Paraguay Coup

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Jose: Jul 24, 2007; Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster and writer

So Paraguay is in uproar atm because the senate held a secret vote to allow the president to run for reelection. Paraguay's last dictator left power in 1989 after being ruled by dictators for about 200 years. Its the only south american country to have the native people form the majority of the population because one of the dictators encouraged people to have interracial marriages with them in a break from what dictators usually do

Those are my paraguay facts and this thread is to talk about the coup currently going on

# ? Apr 1, 2017 09:52

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 10:20

Yossarian-22: Oct 26, 2014

Was that Dr. Francia who encouraged interracial mixing? He was a funny dude

# ? Apr 1, 2017 10:01

Plutonis: Mar 25, 2011

We hosed them up really really bad in the triple alliance war and they never properly recovered RIP.

Also Lugo was pretty cool and was the first victim of the parliamentarian coup poo poo that they pulled later here in Brazil.

# ? Apr 1, 2017 10:02

The Brown Menace: Dec 24, 2010; Now comes in all colors.

sounds pretty "guay" to me, OP

# ? Apr 1, 2017 10:02

Plutonis: Mar 25, 2011

Yossarian-22 posted:

Was that Dr. Francia who encouraged interracial mixing? He was a funny dude

I think it was Solano Lopez. Latin American Historiography rates him as a nationalist leader who stood against british imperialism but imho he was just a piece of poo poo Caudillo who just happened to not be as much a piece of poo poo as the others

# ? Apr 1, 2017 10:07

Jose: Jul 24, 2007; Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster and writer

i woke up and went on the guardian website and thought it was their april fools story lol

# ? Apr 1, 2017 10:13

WINNINGHARD: Oct 4, 2014

those guays with their practical jokes

# ? Apr 1, 2017 11:30

super sweet best pal: Nov 18, 2009

The Brown Menace posted:

sounds pretty "guay" to me, OP

No, that's Uruguay.

# ? Apr 1, 2017 12:17

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

what a buncha wild and cwazy guays

# ? Apr 1, 2017 12:22

Baloogan: Dec 5, 2004; Fun Shoe

yay im learning about another country i don't give a poo poo about

no offense paraguays !!!

# ? Apr 1, 2017 12:26

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Baloogan posted:

yay im learning about another country i don't give a poo poo about

no offense paraguays !!!

You should read up on The War of The Triple Alliance now.

# ? Apr 1, 2017 12:30

The Brown Menace: Dec 24, 2010; Now comes in all colors.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

You should read up on The War of The Triple Alliance now.

quote:

According to some estimates, Paraguay's pre-war population of 525,000 was reduced to 221,000, of which only 28,000 were men.

sounds good to me tbh

# ? Apr 1, 2017 12:37

etalian: Mar 20, 2006

Plutonis posted:

I think it was Solano Lopez. Latin American Historiography rates him as a nationalist leader who stood against british imperialism but imho he was just a piece of poo poo Caudillo who just happened to not be as much a piece of poo poo as the others

Evil ruler who forced white dudes to bang latinas.

# ? Apr 1, 2017 13:40

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

The Brown Menace posted:

sounds good to me tbh

This is why old men start wars imo.

# ? Apr 1, 2017 14:26

Baloogan: Dec 5, 2004; Fun Shoe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeVWupFBkA8

# ? Apr 1, 2017 14:27

Relin: Oct 6, 2002; You have been a most worthy adversary, but in every game, there are winners and there are losers. And as you know, in this game, losers get robotizicized!

sounds like businesses have bribed congressmen in paraguay to pass this law because cartes is friendly to their interests and 'stability'

# ? Apr 1, 2017 16:48

byob historian: Nov 5, 2008; I'm an animal abusing piece of shit! I deliberately poisoned my dog to death and think it's funny! I'm an irredeemable sack of human shit!

Baloogan posted:

yay im learning about another country i don't give a poo poo about

no offense paraguays !!!

dont worry no other country gives a poo poo about you peckerwood!!!

# ? Apr 1, 2017 16:52

Chokes McGee: Aug 7, 2008; This is Urotsuki.

dry run for America in two years imo

(seriously though hope it comes out OK but these types of things usually... Don't)

# ? Apr 1, 2017 17:07

The Ol Spicy Keychain: Jan 17, 2013; I MEPHISTO MY OWN ASSHOLE

Relin posted:

sounds like businesses have bribed congressmen in paraguay to pass this law because cartes is friendly to their interests and 'stability'

It's time

# ? Apr 1, 2017 17:09

Bro Dad: Mar 26, 2010

Plutonis posted:

I think it was Solano Lopez. Latin American Historiography rates him as a nationalist leader who stood against british imperialism but imho he was just a piece of poo poo Caudillo who just happened to not be as much a piece of poo poo as the others

actually it was francia. dude loving hated spaniards (he was a lowborn criollo with rumors of mulatto heritage) so it kinda made sense

he also caught his daughter prostituting herself outside the palace and immediately declared it an honorable profession (wearing gold combs because gently caress spain and their fashion)

# ? Apr 1, 2017 18:15

Jose: Jul 24, 2007; Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster and writer

i've been out fot eh house for 5 hours did anything interesting happen?

# ? Apr 1, 2017 19:07

Badger of Basra: Jul 26, 2007

Jose posted:

i've been out fot eh house for 5 hours did anything interesting happen?

they've actually decreed full communism

# ? Apr 1, 2017 19:14

Brother Friendship: Jul 12, 2013

I hope it works out, best of luck Paraguay don't descend into civil war lmao

# ? Apr 1, 2017 19:23

jBrereton: May 30, 2013; Grimey Drawer

Jose posted:

So Paraguay is in uproar atm because the senate held a secret vote to allow the president to run for reelection. Paraguay's last dictator left power in 1989 after being ruled by dictators for about 200 years. Its the only south american country to have the native people form the majority of the population because one of the dictators encouraged people to have interracial marriages with them in a break from what dictators usually do

Those are my paraguay facts and this thread is to talk about the coup currently going on

I think it's more that they had to marry interracially because huge amounts of men died in the pretty cataclysmic War of the Triple Alliance, when the dictator of Paraguay pretty much Jonestowned the entire country in a quixotic war with the whole of the rest of South America.

The most conservative estimates for the postwar male:female ratio was 1:3 (for those of you not good at numbers, that means 2/3 of the prewar men died, assuming there was a balanced population), and many historians think that more than that died (this is complicated by the utterly poo poo record-keeping of colonial south america at the time fwiw).

# ? Apr 1, 2017 19:25

Dapper_Swindler: Feb 14, 2012; Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

jBrereton posted:

I think it's more that they had to marry interracially because huge amounts of men died in the pretty cataclysmic War of the Triple Alliance, when the dictator of Paraguay pretty much Jonestowned the entire country in a quixotic war with the whole of the rest of South America.

The most conservative estimates for the postwar male:female ratio was 1:3 (for those of you not good at numbers, that means 2/3 of the prewar men died, assuming there was a balanced population), and many historians think that more than that died (this is complicated by the utterly poo poo record-keeping of colonial south america at the time fwiw).

i remeber reading about that in a book(some popculture book called stupid wars which wasnt that bad). wasnt the leader of paraguay a dumb failson retard who kept his mom in a cage and french whore as a queen then died like a bitch on river bank after basicaly loving his country to death because he thought he could be like napoleon because he was dumb Francophile with a syphilitic brain.

Dapper_Swindler has issued a correction as of 19:34 on Apr 1, 2017

# ? Apr 1, 2017 19:32

etalian: Mar 20, 2006

jBrereton posted:

I think it's more that they had to marry interracially because huge amounts of men died in the pretty cataclysmic War of the Triple Alliance, when the dictator of Paraguay pretty much Jonestowned the entire country in a quixotic war with the whole of the rest of South America.

The most conservative estimates for the postwar male:female ratio was 1:3 (for those of you not good at numbers, that means 2/3 of the prewar men died, assuming there was a balanced population), and many historians think that more than that died (this is complicated by the utterly poo poo record-keeping of colonial south america at the time fwiw).

Sounds like the war was just a attempt to break up the pussy cartel

# ? Apr 1, 2017 19:50

jBrereton: May 30, 2013; Grimey Drawer

Dapper_Swindler posted:

i remeber reading about that in a book(some popculture book called stupid wars which wasnt that bad). wasnt the leader of paraguay a dumb failson retard who kept his mom in a cage and french whore as a queen then died like a bitch on river bank after basicaly loving his country to death because he thought he could be like napoleon because he was dumb Francophile with a syphilitic brain.

I have no idea about the more esoteric bits of that story but in a word "kinda".

He'd erected a gigantic fort complex along the main river trade artery of south America, realised soon that a) the cannons on it were pretty crap and b) everyone was building ships out of metal which made extracting the tolls a lot more difficult in future (because he wasn't going to be able to just sink everything that told his guys to gently caress off) and decided that now was the time to strike.

IIRC all the treaties that led to everyone attacking with a mind to taking bits off the country were a secret so I don't think he intended to war with everyone, but once that happened he pressed on regardless until nearly everyone was dead.

Must have been pretty wild!

# ? Apr 1, 2017 20:01

Jose: Jul 24, 2007; Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster and writer

paraguay has a really hosed up and cool history even compared to other latin american countries

# ? Apr 1, 2017 20:02

etalian: Mar 20, 2006

jBrereton posted:

I have no idea about the more esoteric bits of that story but in a word "kinda".

He'd erected a gigantic fort complex along the main river trade artery of south America, realised soon that a) the cannons on it were pretty crap and b) everyone was building ships out of metal which made extracting the tolls a lot more difficult in future (because he wasn't going to be able to just sink everything that told his guys to gently caress off) and decided that now was the time to strike.

IIRC all the treaties that led to everyone attacking with a mind to taking bits off the country were a secret so I don't think he intended to war with everyone, but once that happened he pressed on regardless until nearly everyone was dead.

Must have been pretty wild!

Also lolling how it was basically putting a single nation with a total population around 500,000 vs nations which had a population 11 million by comparison.

# ? Apr 1, 2017 21:18

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

Jose posted:

paraguay has a really hosed up and cool history even compared to other latin american countries

does anyone have a book about how they won the chaco war in 35?

# ? Apr 1, 2017 21:21

Dapper_Swindler: Feb 14, 2012; Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

Lawman 0 posted:

does anyone have a book about how they won the chaco war in 35?

Jose posted:

paraguay has a really hosed up and cool history even compared to other latin american countries

are there any good books on all those south/central american wars? most of the ones i read are just either small snippets of stuff or from chomsky/zinn which while ok, mostly just focus on US buggery in the various conflicts.

# ? Apr 1, 2017 21:52

Fast Luck: Feb 2, 1988

Relin posted:

sounds like businesses have bribed congressmen in paraguay to pass this law because cartes is friendly to their interests and 'stability'

Looked up Cartes and he's a center-right crook, like literal crook. His wikipedia page has a section called "Business career" and it's 80% full of all the crimes he did as a businessman. This is after the leftist priest got couped by the parliament Dilma style

# ? Apr 1, 2017 22:21

Plutonis: Mar 25, 2011

Lawman 0 posted:

does anyone have a book about how they won the chaco war in 35?

There was a cool rear end article by the War Nerd on it and how hosed up that war was

# ? Apr 1, 2017 22:43

Plutonis: Mar 25, 2011

etalian posted:

Also lolling how it was basically putting a single nation with a total population around 500,000 vs nations which had a population 11 million by comparison.

The Paraguayan army was actually pretty big for the country's population and had good morale compared to most neighbors (Brazil's army had a policy in which white plantation owners could send slaves in their stead and several poor people were 'volunteered' by professional bounty hunters lmao) but taking on Brazil and Argentina would be retarded by itself, imagine taking on both at the same time

# ? Apr 1, 2017 22:50

Al!: Apr 2, 2010

parguay? no, ur. uruguay

# ? Apr 1, 2017 22:55

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

Plutonis posted:

There was a cool rear end article by the War Nerd on it and how hosed up that war was

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/land-of-the-flies/

quote:

He hates the Chaco, and after you�ve finished his journal you will too. I kind of want to go there now, just to hate it up close and personal. It�s got to be one of the weirdest Hellholes on the planet. Take butterflies. Nice, purty li�l butterflies. In the Chaco, they�re a nightmare. I had to look up the word �oruga,� which he uses over and over to describe some nightmare creature of the Chaco. Turns out it means �caterpillar,� and these butterfly larvae swarm over every campsite. They�re about two or three inches long, �very warm and soft,� he says, and pop at the lightest touch, smearing you with worm goo. He actually marks with a cross every horrible caterpillar that shows up on photos of his ad hoc operating tables in the bush, so you can see how the nasty little critters were trying to crawl up onto the body of the man he was trying to save. In another photo, he places his boot in a mound of them, millions making a little hillock.

When they pupate, they emerge as white butterflies that look like white hail in some of his photos. Then there are the huge bird-eating spiders. Well, something has to eat the nice butterflies, but God, does it have to look like this? He shows one of these spiders with the caption, �Here she is attacking the stick which has annoyed her.� Don�t annoy the bird-eating spiders, please.

Then there are the ants, who build giant nests every few feet of the way. And the worms that infest the puddles the men have to drink from�and, as Dr. de Sanctis explains, there was no other water and no time to boil this filthy stuff on the march, so you drank it or died of thirst. A lot of the soldiers did, in fact, die of thirst. This war is still remembered in Paraguay as �La Guerra de la Sed��The Thirst War.�

# ? Apr 1, 2017 23:16

get that OUT of my face: Feb 10, 2007

i know almost nothing about post-independence south america, and practically nothing about paraguay in general. it's cool that there was state-sanctioned race mixing

edit: the paraguayan president got his fortune in tobacco. good guy to run for another term imo

get that OUT of my face has issued a correction as of 23:42 on Apr 1, 2017

# ? Apr 1, 2017 23:36

Badger of Basra: Jul 26, 2007

i read that some of lugo's people voted for it so they can have him run again

# ? Apr 1, 2017 23:59

get that OUT of my face: Feb 10, 2007

Badger of Basra posted:

i read that some of lugo's people voted for it so they can have him run again

this is a good overview of what people are pissed off about and it mentions that lugo would probably win if he could run again

# ? Apr 2, 2017 00:02

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 10:20

Troy Queef: Jan 12, 2013

Alan Whicker's documentary about Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay's old dictator) is great viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NCwAQdza30

Also here's some highlights of his rule:

quote:

Stroessner declared a state of emergency over Paraguay, which allowed him to suspend civil liberties and rule by decree. It was renewed every 90 days until 1987. Here's where the bureaucratic bullshit kicks in. The state of siege was technically restricted to the capital after 1970, but the courts ruled that anyone charged with "security offenses" could be brought to the capital and indicted under the state-of-siege provisions. For all intents and purposes, Stroessner ruled under what amounted to martial law for virtually his entire tenure. He justified this action as a necessary tool to protect the country from communism (sound familiar?)

As the undisputed leader of the Colorado Party, even above the Governing Board, Stroessner exercised nearly complete control over Paraguay's political scene, with the Roman Catholic Church being the only thing he couldn't contain. When the police destroyed the Asunci�n University in 1972, the Archbishop of Paraguay, Ismael Rol�n Silvero, excommunicated the minister of the interior and the chief of police, proscribing the celebration of Holy Mass in a sign of protest against Stroessner. Paraguay's bishops increasingly criticized the regime for human rights abuses, rigged elections, and the country's feudal economy. Such anti-Stroessner sentiment was fueled when Pope John Paul II critiqued Stroessner's policies to his face, particularly when the Pope said that politics are a representation and service to (not against) men.

Although opposition parties were nominally permitted after 1962 (the Colorado Party had been the only legal party in the country since 1947), Paraguay remained a one-party state due to Stroessner's firm grip over the political and military aspects of the nation. Elections were so heavily rigged in favor of the Colorados that the opposition had no realistic chance of winning, and opposition figures were subjected to varying degrees of harassment. Nevertheless, even Stroessner was not able to stop Pope John Paul II from visiting the opposition leaders in an attempt to help anti-Stroessner sentiment.

Stroessner�s security forces became so efficient at intimidating potential opposition figures that fear itself � fear of arrest, torture, exile and murder � became one of his prime levers for staying in power. Hundreds of political prisoners and their families were imprisoned at concentration camps like Emboscada in the 1970s. The chief of the secret police was Pastor Milciades Coronel, a vicious enforcer for Stroessner. He would interview people in a bath of human excrement, or ram electric cattle prods through their rectums. The Secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party was dismembered alive with a chainsaw while Stroessner listened on the phone. People with "occasionally uncontrollable urges" were thrown from planes with their arms and legs bound, and corpses were thrown into rivers.

Under Stroessner, land belonging to the native Ach� tribesmen was coveted by foreign multinationals. When the Ach� resisted relocation attempts by the Paraguayan army, Stroessner retaliated via massacres and enslavement. The Northern Ach�, who lived in 20,000 square kilometers, were confined on two reservations totaling little more than 50 square kilometers of titled land. Several Ach� were gathered onto reservations where no adequate medical treatment was provided. This pacification process was designed remove them from their ancestral homeland so that absentee investors (mainly Brazilian) could move in and develop the lands that once belonged only to the Ach�. This policy was more in line with ethnic cleansing than genocide, as the point of the policy was not to exterminate the Ach�, but to remove them from the land to make way for others to take that land from them.

Stroessner was careful not to draw attention to himself as President, preferring to avoid rallies and take holidays overseas. He became nominally more tolerant of opposition as the years passed, but there was no change in the regime's basic character. Stroessner dedicated large proportions of the Paraguayan national budget to the military and police apparatus, the two fundamental programs essential to the maintenance of the regime. Stroessner spent 33% of the 1962 annual budget on army and police, 15% for education, and 2% for public works, and there was no income tax and public spending was the smallest percentage of GDP in Latin America. Stroessner authorized the construction of the Itaipu Dam and the Yacyret� Dam on the Paraguay-Argentina Border, which displaced thousands of Paraguayans, pushing them from their homes, often without any restitution. Around 160 workers died in just building the Itaipu Dam, in a very Mao Zedong move. Senator Carlos Levi Rufinelli, the leader of the opposition Liberal party, had been imprisoned 19 times and tortured six times by 1975.

The only positive thing that came Stroessner would be the many projects that improved the country's infrastructure. Amongst these were the improvement of highways and the issuing of 20 hectare land grants to military personnel upon completion of their service, provided that the land would be used for farming purposes. He made a practice of personally inaugurating every new school or filtration station that opened, for no apparent reason other than to waste peoples' time by taking credit for something that didn't involve him.

In April 1987, Stroessner lifted the state of siege as part of the run-up to elections the following spring, but refrained from removing several of his draconian security laws, so the state of siege was effectively still in place. As had been the case for over three decades, opposition leaders continued to be arbitrarily arrested and opposition meetings and demonstrations were broken up (often brutally), so there was no real change overall.

There are no official figures in Paraguay for the number of people who were killed and/or forcibly disappeared during his dictatorship. According to a report released in August 2008 by the independent Comisi�n Verdad y Justicia (Truth and Justice Commission), around 400 people were "disappeared" by the dictatorship, at least 59 were the victims of extrajudicial execution, nearly 20,000 were illegally detained and 18,000 were tortured. However, the Agrupaci�n de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos y Asesinados del Paraguay (Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared) claims that in reality an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people were murdered.

Stroessner was a close friend to General Andr�s Rodr�guez, so close that Rodr�guez's daughter married Stroessner's eldest son. Key word: was. The two quickly had a falling out by the time Rodr�guez cultivated ties with the "traditionalists", an element of the Colorado party that had come to favor a more humane way of governing. Incensed at the thought of opposition, Stroessner relieved several generals of their commands and replaced them with men thought to be unquestionably loyal to him. Later that month, Stroessner closed all of the country's currency exchanges, his way to strike back at Rodr�guez, who ran one of the largest exchange houses in the nation. On February 2, 1989, Stroessner summoned his former ally and gave him an ultimatum: accept appointment as defense minister or retire.

A few hours later, Rodr�guez gave his answer: by launching a violent, bloody coup, one that he'd apparently been planning since December 1988. On the night of February 3, rebel troops and tanks surrounded the headquarters of the Presidential Guard in Asuncion (where Stroessner had sought refuge), with the backing of the Roman Catholic Church and the United States, the latter of whom no longer valued Stroessner as an ally against international Communism. With this support, the coup quickly succeeded, lasting only eight hours, with Stroessner resigning immediately after the fighting and fleeing into exile a few days later. Rodr�guez was much better at civil liberties than his predecessor, having abolished the death penalty, formally ended the state of siege and incarcerating members of Stroessner's government after trying them in court.

Rodr�guez legally dissolved Congress under a provision in the 1967 constitution that allowed such an act if he felt it had acted in a manner that distorted the constitutional separation of powers. As part of his decree dissolving the legislature, he announced that all "non-Communist" (meaning, all opposition) parties would be allowed to compete in elections due for that May. A presidential election for the balance of Stroessner's term was also held in May, since the constitution required new elections to fill out the term of a president who resigned less than two years into his term. Rodr�guez ran as the Colorado candidate and was elected with 74 percent of the vote, in what was the closest thing the country had seen to a free and fair election up to that time. In 1992, Paraguay adopted a new constitution that limited the presidency to a single five-year term. The term limitation applied to Rodr�guez, who promised on his word of honor as a soldier that he would not run for re-election in 1993. True to his word, he signed the new constitution into law on June 22 and resigned as President. He was succeeded by Juan Carlos Wasmosy, who like Rodr�guez was a member of the Colorado Party.

As for Stroessner, he had been suffering from pneumonia after undergoing a hernia operation. He tired to return to Paraguay before his death, so he could die in his homeland, but he was rebuked and threatened with arrest by the government. Stroessner died of a stroke on August 16, 2006, in Bras�lia, at the age of 93. The Paraguayan government preemptively dismissed any suggestions for honoring the late president within Paraguay.

# ? Apr 2, 2017 00:47

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