ASUNCION, paraguay — When Fernando Lugo was nearing the end of his run as Paraguay’s elected president, the former priest appealed to what many followers of Latin American politics have long assumed to be a higher power: the U.S. government.
Lugo left the presidential palace and met for more than an hour with U.S. Ambassador James Thessin while legislators prepared to vote to impeach him in a hasty Senate trial the next day. While the leftist leader was lunching with the ambassador, his right-wing opponents also reached out to the embassy.
What both sides asked for during these critical hours, and what they were told in response, remains secret. Thessin told The Associated Press that he wouldn’t comment before a report by an Organization of American States fact-finding mission is released Tuesday.
Publicly, the U.S. State Department remained studiously neutral as Lugo’s ouster convulsed his capital and Paraguay’s neighbors sought to apply maximum pressure on their poor, landlocked neighbor to abort what they now call an “institutional coup.”
Should the U.S. have done more to defend Lugo, despite the fact that he had lost the confidence of all but a handful of lawmakers?
A chorus of voices around the region — mostly leftists — is saying yes, and some squarely blame Washington for Lugo’s downfall.
“The coup in Paraguay was being prepared for a long time and is part of a continental policy imposed by the United States against democratic governments, with the complicity of the economic and political powers,” said Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the Argentine Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He urged the entire region to defend democracy by calling for the restoration of Lugo’s presidency.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez went even further, claiming without presenting any evidence that Lugo’s ouster was a “decision of the Pentagon.”
Others disagree that Washington could have made a difference. Former U.S. diplomat Arturo Valen- zuela said Lugo’s failure to cultivate political alliances made him vulnerable to impeachment throughout his presidency.
Valenzuela described a previous episode, though, when he personally defended Lugo and said it was “one of the most difficult tasks I had” as the Obama administration’s top diplomat in Latin America.
“I actually spent hours, two years ago, with the leadership of the Colorado Party, primarily from Congress, trying to persuade them that it was not a good idea for them to impeach the president. And in that particular time, in fact, that did not happen,” Valenzuela said Friday in Washington.
This time, though, there was an overwhelming feeling among Paraguay’s lawmakers that the time had come to end Lugo’s rule. The lower house voted 76-1 to put him on trial, and after a hasty impeachment the next day, senators voted 39-4 to remove him from office.
