Paraguayan feminists take stock after right wing election sweep

Thousands of intergenerational women convened by Paraguay’s Feminist Articulation marched on March 8, 2022 in Asunción, Paraguay. Photo: Mayeli Villaba.

Interview • Alejandra Estigarribia • June 15, 2023 • Leer en castellano

April 30th was election day in Paraguay, and the ruling Colorado Party managed to maintain control of the state apparatus, winning a simple majority in parliament. The Colorado Party, which is also known as the National Republican Association (ANR), has been in power for the past 70 years and is the party that backed the military dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner.

The victory of the ruling party was no surprise. But some new elements did emerge, such as the number of votes obtained by the Partido Cruzada Nacional (National Crusade Party)—an authoritarian party modeled after Jair Bolsonaro—led by former senator Paraguayo 'Payo' Cubas, which won 22 percent of the votes for the presidency.

On the other hand, the left, grouped into the Frente Guasu (Guasu Front), went from having seven seats in the Upper House to having only one.

In order to try to understand the continuities and changes in Paraguay, I turned first to my fellow feminists. Together we decided that it would be ideal to have a conversation with compañeras from different sectors so as to gain a broader perspective. We took the invitation to collaborate with Ojalá as an opportunity to get together virtually and have a discussion—and give each other a big hug—after the electoral letdown.

During our call, we spoke about the failed candidacies of Efraín Alegre and Soledad Nuñez, who headed a coalition of opposition parties that attempted to break the rule of the Colorado Party.

We also touched on the state of the left and the feminist response to the election of Rafael ‘Mbururú’ Esquivel, senator-elect for Cruzada Nacional, who has spent the past eight months in prison for sexually abusing a minor. Esquivel is scheduled to take office this August, and campaigns to prevent him from taking office are underway.

Among those of us who took part in the conversation were women who work in the fields with farmers, like as Nadia López (Market sellers from Liberación, San Pedro) and María Ramona Acuña (Paraguayan Peasants Cultivation Organization); others active in the women’s movement in Asunción, like Myrian Acuña (journalist, Women with Disabilities), Mabel Candia (CasaFem), Jessica Arias and Laura González (Southern Rebels, Bañado Sur), Araceli Medina (Kuña Afro), Felicia Martinez (Bañado Tacumbú); two other feminist colleagues, Ana Galeano and Gabriela Schvartzman, and myself.

To kick off the conversation, I asked everyone to share their reactions to the elections, to share their sense of what we’re seeing now, and to reflect a bit on what we sense is next. The following text is a transcription of some of what we talked about with the compañeras, edited for clarity and brevity.

Gabriela Schvartzman (feminist and environmental activist): The hegemony of the Partido Colorado has strengthened; it will now have had absolute control of the political apparatus for almost 80 years in a country with a history of intense authoritarianism and messianic, personality-based leaderships.

Unfortunately, Paraguay's political tradition is not democratic, as evidenced by historical data. We've had some democratic springs, for example, that of the February revolution in 1936. At that time it seemed that an alliance of socialist, communist, liberal and Colorado forces was going to flourish. In the end that alliance did not last even a year because progressive and right-wing elements undermined the project, which ended up collapsing.

Ten years later, there was another democratic spring, in which a brief coalition government was formed between liberals, febreristas (participants in the February revolution) and communists.

More recently there was the government of Fernando Lugo in 2008, with the Patriotic Alliance for Change, which articulated opposition groups with progressive tendencies. Lugo’s government did not finish its term, it was overthrown using lawfare (judicial persecution), as would later take place against other processes in the region.

That the Colorado Party wins with the longstanding and well-oiled apparatus at their disposal, in a terrain where authoritarian ideas are so deeply ingrained, is nothing new. If we look at the electoral results we can see that the Partido Colorado did not get a much higher percentage of votes compared to previous elections: it has always received between 42 percent and 46 percent of the vote in previous elections.

The opposition failed. I don't know if it's a surprise, but it's remarkable how badly the opposition fared in these elections. For the left, the results were catastrophic.

On the other hand, there are some very interesting surprises.

The preferential vote was a huge surprise because it enabled several candidates to obtain a better position. Esperanza Martínez, who was elected senator through the coalition of leftist parties was fourth on the list, and the preferential vote bumped her to first place.

Johanna Ortega was also elected as congresswoman for Asunción through a coalition of parties, including the Liberal Party and several left-wing parties. She was second on the list and it was the preferential vote that propelled her to number one, allowing her to enter parliament.

There are several readings we must make here. People are tired of the macho leftist leaders who are bolted to their chairs in congress.

Right now Esperanza Martínez and Johanna Ortega are leading the left and I'm convinced that it was the feminist vote that brought them there.

Both of these women define themselves as left-wing feminists and, without hiding their politics, they won the preferential vote.

That is a sign that women, women's organizations, and feminisms are reaching a very interesting place from which progress can be made. And when I say progress, I mean to keep organizing ourselves, to stay active in the territories, to continue participating in the barrios (neighborhoods).

This is our moment, this is a thermometer that shows us clearly how things are.

If their election depended on party structures and sexist leaderships, these two compañeras would not have entered congress. The preferential vote earned them a place in parliament. Mind you, I’m skeptical of electoral processes, but this is a clear signal to heed, that points to the utility of continuing what we’re doing.

Myrian Acuña (journalist, Women with Disabilities): Here, we’re fed up with the Partido Colorado, fed up with so much corruption. If we look at the results, the majority did not vote for the Partido Colorado.

If the opposition does not unite to stand up to the Colorados, we are going to live with an absent government, in short, in a narco political system.

Mabel Candia (CasaFem): I believe that we will be analyzing these elections for a long time to come. I was shocked by the Payo Cubas phenomenon.

I knew that Efraín Alegre wouldn't get very far because people don't feel identified with him or with Sole Nuñez, who represents a wealthier class. No matter how much they say that they will stop the ANR, the people don't believe them.

Payo Cubas' rhetoric is anti-rights and that’s what drew people in. He has a 'Bolsonarist' far-right discourse.

With these elections we realized that women are the most organized.

Esperanza Martínez and Johanna Ortega are the ones who entered from the left. But in reality there is no democracy, the congress belongs to the Partido Colorado. How can we say there is democracy if they control everything?

In such a difficult context, the way women have rallied to prevent the swearing-in of senator-elect Rafael Esquivel really lifted my spirits. This is very important in this moment of discouragement and despair, it’s important to become infused with this energy and hope.

Our compañeras called on people to mobilize in response to this case, and more cases came to light. This is a highly political action. It's important that as a feminist movement we respond to this situation, since we have been organized for years.

Maria Ramona Acuña (Paraguayan Peasants Cultivation Organization): There is a sense of shared sadness. The responsibility lies with the leaders, with the parliamentarians who once again ran for re-election, when there is a great need for renewal of leaders and ideas, and perhaps also in how we reach the people.

The victory of the Colorado Party is due to the enormous failure in discourse, in the approach and in the proposals of the left, and to the fragmentation of the opposition.

Jessica Arias and Laura González (Southern Rebels—Bañado Sur): We want to join this post-election catharsis. We know how the Colorado Party has been conducting politics over the last 70 years.

It is infuriating that the Colorado Party won because this means that we will have to continue organizing polladas (fundraising to pay for medical treatment), collecting money to buy medications, that we will be the ones who have to rescue our compañeras suffering violence, that we are going to have to keep fighting the police, in other words, that everything will stay as it is.

Women bear the brunt of it because we have to defend ourselves from the violence of society and the state, without any recourse.

We are committed to reflecting on what's going to come next, and to encourage one another to become more united, more organized and active in the streets, from our places of militancy and community work; to build the policies and candidacies we want together, actions that truly represent us because they come from below, and are built in day-to-day life. This is how we find the collective motivation to face five more years of corrupt, narco and anti-democratic government in our country.

Ana Galeano (feminist): On the Monday after the elections, when we were all still in shock, I snapped out of it because one of our groups felt the need to take a position quickly, put together a team and try to gather all the information on the senator-elect Esquivel, who faces serious accusations and has a years long record of violence.

Our ability to react comes from what we've been building in our spaces, which are ultimately spaces of collective construction, of trust. That's what allows us to remain grounded when everything becomes harder, as is the case here.

The idea is to take advantage of this opportunity and make space for us to think about the situation from our organizations, and from what we've been building together.

We're still recovering from wounds from the coup that haven't healed yet, and from a progressivism that refused to take responsibility for its decisions. Burnout among political organizations has permeated social movements and popular organizations.

I highlight the different practice and logic that we’re trying to build through feminist organizing and self-criticism. It’s more and more evident that there is no democratic proposal that can coexist with a sectarian, macho logic that imposes its particular interests above the needs of the people.

We must confront and dispute the clientelistic and violent logic imposed by the Colorado Party in the territories. We must confront denialism of the dictatorship, that is, the idea that there never was a dictatorship.

There's a whole generation that didn't live under dictatorship but doesn't really know about it, because education was never democratized, the educational model was never democratized. The structure of the educational model has remained intact since the dictatorship; this guaranteed the status quo and continues to do so.

It’s no wonder the Ministry of Education is a stronghold for fundamentalists. It's important to fight in those spaces and to confront and dispute as much as we can.

On the other hand, we still haven't been able to properly record the history of the pandemic. Who handled the pandemic in the face of the collapse of the health system? It was the ollas populares (community kitchens) and the logic of preserving life. Having that clarity is what helped us survive.

And it's that same clarity that brought us together on the Sunday after the elections to declare that we cannot let Rafael Esquivel take office as senator. We must start from the concrete, from the concrete needs that we have to manage.

I don’t think it’ll be a short term process, but we're on our way and it's important to recognize these spaces of political construction.

Nadia López (Market sellers association from Libertad, San Pedro): Both factions of the Colorado Party seem terrible to me. One covers up for former president Horacio Cartes, who is a regional mafioso, and the other is led by current president Mario Abdo, who goes crying to the United States asking them to come and help us with the cartel (Horacio Cartes), as if we were the United States' backyard.

In this context, the left doesn't offer an alternative, nor does it engage in self-critique. We women are the ones generating spaces where we can meet and analyze what's going on. The left is confused because they don't work in the territories, they don't want to reach the grassroots, instead they are bolted to their desk chairs.

The social situation in Paraguay is a time bomb. We must keep betting on building processes and understand that they are not immediate, but we're here to contribute to change.

We must keep strengthening our processes outside their structures, just as 8M (March 8th, International Women’s Day) began in the squares, in the streets, talking to your neighbor, always trying to name reality.

Araceli Medina (Kuña Afro): The youth vote was supposed to be a decisive vote for change but there's a huge disdain among young people towards politics, there's a feeling of "they're all the same."

…

We are now tasked with deepening the debate and the encounters. Even though we talked for almost two hours, we collectively felt the desire and need to organize further exchanges.

This is perhaps one of the most important tasks in our militant spaces from here forward, and in political practice in general: to be able to effectively incorporate, in the broadest spaces of articulation and joint struggles, logics in which self-criticism and respectful criticism are valued and sustain collective processes.