Paraguay did not join the second wave of progressive governments in the region, which, with nuances, was the most visible trend since the triumphs of Gustavo Petro and Lula in Colombia and Brazil. At most, Santiago Peña’s will try to give a patina of modernization and good manners to a historic force with strong conservative roots in this country: the Colorado Party. The new president is an economist and former finance minister. With liberal ideas but converted into an affiliate of the main Paraguayan political force since 2016.
He had been a member of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA) for 21 years – almost half of his life, he is 44 – and when he was a member of the cabinet of former president Horacio Cartes (2013-2018) he decided to change paths and joined the ruling party. Now, with him at the helm, the coloradismo, a formidable electoral machine, clientelistic and omnipresent like no other on the continent, will continue with its historic hegemony that has spanned eight decades, from 1954 with the dictator Alfredo Stroessner to the present day.
Peña trained at universities in the United States and was even an IMF official. He worked in Washington and is the son of an Argentine. He also has two brothers of the same nationality. If he reached the highest position to which a man or woman can aspire this Sunday, he owes it to his political godfather, the controversial Cartes. The billionaire businessman whom the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the Treasury pointed out in a document dated January 26 for having engaged in “acts of corruption before, during and after his tenure as president of Paraguay”.
Even with such a burden on his shoulders, this young president born on November 16, 1978 in the midst of a dictatorship, is a genuine product of the Colorado Party’s power of cooptation. His student life surprised him with a son when he was barely 17 years old. He hadn’t finished high school yet. He still had a lot to do.
His candidacy was settled in the increasingly confrontational and acid internal of the Colorados. After being easily defeated in 2017 by Mario Abdo Benítez, the current president, he had a second chance against the former evangelical bishop Arnoldo Wiens. He beat him and in a hyper-velocity run today he became president-elect. On August 15, he will assume the head of state of a country that chose continuity rather than breaking with the established order. The conservative lineage of the Colorado Party may have in Peña the new sap that will modernize it in his appearance and escape the allegations of corruption that weigh on his strong man. Will Peña break with his political boss or will Cartes continue to be disciplined? That will be the dilemma of the coming months.
