Analysis: Discontent and insecurity grow in Paraguay

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A shooting at a concert, resulting in two dead and four wounded, has put Mario Abdo’s government in the international spotlight and reignited the debate on security in the South American country. One of the dead was influencer Cristina Vita Aranda, wife of soccer player Victor Torres.

On Wednesday, a group of deputies from the opposition National Republican Association (ANR) party called for the impeachment of Abdo’s Interior Minister, Arnaldo Guizzio, following the shooting.

The legislators, who require a minimum of 20 signatures, will seek to “initiate the process of impeachment” against Interior Minister Arnaldo Giuzzio, whom they accuse of “poor performance” of his duties, especially in the fight against insecurity and crime.

DISSATISFACTION WITH MARIO ABDO’S GOVERNMENT

During the first year of the pandemic, Paraguay was spared from experiencing overcrowded hospitals or massive deaths due to Covid-19, just like neighboring countries such as Brazil. However, the picture was very different only a year later.

In March 2021, Paraguay’s coronavirus infection rate skyrocketed and became one of the worst on the continent. It stretched the already precarious healthcare system to the limit.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Asunción, Ciudad del Este, and other Paraguayan cities to demand the resignation of President Mario Abdo for his mismanagement of the health crisis.

Paraguay’s political elites were already burdened with an image of corruption and privilege that became intolerable for many citizens during the pandemic.

According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2021, Paraguay ranks 128th out of 180 countries rated, with a score of 30 out of a possible 100 points.

DRUG TRAFFICKING AND THE POLITICAL SPHERE

Interior Minister Arnaldo Giuzzio has been the target of harsh criticism after last Sunday’s shooting during a crowded musical show, which resulted in the death of Aranda and another person, identified as Marcos Rojas, allegedly linked to drug trafficking activities.

The head of the National Police’s Department for the Fight against Organized Crime, Sergio Insfrán, explained to local media that the “strongest hypothesis” being investigated by the authorities is that the shooting was linked to the collection of a debt contracted by Rojas.

It is not the only alleged link between Paraguayan politics and drug trafficking. Some legislators have been accused of having ties to criminal groups.

Javier Zacarias Irun is a senator for Alto Parana. His wife, Sandra McLeod, is the former mayor of Ciudad del Este, the heart of the triple border with Argentina and Brazil, and where there is a network of contraband and drug trafficking that has already been denounced but without effective arrests. Both are under investigation for mismanagement of public funds.

According to three Paraguayan prosecutors interviewed by InSight Crime, an organization that investigates organized crime, the Zacarias clan’s power within drug trafficking has been associated with the contraband smuggling business in the region.

On the other hand, Ulises Quintana also emerged thanks to the Zacarias clan, but when they began to lose a positive image due to the investigations against him, he switched to the opposite side, the Colorado Party.

For Ulises Quintana to come to power, he needed the help of Reinaldo Cucho Cabaña, who, it is suspected, moves cocaine coming from Bolivia to Europe and other parts of South America.

SOUTH AMERICA’S TOP MARIJUANA PRODUCER

Paraguay supplies Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay with pressed cannabis, making it South America’s largest marijuana producer. So says a study by journalist Guillermo Garat, endorsed by Germany’s Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Amsterdam’s Transnational Institute.

“In the north of the country, there is a city, Pedro Juan Caballero, which historically has to do with drug trafficking and today is a no man’s land. Everything there is based on drug trafficking. It is a city under siege by traffickers, and even the police can’t do anything. From time to time, some journalist dies denouncing it. There is a radio station besieged by drug traffickers,” Paraguayan journalists say.”

Marijuana cultivation in Paraguay began in the sixties and spread to supply the high demand in South America. Today between 6,000 and 7,000 hectares are planted in three annual harvests that allowed genetic improvements to cannabis”, states Garat’s report.

The problem is not Asunción; the problem is the border. From all of Paraguay’s exit points, drugs find their way in. In the case of the Triple Frontier, the Paraguayan side has been controlled by the Zacarias family since the time of Alfredo Stroessner’s military regime (1954-1989).

“Homicide rates on the Paraguayan-Brazilian border are scandalously high and show the actions of trafficking groups that dispute territories towards Brazilian routes,” states Garat’s report.

PARAGUAY, A NARCO-STATE?

The Paraguayan media ABC Color published this Tuesday, after the shooting at a concert, an editorial with the following headline: “Paraguay is acquiring characteristics of a narco-state“.

“The population is no longer safe anywhere, as not infrequently innocent people, including children, have been collateral victims of the settling of scores between criminals, especially those involved in drug trafficking, as has happened now in San Bernardino,” the editorial began.

San Bernardino is a summer resort for young Paraguayans. And the place where the tragic murder of influencer Cristina “Vita” Aranda occurred.

“But this episode places us in front of the tremendous reality: drug trafficking has not only infested the structure of the State, as recognized by high government exponents but has expanded throughout the territory, far beyond the traditional areas of violence, such as Alto Parana and Amambay,” the editorial exposed.

“The wars between criminal organizations reveal that, for several years, the police institution has been incapable of preserving public order. If the war continues, with the entire country as its stage, it is because its protagonists have no reason to fear that the forces of law and order will intervene decisively to put a stop to their excesses. How could they do so if they, too, are infiltrated by the gangsters?

The President of the Republic himself, Mario Abdo Benítez, said it in October 2020, without much consequence: “There is a lot of permeability; organized crime permeates several institutions; we have to improve our control systems,” states ABC Color.

SHOOTING AT MUSIC FESTIVAL; INFLUENCER DIES

The whole issue of whether or not Paraguay is a narco-state was revived by the murder of model and influencer Cristina Vita Aranda, wife of Paraguayan soccer player Iván Torres, and another person killed during a shooting at a music festival on Sunday night that gathered some 7,000 people in San Bernardino, 48 km from Asunción.

Also shot in the leg but in stable condition is Xoana Barrientos, wife of Tucumán-born Argentine player Víctor Salazar, 28, an Olimpia defender.

Interior Minister Arnaldo Giuzzio told reporters that “everything points to the festival being used as an opportunity for an unidentified mafia organization to attack a target,” presumably the leader of a rival gang from the Brazilian border who was at the recital.

“We have too little yet to dare give a hypothesis,” the official added. The concert was proceeding normally until gunshots were heard, which caused a general disbanding of the audience, according to the police report.

At the time, the Colombian tropical music group Binomio de Oro was performing on stage.

The program included the Argentinean band Damas Gratis, the Uruguayan singer-songwriter Lucas Sugo, and the Argentineans Néstor en Bloque and Ke Personajes, among others.

Witnesses who observed the incident told TV media that the perpetrator quickly mimicked among the people who ran to look for the venue’s exit, the “José Asunción Flores” amphitheater.

One of the wounded, José Luis Bogado Quevedo, hospitalized in intensive care in a private hospital in Asunción, has an arrest warrant from Brazil for alleged drug trafficking.

The prosecutor in the case, Alicia Sapriza, said that “according to the investigations, Bogado Quevedo was possibly the gunman’s target”.

With information from AFP and EFE