Paraguayan General’s Arrest Ends Odyssey in Lawless Zone

In the end, the Brazilian police found the Paraguayan general hiding in the bathroom of an eighth-floor apartment with a view of the muddy Parana River, the boundary marking the lawless border between Brazil and Paraguay.

The general was alone. He had a .38-caliber revolver, 10 cellular phones, $3,000 in cash and a woman’s wig in the bedroom. He had acquired a black mustache and looked younger and shaggier thanks to hair implants and a face lift by an Argentine plastic surgeon. He tried to deceive his captors with an identification card bearing a false name.

But there was no doubt: The fugitive was Lino Oviedo.

He was the former army chief accused of ordering the killings of Paraguay’s vice president and pro-democracy demonstrators last year and instigating a military uprising last month. He was the fallen political boss who had agitated the region during a delirious six months on the run, proclaiming his imminent resurrection while staying a step ahead of the law.

It wasn’t his first taste of clandestine politics. Oviedo had the dubious distinction of campaigning for the Paraguayan presidency while a fugitive in 1997.

He has earned a place on the roster of Latin American generals known for inspired lunacy. His exploits recall Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna of Mexico, who ordered elaborate military honors for his left leg after losing it in battle. Or Gen. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, the Dominican dictator who made his 10-year-old son a general.

True to form, the 57-year-old Oviedo kept up a jaunty front with the police who arrested him last week. He thanked them for their professionalism and promised: “I will keep you in mind when I become president of the republic.”

Although his story has amusing aspects, it is a dark sort of comedy.

Oviedo’s popularity among rural Paraguayans reflects the dire conditions of a landlocked nation of 5 million with a per capita annual income of $1,500. Turmoil since 1996 has enfeebled the democracy. Now the economy, which is based mostly on cotton and smuggling, is sliding toward disaster as well.

And Oviedo’s ability to elude pursuers from three nations highlighted again the potential for regional instability of the “triple border” zone where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, a major outpost of international gangsters.

Last week, U.S. and Brazilian officials publicly reaffirmed their suspicions that Oviedo has ties to border drug lords--a disturbing alliance between the forces of lawlessness and extremism that are resurgent in Latin America.

“There have been indications over the years that he was involved in drug trafficking while he was in active military service,” said Stephen McFarland, the acting U.S. ambassador in Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital.

“It is no secret to Paraguayans,” McFarland said, “that he had a lot to do with smuggling at the triple border.”

Now Brazil and Paraguay have to figure out what to do with Oviedo.

He has caused much strife in the Mercosur trade bloc, which unites Brazil and Argentina, the continent’s economic giants, with Uruguay and Paraguay.

The Paraguayans say they will request extradition, though there are doubts about whether the government really wants him in a cell playing the role of a martyr. Oviedo’s lawyers hope to seek political asylum or refugee status in Brazil for him, much like former Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who has spent 11 years in exile in Brasilia, the capital.

The latest Oviedo Sturm und Drang began in March last year, when an intraparty feud exploded with the assassination of Vice President Luis Maria Argana, an Oviedo rival, in a street ambush. Pro-Oviedo forces massacred eight student protesters days later as the crisis mounted. The government fell.

Facing murder charges--and a 10-year prison sentence for an attempted coup in 1996--Oviedo fled to Argentina, whose center-right government enraged Paraguay’s new leaders by granting him asylum. Oviedo abandoned Argentina, however, just before a less friendly Argentine administration took power in December.

So began a rather demented odyssey. Oviedo apparently slipped back and forth across international boundaries, especially in the badlands formed by the adjacent cities of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, and Foz do Iguacu, Brazil. In theoretical pursuit were Argentine, Brazilian and Paraguayan police and intelligence agencies that have received training and expertise from the U.S. and other nations concerned about the triple border.

But no one laid a glove on Oviedo, who wasn’t exactly keeping a low profile. He moved around with an armed entourage, according to an Argentine police official. He called his wife at her home in northern Argentina three times a day, at the same time each day.

And he gave numerous clandestine interviews to the media--in person and on the phone--in which he protested his innocence and railed in his gravelly voice against the Paraguayan government.

“This country is ruled by drug traffickers and pirates,” Oviedo told foreign journalists in a telephone interview in May.

He also claimed that his political movement had “made contacts” with representatives of U.S. presidential candidate George W. Bush and that “they believe in me and the Paraguayan people.” (This assertion appears to be groundless.)

The turning point came May 18. Oviedo loyalists in the armed forces and police launched a ragged coup attempt that was put down within hours after tanks fired shots at the Congress building in Asuncion.

The seemingly lackluster search, which may have been impeded by the fugitive’s allies in border-area security forces, went into high gear.

“Evidently, there was a political decision by the Brazilian government and all of Mercosur to capture Oviedo,” said Jose Morinigo, a Paraguayan political analyst. “He had become a problem for Argentina and for Brazil. And his reputed connections with local intelligence services were not enough to make this discomfort tolerable to those governments.”

Aided by the general’s addiction to the cellular phone, according to Paraguayan authorities, Brazilian federal police tracked him to the luxury apartment in Foz do Iguacu, minutes from the border, and placed him under surveillance. On Monday, a 15-officer team kicked in the door.

As the Oviedo forces point out, the troubled Paraguayan government has capitalized on Oviedo’s all-purpose villain status to stave off other crises. Now those leaders must make their charges stick in court. They must also confront grave social and economic challenges that go far beyond personality and skulduggery.

“If we ask the people what their problems are, they do not say Oviedo. The problems are there is no work; there is no food; there is no medical care; and there is no security,” McFarland said. “If something is not done to solve those problems, someone like Oviedo, some other adventurer, can always arise.”