Deconstructing the Relationship Between Power and Drug Trafficking in Paraguay

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*Por Jorge Rolo´n Luna

Sev­eral coun­tries ex­pe­ri­ence pro­found ef­fects on their economies, so­cial dy­nam­ics, and in­sti­tu­tional frame­works due to the com­plex­i­ties of drug traf­fick­ing. Paraguay, bur­dened by this ne­far­i­ous trade, is of­ten dubbed a “narco-state.” As I have pre­vi­ously high­lighted, the pri­mary fac­tors that cat­e­go­rize a state as a “nar­costate” are:

a) the states’ ac­tive en­gage­ment in drug traf­fick­ing, b) the sub­stan­tial eco­nomic in­flu­ence of drug traf­fick­ing, and c) vast ar­eas ded­i­cated to il­le­gal farm­ing.

In this ar­ti­cle, I want to ad­dress what is of­ten per­ceived as the crux of the mat­ter: the re­spon­si­bil­ity and im­pli­ca­tion of state agents in the il­licit trade. Firstly, it’s un­de­ni­able that drug traf­fick­ing in Paraguay was es­tab­lished and thrived un­der a state and party (the A.N.R.) pro­tec­tion scheme. This hap­pened from its early days with mar­i­juana cul­ti­va­tion to its con­sol­i­da­tion as a tran­sit and re-ex­port coun­try for co­caine, in­clud­ing heroin traf­fick­ing in the 1970s. High-rank­ing mil­i­tary of­fi­cers and bor­der politi­cians were part of this scheme, and to­day, the ty­pol­ogy of of­fi­cials has di­ver­si­fied and ex­panded.

The case of for­mer Pres­i­dent Gen. An­drés Ro­dríguez (1989-1993) is em­blem­atic. He was di­rectly in­volved in heroin traf­fick­ing in the 1970s and later in co­caine traf­fick­ing, ac­cord­ing to nu­mer­ous sources, in­clud­ing de­clas­si­fied Amer­i­can doc­u­ments. An­other pow­er­ful ex­am­ple from party pol­i­tics is the Morel Clan, ac­tive lead­ers of the Col­orado sec­tion of Capitán Bado. They are of­ten con­sid­ered the founders of mar­i­juana traf­fick­ing to Brazil (fa­ther and sons bru­tally mur­dered in 2001). This model so­lid­i­fied in sub­se­quent decades, with no checks or cor­rec­tions ap­plied, lead­ing many to be­lieve that Paraguay had be­come a narco-state.

The re­sults of the re­cent elec­tions have brought the Car­tismo fac­tion to the pres­i­dency, over­whelm­ingly pointed out for its ties to all kinds of il­licit busi­nesses, which does not bode well. This will likely re­sult in strong pres­sures on the Pub­lic Min­istry to hin­der or slow down the mod­est ad­vances against po­lit­i­cal im­punity. The com­ing months and years will be cru­cial in de­ter­min­ing the model that will emerge from these back-and-forths be­tween pol­i­tics and drug traf­fick­ing.

Sev­eral for­mer pres­i­dents, high-rank­ing mil­i­tary of­fi­cers, deputies, sen­a­tors, gov­er­nors, may­ors, and mu­nic­i­pal coun­cilors (es­pe­cially from bor­der ar­eas) have his­tor­i­cally been in­volved in the busi­ness. Pro­tected by a weak, de­pen­dent, and cor­rupt ju­di­cial sys­tem, by the po­lice (where there are also en­thu­si­as­tic traf­fick­ers), and by the anti-drug agency (SENAD). Such a lu­cra­tive busi­ness model, in a struc­turally cor­rupt coun­try with a prim­i­tive econ­omy, few op­por­tu­ni­ties, and in­cen­tives for ad­vanced cap­i­tal­ist growth, cre­ated the per­fect con­di­tions. Ob­vi­ously, such a lu­cra­tive in­dus­try could not have re­mained out­side the in­ter­est of the hege­monic party, much of the po­lit­i­cal class, and the civil and re­pres­sive bu­reau­cracy (Armed Forces, po­lice, and anti-drugs).

It can be said that the busi­ness was born from the ba­sic lead­er­ship of the Col­orado party in the bor­der area, with the ap­proval and pro­tec­tion of the power elite (mil­i­tary and civil). This is quite log­i­cal: dur­ing the Stroess­ner dic­ta­tor­ship, it was un­think­able to be an op­po­nent and a drug traf­ficker at the same time. To­day, as the coun­try is in­te­grated into the global drug mar­ket, the money it gen­er­ates is one of the pil­lars of the Col­orado of­fi­cial­dom, fi­nanc­ing its cam­paigns. In ad­di­tion, it gen­er­ates a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar spillover to busi­ness sec­tors (ex­change houses, the fi­nan­cial sys­tem, es­pe­cially) and much of the so­ci­eties in its area of in­flu­ence and through­out the coun­try. To­day, the busi­ness di­ver­si­fies and ex­pands with di­men­sions far re­moved from its mod­est be­gin­nings in the fields of Amam­bay.

The the­o­ret­i­cal prob­lem with sub­scrib­ing to the narco-state the­sis is that it im­plies un­der­stand­ing these state agents as the State it­self and main­tain­ing that they have acted and acted on its be­half to pro­mote drug traf­fick­ing. How­ever, one should not con­fuse the fact that there are of­fi­cials who dare to par­tic­i­pate in this il­le­gal trade with the State as a whole en­gag­ing in it. If we also ac­cepted that sim­plis­tic de­f­i­n­i­tion from cer­tain con­sti­tu­tional law man­u­als that say: “the State is all of us,” in a narco-state, we would all be drug traf­fick­ers. Sim­ply con­ceiv­ing of the State as a set of so­cial re­la­tions pre­vents con­clud­ing, no mat­ter how wide­spread the rot, that the Paraguayan State as a whole is ded­i­cated to drug traf­fick­ing. The State is also a set of di­verse in­sti­tu­tions, with his­to­ries, ethos, and dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tional mis­sions, some­thing not un­der­stood by those who vi­su­al­ize it as a ho­mo­ge­neous block with a sin­gle po­lit­i­cal will.

Thus, it’s cru­cial to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween a state where drug traf­fick­ers op­er­ate and one where the en­tire state ap­pa­ra­tus con­trols, pro­motes and over­sees drug traf­fick­ing. Avail­able ev­i­dence sug­gests that seg­ments of Paraguay’s po­lit­i­cal elite and pub­lic sec­tor have had, and con­tinue to have, ties to drug traf­fick­ing. Some in­di­vid­u­als fully em­body the role of drug traf­fick­ers. This is par­tic­u­larly ev­i­dent in bor­der towns, where lo­cal coun­cilors and may­ors have di­rectly en­gaged in the trade, though the ex­act ex­tent re­mains hard to quan­tify. The men­ace of tar­geted as­sas­si­na­tions has also af­fected them, not nec­es­sar­ily be­cause they op­posed drug traf­fick­ing.

A sig­nif­i­cant point to note is that, over the years, the Paraguayan State has se­lec­tively tar­geted al­leged and con­firmed drug traf­fick­ers. Many of them have been pros­e­cuted, in­car­cer­ated, or ex­tra­dited to other coun­tries. How­ever, there are glar­ing ex­cep­tions, such as Fahd Yamil Georges and the late Jorge Raafat, who ap­peared to be seem­ingly un­touched by our po­lice, anti-drug agen­cies, and ju­di­cial sys­tem. In Georges’ case, he was never held ac­count­able for the mur­der of jour­nal­ist San­ti­ago Leguiza­món, only fac­ing con­se­quences un­der Brazil­ian law.

How­ever, other promi­nent po­lit­i­cal fig­ures im­pli­cated in drug traf­fick­ing, money laun­der­ing, and re­lated of­fenses have faced a dif­fer­ent out­come. The pre­vail­ing trend has been one of ab­solute im­punity. A prime ex­am­ple is the for­mer Pres­i­dent An­drés Ro­dríguez. He was­n’t the only leader to as­cend to the high­est of­fice while bear­ing grave al­le­ga­tions of drug traf­fick­ing con­nec­tions. This pat­tern of shield­ing high-rank­ing politi­cians from ac­count­abil­ity, es­pe­cially when jux­ta­posed with the fate of many ma­jor drug traf­fick­ers, sug­gests that po­lit­i­cal power re­mains dom­i­nant over “narco” in­flu­ence.

To­day, the pre­vail­ing model -par­tic­u­larly in its most com­pre­hen­sive form- ap­pears to be tem­porar­ily wan­ing. This is ev­i­dent from the cases in­volv­ing for­mer Col­orado party deputies Ulises Quin­tana and Juan Car­los Os­o­rio, as well as Op­er­a­tion A Ul­tranza, which now im­pli­cates Sen­a­tor Erico Galeano, also from the Col­orado party, who is cur­rently un­der scrutiny by the pros­e­cu­tion. The re­cent elec­tions have el­e­vated the Car­tismo fac­tion to the pres­i­dency, a group widely crit­i­cized for its con­nec­tions to var­i­ous il­licit ac­tiv­i­ties. This as­cen­dancy is con­cern­ing and may lead to in­creased pres­sures on the Pub­lic Min­istry, po­ten­tially stalling or slow­ing the mod­est progress made in the com­bat against po­lit­i­cal im­punity. The dy­nam­ics be­tween pol­i­tics and drug traf­fick­ing in the up­com­ing months and years will be piv­otal in shap­ing the fu­ture drug traf­fick­ing land­scape.

While the as­so­ci­a­tion of promi­nent pub­lic fig­ures with drug traf­fick­ing is un­de­ni­able, it does­n’t im­pli­cate the en­tire state ap­pa­ra­tus. It’s ev­i­dent that the pro­ceeds from drug traf­fick­ing are gen­er­ously dis­trib­uted and wel­comed across broad seg­ments of the es­tab­lish­ment, in­clud­ing cer­tain op­po­si­tion groups, bu­reau­cratic cir­cles, the busi­ness com­mu­nity, and the gen­eral pop­u­lace. While the state as a whole is­n’t en­gaged in drug traf­fick­ing, it un­de­ni­ably op­er­ates within a drug-traf­fick­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

*Re­searcher. For­mer di­rec­tor of the Ob­ser­va­tory of Co­ex­is­tence and Cit­i­zen Se­cu­rity of the Min­istry of the In­te­rior.

Cover Im­age: Roberto Go­i­riz