Sandwiched between Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia, a hydroelectric powerhouse, a mysterious country with a tragic past and incredible stories, Paraguay promises to reemerge as “a giant.”
“We were a great nation and today we are destined to be so again,” promised Santiago Peña, the young economist who assumed the presidency of the country on Tuesday for the next five years. “Let the world witness the rise of a giant,” Peña, 44, said at the change of command ceremony in Asunción, with King Felipe VI among the many foreign heads of state present.
Peña’s promise sounds grandiose, but it rests on the country’s history and is part of the convictions of a president who is economically liberal and politically conservative.
“In 1850 we were the most developed country in South America, the first with heavy industry, weapons, ships. That stopped with the Paraguayan war (also known as the Triple Alliance, which pitted the country against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay between 1864 and 1870), when we lost 60% of our territory and 90% of the male population,” Peña said in an interview with EL MUNDO before assuming power.
“We are a country of 40 million hectares, and we farm four or five, but we have another 20 million arable lands. The productive potential we have is enormous. Paraguay is bigger than Germany, but it has 10% of its population. We have a lot of land, we have a lot of water, and not only do we generate clean renewable energy with two hydroelectric dams, which we export to Brazil and Argentina: the most important thing is that we have the youngest population in South America, eager to learn and with a culture of work. a GDP per capita of $5,000, there is no reason not to think that we can double that in the next few years,” he added.
This Tuesday, on a spring-tinged morning in the country’s capital and with practically all the South American presidents present, Peña went further: he compared his country’s harsh history with what Ukraine is suffering today.
“We maintain economic, cultural and historical ties with the Russian people, but we cannot remain indifferent to the military aggression suffered by the Ukrainian people with terrible consequences for human development. Today Ukraine suffers the same fate that Paraguay suffered during the Great War that pitted us against our neighbors.”
Paraguay, with barely 7.5 million inhabitants, is a country that China watches very closely, because it is the only one in South America that resists it: Asunción has maintained diplomatic relations for 66 years with Taiwan, whose vice president, William Ching- Te Lai, is these days in the country.
“We are negotiating and we will continue negotiating with the world without compromising our sovereignty,” said Peña, who visited Taipei weeks ago and will not give in to pressure from Beijing, which is increasingly present in the region: “We have come to convey to the people of Taiwan our determination to be close to them.”
Peña showed his harmony with Lula, despite the ideological distances with the Brazilian president. Paraguay depends heavily on Brazil, the main Mercosur country, and the new Paraguayan president is clear: he supports Lula in his deep anger with the European Union for the “environmental nexus” that Brussels presented as a condition for signing the strategic association agreement. with Mercosur.
“I view President Lula’s position with great sympathy. COP-30 is going to be held in Brazil and President Lula chose the city of Belém, in the Amazon, as the venue. The world talks about the Amazon, but let the world go to see what is there,” Peña said during an interview with Podcast Américas.
The new Paraguayan head of state gave the Triple Border where his country, Brazil and Argentina converge as an example: “The triple border is today a center of commerce, not of drug trafficking and smuggling as many people say from outside. People talk about the Triple Frontier without ever having set foot on it. The same happens with the Amazon”.
Peña does not intend to sign that “environmental annex” proposed by the EU: “We have one of the largest forest reserves in the world, and it would be unthinkable for Paraguay to limit its development. There is great potential in forestry and agro-industrial matters.”
An American-educated economist and former finance minister to the powerful and disputed Horacio Cartes, whom the US government labeled “significantly corrupt,” Peña boasts that the 90-year-old Guarani is the oldest currency in South America. . The idea of ??a common Mercosur currency, raised by Laila and by the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, seems nonsense to him: “It would not make sense. Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay have single-digit inflation, while Argentina has three-digit inflation. “.
When Peña ends his term in 2028, the Colorado Party will have governed 70 of the last 75 years. According to the new president, his party embodies “paraguayness,” and that includes opposing equal marriage to defend “Paraguayan family values.”
The political dependence that Peña has on Cartes will be the measuring stick of his Presidency in the first weeks: to what extent will he govern and to what extent will the strings be pulled by the former president? Peña already gave a signal when leaving the homily in the Asunción Cathedral, in which Cardinal Adalberto Martínez Flores warned him that he will be vigilant against corruption and what threatens the common good: the only person who was arrested hug went to Cartes.
Peña is between eyebrows turning Paraguay, a very stable economy with low inflation, although great disparities and social injustices, into a growing reference in the region. He wants Paraguay to be a reliable country for tourism and investment. It is something, he confessed to EL MUNDO, that he proposed to do with twenty-somethings, studying in the United States.
“I studied at Columbia University, in New York. The economist Jeffrey Sachs gave a two-hour lecture in which he analyzed Latin America, country by country. He knew about everyone, from Mexico to Argentina. When he finished speaking he said: ‘ The only country I’m not going to talk about is Paraguay, because I don’t know anything about Paraguay.’ It was a key moment in my life, I was a young student and I told myself that I had to change that.”
