The July 8 forum, sponsored by the campus student association, featured the authors of this article, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party and of the Young Socialists in United States who are visiting Paraguay at the invitation of a youth group here called Casa de la Juventud (Youth House). The two were asked to speak on the work communists in the United States are carrying out among working people and students, and to bring along with them revolutionary books published by Pathfinder Press. Students at the meeting crowded around a literature table before and after the meeting to purchase books on topics ranging from the U.S. working-class movement to the Cuban Revolution to the 1991 Gulf War.

The wide-ranging discussion at the forum, and the youths’ interest in gaining an understanding of a communist world program, were a vivid expression of the political ferment that has been growing in Paraguay as workers, farmers, and young people search for answers on how to confront the effects of the economic and social crisis gripping the country today.  
 
Impact of peasant mobilizations
In May and June, thousands of peasants blocked highways and marched on Asunción to protest government proposals that represented a serious attack on the living standards and political rights of working people. These included legislation, demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other imperialist financial institutions, allowing the sell-off of the national bank, telephone company, and other state-owned facilities; and a value-added tax on agricultural products that would devastate family farmers. The peasants also protested an "antiterrorist" measure introduced in Congress--and promoted by the U.S. government--that would give the government freer rein to arbitrarily arrest people.

In face of these mobilizations and a threatened general strike by the unions, the government backed down on all these measures, a victory that boosted the confidence of working people.

"When I saw on TV this huge crowd of peasants force the baton-wielding cops back along the highway, it was so impressive it made my eyes water. This was a big moment for us in Paraguay," said Guillermo Verón, 21, a student who is a member of Casa de la Juventud.

These social struggles have been intertwined with an ongoing fight against the frame-up, torture, and detention of several political activists belonging to the Free Homeland Movement (Movimiento Patria Libre--MPL). In January two MPL members--Juan Arrom, the organization’s general secretary, and journalist Anuncio Martí--were kidnapped by police and tortured. The cops tried to force them to sign a statement "confessing" that they were responsible for the kidnapping under murky circumstances of María Edith Debernardi, a member of a prominent bourgeois family. A broad international campaign demanding their freedom was launched, and Arrom and Martí were found and released. Several top government officials implicated in the kidnapping of the two were forced to resign.

The cops now face prosecution for torture, but the government is continuing its frame-up campaign against Arrom, seeking to try him in connection with the Debernardi case. Three other MPL members remain in prison.

These fights are focal points in a class struggle that has accelerated in recent years. The media here reports a variety of social struggles on a daily basis. In the second week of July, for example, government workers protested to demand payment of back wages, university students in eastern Paraguay held a strike against tuition hikes, and homeless workers held actions demanding housing.

The social crisis shaking Paraguay and the resistance it is generating among working people is fueling the growing hunger for a revolutionary perspective to advance the struggles of workers and peasants, for books that contain the lessons of past battles of working people, and a communist explanation of the evolution of world politics today.  
 
Lively exchange at campus forum
Before the forum at the National University, socialist workers from the United States set up a table with Pathfinder literature on campus. It became a magnet for students, who were drawn to titles by Marx, Engels, and Lenin as well as books and pamphlets on U.S. politics from a communist viewpoint.

One of the most popular Pathfinder titles was The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning by SWP national secretary Jack Barnes. Some students bought a copy to get a class view of the question of education. One student who browsed through the booklet said, "I need this because it has facts on the real conditions in the United States, like the high number of on-the-job injuries and the number of people executed--it’s ammunition for my arguments with schoolmates about capitalism in the United States."

Students were surprised to see communists from the United States visiting their campus and selling books on revolutionary politics. "I didn’t know there were revolutionaries in the U.S.," was a common remark. The visitors were also greeted by the dean of the School of Philosophy, who came by the table with a small delegation to welcome them.

Some 35 students and a couple of professors attended the forum on campus, which was chaired by student association president Gustavo Torres Grossling. Martín Koppel and Romina Green gave presentations describing the class struggle in the United States today and the work of the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialists among fellow working people and youth. They were interested to learn about the growing mood of resistance, like the popularity of the giant inflatable rats that construction workers put up all over New York to win support for their union struggles against "rat" employers.

"Isn’t there repression against communists in the U.S.?" one student asked--one of the most common questions asked during the trip. Green explained that despite the U.S. rulers’ pressure on workers’ rights, they have not been able to close down the political space that working people have won in struggle. A garment worker, Green described how communist workers function openly on the job and gain respect for their views from co-workers.

Koppel explained how socialists have campaigned against the U.S. rulers’ war drive at home and abroad that has accelerated since September 11. Koppel is the Socialist Workers candidate for New York governor in the 2002 elections, welcomed the opportunity as part of the campaign to visit Paraguay and Argentina to meet revolutionary-minded workers and young people.

"Capitalist politicians would say Paraguay has nothing to do with the New York elections, but visiting Paraguay to learn about the rising class struggle here is part of presenting an internationalist perspective for working people in the United States," he said.

Another student, noting that this was the first visit by communists from the United States to Paraguay in a long time, asked, "Why couldn’t this meeting take place before?" Koppel pointed to the rise in working-class and peasant resistance--from Peru to Argentina--in response to the capitalist economic catastrophe, as well as the shattering of the Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, a process that has removed enormous political obstacles that for decades had separated revolutionary fighters from each other. The Young Socialists first met Casa de la Juventud members in Cuba, at an event sponsored by the World Federation of Democratic Youth a few years ago, and the current trip to Paraguay is part of the effort to rebuild a communist movement on a world scale.

Other questions included: Why is Washington preparing to launch a war against Iraq? How did communists in the United States stand up to patriotic pressures during the Cold War? Is there a student movement in the United States today?

After the forum, students again surrounded the Pathfinder literature table to check out books recommended by the speakers and other titles. They purchased a variety of titles ranging from "U.S. Imperialism has Lost the Cold War" to The Emancipation of Women and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara and Che Guevara Talks to Young People.

The eruption of mass protests by working people has had a politicizing effect on many young people.

Several members of Casa de la Juventud have been reading "Their Trotsky and Ours" by Jack Barnes, and "The Rise and Fall of the Nicaraguan Revolution" in New International no. 9, and discussing some of the key questions of revolutionary strategy that are taken up in these documents. These include: What is a workers and farmers government? How can workers and farmers forge a fighting alliance? What is the place of the fight for national liberation in an anticapitalist revolution?

A similar forum, attended by about 20 youth, took place July 14 at the Casa de la Juventud hall.  
 
35 years of Stroessner dictatorship
The ferment in Paraguay today is part of the opening up of politics in this country since the end of the 35-year-long Stroessner regime in 1989--one of the longest-standing and most brutal dictatorships in Latin America. To appreciate the changes under way, it is worth looking at Paraguay’s unique history.

For a more than a century Paraguay has been marked by isolation, underpopulation, underdevelopment, and dictatorship. In the 1865–70 War of the Triple Alliance, the Ar gentine, Brazilian, and Uruguayan governments defeated Paraguay--until then the most advanced Latin American country in social policy--in a bloody conflict where most of the male population was wiped out, the country lost a large part of its territory, and British imperialism strengthened its domination in the region. The 1932 "Chaco War" with Bolivia regained some territory but brought further devastation.

After years of instability following a 1947 civil war between bourgeois factions, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner seized power in a 1954 coup. For 35 years, unions and political organizations were brutally suppressed. The Paraguayan Communist Party and other political currents were savagely suppressed. Stroessner maintained the rule of the Colorado Party through a combination of repression and patronage.

Paraguay today remains one of the least industrialized and most agricultural countries in Latin America--where in the 1960s there were still few telephones or electrical service in the capital city of Asunción. Unlike any other nation in the Western Hemisphere, most people speak both Spanish and Guaraní despite being an overwhelmingly mestizo population. In the rural areas today, many peasants speak only Guaraní.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, capitalist development accelerated and the population grew in Paraguay. By the 1980s the world economic crisis began to be felt, sparking initial waves of protests against the regime. Eventually, the capitalist rulers, including Washington, decided Stroessner had outlived his usefulness and he was overthrown in a 1989 coup by Gen. Andrés Rodríguez, who became president. Because of the continuing weakness of the bourgeoisie, however, the two ruling parties--Colorado and Liberal--remain riven by internal factions. On July 15, for example, the government of President Luis González Macchi declared a five-day state of siege in face of violent confrontations between police and supporters of Colorado Party politician and former general Lino Oviedo, who has mobilized his supporters to demand the president’s resignation.

Meanwhile, the class struggle has sharpened in city and countryside, and an entire generation of radicalizing youth, not weighed down by previous defeats, has grown up in the post-Stroessner period. With the end of the dictatorship and as working people fought to open up new political space, the small Communist Party went into crisis and continued to decline. The union officialdom has also become fragmented. On the other hand, the peasant movement has grown significantly in response to the effects of the economic crisis and farmers’ demand for land.

Because of the decades of dictatorship, it is still difficult for revolutionary-minded workers and youth to find books on communist politics in Paraguay. One member of Casa de la Juventud described how he searched for a long time for a set of Lenin’s Collected Works in Spanish, but could not find it anywhere he looked--bookstores, libraries, and even private collections of old CP members. Finally, two years ago, he was delighted to discover a set in a used bookstore and purchased it on installments. He just paid his final installment last month.

The eruption of mass peasant protests has had a politicizing effect on many youth looking for a way forward. The response to the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialist delegation, as well as Pathfinder books, is one example of that search for clear explanations. Several members of Casa de la Juventud, for example, have been reading "Their Trotsky and Ours" by Jack Barnes, or "The Rise and Fall of the Nicaraguan Revolution" in New International no. 9, and discussing some of the key questions of revolutionary strategy that are taken up in these documents. These include: What is a workers and farmers government? How can workers and farmers forge a fighting alliance? What is the place of the fight for national liberation in an anticapitalist revolution?

Casa de la Juventud and MPL members took the visiting socialists from the United States to the rural town of Caaguazú, a focal point of the recent peasant mobilizations, and to Ciudad del Este, on the border with Brazil--an area, known as the Triple Border, where Washington has taken its "antiterrorist" campaign to harass members of the large Lebanese-Paraguayan community and to increase the U.S. military presence in the region. In each place, farmers, unionists, and political activists gave the U.S. communists a warm welcome, were eager to learn about political developments in the United States and exchange experiences, and purchased piles of Pathfinder books.
 
 
Related article:
State of siege reflects instability in Paraguay
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