🐯📰The Weekly Post: Smoke & Fire
The Chaco burns, Paraguay cosies up to Israel, and Santi's party ends in tears.
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The Headlines:
The Chaco is still burning. 🔥🌴🔥🌴🔥
Fires continue to smoulder at Cerro Chovoreca, a protected area of dense, dry forest and savannah in the Chaco, near Paraguay’s remote northern border with Bolivia. Asunción, like much of the country, woke up this morning once again smothered by a noxious, yellow-grey smog (see the video above by Santi Carneri for DW).
Here at The Paraguay Post HQ we can report serious headaches, shallow breathing and two stuffed noses. Anyone else feeling it?
The situation is far worse up in the Chaco. Over 180,000 hectares (1800 sq km) of this endangered ecosystem have been destroyed around Chovoreca in just three weeks. Cattle ranchers (Mennonites, Paraguayans, and increasingly from Brazil and Uruguay) often use the spring to burn felled trees and bulldozed scrub. In the Región Oriental, you can legally deforest over half of your property. But the Chaco is tinder-dry after years of drought, and intentional fires are currently banned.
The blaze started on September 2 on recently deforested land on a Paraguayan-owned ranch — reports Maxi Manzoni at Consenso — before racing out of control. Soldiers and volunteer firefighters are still battling the flames. Uruguay loaned a water-carrying C-130 Hercules. One of the Paraguayan Air Force’s only serviceable aircraft was meanwhile being used for parachuting practice by Horacio Cartes’s son.
The fires have ravaged land belonging to settled Indigenous communities and scorched areas used by nomadic Ayoreo tribes — the only uncontacted people in the Americas outside of the Amazon — to hunt, forage, and plant crops. “Our isolated brothers live in that territory,” Choyoide José Fernando Jurumi, leader of the Ayoreo Chovoreca community, told The Paraguay Post. “It causes us great pain. What are they going to eat? Where are they going to hide?”
Santiago Peña has promised stiff punishment for those responsible. But environmental crimes in Paraguay are often met with laughable fines, as Aldo Benítez recently reported for El Surtidor. And with the authorities in denial about climate change, it’s unlikely that the fundamental problem — rampant deforestation for agribusiness — will be addressed. Maybe the $100m that Peña is splurging on attack aircraft would be better spent on a fire-fighting plane of Paraguay’s own?
Israel re-opened its embassy. 🇮🇱❤️🇵🇾
On Wednesday, Israel reopened its embassy in Asunción after six years’ absence. In remarks delivered alongside the speaker of the Israeli Knesset, President Peña said Paraguay-Israel relations weren’t based on commercial ties, but “on faith, on hope, on knowing we have the right to dream big.”
Peña also announced that, in December, Paraguay will move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This campaign promise is a deeply controversial move — control of the historic city is contested between Israelis and Palestinians — so far only adopted by the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and, er, Papua New Guinea.
“The Paraguayan people want to be close to Israel,” Peña argued, citing conversations around the country with “businessmen, young people, housewives, [and] grandparents.”
Do the abuelitas of Caaguazú really have strong feelings about the Oslo Accords? Enquiring minds want to know.
THE PARAGUAY POST ANALYSIS:
In reality, several factors lie behind Peña’s rush to embrace Israel, whose year-long war in Gaza following the October 7 attacks has killed 41,000 people and threatens to spark a regional conflagration:
It’s what el patrón wants. Peña is picking up where his mentor left off. Horacio Cartes cultivated close ties with Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu while in office. His jailed ‘soul brother’ Dario Messer has Israeli nationality. Cartes first announced this move way back in 2018, but Marito reversed it three months later.
It’s red meat to Paraguay’s small-but-noisy evangelical and ultra-Catholic lobby, who might otherwise make trouble for Peña on education, international cooperation, and social issues. His administration has consistently opposed UN resolutions calling for a humanitarian ceasefire.
It’s a way to curry favour with the US — especially the evangelical-Trumpista wing of the GOP, which Cartes and co. are hoping will sweep back to power in November’s election and magic-wand the US sanctions on the papá guazú away. The US has accused Cartes of being in bed with none other than Hezbollah.
Santi got booed off the stage. 😡🎸
Who doesn’t like a free concert? On Saturday, Asunción hosted a festival in honour of Día de la Juventud, when Paraguay celebrates the young people (< 30, that is) who make up half of the population. Kchiporros were the headliners. Nice.
President Peña took to the stage for a selfie, possibly expecting rapturous applause. Instead, videos showed la juventú booing Paraguay’s head of state and yelling in unison: hijo de p*ta (son of a b*tch).
Let’s be honest: Paraguay isn’t the best place to be young. There are precious few public spaces. Schools collapse on students’ heads. Exam results are among the worst in the world. Getting a decent job or your own place is pretty much impossible if you’re poor or lack political connections. Peña’s not responsible for all of that, but his party (the Colorados) are, and he hasn’t done much (yet) to fix it.
His supporters were quick to leap to his defence online. The crowd loved him, they suggested. In the spirit of unscientific samples, let’s put it to Post readers:
Controversial opinion alert ❗ As a resident of el centro, I think the government’s efforts to revitalise Asunción dilapidated historic core — partly led by the First Lady, Leticia Ocampos — are positive. It’s great to see families from different backgrounds enjoying the free activities, food stalls, and quirky architecture along Calle Palma (now more or less free of overhead cables).
But it’s sad the love doesn’t extend to the streets beyond, where you soon run into heaps of rubbish and broken glass, entire blocks plunged into darkness and stinking of urine, and vulnerable people in dire need of healthcare and housing.
And it’s a shame that city hall is meanwhile stifling sorely-needed (counter-)cultural spaces like La Chispa — which I recently highlighted in a New York Times profile — citing noise pollution. Paraguayan culture isn’t just harps, polka, ponchos and dad-rock. It’s also polemical street theatre, drag performers, and hip-hop in Guaraní.
The authorities don’t have to pretend to like all that. But they could at least let it happen without interfering.
Culture Corner
I loved Rebeldías que persisten at the Museo del Barro (all September, free Saturdays). Elisa Marecos and Sandino Flecha are known for powerful photojournalism, but the selection made by first-time curator Adriana Rolón Isnardi — a bicycle race in the Chaco, a man displaced by flooding snoozing on a bed atop a rowboat — showed unexpected lightness. Check this review by Laura Ruiz Díaz for Pausa.
Speaking of photos, there’s still time to catch Jahecha, an open-air exhibition on the Paī Tavyterã people, featuring images taken over years of visits by William Costa. Squeezed on all sides by narcos, ranchers, soldiers and EPP guerrillas, the Paī are understandably wary of outsiders, so don’t miss this chance for a rare glimpse inside their ancestral way of life. (Plaza de la Democracia, all September)
I had mixed thoughts about the documentary LOS ÚLTIMOS (89 mins, Cine Villamora, dir. Sebastián Peña Escobar). The aerial photography of the Chaco was stunning and the central double-act (a cranky lepidopterist and a hard-bitten ornithologist) were funny and full of bathos. But I would have loved to see some space given to the native peoples that still call the vanishing forest home.
Also in Revista Pausa, Nadia Gómez writes on Emilio Barreto: Ángeles y demonios (26 mins, dir. Cris Arana), a documentary short about an actor who was jailed for 13 years by the Stroessner dictatorship. I’d not heard of Barreto before, but the film, and his story, sound fascinating: “Faced with repression, we respond with culture.”
Nothing happens in Paraguay, right? Wrong, say Isabela Marini and Giuliana Meilicke in a cool new video for Tobogán Media, a freshly-launched arts journalism initiative:
What we’re reading:
After months of drought upriver in the Pantanal, the Paraguay River fell to 1.06 metres below the benchmark at Asunción on September 15: its lowest level at the capital since records began in 1904. This is not ideal: the river carries ~85% of Paraguay’s imports and exports, and there’s no major rainfall forecast for weeks. See the grim coverage with photos by Reuters and AP.
Peña met with the bloque democrático, the opposition grouping in congress headed by Esperanza Martínez (Frente Guasú). They asked the presi about his mooted labour reform (off the cards, for now), the expulsion of Kattya González (you guys started it), and the state of negotiations with Brazil over the Itaipú dam (he’s got it covered). Estela Ruíz Díaz at Última Hora has the chisme.
In a nod to worried foreign investors and partners, Peña has announced changes to legislation before congress imposing exorbitant financial penalties on NGOs that fail to comply with audits. The opposition has branded it a civil-society crackdown akin to Hungary, Nicaragua and Venezuela. And a congressional money-laundering commission is meanwhile going after pretty much anybody that’s received overseas funding, ABC reports. Let’s see what happens.
If you fancy some light bedtime reading, the World Bank has released a 120-page report called Paraguay: From landlocked to land of opportunity. “Paraguay has a bright future. With abundant natural resources, a young population, and a stable macroeconomic backdrop, it is positioned for success,” the Bank writes. “However, to fully realize its potential, it needs a new approach in its growth strategy: prioritizing productivity, resilience, and sustainability.”
ICYMI: For the New York Times, I wrote about Mickey, the beloved household brand and mouse mascot that (according to Paraguay’s Supreme Court) are definitely not a Disney rip-off. I tried to sneak in an exploration of Paraguayan gastronomy, history and national identity among all the legal chicanery. With photos by the great María Magdalena Arréllaga, the story made the Times front page and blew up on social media (check the Insta comments). Mi país, mi país!
As someone living in San Roque, I think it’s a good start that we’re seeing the events in “el centro” during the weekends. However, I’d say is very superficial as it doesn’t so far translate to an overall improvement of the streets, safety, etc throughout the week.
On another point, its been peculiar to see how this government has a dual speech about outsiders. Congress has a very nationalist view, doing a lot to undermine external influences to our governance, while the executive goes on a Taylor-style around countries trying to allure foreign investment without really solving underlying problems like our judicial system. Let’s see for how long they continue with that dychotomy… I reckon Peña won’t be too nationalistic as he would like a job on an international agency/institution after his tenure.