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Asuncion (AFP) – Paraguay, which holds presidential and legislative elections on Sunday, April 30, is a country in the heart of South America praised for its economic stability but plagued by corruption and organized crime.
This 406,752 km2 nation, landlocked but rich in rivers, has been ruled by the conservative Colorado Party for most of the past seven decades.
Here are some key facts about this country of 7.5 million inhabitants, with a Catholic majority:
Corruption and drugs
Sandwiched between Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil, Paraguay has a porous border, which makes it attractive to drug traffickers.
Cannabis (which it also produces) and cocaine (mainly from other places) transit through Paraguay to Brazil, from where it is sent to Europe.
An anti-mafia prosecutor, Marcelo Pecci, and a mayor known for his fight against corruption, José Carlos Acevedo, were assassinated in 2022. Their crimes were attributed to drug trafficking.
Paraguay ranks 137 out of 180 countries in the corruption ranking of the Transparency International organization.
Guarani legacy
With a majority mestizo population, Paraguay has a strong legacy of the Guarani indigenous culture.
The 1992 Constitution established two official languages: Spanish and Guaraní, spoken by 87% of the population and compulsory in schools.
Tereré, an herbal infusion that is drunk cold and is considered the national drink, is also a heritage of the Guarani people.
colorado domain
The Colorado Party has dominated political life in Paraguay almost uninterruptedly since 1947. Under its aegis, the dictator Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989) ruled for 35 years, whose regime caused between 1,000 and 3,000 deaths or disappearances.
The only time Paraguay had a president who did not come from the Colorado Party was with the leftist Fernando Lugo, who came to power in 2008. The former Catholic bishop Lugo was ousted in 2012 after an impeachment trial denounced as a coup by Argentina, Brazil , Uruguay and Venezuela.
In 2013, tobacco businessman Horacio Cartes, one of the richest men in Paraguay, returned the Colorado Party to power. He was president until 2018 and sanctioned by the United States as “significantly corrupt” in 2022, along with the current vice president, Hugo Velázquez.
For Sunday’s elections, the Concertación Nacional, a coalition of center and left-wing parties, hopes to break the hegemony of the Colorado Party. Efraín Alegre, a 60-year-old lawyer and two-time presidential candidate, is neck-and-neck in the polls with Colorado Santiago Peña, a 44-year-old economist.
Electricity, waterway and soy
Paraguay is a major exporter of soybeans, beef, and hydroelectric power.
It has huge hydroelectric dams on the Paraná River, including Itaipu, in condominium with Brazil, the second largest in the world in terms of production after China’s Three Gorges.
It also has the Paraguay-Paraná waterway, some 3,000 km from its source in Brazil to its mouth in the Río de la Plata. With more than 3,000 boats and barges, Paraguay has the third largest freshwater fleet in the world, behind China and the United States.
Paraguay, which has a low tax burden of no more than 10%, is one of the few countries in the region where foreign direct investment increased during the covid-19 pandemic.
The IMF forecasts that the Paraguayan economy will grow 4.5% in 2023, well above the Latin American average (1.6%). But poverty affects 24.7% of the population.
Between Taipei and Beijing
Paraguay is one of 13 countries in the world that officially recognize Taipei over Beijing, which claims the autonomous island of Taiwan as part of its territory. Taiwan has lost several Latin American allies in recent years, in fact Honduras was the last to establish formal ties with China.
Alegre has announced his intention to review relations with Taiwan if he wins, believing that Paraguay pays a high price for losing the huge Chinese market. Peña promises to maintain the link with Taipei based on common “democratic principles and values.”
