COCAD, 29 rue Plantin 1070 Bruxelles tel (322) 527 59 90 fax (322) 522 62 27 <cadtm @skynet.be> http://users.skynet.be/cadtm a subsistence income, all these are losing Popular struggle ground over large parts of the world.
3. The negative effects of adjustment policies have a gender dimension: women's rights are even worse affected than men's. When access to education and health is restricted, women suffer the most.
4. The acceptance of structural adjustment plans entails partially renouncing the exercise of the right to national sovereignty. Some of the policies carried out by indebted governments within the framework of structural adjustment programmes are defined outside national borders by the Bretton Woods institutions, if not by one of the governments of the leading industrialized countries, or even by the boards of directors of private financial institutions.
In so far as adjustment policies are usually unpopular, the governments which agree to enforce them end up trying to limit the democratic expression of discontent by the population concerned. Latter years have seen insidious restrictions on the exercise of democratic rights. There has also been gradual limitation of legislative and judiciary powers as compared to
In March powerful mass mobilizations of youth, peasants and workers toppled the government of Cubas Grau and forced the former dictator. general Lino Oviedo to flee. The new government of "National Unity" includes the liberal and social-democratic parliamentary opposition. Is this a democratic rupture? The end of the conservativeled transition from dictatorship to parliamentary democracy? Ernesto Herrera reports The outcome of the Paraguayan crisis can't be understood without taking into account the active interventions of the United States, Brazil and Argentina, and of the prophylactic measures imposed by the long economic and social restructuring of Latin America.
This crisis was solved without NATO bombardments, but with the same precision marksmanship. Surgical military technology is not used in these countries. What the International Community' considers 'good conduct' is imposed within the framework of diplomatic courtesy or political and economic blackmail. When this is not enough, State terrorism in all its variants comes into play.
The long economic adjustment, and the brutal effects of the incorporation of Latin America into the process of 'globalization' have produced an increase in social tensions, misery, corruption,and political instability, along with a rise in populist-authoritarian leaderships. Delinquency is now an epidemic, and 'zero tolerance of crime' the only medicine on offer.
Venezuela has elected an ex-leader of a military coup as president; President Alberto Fujimori has nothing but contempt for the Peruvian Congress and
International Viewpoint #312 June 1999 25
* Paraguay the Judiciary; Argentine president Carlos Menen continues to demand an unconstitutional third term in office; the 'democratic consolidation' in Chile is being the Pinochet case; Mexico's Zapatistas have organised a massive popular referendum on indigenous rights, defying the institutional order; and in Columbia, the negotiations between the government and the guerrillas are at an impasse, resulting in
The American empire and its bureaucrats are starting to be concerned and to take action. Especially where the neo-liberal restructuring has resulted in broadly-based popular insurrections, as in Ecuador, where 63% of the population lives below the poverty line, and where interest payments on the external debt consumes 41% of the national budget.
The capitalist economic crisis has had a decisive impact. The fall in commodity prices and a new cycle of external indebtedness have resulted in a recession. In 1999, unemployment in Latin America will rise to an average of 12% and GNP will fall by 2.3%. The panorama is somber: fragility of democratic structures is again an issue in Latin America, as is regional political stability.
Within this framework, the historian Joseph Tulchin wrote in the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarin on April 4, that "nations affected by corruption, chaos, and political crime must place the protection of national interests in the wider context of its commitments to the international community." This is exactly what happened in the Paraguay crisis.
The analyst Carlos Marini has taken up the argument for direct foreign intervention in Paraguay: "The democratic institutions are so fragile that their survival depends completely on external pressures." (El Observador Economico, Montevideo, April 4).
The key to the acceleration of this interference is to be found in the resistance of the masses, and in the massacre unleashed by the fascists (with the complicity of the police) in Oviedo on March 26. The preliminary estimate of casualties from the battle is tragic: 7 dead, 200 wounded, and 10 disappeared (the bodies thrown into the Paraguay river).
Until then, the governments of Mercosur and the United States restricted themselves to diplomacy, which took into account the distinct fractions and mafias of the ruling Colorado party, which had arrived at a final showdown. 26 International Viewpoint #312 June 1999
The rise of a radical and democratic regular and illegal business interests in popular movement modified the whole panorama. From then on, the "Demo- Paraguayan agriculture was largely cracy Clause 1" came into effect. The full integrated into the Brazilian economy weight of the Unites States and its even before Mercosur. Brazil buys a faithful allies in Mercosur, the European large part of Paraguay's cotton producUnion, and the Vatican representative tion, and most of Paraguay's soya beans was used to demand the resignation of are processed in Brazil before being Cubas Grau and to guarantee the exile of exported via Brazilian roads and ports. Oviedo (an old friend of the CIA and Mainstream media in Latin America former German leader Helmut Kohl.) are reporting a happy ending to the Para-
For the North Americans, the funda- guay crisis: all parties are content: mental issues were to put limits on Oviedo and his puppet Cubas Grau are Oviedo's involvement in contraband and exiled, the armed forces have declared narcotraffic, and to implement a fiscali- their "unconditional respect for the zation of the Paraguayan economy. The institutions," a coalition government is in US asked the Argentine president Carlos power, the anger of the masses has been Menen (a friend of Oviedo's and an appeased, and the "unity of democratic associate in all kind of dirty deals) to Mercosur" has survived a trial by fire. keep the ex-general under strict surveil- For the tranquillity of lance while in exile in Argentina, to American masters, there is now no prevent him participating in conspiracies. danger of a civil war.
A Compromise Government Successive governments have scrupulously maintained the close circle of benefactors created by the Stroessner dictatorship. In its latest report, Transparency International listed Paraguay as the world's second most corrupt country, right after Cameroon. A popular joke in Asuncion is that "Paraguay came second worst because it pulled a deal with Cameroon so as not to come in last." This is a country where the state has been converted into a feeding ground for one of the most corrupt and patrontagebased ruling classes in the world. The public prosecutor has over 20 ongoing investigations of ex-president Wasmosy
Brazil played a crucial role in for misappropriation of US$6,000 resolving the crisis, and granted a golden million, which is the equivalent of 60% exile to ex-president Cubas Grau. of Paraguay's GDP or 10 times its Brazil's involvement has little to do with international reserves. And in the days democratic principles, and a lot to do just after the assassination of vice with economic interests. Brazil is the president Luis Maria Agana (an old colprincipal foreign investor in Paraguay. laborator in the Stroessner dictatorship Southern Brazil's industries get their and arch enemy of Oviedo), more than electricity from the gigantic hydroelectric US$2,000m. disappeared from the public power station at Itaipu on the Paraguay treasury. side of the Parana river. During the crisis, None of this can be understood the power station was guarded by without reference to the Colorado party's
112 year monopoly on politics and the
Brazil is also preoccupied by the State. The party has a membership of 400,000 Brazilians peasants living in over 120,000, including soldiers and Paraguay. Any crisis which pushed them police. An estimated 200,000 civil out of the country would exacerbate servants depend on the party, which Brazil's own rural crisis and confronta- controls over half of the country's tions with the mass movement of land- regional governments less peasants ("Movimiento Sin Tierra"). In other words, the party is the inconThere is also a lobby of Brazilian testable master of a country of five businessmen and landowners with million inhabitants, of which half are pea cap yea The fact of I und put whi coul crea tion (unc Lui "der rado bou part Nat Enc arch hop SuCI Tral and (Nai whi farm coot gove have to ag takir iS W com have new Is to end t ecor obvi bons tage Ind m b Dem and for t Euro Curr shoe the s
peasants; a country whose poverty level is above 45%, and whose annual per capita income is under $1,650.
But now, for the first time in 50 years, the monopoly has been shaken. The internal disputes with the Oviedo faction which came to a head at the end of March, and the democratic rupture undertaken by the masses in the streets put an end to the conservative transition which started in 1989 (when a military coup overthrew the old dictator). It also created the conditions for the inauguration of a government of "national unity" (under foreign tutelage) presided over by Luis Gonzalez Macchi (one of the "democratic" representatives of the Colo-
This government also includes the bourgeois "Authentic Radical Liberal" party (PLRA), and the social democratic National Encounter party (Partido the Mercosur agreements, especially competition from Brazil.
The "national unity" government demanded by the United States, Mercosur, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, poses, more than anything else, uncertainties around compromises which will be difficult to achieve.
The forces for a new battle are being drawn up even though the old battle has not yet been concluded. Meanwhile, the popular movement, which was the principal protagonist of the democratic rupture, remains vigilant over its democratic rights, and is inclined to demand the social fruits of its victory. After the battle of March, a retreat seems improbable. * (1) In 1996, when Oviedo attempted a coup d'etat against president Wasmosy, the governments of the Common Market of the South' (Mercosur, created in 1991 and comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay) included in the treaty a "democracy clause" by which any "institutional collapse" would imply the
PEN). The architects of this project of "conciliation" hope to include the social movements, such as the Central Unitaria de Llamamiento Socialista Trabajadores (Workers United Central) and the Federacion Nacional Campesina "For a Democratic, Radical ano (National Federation of Farmworkers) which demands the cancellation of the farmworkers debts.
It isn't clear whether this attempt at cooption will have any success, as the government is also saying that it doesn't have the "economic resources" to be able to agree to social demands.
Disputes inside the government are taking place on various fronts. One issue is whether Gonzalez Macchi should complete the time in office which would have corresponded to Cubas Grau, or call new elections within six months; another is to clean out the Judiciary and put an end to legal impunity.
The most fundamental differences are economic. The Colorado party, for obvious reasons, is opposed to privatizations, at best would accept only 'selective privatization.' The PLA and the PEN, which account for four of the eleven ministers, agree with the IMF and BID, that privatization of state corporations such as electricity, water, and steel is the most effective way to pull the country out of paralysis and to combat the patronage and corruption. The Paraguayan 'Industrial Union' business council, along with other business organizations, has already given its support to the immediate privatization of any state corporations currently running a deficit.
As to joining Mercosur, there is very little enthusiasm among either politicians or businessmen. The new government has already announced that it will demand "a revision of the Mercosur treaty" to achieve a fairer distribution and ensure "compensation mechanisms for the poorest countries, similar to the European Economic Community." Currently, sectors such as textiles, oil, shoe manufacturing, and machining for the sugar industry have been affected by
Socialist solution" After decades of repression, the Paraguayan left was unable to play a decisive role in the transition.
The left was part of the popular resistance, although without being able to present an alternative program capable of politically centralizing the revolutionary potential of the mass mobilizations.
The Communist Party of Paraguay (PCP) called for the constitution of "a government of national salvation," while the (Castroist) 'Patria Libre' Movement (MPL) called for "a new popular and democratic
The two small organizations resulting from the split in the Morenist Party (Workers Party PT, and the Workers Socialist Party, PST), called for "unity in action" against Oviedo and Cubas Grau.
The New Paraguay Movement, based on the peasantry, empha-
Only once during the crisis was there a unitary statement signed by the PCP, PST, PT, the Paraguay Socialist Party, the 'Acceso Sur' federation, and the Llamamiento Socialista (Socialist Call).
It was the comrades of the Llamamiento Socialista-an organization grouped around the magazine 'Debates for a New Epoch', and which includes those comrades who identify with the 4* Internationalautomatic expulsion of the state in question from the Mercosur. who participated most actively in the resistance, even producing daily political statements
On March 31, Llamamiento Socialista issued a call to "continue the impunity, against patronage, and for the widening of the democratic
They repeated the call for "the construction of a Popular Socialist Movement which with clarity and discipline gains sufficient moral authority to move forward both the struggles and the unity of the popular revolutionary movements, to then resolve the historical problems the Paraguayan people, such as sovereignty, democratic reforms, agricultural reform, health, education, reactivation of the economy and employment."
The challenge is enormous, and appears out of proportion in relation to the immediate tasks imposed by the current situationin particular, how to propose a broad and democratic alternative, both radical and socialist, in the context of an increase in popular mobilization, but in the absence of a history of stable alliances and unitary traditions.
The comrades of Llamamiento Socialista recognise the urgent necessity of greater ties with the multi-coloured movement which carried out the democratic revolution, but which does not yet have a clear political identity. [EH] *
East Timor
These terms also imply that the independence movement and the armed wing of the resistance, Falintil, are currently engaged in armed conflict with the prointegration gangs and the Indonesian military. This is totally false.
Falintil has upheld a unilateral ceasefire, which it declared last December as an act of good faith and a sign of commitment to a peaceful transition to independence. Falintil maintains the right to act in self-defence and the right to protect defenceless civilians.
The full detail of the UN plan for the vote on autonomy are still being discussed. It is understood to include provision for a UN monitoring team of some 450 to 650 personnel to oversee the vote. It will include a police force which will liaise with the Indonesian military and police on security matters, and it is likely that Australia will be requested by the UN to provide a contingent of police for the team.
This plan entrenches the control of the Indonesian military and police, who will be responsible for overall security in the lead-up to the vote. UN police will merely act in an "advisory" capacity.
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