A Man of Muscle, Mystery

In the secret universe of Paraguayan conspiracy theory, strange things happen.

A dead general sips cocktails in his mansion. A chauffeur drives the corpse of the vice president around town. And a prison inmate charged with murder cuts the deals that will make him the country’s next president.

The sinister rumors form at the dark vortex where power, corruption and violence meet in this country marooned in South America’s impoverished heartland. And they revolve around a single man.

Former Gen. Lino Oviedo is the former head of the army, a convicted coup plotter and the alleged mastermind of the assassination of the vice president. Currently under lock and key in a military facility on the fringes of this capital city, he began serving a 10-year prison sentence in June. But few here expect he’ll be behind bars much longer.

Some polls say Oviedo is the most popular politician in Paraguay, even though as a convicted felon he is legally barred from running for office. To many here, his name is synonymous with virility and order. Legend has it that Oviedo forced the seemingly omnipotent dictator Alfredo Stroessner to resign by storming into his office with a gun and a live grenade in 1989. Later, he is said to have slapped President Juan Carlos Wasmosy, a story that to Oviedo’s most fervent supporters illustrates his refusal to submit to weak-kneed politicians.

But his detractors, including most of the country’s intelligentsia, fear that Oviedo could bring a Paraguayan brand of fascism to their country if he is freed.

“If Oviedo were set free and he were allowed to campaign in a presidential election, I have no doubt he would win in a landslide,” journalist Luis Paredes said. “People feel the transition to democracy has failed. They’ve had nothing but bad governments.”

Many Paraguayans pine for a strongman who will cleanse the republic of venality and incompetence.

“Unfortunately, the rest of the political class lies to the people,” Oviedo said in a prison patio next to his cell. “My word is sacred. My former colleagues in the army know that when I promised something, I always came through. That’s what made me famous.”

When Oviedo, 61, returned to Paraguay in June after five years in Brazilian exile, large crowds lined the airport road to greet him as officials took him to prison. His name has dominated the news and the political gossip ever since.

He has been publicly blamed for a bloody peasant uprising that he supposedly organized from his prison cell. His allies deny that charge and counter with an unproven allegation of their own: Oviedo has been offered his freedom in exchange for political favors.

Alejandro Velasquez Ugarte, the head of Oviedo’s party in the Senate, said the government of President Nicanor Duarte Frutos had offered privately to set Oviedo free if his backers in the Senate would stop blocking the promotion of the head of the army. Six of the 45 members of the Paraguayan Senate are from Oviedo’s UNACE party.

“Our leader told Duarte’s people he would never do this,” Velasquez said of Oviedo. “He told them he would rather be transferred to the lion’s cage in the zoo.”

Ever since his rise to prominence in the final days of Stroessner’s rule in the late 1980s, Oviedo’s very name has evoked a political underworld where disputes are settled with threats of violence and secret deals often involving great wads of cash.

But he is also a charismatic figure famous for his golden touch with the common man. He pioneered the use of Guarani, Paraguay’s indigenous language, in political discourse. In towns across Paraguay, people tell stories of their encounters with him, including many in which he removed a gold chain from his neck and gave it to a poor family.

“As crazy as he may be, he’s the lunatic least likely to steal,” said Luis Vergara, a former cavalry soldier who works for a car service.

Like other Oviedo supporters, Vergara has little respect for the nation’s democratically elected leaders, including President Duarte Frutos, who won election last year.

“To me,” Vergara said, “they are like clowns with ties on” -- a far cry from the man known as “the bonsai horseman” for his short stature and equestrian skills.

Such attitudes are gaining currency. A survey of several Latin American countries in August found that just 39% of Paraguayans believe democracy is the best form of government. Only Guatemalans are more disillusioned with their democratic leaders, according to the poll by the Chilean firm Latinobarometro.

Many observers argue that the country has yet to overcome the legacy of kleptocracy and civic apathy that defined the Stroessner dictatorship. All the democratically elected governments since have been tainted by scandal.

“Before, we had Ali Baba and the 40 thieves,” said Jose Nicolas Morinigo, a political scientist, referring to Stroessner and his entourage. “Now Ali Baba is gone, but the 40 thieves are still around.”

The official poverty rate stands at 41%, but there’s little sense the government is doing anything to address the problem. Paraguay perennially scores near the bottom of Transparency International’s global index of corruption. Asuncion is the stolen-car capital of South America, kidnapping is rampant and if you’re rich it’s easier to bribe the taxman than pay the levies.

Corruption stories are part of Paraguayan folklore. Oviedo’s political mentor was the notorious Gen. Andres Rodriguez, who became wealthy with drug money. Rodriguez, who was president of Paraguay in the early 1990s, was widely believed to have had the head of the country’s drug enforcement agency assassinated.

Rodriguez died of cancer in 1997, but to many here his death was just a ruse.

“They say he had plastic surgery and he’s living in his mansion,” Vergara said. “You can go and ask anyone if they think Rodriguez is dead. And they will answer, ‘He might be.’ ”

In recent months, Oviedo’s supporters have circulated another conspiracy theory, one that exonerates Oviedo of the most serious charge against him: the 1999 assassination of Vice President Luis Maria Argana.

Government prosecutors charge that Oviedo orchestrated the killing for political purposes. Argana was a bitter rival in the ruling Colorado Party, to which Oviedo belonged before forming a splinter faction. After the assassination, Oviedo fled into exile.

But Oviedo’s supporters say the vice president really died of natural causes during a lovers’ tryst. His chauffeur and bodyguard drove his corpse around Asuncion, the story goes, and staged the ambush in which his body was riddled with bullets to discredit Oviedo and frame him for murder.

This story sounds wildly implausible to some Paraguayans.

“They say Argana’s own son fired the bullets into his corpse,” said Morinigo, the political scientist. “You have to be delusional to believe that.”

But the country’s largest- circulation newspaper, ABC Color, has published dozens of stories in support of this theory since March.

The stories detail an alleged cover-up of Argana’s death that involves his chauffeur and others. Colorado Party leaders have charged the newspaper with running a misinformation campaign on Oviedo’s behalf. ABC Color responded with a 21-point list of “contradictions in the official version of the death of the deceased vice president.”

Nilda Rivarola, a sociologist and newspaper columnist here, says the ABC stories have left many people wondering if they will ever know the truth of how Argana died, and why.

“We live in a small country, with a culture of suspicion where people believe no one is really telling the truth,” she said. “We believe everyone is trying to fool us.”

Argana’s killing marked the end of three convulsive years in which Oviedo seemed to hold a dagger over the heads of Paraguay’s elected leaders. He staged an aborted coup, pressured one president into naming him defense minister and persuaded another president to free him from prison on the coup charges.

Now he’s back behind bars, the coup charges reinstated, occupying a cell in the military prison in Vinas Cue, just outside Asuncion. He refuses to eat or drink anything offered by the guards because he fears being poisoned. His wife, one of a stream of daily visitors, brings him food.

During a lengthy interview, Oviedo’s posture rarely varied from the stiff, barrel-chested bearing of the military cadet he once was. He said he returned to Paraguay to clear his name.

“First I have to prove my innocence,” he said, adding that he believes he will receive a fair trial under the current government. “Then we will work with the party I founded, to see if it is possible to reach the presidency.”

Oviedo said he is the only man who can bring back social stability to Paraguay.

“There is no candidate or political leader who knows the country as I do,” he said. “I am the only one who understands how to resolve the problems of the peasants. I go and speak to them and everything is fixed.”

Weeks after Oviedo made that statement, peasants rose up in several rural areas, demanding land to farm. A police officer was killed.

Oviedo’s detractors say he incited the rebellion from his cell. His supporters deny this.

Rivarola, the sociologist, believes Oviedo returned to serve his prison sentence because his gilded exile in Brazil was slowly eroding his political support. Polls show his popularity has slowly increased since his return.

Paraguay’s next presidential elections are set for 2008. But in modern South America, elections are often held years ahead of schedule.

“Am I afraid something will happen to me in jail?” Oviedo said, repeating a visitor’s question. “When one is convinced of one’s ideals, there is no fear that matters. I promised my followers I would not abandon them, and here I am.”

Oviedo gives souvenirs to his visitors, including CDs with his picture on the cover and the words, “Thank you for visiting me in prison.”

The CD contains 24 songs celebrating his return. The lyrics of “Persecuted” compare Oviedo to Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr., among others: Every 100 years God sends/ a blessed one to Earth/To Paraguay, he has sent /someone they call Lino.