Paraguay's Ciudad del Este and the New Centers of Gravity
2002; The MIT Press; Volume: 82; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0026-4148
Autores Tópico(s)Migration, Racism, and Human Rights
ResumoPARAGUAY IS landlocked, poor, a long way from everywhere, and seldom appears in the drama of international events but is nevertheless emblematic of our global security challenge. It has suffered crippling wars where governance has always been a challenge and where smuggling and criminal organizing is a tradition. Long disregarded by the great powers' intelligence and diplomatic services, it is now a place where international crimes like money laundering, gunrunning, migration fraud, and drug trafficking recombine and metastasize. In an age of great sovereign competitors, the United States pays attention to nations according to their development-their ability to mobilize as a nation and to make war as a nation. Now we are entering an age of uncivilized behavior in which we must focus on the lost geographies, the fertile ground for piracy and terror. Ciudad del Este, a boomtown on Paraguay's eastern border facing Brazil and Argentina, is an appropriate target for new concerns. Regional security scholars have aptly called it a nest of spies and thieves. Local security specialists assert that Ciudad del Este is not only a den of low-technology criminality but also a haven for international money laundering, with much of the money coming from the Middle East. It is a town of a quarter million inhabitants and an international trading center where the admixture of drug runners, terrorists, and pinstriped bankers trespasses on the sovereignty and safety of democratic countries and their citizens, thereby representing a threat to the United States and the region. There are other examples of ungovernable zones in the Americas that provide cover for terrorist groups, such as the Switzerland-sized area that Colombia granted as an official safe haven to a group on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations, but in Paraguay's Ciudad del Este, all the components of transnational lawlessness seem to converge. The Larger Context The turbulent political environment of Paraguay engendered lawlessness in Ciudad del Este. The country has suffered three coup attempts in the past 5 years. Popular army chief, General Lino Oviedo, who mounted a short-lived coup in 1998, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, then ran for president later the same year. While the supreme court declared Oviedo an illegal candidate, his running mate, Raul Cubas Grau, was elected president and quickly pardoned Oviedo. Cubas Grau resigned under pressure after the vice president was assassinated in March1999, leaving the presidency to Luis Angel Gonzalez Macchi who was next in line as senate president. Adding to the political turbulence, Gonzalez Macchi fired 18 generals and more than 100 other officers who had supported Oviedo. After a May 2000 coup attempt, GonzAlez Macchi terminated another 13 officers. Meanwhile, the party of Oviedo-supported Vice President Julio Cesar Franco maneuvered to impeach Gonzalez Macchi. The political tumult has done little to engender social and economic progress in Paraguay, and only Brazil and Argentina's influence have kept the democratic government afloat. I Needless to say, the government in Asuncion has had little time to concentrate on improving the rule of law in Ciudad del Este. According to Paraguayan police, about 70 percent of the 600,000 vehicles on the road in Paraguay are there illegally. Open markets provided by the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) membership help import stolen cars from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.2 Brazilian police complain that Paraguayan criminals trade stolen cars for drugs, which are then exported to Europe and the United States. Recently, Gonzalez Macchi was exposed in the press as owning a stolen BMW, and his wife was then reported for having a stolen Mercedes. Both cars apparently claimed the same title document, which belonged to a Toyota. Understandably, Paraguay did not attend the American hemisphere forum on auto theft held in Bogota, Colombia, in October 2001. …
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