Unity in diversity. Lessons from Pepe Mujica in Paraguay to the opposition.

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By Mar­cos Pérez Talia.

Last Sat­ur­day, April 15, the young peo­ple of the Con­certación re­ceived the for­mer Uruguayan pres­i­dent Pepe Mu­jica in a mas­sive event. Far from be­ing a mere mo­ti­va­tional talk to the youth, it was, in fact, a po­lit­i­cal deca­logue based on his­tor­i­cal, the­o­ret­i­cal and em­pir­i­cal ar­gu­ments. The pur­pose of this ar­ti­cle is to re­cover a cou­ple of them in light of the up­com­ing gen­eral elec­tions in Paraguay.

Next Sun­day, April 30, Paraguayan democ­racy will hold its eighth gen­eral elec­tions af­ter the fall of the long-lived Stro­n­ist dic­ta­tor­ship (1954-89). Of the seven pre­vi­ous pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, the Col­orado Party (which had al­ready sus­tained the dic­ta­tor­ship for thirty-five years) tri­umphed in six, thus adding thirty more years of gov­ern­ment, now in de­mo­c­ra­tic times. This is a small ex­am­ple of the re­silience of col­oradismo, crit­i­ciz­able of course from mul­ti­ple fronts, but pow­er­fully ef­fec­tive to re­main in power.

Against this back­ground, it seems ob­vi­ous that the Paraguayan op­po­si­tion has to unite in or­der to tri­umph against the Col­orado Party. How­ever, such op­po­si­tion unity has not al­ways ma­te­ri­al­ized. The Paraguayan op­po­si­tion, or rather the op­po­si­tions, are het­ero­ge­neous groups, dif­fer­en­ti­ated not only by ide­ol­ogy but also by strat­egy and praxis. As we pointed out in an­other ar­ti­cle, in some elec­tions they ran sep­a­rately (1989, 1993 and 2003), in oth­ers par­tially united (2008 and 2013) and in oth­ers very united (1998 and 2018).

Unity in spite of differences, in the end, is more powerful than division under the pretext of ideological purity. Exposing his own history, Mujica expressed that “I come from the traditional left that was 80 years old, but it did not bother anyone, it was a mere testimony. Even the right wing treated him well, it put a bit of folklore to the matter”.

Apart from the 2008 op­po­si­tion tri­umph, which has its own speci­fici­ties (such as Lu­go’s lead­er­ship, the thriv­ing lib­eral struc­ture and the Lino Oviedo phe­nom­e­non that cap­i­tal­ized on the col­orado di­vi­sion) the two best re­sults of the op­po­si­tion in per­cent­age terms oc­curred in an en­vi­ron­ment of broad con­ver­gence: in 1998 and 2018, with 42.6 and 42.7 per­cent­age points re­spec­tively. The fol­low­ing table il­lus­trates the sta­tis­ti­cal data.

Table I. Main re­sults of the seven pres­i­den­tial elec­tions (1989-2018).

Presidency	1989	1993	1998	2003	2008	2013	2018
Colorado Party	74.3%	39.9%	53.8%	37.1%	30.6%	45.8%	46.4%
Liberal Party (in alliance 1998, 2008, 2013 and 2018)	20%	32.1%	42.6%	23.9%	40.9%	36.9%	42.7%
Encuentro Nacional		23.1%		0.5%
Patria Querida				21.2%	2.3%	1.1%
UNACE				13.4%	21.9%	0.8%
Frente Guasú						3.3%
Avanza País						5.8%

Source: own elab­o­ra­tion based on TSJE data

For these elec­tions of 2023, the le­gal fig­ure that (a large part) of the op­po­si­tion de­cided to use is the Con­certación. It is a mot­ley space of con­ver­gence that brings to­gether broad and dis­sim­i­lar forces such as an im­por­tant part of the Frente Guasú, Pa­tria Querida, En­cuen­tro Na­cional, Hag­amos, the Fed­eración Na­cional Campesina, the Democrático Pro­gre­sista Party, the febrerismo, Yo Creo from Alto Paraná and, of course, the his­toric Lib­eral Party, among so many other move­ments and par­ties. This unity is not only im­por­tant be­cause of a mere arith­metic sum of par­ties and move­ments, but also be­cause of the emer­gence of new lead­er­ships that can at­tract the sym­pa­thy of dif­fer­ent seg­ments of so­ci­ety. Such is the case of Soledad Núñez, Se­bastián Vil­larejo, Miguel Pri­eto or Jo­hanna Or­tega; who come to re­in­force the con­sol­i­dated lead­er­ship of Efraín Ale­gre, Kattya González, Es­per­anza Martínez, etc.

Is so much het­ero­gene­ity of ideas, tra­jec­to­ries and worlds of be­long­ing a risk? Last Sat­ur­day Pepe Mu­jica pointed out that “when there is a need for change, the most im­por­tant thing is the ob­jec­tive. Peo­ples come to­gether or suc­cumb. When they do not have the ca­pac­ity to come to­gether to find a bet­ter des­tiny, they are con­demned”.

“When you have to change, you have to come to­gether.” seems to be an adage as se­duc­tive as it is con­vo­luted. But is there re­ally a spirit of change in the elec­torate? The only sur­vey that seems to be ef­fec­tive in the re­gion is the one re­cently pub­lished by At­las In­tel. Fol­low­ing its data, we see that, in­deed, there is a strong will for change in Paraguay.

Fig­ure I. Re­sponse on voter pref­er­ences, At­las In­tel Sur­vey

Fuente: En­cuesta At­las In­tel, abril de 2023

If com­ing to­gether for the sake of change is the first com­mand­ment, there is an­other equally cru­cial one ac­cord­ing to Mu­jica: once to­gether… tol­er­ate each oth­er’s dif­fer­ences. The for­mer pres­i­dent pointed out that: “we must learn to tol­er­ate each other and com­bine things that are dif­fer­ent, be­cause we are not per­fect and the world is not per­fect… We must main­tain di­ver­sity be­cause so­ci­ety is di­verse. All the con­tra­dic­tions in so­ci­ety will be re­flected in dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal cri­te­ria and points of view”.

Un­like the Uruguayan Frente Am­plio to which Mu­jica be­longs, which brings to­gether mul­ti­ple pro­gres­sive and cen­ter-left par­ties and move­ments, the Paraguayan Con­certación is much more di­verse. In the same po­lit­i­cal space con­verge, for ex­am­ple, the Fed­eración Na­cional Campesina and Pa­tria Querida. That is why here, in con­trast to Uruguay’s Frente Am­plio, the call for “tol­er­ance” as a re­sponse to the “di­ver­sity” that char­ac­ter­izes so­ci­ety in gen­eral, and the Con­certación in par­tic­u­lar, is dou­bly fun­da­men­tal.

As an ex­am­ple, the re­sults of the 2013 elec­tions showed how elec­toral pol­i­tics fiercely pe­nal­izes coali­tion crises and break­downs. The breakup of the Alianza Pa­triótica para el Cam­bio in 2012, af­ter the im­peach­ment of Lugo, was key for the re­turn of the col­oradismo to the gov­ern­ment, as shown in the fol­low­ing table.

Table II. Main re­sults of the 2013 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion

Candidate	Party	Votes	Percentage
Horacio Cartes	ANR	1.104.169	45.83%
Efraín Alegre	Alianza Paraguay Alegre	889.451	36.92%
Mario Ferreiro	Avanza País	141.716	5.88%
Anibal Carrillo	Frente Guasu	79.573	3.30%
Miguel Carrizosa	Patria Querida	27.026	1.12%

Source: own elab­o­ra­tion based on TSJE data. On­line ac­cess: https://​tsje.gov.py/​e2013/​re­sul­ta­dos-elec­ciones-2013.html

The sum of votes re­ceived by the can­di­dates of the par­ties that made up the APC, such as Efraín Ale­gre (889,451), Mario Fer­reiro (141,716) and Aníbal Car­rillo (79,573) was slightly higher than the votes ob­tained by Ho­ra­cio Cartes, but higher nonethe­less. This arith­meti­cal ex­er­cise, al­though it does not al­ways oc­cur in re­al­ity, can still serve to make an an­a­lyt­i­cal point. If the forces that made up the APC went to­gether, they could have added 1,110,740 votes and de­feated the 1,104,169 votes of the Col­orado Party. That shows that the breakup of the APC was a ru­inous busi­ness for the Paraguayan op­po­si­tion that gov­erned be­tween 2008 and 2013. Keep­ing the «united team» would have been a guar­an­tee of suc­cess de­spite the eco­nomic power of Cartes and the, so to say, « good pro­file» that the to­bacco grower showed at that time.

In an­other part of his speech, Pepe Mu­jica in­sisted again that “this path that you have started is the one that builds hope, and not the other one, which is to be at­om­ized, each one in his own ranch, be­liev­ing him­self to be the cen­ter of the world. I am an old man who was a sec­tar­ian when I was young, like any other young man who be­lieves that with four re­vealed truths we can change the world”.

Unity in spite of dif­fer­ences, in the end, is more pow­er­ful than di­vi­sion un­der the pre­text of ide­o­log­i­cal pu­rity. Ex­pos­ing his own his­tory, Mu­jica ex­pressed that “I come from the tra­di­tional left that was 80 years old, but it did not bother any­one, it was a mere tes­ti­mony. Even the right wing treated him well, it put a bit of folk­lore to the mat­ter”.

In times of yearn­ing for change, mere tes­ti­monies do not build al­ter­na­tives, but pre­vent the re­al­iza­tion of col­lec­tive dreams. Only con­ver­gence, unity and tol­er­ance, with all its con­tra­dic­tions, is the only pos­si­ble path. As once said by an old wise man who un­der­stands a lit­tle about pol­i­tics.

Cover im­age: So­cial net­works of Efraín Ale­gre