With many of the leaders in this collection there is a debate to be had over which came first, the religious commitment or the policy decisions. Uniquely, when it comes to Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez (known more commonly simply as Fernando Lugo), there is no debate at all. This is for the simple reason that long before Lugo became President of Paraguay in 2008 or ever had any official political manifesto he had been one of his country’s (and arguably South America’s) most prominent Catholic bishops.
Lugo’s situation is almost unique in modern times, since it is illegal under Canon 285 for Roman Catholic clerics ‘to assume public offices which entail a participation in the exercise of civil power’.1 Since the start of the twentieth century the only Catholic clerics to be heads of government were the fascist Jozef Tiso, who was the President of the short-lived Nazi satellite state of the Slovak Republic until he was hanged in 1945, and Ignaz Seipel, a right-wing Christian democrat who was Chancellor of Austria twice in the 1920s.
Lugo’s story, context and politics could not be more different. He was part of the ‘Pink Tide’ (Marea Rosa in Spanish) that saw a succession of populist left-wing leaders, including Evo Morales in Bolivia and Lula in Brazil, elected in Latin America. As bishop of San Pedro he developed a reputation as a radical advocate for the poor.
His presidency would prove short lived; it lasted less than four years before being replaced in what amounted to a legally questionable constitutional coup. In many ways it failed to live up to Lugo’s radical and hopeful promises to change Paraguay for the better, though given the situation he inherited that was perhaps inevitable.
This chapter will focus particularly on the development of Lugo before his ill-fated presidency. This is slightly different from the approach taken in most of the other chapters in the book, partly because of Lugo’s uniquely interesting pre-political life and partly for two reasons of necessity. The first is that sources on Lugo as a President are limited. He was not in power very long, and Paraguay is not a country that gets significant international press or academic attention. By comparison, the sources on his religious work are rather more extensive. The second is that, although Lugo was only a professional politician for a relatively short period, he spent many years as a bishop in a poor diocese, and it was there that he developed his particular political role. The intersection of his theology and politics is best seen in that period of his life. His policies as President reflect that development – they were not forged in a classic political context, but through a pastoral ministry in one of the poorest parts of Latin America.
The country inherited by Lugo as President in 2008 was faced with a number of serious challenges. Paraguay is a small, landlocked country, with a population of under seven million. Of those seven million, more than 1.2 million live in extreme poverty. After its independence from Spain in 1811, the country remained relatively isolated, ruled by a series of military officers and dictators. Its development was severely hampered by a costly war on the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay in 1864. The result had near-genocidal consequences for Paraguay, with estimates that as many as 69 per cent of the population lost their lives.2
Political instability became a feature. Between 1904 and 1954 Paraguay had thirty-one Presidents, mostly replaced in armed insurrections. From 1954 to 2008, the country was ruled by a single party, the National Republican Association, better known as the Colorados (‘Reds’; the colour has no socialist connotation). For thirty-five of those years it was controlled by Alfredo Stroessner, the longest-serving dictator in South American history. Backed by the USA, Stroessner oversaw some economic progress, but also rampant corruption and widespread human rights abuses. Even after his overthrow in 1989, the Colorados retained power until Lugo’s victory in 2008.
Paraguay remains overwhelmingly agrarian, being one of the least urbanised societies in Latin America. Many of the population are little more than serfs – landless peasants forced to work for exploitative landowners. Seventy-seven per cent of Paraguay’s land in 2008 was owned by just one per cent of the population.3 The population is around 85 per cent Mestizo (mixed Amerindian and European descent),4 and is one of the most bilingual populations in the world, with the vast majority speaking both Spanish and Guaraní as joint first languages (though until Lugo, Spanish was used for almost all official functions). Catholicism continues to be by far the biggest religious group, accounting for over 88 per cent of the population.
The dominance of the Catholic Church, combined with the weakness of opposing political parties during the Colorado period, has resulted in the Church being a major political player (even aside from Lugo). Refusals to celebrate San Blas’s Day in February (Blas, or Blaise in English, is the patron saint of Paraguay) or the festival of Santa María de Caacupé in December have been used by the Church to publicly sanction governments and have caused significant social stirs.
This was the situation which Lugo inherited: an impoverished, isolated country used to despotic government and endemic corruption in which the Church possessed significant political power as a protest against government.
Lugo’s upbringing would not have suggested that he would go on to become the ‘bishop of the poor’ in a largely rural district, or that he would be the man to finally break the grip of the Colorados on government. By Paraguayan standards, he was brought up in a fairly comfortable, middle class home. Born in 1951, the youngest of seven children, his father was a railway worker and mother a school teacher. It was a committed Catholic household. His family, in one of life’s ironies, were all committed Colorados. His father was prominent in the local party structure, as were several of Fernando Lugo’s older brothers.
Even more prominent was his uncle, Epifanio Méndez Fleitas. Epifanio was widely famed in Paraguay as a writer, musician, composer and Colorado politician. In the chaotic politics of 1940s Paraguay, he was a key power broker who rose to become police chief in Asunción and president of the Central Bank. The situation did not last, with serious consequences for Lugo’s family. Stroessner, always suspicious of non-military politicians and paranoid that his position was under threat, fell out with and then exiled Epifanio in 1956. His name became toxic, not least as he co-ordinated much of the political activity of Stroessner’s many exiled enemies abroad. Lugo’s father, despite his commitment to the party, was arrested and tortured for his support of Epifanio and his faction. He was denounced at work, arrested and waterboarded so badly that it did permanent damage to his kidneys. Several of Fernando’s older siblings were exiled.5
Fernando Lugo, for his own protection, was urged to avoid too much public prominence and certainly a Paraguayan political career. Even outside politics his family name and history were held against him. He thrived in his military service and was due to be awarded a prestigious prize as a leading cadet, with the likelihood of a promising career in the military as a reward. The army chiefs, learning of his family, decided it would not be politic to have the nephew of Epifanio Méndez on a stage receiving an award from Stroessner, and gave the prize (and career) to another young man.
With his career hopes dashed Lugo decided to become a teacher, and slowly came to know an order of Catholic priests who had become important local figures.
Lugo came to know a number of prominent local priests from the Verbistas order (officially the Divine Word Missionaries or Societas Verbi Divini in their Latin name). Though not a particularly rich or prominent order by comparison with the better-known Jesuits, Dominicans or Franciscans, they were well established in Paraguay and across the river from Encarnación, where Lugo was living at the time, in the Argentine city of Posadas. It was as a Verbista that Lugo felt a vocation. He became a novice in 1970, read for a degree and was ordained in 1977. The Verbistas then made a decision that was to make a huge impact on Lugo’s politics: after ordination they sent him to Ecuador.
Ecuador was Lugo’s first real exposure to the abject treatment of Amerindians by Latin American governments. It was also where he encountered the remarkable bishop of Riobamba, Leonidas Proaño. Proaño, nicknamed ‘the bishop in the poncho’ or ‘the bishop of the Indians’, was a champion of the poor and Indians. He was also one of the leading advocates of liberation theology. He was charismatic, idolised by his young priests, and a thorn in the side of the military junta.
Lugo, inspired by what he heard from Proaño and his followers, and by what he had seen in Ecuador, became a liberation theologian. The movement was at the height of its prominence in the late 1970s, and the height of its controversy within the Church. At root, liberation theology is a radical Catholic idea that arose after the Second Vatican Council. It is a call to a renewal of the Church lived in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed. Its starting point is the idea that God has a ‘preferential option for the poor’.6 Fundamentally it is a practical theology; it is not meant to be imposed and taught in the academy but lived and experienced alongside the poor – as Jesus lived. Thus Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian often seen as the father of the movement, described the source of the movement as originating ‘among the world’s anonymous, whoever may write the books or declarations articulating it’.7
Liberation is understood as having a real political and social content to it regarding the emancipation of the poor. In a Latin American context of endemic poverty, that vision took fire among many Catholic priests and laypeople. It was never without criticism. Many liberation theologians drew upon Marxist analysis of structural poverty, going so far as to describe the situation of the poor as being one of ‘structural sin’. The Catholic hierarchy, witnessing the Cold War and the plight of Catholicism on its doorstep in central and eastern Europe, was militantly opposed to any hint of socialism and Marxism, which it saw as an atheistic and evil creed. The association of liberation theology with socialism and Marxism was unacceptable to many in the Church. In 1978, Karol Wojtyła would become Pope John Paul II. As a Pole who had witnessed first-hand the effects of communism on a traditional Catholic country, John Paul would countenance no surrender to Marxism and viewed liberation theology as innately dangerous.
More broadly, liberation theology was criticised for making the concerns of the Church too earthly at the expense of traditional Church teaching and piety. The movement was censured by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI, then the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the successor to the Inquisition) in an official Church document entitled Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’. In it he declared:
Faced with the urgency of certain problems, some are tempted to emphasize, unilaterally, the liberation from servitude of an earthly and temporal kind. They do so in such a way that they seem to put liberation from sin in second place, and so fail to give it the primary importance it is due.8
Prominent liberation theologians were consistently investigated by the Vatican. Some, including the Brazilian Leonardo Boff, were officially silenced and banned from teaching by the Church, or had their books condemned.
Lugo was at the heart of the movement in Paraguay. He was close friends with many of the leading figures across Latin America, including Boff and Ernesto Cardenal, both of whom would one day attend Lugo’s inauguration as President of Paraguay. He did not write many prominent works himself, but he was a rousing and radical speaker who filled his sermons with increasingly politicised calls for liberation and the rights of the poor. His sermons as a priest on his return to Paraguay were sufficiently radical that, combined with his family history, they were recorded by the military and ultimately led to a firm suggestion from the authorities to his Verbista superiors that he be sent out of the country. He went to Rome, completed a second degree and became a far more prominent churchman than he might ever have done had he been forced to stay at home.
By virtue of his status as a prominent liberation theologian Lugo bonded together the roles of political activist and cleric. For Lugo, there is no space between where politics ends and Christianity begins. Authentic Christianity is about liberation and fighting for justice, so that is what Lugo did. His career as a priest is, in effect, also his career as a politician.
So it was that having returned to the country in 1987 and become a bishop in 1994, Lugo started to become a key public figure. In 1996, he told a conference in his diocese that ‘the sight of so many families without land or homes, and of children without schooling, health or hope is an injustice that cries to heaven, and demands the full power of our reflection and action’.9 That basic programme, calling for land, education, healthcare and a new, more hopeful Paraguay, was essentially the same when, a decade later, Lugo laid out his political programme for the presidency. Politics and religion are not divisible in Lugo’s vision. He would summarise that, years later, in an interview soon after winning the election:
I have always strongly maintained that anywhere in the world, anyone who radically accepts the life of Jesus Christ must also live the way he lived. I believe that defending the gospel values of truth against so many lies, justice against so much injustice, and peace against so much violence, is like rowing against the current.10
In 1994, he was Paraguay’s youngest bishop and had been given the difficult diocese of San Pedro. In 2004, after a decade of toil he was still faced with a diocese of over 380,000 people, 90 per cent of whom were Catholics, and only eighteen priests – in effect, 19,444 Catholics for each priest.11 Moreover, it was desperately poor.
Lugo’s actions were classic for a liberation theologian bishop. First, he encouraged ‘basic ecclesial communities’ (CEBs in the Spanish acronym). These are small groups of Catholics who gather together alongside parish models. They take part in Bible study, prayer, community work and local campaigning and politics. They are a staple of liberation theology, but also a practical necessity in areas with a serious shortage of priests. Lugo was an enthusiastic advocate of CEBs from his first days as a bishop.12 Over the course of his time in San Pedro, he doubled the number of CEBs in the diocese and encouraged them in political participation. He also changed the official language of all church services and businesses from Spanish (the language of education, politics and formality) to Guaraní (the more common language of everyday peasant life). He eschewed the bishop’s quarters and moved into a modest house, drove around the diocese on a motorbike and tried to avoid wearing full clerical garb in favour of more traditional local clothes.
Some of his other moves were even more radical. He withdrew all his diocesan priestly candidates (trainee priests) from the national seminary and tried to set one up within the diocese that would be less focused on classic education and instead see them work and live alongside the poor.13 It was a brave move, in keeping with Lugo’s theology and politics, but one which, in this case, sadly failed. A lack of suitable formation directors and the difficulties of making it work in practice doomed the idea.
His political work also became more pronounced and public. The diocese was largely rural, and there was significant conflict (some of it sporadically violent and backed by guerrilla groups) between on the one hand, the (mostly) landless peasants and farmworkers (campesinos), mostly Guaraní speakers who live in asentamientos, small villages lacking even basic infrastructure, and on the other, their landowners. Most of the landowners owed their property to cronyism during the Stroessner years. Almost all were hugely unpopular. Lugo was generally careful to shy away from calling for armed uprisings or violence (although he did associate with those who were less cautious), and campaigned vociferously on the part of the campesinos. His campaigns always returned to the constant refrains of liberation theology – emancipation and liberation, fighting for the poor and the dispossessed (particularly Amerindians), and seeing in all of this a deliberate echoing of the option for the poor as taken by God.
More broadly, he became a constant campaigner, endlessly petitioning and protesting to get more local funding for infrastructure, education and healthcare reform from the central government. He fought against corruption and clientelism and worked to hold government-sponsored violence to account. He denounced the government-sponsored vigilante groups as ‘terrorists’.14 His fame grew, he gained the nickname ‘bishop of the poor’ or more simply ‘El Bueno’. He was now a national figure and cult hero to many of the peasants.
This fame and campaigning spirit, combined with the ongoing weakness of the opposition political parties and the status of the Church for many years as critic of the government, led to Lugo being seen more and more as the official spokesperson for opposition to the Colorado government. He did little to dispel these impressions, calling again and again for the poor to go into the streets and denounce bad politicians. In June 2000, he led a mass protest to demand government work on a major highway that had been allowed to erode.15 He took an ever greater interest in economics, and in 2001 attended the World Social Forum in Brazil. He could be extremely blunt in his diagnosis of his country and global economics. Commenting on Paraguay’s history after independence from Spain, he said, ‘New forms of slavery appeared, the English arrived with their capital, their companies, their people.’16
Eventually the strain of fighting these political battles alongside his other duties as bishop seems to have taken its toll on Lugo. He suffered with thrombosis, and that was the reason offered in his resignation letter to John Paul II in 2004. A revealing quotation from soon afterwards suggests that what really ailed him was not only physical health but a sense of frustration at being unable to see enough of a practical impact for his work:
The impotence of not being able to see the institutional way forward, and of not being able to help so many families who had their human rights humiliated, because of the young people who want to study and work and can’t because of a lack of money and, on the other hand, observe impotently that the institutions of the state did not have the capacity of giving answers to the needs of the population that I as a pastor would like to have given more dignity.17
This quotation gets to the heart of Lugo’s theo-political instincts. His faith and theology had led him to radical political demands that seemed to him to be beyond the abilities of a bishop to address. After a further year of refusing to take on an official political role, but still taking prominent political positions (notably leading a huge protest against a proposed constitutional reform that would have dramatically empowered the then President, Nicanor Duarte), on Christmas Day 2006 he finally announced he would run for President. By September 2007, he had formed a seven-party coalition.
Lugo’s faith had not so much shaped his politics as created them from scratch. His political campaign and presidency were, in terms of policies, identical to the campaigns he had fought as a liberation theologian and bishop for years. They were quite simple: agrarian reform, giving dignity to the landless and exploited, and investment in education, infrastructure and healthcare to help liberate the poor from the structures that oppressed them. More broadly, Lugo promised an end to the corruption that permeates every level of Paraguayan society and a simple message of hope for something better. The campaign tag line was simply ‘Lugo has heart’.
Even with Lugo’s undeniable popularity, particularly among the poor, victory was not a given. The Colorado Party had not held power for over fifty years by simple good luck. A number of dubious election practices were reported – including a large number of suspiciously elderly voters who were registered in marginal constituencies and whole areas being reclassified as if they were located somewhere else. Moreover, the Colorado Party had for decades cultivated a simple model of clientelism. In a poor country with high unemployment, the government was directly responsible for more than 200,000 jobs that could only be held by paid-up members of the party. The financial war chest available was massive, as was a large body of workers reliant on the party staying in power. Lugo was aided, however, by a split in the Colorados that saw two separate candidates divide the vote, and by the backing of the largest of the traditional opposition parties, the Liberals (PLRA or blues).
His peculiar status as a priest did lead to a constitutional and legal issue. The Church for some time refused to recognise Lugo’s right to run for office, which is, as noted, against canon law. He received stern rebukes from the Vatican that continued for some months. Only after his election was the issue settled, with Pope Benedict XVI sending Lugo a gift, congratulating him and formally recognising that he had a calling to justice and politics. The decision to become a politician received a mixed reception from his fellow bishops, even in Paraguay, with several believing the move to have been reckless.
The inauguration ceremony was a study in Lugo’s religion and politics. Shunning a suit, he attended in sandals and a traditional Indian shirt (ao po’i), and gave his speech largely in Guaraní. Present among the guests were a number of other leaders of the ‘pink tide’ of Latin American politics, including Lula of Brazil, Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and a number of the great figures of liberation theology, including Leonardo Boff and Ernesto Cardenal.
Lugo’s period in office began with extraordinarily high expectations from his supporters. Perhaps they were too high. Lugo inherited a state apparatus with a huge number of government employees, all of whom owed their livelihood to the Colorados. Attempts to eliminate corruption or prompt major reforms given such an embedded opposition were never likely to be easy. Nor, after decades out of power, did the various opposition parties that had backed Lugo have enough experience and competent figures to drive through reforms in critical offices.
There were successes. Healthcare improved, particularly for the poorest. There was a focus on much-needed infrastructure which greatly improved the situation of many of the poor. Lugo also presided over a radical education reform, importing a Cuban educational system and resources through Venezuela, in a deal brokered between himself and Chávez.
Ultimately, however, his work was doomed by four factors. First, there was the sheer scale of the task given the level of poverty, under-investment and resistance from civil servants. Second, despite significant efforts, Lugo was unable to bring in radical agrarian reform fast enough for many of the poor. This issue would ultimately play a major role in his impeachment.
The other two factors were more personal. His health was a problem. In 2010, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, forcing regular treatment in Brazil (Paraguay did not have the facilities to treat him). The illness sapped much of his energy. Finally, he was shaken by a succession of revelations about his personal life. A succession of women, four to date, claimed Lugo was the father of their children. The claims went back years and Lugo has been forced to recognise his paternity of two children. These paternity suits did huge damage to Lugo’s moral credibility. As a Catholic priest he had sworn to be celibate, and though a number of Latin American bishops are well known to turn a blind eye to the celibacy of their priests, it was a significant scandal.
He might have been able to survive the reputational damage of those revelations and won further elections, but he was never given the chance. Frustrations at the slow pace of land reform meant that violent clashes between campesinos and landowners continued under Lugo; indeed, they continue to this day. One such violent clash, in which seventeen died, was used, along with a number of other charges relating to alleged support for criminal groups, as an excuse to impeach him. He was given only hours to mount a defence, in what was roundly condemned by a number of Latin American heads of state as a constitutional coup, the legality of which has been challenged.
This was a sad end to the Lugo presidency, which had promised much to help turn around Paraguay and help the poor. It seems unlikely, even in Latin America, where the Church remains a significant and powerful presence, that we will see another Catholic priest as head of state. Lugo had, and still has (for he has latterly returned to politics as a senator), an unquestionable courage in standing up for the poor and campaigning for their needs.
This courage and vision is founded within Lugo’s theology in a more clear and linear sense than for other politicians in this collection. With many Christian leaders it is possible to question which came first – the ideology, or the religious thought to justify and explain that ideology and the resulting policies. With Lugo there is a clear answer to that question. In his years of service as a priest and bishop to Paraguay’s poor, the theology undeniably came first. It just so happens that the theology and the political vision were, in Lugo’s case, one and the same thing.
Ironically, after years of Lugo feeling that the Church was impotent to help enact the radical change that he felt was necessary for the sake of the poor, within a year of his fall from power it elected a man to the papacy, who more than any previous Pope, sympathises with Lugo’s position. Jorge Bergoglio, like Lugo, is a middle-class Latin American who would become a bishop to the poor.18 His criticisms of unchecked capitalism as ‘the dung of the devil’19 could have come from one of Lugo’s firebrand sermons. Pope Francis is not a liberation theologian, at least not of the classic variety, and has always been a wary critic of Marxism. Perhaps Lugo can take heart that, though his presidency did not bear the fruit he had longed for, his Church at least seems to be coming round to his way of thinking.
1. Canon 285 on the obligations and rights of clerics from the Code of Canon Law, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_PY.HTM (accessed 27 January 2017).
2. For the upper estimate see, for example, Thomas L. Whigham and Barbara Potthast, ‘The Paraguayan Rosetta Stone: New Insights into the Demographics of the Paraguayan War, 1864–1870’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 34, no. 1, 1999, pp. 174–86.
3. Toby Stirling Hill, ‘Paraguay battles over land rights in the courts and across the airwaves’, The Guardian, 3 May 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/may/03/paraguay-battles-over-land-rights-in-the-courts-and-across-the-airwaves (accessed 27 January 2017).
4. Joel Morales Cruz, The Histories of the Latin American Church: A Handbook (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), p. 457.
5. Their respective fates are mentioned in Richard Gott, ‘The red bishop in Paraguay’, London Review of Books, 21 February 2008.
6. The line is first attributed to Pedro Allupe, when he was superior of the Jesuit order, in a letter of 1968. It would be taken on in the famous conference at Medellín in Colombia in 1968 which is seen by many as the birth of liberation theology. It would become popularised by Gustavo Gutiérrez in the 1971 book A Theology of Liberation, which is a key text in the early liberation theology movement.
7. Gustavo Gutiérrez, ‘Two Theological Perspectives: Liberation Theology and Progressivist Theology’, in Sergio Torres and Virginia Fabella (eds), The Emergent Gospel: Theology from the Underside of History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1978), p. 240.
8. Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 6 August 1984, available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation_en.html (accessed 27 January 2017).
9. Quoted in ‘Paraguay leads way for base communities’, The Tablet, 17 August 1996.
10. ‘Q&A: a bishop with his (sandalled) feet on the ground’, Inter Press Service, 2 May 2008, http://www.ipsnews.net/2008/05/qa-a-bishop-with-his-sandalled-feet-on-the-ground (accessed 27 January 2017).
11. Hugh O’Shaughnessy, The Priest of Paraguay: Fernando Lugo and the Making of a Nation (London: Zed, 2009), p. 94.
12. In ‘Paraguay leads way for base communities’, op. cit., he is reported as the host of a major international conference and keynote speaker.
13. Alberto Luna, ‘Paraguay: the bishop who would be President’, Thinking Faith, 4 February 2008, http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20080204_1.htm (accessed 27 January 2017).
14. Quoted in O’Shaughnessy, The Priest of Paraguay, p. 97.
15. Ibid., p. 99.
16. Quoted in Gott, ‘The red bishop in Paraguay’.
17. Quoted in O’Shaughnessy, The Priest of Paraguay, p. 100.
18. See Austen Ivereigh, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope (London: Allen and Unwin, 2014).
19 Quoted in ‘Unbridled capitalism is the “dung of the devil”, says Pope Francis’, The Guardian, 10 July 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/10/poor-must-changenew-colonialism-of-economic-order-says-pope-francis (accessed 27 January 2017).