Winner & Still President

On election day this week, Paraguay's President Federico Chaves puffed his black cigars and puttered about his two-story house on a jacaranda-shaded street in Asuncion. Don Federico could celebrate his 71st birthday and his second presidential victory with calm assurance, for it was a one-man election, Paraguay's fourth since 1948.* Through the day, most of the 200,000 registered voters dutifully visited the polls (under threat of fine) to cast their ballots for him as the candidate of the Colorados, the country's only legal political party.

Almost by default. Chaves has become boss of one of the Americas' most complete dictatorships. After the presidency had changed hands four times in a year, Chaves, a self-educated lawyer and lifelong politico, engineered a coup that put bumbling Dr. Felipe Molas Lopez, a 50-year-old dentist, in power in 1949. But even Don Federico could not stand the dentist long; in another coup, he installed himself as President. That was enough coups, he decided; next year he had himself elected.

This week, as his second elected term began, Don Federico found his country little changed. Smugglers were running much of the nation's cattle across the border into Brazil to escape unrealistic price controls on beef. Bureaucrats were selling illegal import and export licenses. And the important quebracho, tobacco and cotton trade with Argentina was logjammed against Juan Peron's nationalistic economy. Now exiles have become Paraguay's principal export; of the 1,500,000 population, more than 100,000 (some estimates run up to 500,000) are refugees abroad. Most are members of the out-of-power Liberal (i.e., conservative) Party.

With Don Federico and his self-proclaimed doctrine of Spiritual Peace, Paraguay is somewhat better off than during the period of bloody revolutions (27 between 1904 and 1947). But the country is still on its knees, with no immediate prospects of getting on its feet.

* Last presidential election with more than one candidate was in 1928.

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