimbabwe Road for yet another South American country and the general shrinking of the free areas of the whole world.
Name 1 Latin American foreign policy success for Rice. Name 3 anywhere in the world.
How many Communists were in power in Latin America when Bush took power? How many today? Compare it to the record of Reagan, the current president’s father, or even Clinton.
I know what you're saying but I think the timing of these trends is more fortune than policy. If Bush lost Latin America then Ike lost that and more.
Just so you know, I'm not a Bushbot. I'd have said the same about Clinton and taken the abuse to come from that. There's just so much a president can do.
Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, and if it wasn’t for the Democrats, Colombia, Peru, and Panama.
Only someone stupid or ignorant would include Lula and Bachelet in the list with the others...
If you are trying to list the ones that were Bush/Rice responsibility, you left a few off.
If Washington had given the word, Venezuela would have been rid of the pest. Instead, he was returned to power, where he proceeded to move against the pro-American leaders.
Remember, we are talking policy here, not engaging in wishful thinking or temper tantrums.
Since you apparently don’t keep up with Latin America, I’ll supply a very brief history lesson. Chavez was deposed in a coup by pro-western military officers. Washington (ok, let’s name names, the Bush/Rice team denounced the coup, and withheld support, enabling Chavez to regain power.
So, all the Bush team would have had to do was keep their mouth shut, and the Venezuelan oil would have been controlled by and American ally.
Anti-Chavez coup fails.Just so you don't think I am unwilling to throw you a lifeline--even if you can successfully argue that the Bush Administration's reaction to the coup attempt was flawed, you'd still have to demonstrate that the flawed reaction was a failure of policy.
Bush's Fault™.
Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
And I need to warn you in advance, if you plan on citing to communist sources, our conversation is over.
You seem to be the one supporting those who have facilitated the Communist takeovers.
Yeah, we free-market capitalists are a scourge. Without us, marxism would not exist. /sarc
First off, I live in Paraguay. Sadly enough the Latin American political/historical memory is very short. Chavez (as well as Lugo) professes populist political strategies that have historically failed and had disastrous consequences for those they were supposed to benefit. However, where Chavez obviously has dictatorial tendencies and closely mirrors the definition of ‘imperialism’ (...Una ideología que pretende la expansión de un estado o potestad por encima de otros estados o comunidades a las que considera inferiores.) he attributes to the USA, Lugo actually appears to believe in his outdated principles.
CHAVEZ:
At present Chavez can be classified only as totalitarian; however, current legal reforms in Venezuela leave little doubt as to his desires to elevate himself to full dictatorship. While squandering billions of dollars for armaments and to project him into the politics of other Latin American countries, not only the “poor” but also the “middle class” in Venezuela are now suffering extreme shortages in food and medical supplies.
The obvious and very public intrusion into the politics of other nations clearly classifies him as an imperialist. He forcefully attempts to voice his personal politics at any upper hierarchy political reunion in the region (invited or not in some cases). The constant rhetoric about the USA being the ‘imperialist enemy to the north’ is simply the same old xenophobic political song and dance of blaming someone else for the fallacies of current and past governments to meet the needs of their own countrymen. It’s also always nice to have a pre-planned scapegoat ready if your own outdated policies yield the same results they have historically given (failure). Scream, “it’s their fault!!”
While Lugo’s body language at their San Pedro press conference demonstrated ‘possible’ discontent with positions expressed by Chavez, he said nothing. What was most surprising is that Chavez’s new campaign to impose censorship of the Press went over quite well with Lugo and he has already made steps towards its implementation. (Chavez’s personal security force went so far as to physically abuse two reporters with the passive consent of Lugo’s Paraguayan security staff.)
LUGO:
This passive consent or simulated inobservance (ñembotavy in local terminology) appears to be a practiced political trait in Lugo’s repertoire. He has used it numerous times over the months leading up to his inauguration when he publically appeared along side of and made political discourses jointly with “social reformers” who profess that violence is the only means to achieve justice. Several of these had pending detention orders.
When questioned with respect to this, Lugo stated “Is that so? I was unaware. Why don’t the police do something?” It seems hard to believe that an elected president would not have information regarding persons with whom he would be sharing dinner, pronouncing speeches and meeting privately with behind closed doors. When questioned, all of these have claimed to be long-term acquaintances of the defrocked bishop. In Latin America, do you think the police are actually going to arrest someone the president elect invited while they are at the event?
Lugo has made ample promises to redistribute land and his previous recognition of violent invasion as a legitimate form of ‘accelerating the legal’ process has lead to a state of anarchy in Paraguay. This appears to have been a clear strategy on his part given the amount of ‘invasion leaders’ he met with publically during the interim between election and being sworn in. Only a day before his inauguration did he finally state that violent invasions should not be accepted. Lugo then touted that private property should be respected as well as the right for every Paraguayan to own land.
The simple constitutional guarantee over private property should be enough to understand that every Paraguayan has the right to own property. What is in question here is the implication that people have the right to obtain property from the government freely, without payment, and that such property can possibly be expropriated from others on a simple whim or demand from parties who perform illegal actions.
While there are substantial amounts of land “illegally acquired” by cronies of the previous governments, these are not the properties generally persecuted by the ‘labriegos’*. The most persecuted properties are those honestly paid for by foreign investors. This is well inline with the xenophobic political strategies utilized since God knows when. Is it always easier to blame someone else?
*This widely used term irks me. General references mean ‘workers’, ‘country-folk’ or farmers. However, the majorities of these do not work, live in nearby cities, have other professions and do not know how to work the land in any case. They only look for the public handout of properties that they will then commercialize (at the expense of real taxpayers….). Laborious persons of all classes have historically excelled and become at least modestly prosperous in Paraguay, which is a land of many unexplored opportunities. To benefit these particular persons is a slap in the face to the honest country folk that have prospered due to their hard work and also serves to increase apathy amongst those that have honest upbringings and intentions.
THE FALLACY OF LUGO’S AGRARIAN REFORM MENTALITY:
While President Lugo may firmly believe in his agrarian reform as a means to alleviate poverty, he is only looking at the present generation. He once publically stated that the previous regime’s political strategy was to maintain the largest part of the populace “poor and ignorant”.
That is exactly what will be achieved by focusing on land distribution as the most important economic factor. The majority of the small Paraguayan farmers address agriculture with techniques similar to those of the Dark Ages and under conditions that would have brought joy to the hearts of the feudal lords. Professing that giving each poor family a lot of approximately 40 acres will improve their economic conditions is completely absurd. Most likely it will destroy the future of their sons and grandchildren.
If you give a man this amount of land and insist that he work it without machinery, technical support (most of the populace has forgotten how to work the land) and a proper marketing strategy, he will simply resort to what he knows best; have his children help him. This implies that to make the land profitable and support the family’s nutritional needs, the children will not attend school. The lack of education or training in other skills will condemn them to working the land in the same manner in which there father did, and so forth with their children. Agriculture based on hand-planting, hoe cleaning and hand-harvesting will only provide that the Paraguayans remain poor and ignorant for generations to come (or until a government with a more intelligent economic activation mentality appears). In short, Mr. Lugo is simply following one of the previous regime’s political strategies albeit with apparently different intentions.
It should be noted that the hundreds of thousands of small agricultural lots in Paraguay are possibly the source of the greatest areas of non or underproductive land. This is in sharp disagreement with the generally professed opinion that single landowners with huge properties are unproductive and help strictly for speculative reasons.
While agricultural cooperatives have had reasonable success in Latin America, the general Paraguayan has distinct difficulties in collaboratively working with his neighbors. Also, we have a small dislike in being employees (don’t we all). However, these cultural characteristics will almost assuredly hinder more comprehensive forms of support provided to the land distribution incentive. Numerous projects of international organizations have met with less than favorable results because of these traits.
While small agricultural projects can be very profitable when properly undertaken, at this point in global development they would not generally be thought of as an appropriate activity to be conducted by the majority of a nation’s populace.
Instead of spending extensive economic resources towards legally acquiring expropriated properties (not always the case), the new government would more wisely dedicate this money towards improved education and fomenting industry through both Paraguayan and foreign investment. Acquiring interested foreign investors as well as national is hard when judicial guarantees are publically disavowed by governing authorities. There are numerous extremely wealthy Paraguayans that prefer to invest in other countries.
As a developing country, Paraguay has a long way to go, but the insistence on ignoring the historical failures of certain strategies will almost certainly prolong the journey. As Mr. Lugo stated, “the struggle will be hard, but not impossible.” Why make it harder than necessary and insist on economic strategies that have a proven history of failure? The world continually changes. Failing to recognize those changes and the evolution of economic activities that will provide beneficial results now and for future generations will almost certainly increase or prolong poverty for those in need.
If he had been honest and just horribly misguided, he might have been able to be reasoned with and some of the destruction mitigated. From your description of his reactions and statements he is totally agenda driven.
His pretended lack of knowledge of people he has known and worked with sounds like Barak Obama in my country. Obama didn't know his preacher was screaming racist garbage even though he'd attended that church with that preacher for decades. Also two domestic terrorists of the US actually started his political career for him (at Ayers' house) and then BHO declares that Ayers is moderate and mainstream. When that doesn't fly he pretends he just didn't know.
I tremendously empathize although I'm pretty sure we will be spared Obama. The idea that Lugo supports suppression of the press like Chavez and also redistribution of land like Chavez and the resultant food and medicine shortages are pretty much what I meant by taking the country down the Zimbabwe Road.
Also the disaster that awaits following generations. I remember seeing clips of a Latin American country several years ago. I think it was Venezuela, and they showed people scratching in the dirt with a stick as you have described. Also one man was surprised that his beans died when he didn't water them. The land had been taken from a large, successful foreign commercial farming company.
I wish there was something that would spare your country this before too much damage is done. I wish there were some way to correct a horrible mistake that is made worse by the perp's high approval rating. (It's bad also to consider whether the Pope was so easily fooled, or worse to think that he wasn't). I suspect there will be plenty of suffering before anything is reversed. Sigh.
I have saved your post to my hard drive because there were lots of things in it that I did NOT know about Latin America generally and Paraguay in particular. Example, While agricultural cooperatives have had reasonable success in Latin America, the general Paraguayan has distinct difficulties in collaboratively working with his neighbors. Also, we have a small dislike in being employees (don’t we all).
I wish you and your country the best in making it through what's coming next, and I thank very much again.
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