Paraguay 2014

Yearbook 2014

Paraguay. Paraguay population in 2020 is estimated at 7,132,549. The social and political tensions in rural areas increased during the year. Particularly in the poor central part of the country, the conflicts between large landowners and small farmers increased. Hundreds of landless peasants, so-called carperos, occupied land on a large soy farm near the small town of General Requín in January in protest of the massive use of herbicides that affected their own crops. The demonstrators were forcibly dismissed by the summoned police, causing two policemen and four peasants to be injured.

Another number of confrontations occurred in the same area during the year, and in February, the peasant organization Federación Nacional Campesina (FNC) accused large property owners of being behind the murders of two of their activists. The government responded with a promise to investigate the environmental effects of soy cultivation in the country. A special congressional commission also challenged the police’s decision to protect soybeans against small farmers and demanded a statement from Interior Minister Francisco de Vargas.

According to topb2bwebsites, there were great fears that the guerrilla group Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo (EPP), which has been operating for several years in central Paraguay, would step up its acts of violence as a result of the land conflicts. In July, the group also blew up power lines and attacked a police patrol in the Horqueta district of the province of Concepción. In the small town of Ypejhú, October 16, Pablo Medina, a journalist from the country’s largest daily newspaper ABC Color, was murdered, which investigated links between local politicians in the eastern part of the country and drug smuggling. Soon, a judge in the Supreme Court, Victor Núñez, was implicated in the murder, as was the mayor of Ypejhú, Vilmar Acosta. The ruling National Republican Organization-Colorado Party (ANR-PC), which belongs to both Núñez and Acosta.

At the end of November, the country’s anti-narcotics body submitted a report to the Senate with strong evidence for “drug policy”, ie. elected congressmen’s connections to drug smuggling. Every fourth judge in the entire judicial system was charged with similar crimes, and the demands of transparency and accountability on the part of the government and the ANR-PC became loud.

Demography and economic geography. – Internal state of South America. Country with low population density (6,917,579 residents, according to an estimate by UNDESA, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in 2014, equal to 17 residents ^/ km ²), and also with the highest percentage of rural population (37.5% in 2012) and the most unequal distribution of land. The poverty rate has declined slightly, but remains high, especially in the countryside, with over a third of the residents living below the subsistence threshold. The economy is characterized by alternating periods of growth and recession: this volatility is due to the strong dependence on the primary sector and, in particular, on two products, beef and soy (of which Paraguay is the sixth world producer), which contribute to form 20% of GDP. Both products, however, are subject to the uncertainty of the climate and prices on international markets; consequentially,

History. – The victory in the 2008 presidential elections of Fernando Lugo, leader of the center-left coalition Alianza patriótica para el Cambio (APR) and former Catholic bishop, put an end to the political hegemony of the Asociación nacional republicana (ANR, commonly known as Partido colorado), in power continuously for sixty-one years. Lugo placed economic and social reforms at the center of his government action aimed at improving the living conditions of the poorest strata of the population and overcoming the inequality in income distribution and land distribution, which is crucial in a country with an essentially agricultural production structure.. Hence the relaunch of the agrarian reform which provided for the fight against large estates and the assignment of land to poor peasants. Mercado Común del Sur), the president was unable to carry out his program and in 2012 was subjected to impeachment by Parliament, in which his party had never reached a majority.for ‘ineptitude and lack of decorum’ and was forced to resign. The pretext that triggered the proceedings was an episode that took place on June 15, 2012 in Curuguaty: the occupation of a farm by a group of farmers who claimed the land ended in a clash with the police that caused six victims among the military and 11 among the peasants. The vice president Federico Franco, a liberal, was appointed in his place. Having abandoned the agrarian reform, Franco initiated a series of economic and fiscal reforms to encourage the entry of private capital into the infrastructure sector and to promote greater industrialization of the country. However, he had to face the isolation on the international level, due to the expulsion of the Paraguay from UNASUR (Unión de Naciones Suramericanas) and MERCOSUR decided by the Member States that had not recognized Lugo’s dismissal lawful. In 2013, new presidential elections were held, won by Horacio Cartes, a millionaire businessman, new in politics, who brought the Partido Colorado back to power. Cartes formed a technical government and continued the economic policy inaugurated by his predecessor. On the international level, he tried to normalize relations with the members of MERCOSUR, including Venezuela, and to maintain the most important existing collaborations. In particular, he tried to revive economic-trade relations with Brazil, the United States and China. In April 2014 the Parliament, prompted by a sentence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights which in 2006 had condemned the State for the illegal confiscation of land, passed a bill to return over 14,000 hectares of land in the Chaco region to the indigenous community of Sawhoyamaxa. The appeal filed against the law by a group of private companies, whose lands had been expropriated, was dismissed in October by the Supreme Court.