News > November 10, 2005

U.S. Military Eyes Paraguay

Rumors of an American base raise fears that the United States is there to stay

By Adam Saytanides

Bolivian presidential candidate Evo Morales, speaks to a crowd of miners in the town of Huanuai on October 6, 2005. (Credit: Noah Friedman-Rudovsky)

In June Paraguay’s legislature gave the green light to the U.S. military for a series of 13 joint exercises to run through December 2006.

Then the rumors began appearing in the Latin American press: The United States was moving to establish a military base at Mariscal Estigarribia, a town in Paraguay just 124 miles from Bolivia’s southeast frontier and within easy striking distance of Bolivian natural gas reserves, the largest in the Americas. Anywhere from 400 to 500 U.S. troops were said to be arriving.

In late July, Brazil reportedly launched military maneuvers along the Paraguayan border, a move seen as an expression of Brazilian discontent with Paraguay. More vocally, Brazil’s foreign minister Celso Amorin drew a line in the sand: “Paraguay must understand that the choice is between Mercosur and other possible partners.”

Brazil and Argentina lord over Paraguay in the Mercosur trading bloc with a dominant import-export relationship. They don’t want to see their leverage compromised if Paraguay gains preferred access to the U.S. market for its textiles (hinted at recently) and drops out of the Mercosur trade partnership.

But Bolivia has the most to fear from a U.S. military base in Paraguay. With national elections slated for December 5, the Andean nation is expected to become the next Latin American flashpoint. Since October 2003, widespread indigenous peasant uprisings have ousted two presidents. Quechua and Aymara Indians make up the majority of the Bolivian populace, and they’re pressuring the central government to halt the forced eradication of coca cultivation and to nationalize the country’s natural gas reserves. Evo Morales, presidential candidate for the Movement Towards Socialism, or MAS party, made a meteoric rise onto the international political stage by supporting these goals, in open defiance of Washington. Considered by many analysts to be the frontrunner, Morales’ main competition is former president Jorge Quiroga Ramírez, the preferred candidate of the United States.

Both the U.S. Embassy and Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte Frutos emphatically deny plans for a U.S. base.

“There have been these joint exercises since 1943,” Bruce Kleiner, U.S. press attaché in Asuncion, told In These Times. “The only difference is this time they authorized 13 at one time, for expediency.”

Kleiner says U.S. military personnel have been given no special treatment, and no blanket immunity. The joint training exercises generally involve less than 50 personnel, and last for two weeks at a time. And he adds, “There are no U.S. military personnel at Estigarribia, and no exercises planned there.”

The hand-wringing grew more intense in August, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Asuncion and met with Duarte Frutos, partly to discuss Cuba and Venezuela’s “unhelpful” and growing influence in Bolivia. As a senior defense department official told reporters, “The challenge … is to help the Bolivians steer this situation to a democratic outcome.”

Rumsfeld’s comments fueled suspicions that the United States was making a move to block Morales’ rise to power, or at least stifle any move he might make to nationalize gas reserves at the expense of U.S. corporations. U.S. officials have also said that the three-borders region, where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, is home to financiers of Islamic terrorist groups, but presented no strong evidence to back this.

Jorge Ramon de la Quintana is a former Bolivian military officer who spent three years in the Defense Ministry conducting political analyses of national defense strategies. He says the confluence of all of these factors is ominous.

“I don’t believe in the arguments being put forth by the Secretary of Defense or the Embassy in Asuncion,” Quintana told In These Times. “The military presence in Paraguay reflects a series of perceived threats by U.S. Southern Command.”

Quintana says the main motivation to invade Bolivia would be to stop the spread of socialism. With Hugo Chávez enjoying broad support internationally, and left-leaning presidents at the helm in Brazil (Lula da Silva) and Argentina (Néstor Kirchner), Washington is finding its backyard increasingly insubordinate and difficult to control. The last thing the State Department wants to see is Morales, a good friend of Chávez, taking over. Strong socialist movements might develop next in increasingly unstable Peru and Ecuador. “This is the return of the Domino Theory,” says Quintana.

But Paul Sondrol, an academic expert on Latin America at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, says all this talk of impending intervention is rubbish. “There are no designs on Bolivia’s natural gas: it’s an urban legend,” he says. However, Paraguay does have a legitimate problem with outlaws in the tri-border area. According to Sondrol, Paraguayan military officers sell everything from weapons systems to hot Mercedes sedans on the black market here.

“Paraguay’s democracy isn’t stable, and it’s probably getting worse,” Sondrol said. “I’d guess Paraguay is asking the U.S. to come in as much as the U.S. is asking ‘Can we send some troops down there?’ “

Council on Hemisipheric Affairs Director Larry Birns, a personal acquaintance of President Duarte, has backed off initial reports of the presence of 500 U.S. troops. He told In These Times there are no plans at this moment to build a big U.S. base in Paraguay, but he worried that the denials being issued sound identical to the ones that predicated an escalation of U.S. military activity at the airbase in Manta, Ecuador.

“Paraguay is interesting for what it could become,” says Birns.

Bolivia’s MAS party has been careful not to add to the chorus of shrill protestations. “Though I have heard many things, it’s important to look at this with a cool head,” says Álvaro García, Evo Morales’ vice-presidential running mate. “I’ve seen no evidence to suggest they have an intention of setting up a base in Paraguay.”

García says the information he’s seen indicates that the airstrip at Estigarribia lacks the support infrastructure needed to become a full-blown military base, such as taxiways, hangars and barracks. However, he admits that the airfield’s proximity to Bolivia’s natural gas reserves is “worrying.”

“But what gives us greater worry is, we don’t know if this is merely joint exercises, or the beginning of establishing a greater presence or base,” Garcia said. He echoed, perhaps unwittingly, the sentiments of Argentine Nobel laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquibel, who remarked: “Once the United States arrives, it takes a long time to leave … and that really frightens me.”

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• Reader Comments

  Once the United States arrives, it takes a long time to leave … and that really frightens me.

  Spoken like a true socialist.  It is quite appropriate that the socialsts are frightened, considering the terrible damage they have done in the world.

  Once the United States arrived, fascist Germany and militarist Japan went away, to be replaced by prosperous democracies.

  Once President Reagan arrived and began to straighten out the economic and military mess that Carter left, the corrupt and inefficient Soviet Union collapsed like the house of straw that it was, leaving multiple growing and prospering democracies. 

  Once President Bush arrived, the Taliban went into hiding, as did Saddam, and two new democracies are growing and prospering. 

  It is obvious that, if you want democracy and prosperity, the democracies are your ally, and the communists, socialists , and religious terrorists are the enemy.  If the enemy is not too great a threat, like Old Europe and Cuba, you can isolate them and wait for them to collapse of inefficiency, corruption, and old age. 

  If the enemy starts to kill your people or threatens to do so, it raises the stakes.  For example, Israel is a democracy, of course, and the President of Iran threatened to destroy Israel, which in itself is an act of war; you may expect Israel to defend itself, if other developments don’t intrude first.  Then Iran will become a democracy also.  As will Venezuela and Cuba.

  Posted by scorp on Nov 10, 2005 at 2:38 PM

  “Then Iran will become a democracy also.  As will Venezuela and Cuba.”

  And one day, with any luck, so will the United States. One day, every single vote will be accurately counted, ensuring that we have a representative government. One day, the will of the people will truly be served by the leaders who today are elected primarily on the basis of how many millions of campaign dollars they secure from special interests. One day, our elected officials will look beyond the smarmy smiles of lobbyists and big corporate donors, and undertake actions which help every single American, no matter how poor or disadvantaged they are. One day, our health care system will provide high quality care to all citizens rather than subsidizing insurance companies. One day, our tax system will require everyone, including the upper class and corporations who have fled offshore, to pay their fair share of taxes to support the common good.

  We can all dream, can’t we?

  Posted by pete29 on Nov 10, 2005 at 6:29 PM

  Once the U.S. arrived, Trujillo was left to become the dictator of the Dominican Republic. Once the US arrived hostages were exchanged for the sale of arms to terrorists. Money was then used to support cut-throat revolutionaries no better than the government they were out to depose.

  Once the US arrived Juan Bosch, the democratically elected president (the first after the fall of Trujillo) was deposed and after some bloodshed the much more pro-US Balaguer was back in power (who by the way was an advisor of the bloody dictator).

  Once the US arrived, clandestinely, Pinochet had free reign in Chile but at least that communist Allende was not in power (despite the fact that he was elected).

  Once the US arrived and helped train government goons to supress grassroots rebellions against opressive, but pro US, regimes in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama.

  Once the US arrived Sadam Hussein had biological weapons, but they were to be used against Iranians and that’s ok because they are not pro US.

  Somewhere there exists a world informed only by Fox news where John Wayne is president and a former Miss America is first lady, where all houses have picket fences, where every family as a mother and a father, two kids, and a dog, where everyone has equal opportunity, where race doesn’t matter, where the US has only ever been a force for good in an otherwise evil world filled with nothing but communists, fanatics, and other dark and sinister anti-US forces. This is the land where Scorp lives.

  Posted by Neruda on Nov 10, 2005 at 6:30 PM

  For another interesting, informative article on this disturbing news, see

  US Military in Paraguay Prepares to “Spread Democracy”
  at
  http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/47/44/

  Posted by mangomundo on Nov 10, 2005 at 7:38 PM

  There’s a Latin American expression I’ve heard.  ‘He who sleeps with an elephant sleeps lightly’.

  Be considerate of poor scorpy.  He has to sleep with the elephant of his own conscience.  The possibility of his own complicity in the horror death and misery that is the history of US intervention in this hemisphere is just too painful to contemplate. His need is to shout down that still voice of conscience that is eating away at the psychic armor of his misplaced loyalties.  Is it too much to ask to give the poor guy a little space to rant?  It’s really only a cry for help.

  It’s OK scorpy, we are all on the same side here.

  Posted by luminous beauty on Nov 10, 2005 at 8:13 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

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