In Paraguay, Rough Rider or Running Roughshod?

The home of Lino Oviedo, the presidential candidate and former cavalry general who has this nation in an uproar, resembles a fort on the eve of battle. A sentry stares down at visitors over the high front wall. The wooden gates open onto a patio where half a dozen former soldiers stand watch.

They snap to attention at the arrival of Oviedo, a compact 53-year-old with renowned equestrian skills and a rough-rider personality to match: At his campaign rallies, he rails against criminals, politicians and foreign ambassadors and performs impromptu back flips. His nickname is The Horseman.

In a gravelly tough-guy voice, Oviedo charges into a typical onslaught. He declares that he could lead a military coup “right now. I could do it whenever I want. I have more power in the army than I did when I was in the army. But I am going to make my coup at the ballot box.”

Last year, Oviedo was ousted as army commander after defying a presidential order to resign and setting off Paraguay’s worst crisis in eight years of fragile democracy. He was charged with attempting a coup and briefly jailed. Then he pulled off a startling comeback: He won the presidential nomination last month of the Colorado Party, which has ruled for the past 50 years. Although his candidacy has been challenged in court, he’s the favorite in next May’s presidential election.

Oviedo seems an archetype of Latin America’s past--the messianic caudillo, or boss, who promises order and economic justice. Despite the spread of democracy across the continent, militaristic populists survive. Bolivian voters recently elected former dictator Hugo Banzer as president. In Chile, former dictator Augusto Pinochet will soon retire as armed forces commander in an outpouring of adulation. Peru’s Alberto Fujimori won a second term largely because of his authoritarian style.

‘Euphoria Is Over’

These figures appeal to voters disgusted with traditional politics, inequality and criminality. Their popularity reveals the potential shakiness of “anemic” democracies, according to Carlos Martini, a political analyst at Catholic University here. “The euphoria of the return of democracy is over,” he said. “There is a nostalgia for results.”

Paraguayans yearn for a strong leader, Oviedo’s followers say. He promises to take charge; he evokes the day in 1989 when he stormed into military headquarters, pistol in one hand and grenade in the other, and captured Alfredo Stroessner in an uprising that ended Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship.

But critics call Oviedo the horseman of an impending apocalypse. They fear he will drag a nation of 5 million that seems marooned in time and geography back into the days of despots and gangsters in uniform.

“It is practically impossible to understand how a man who tried to stage a military coup is the kind of person who is qualified to be president of a democracy,” U.S. Ambassador Robert Service said. His words exemplify unusually harsh criticism by foreign diplomats, which Oviedo uses to drum up nationalistic backlash.

“I appreciate it,” Oviedo growled sarcastically in an interview, his first with a U.S. newspaper since he rose to international prominence last year. “They are my best political operatives. Tell them to come back eight days before the national elections and take the same position, and I will win by even more.”

Oviedo is a product of the singular history of Paraguay, which has been called “an island surrounded by land.”

The country’s first real democratic experiment began only in 1989. That political transition has collided with an economic downturn.

Martini called Oviedo’s rise “a symptom of the nation’s sickness.” The past that Oviedo embodies was awash with corruption, according to opposition lawmaker Marcelo Duarte. Riot police broke Duarte’s jaw last year during pro-democracy protests against Oviedo, who had holed up in his barracks for 27 hours and demanded the president’s resignation while diplomats negotiated to avert a coup.

“It is agonizing to see the ghosts of the past return,” said Duarte, 36. “This is the Paraguay of the 21st century against the Paraguay that we want to leave behind.”

Stroessner closed his borders to basic freedoms but opened them to contraband, turning Paraguay into a thieves’ bazaar. The heart of the smuggling industry remains lawless Ciudad del Este on the triple border with Argentina and Brazil, a reputed haven for gangsters and terrorists. The town generates $5 billion to $8 billion in yearly transactions involving duty-free, pirated and smuggled goods.

Some economists believe that the nation’s illicit economy equals the official gross domestic product of $10 billion. Paraguay is an international hub for smuggled drugs, arms, stolen vehicles and laundered cash. The top-heavy military enriched itself by controlling the smuggling rackets.

Stroessner was overthrown by his right-hand man, Gen. Andres Rodriguez, whose right-hand man was Oviedo.

“Oviedo could not run his multimillion-dollar campaign and acquire his fortune on a general’s salary,” Duarte said. “Where does he get his money? It is a question of simple logic.”

Oviedo denies links to corruption. “In Stroessner’s government, I wasn’t even a general,” he said. “And if Stroessner gave me money, why would I have helped overthrow him?”

Jailing the ‘Pirates’

In fact, he warns that dishonest leaders will go to jail if he is elected. “They are like pirates who board a ship and take everything,” he said. “They rob in the name of democracy.”

Oviedo lives in a spacious house in a wealthy neighborhood. Horse figurines and religious art fill the living room. A sword occupies a place of honor under glass. On a recent evening, his children played noisily outside as the workaholic Oviedo barked orders over the phone to operatives monitoring the contentious vote count of his party’s presidential primary. “Everyone laughed at me because I was a rookie,” he said. “I have built this movement on horseback, on a bicycle, on foot, on a motorcycle and in a four-wheel-drive vehicle.”

Oviedo was the underdog in a three-way race against rivals backed by the party machine and by President Juan Carlos Wasmosy. But the general had built his own machine while in uniform, doling out public works projects and patronage.

Opponents accuse the Oviedo campaign of providing voters with tractors, bicycles and loans and using intimidating goon squads.

They also worry about his apparent sympathy for foreign extremists who operate in Latin America, such as U.S. ultraconservative Lyndon LaRouche Jr., who preaches a conspiracy-obsessed, cult-like ideology and was convicted and imprisoned for fraud.

Oviedo’s base is the depressed rural heartland where half the population lives and where he was born. Unlike other candidates, he speaks fluent Guarani--a potent weapon in one of the Latin American nations where the indigenous language remains prevalent.

During a recent rally about 90 miles outside Asuncion, the capital, he addressed more than 100,000 peasants while standing on the roof of a truck. He wore jeans and a work shirt in party crimson. He fired up the crowd with a fist-pumping, chest-thumping barrage of words.

“I am talking to you from the heart,” he bellowed. “Like you, I drink mate [rustic tea]; like you, I am a tamer of horses. When I am president, we will be able to travel the country without being robbed, without our women and daughters being raped. Our Cabinet ministers will no longer work in air-conditioned offices with secretaries in miniskirts. They will know the country and visit the people in their kitchens.”

The agitated rhetoric contributes to questions about Oviedo’s behavior. He has thrown costume parties where he dressed as Julius Caesar and officers and their wives dressed as gangsters and molls. Opponents compare him to Abdala Bucaram, “El Loco,” the erratic Ecuadorean president who recorded a pop album and allegedly pilfered public coffers before lawmakers voted him out of office this year.

“He is totally dangerous,” Duarte said. “He will either govern like Bucaram, with irrational measures that are unpredictable, or return to extreme authoritarianism.”

‘He Is Not Crazy’

But Julio Cesar Frutos, an eminent strategist for a rival candidate, said: “It is all coldly calculated. He is not crazy.”

Oviedo listed his role models as Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Washington. He downplayed his reputed promise to import and use electric chairs (the nation has no death penalty), saying he will execute criminals only if citizens change the constitution. And he said his supposed defense of polygamy was a jovial reference to the founder of the ruling party, Gen. Bernardino Caballero.

“All I said was that he sacrificed himself not only militarily and politically, but also personally: He had 87 children. And everyone laughed,” he said. “Then the press says Oviedo will do the same. My wife would shoot me if I did that.”

Oviedo denied that he and more than 100 soldiers attempted a coup in April 1996. No troop movements took place, he argued, citing a court ruling that reduced pending charges against him to simple disobedience.

Critics worry about stability if Oviedo triumphs over the weak opposition. Colorado Party rivals have challenged his nomination in court; the government refuses to recognize his candidacy until fraud allegations are investigated.

The most ominous scenario: Fearful military commanders who opposed the alleged coup could resort to extreme measures to prevent him from taking office.

But Oviedo says he plays by the rules. “What is democracy for the United States? Respect for the people’s will. The ballot boxes have spoken.”

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Profile: Lino Cesar Oviedo Silva

* Born: Sept. 23, 1944

* Residence: Asuncion, Paraguay

* Education: 1958, enters military school, graduates into cavalry; 1969-70, undertakes military studies in Germany, specializes in tank warfare.

* Career highlights: 1989, as colonel, leads attacking forces in coup against dictator Alfredo Stroessner and is named general; 1996, as army commander, is accused by president of political interference and is dismissed. Oviedo charged with attempting coup and briefly jailed. September 1997, wins presidential nomination of ruling Colorado Party. Amid mutual charges of fraud, rivals challenge candidacy in court.

* Family: married, six children.

* Quote: (referring to the capture of Stroessner in 1989 coup): “Do you know who organized the plan, who executed the complete plan? [Stroessner] was in military headquarters. . . . I went in alone. Because soldiers were dying, and it was possible that everyone was going to die, and I said, ‘Why?’ All his troops were aiming at me, ready to kill me. But they couldn’t get up the nerve to do it.”