Paraguay hosted the Conservative Political Motion Convention (CPAC), a meeting of the worldwide appropriate, for the primary time in mid-September. In attendance had been participants of US president Donald Trump’s interior circle, together with his long-term overseas coverage consultant Richard Grenell, and President Javier Milei of Argentina.
The Paraguayan president, Santiago Peña, gave a keynote cope with confirming the rising id of his Colorado birthday celebration management with the worldwide ultra-conservative motion. He emphasized that he would shield earlier than the sector his opposition to “free abortion”, “alternative ideas of the family” and “radical social experiments”.
Paraguay is the Latin American nation maximum strongly aligned with the overseas coverage of the Trump management. It’s one in every of handiest 12 international locations on this planet, and the one one in South The us, to deal with diplomatic members of the family with Taiwan. And in December 2024 it moved its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which Trump formally recognised because the Israeli capital in 2017 to a lot world complaint.
In UN Normal Meeting votes in June and September respectively, Paraguay joined simply ten international locations in vote casting with the United States and Israel in opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza. It additionally voted in opposition to a two-state approach to the Israel-Palestine struggle.
Then, along the United States, Israel, Nauru and Palau, it voted in opposition to the verdict to permit Palestinian Authority chief, Mahmoud Abbas, to deal with the hot eightieth consultation of the Normal Meeting through video hyperlink after the Trump management refused visas for Palestinian officers to go into the United States.
America has additionally signed an settlement with Paraguay to outsource a few of its asylum claims. The Protected 3rd Nation Settlement will permit asylum seekers already in the United States to have their claims processed in Paraguay. The main points stay obscure. It’s unclear who will quilt the prices and whether or not Paraguay will likely be obliged to host immigrants indefinitely if a visa software is refused.
And the United States has introduced a brand new joint anti-terrorism base within the Paraguayan capital, Asunción, with an operational arm in Ciudad del Este, a town at the Brazilian border. The purpose is to struggle world terrorism, organised crime and cash laundering.
This id with Trump’s overseas coverage has been accompanied through rising hyperlinks to excessive right-wing political actions within the Americas and Europe. In June, Paraguay hosted the fourth annual assembly of the Foro de Madrid, a global grouping connected to Vox, the hardline right-wing political birthday celebration in Spain. Vox chief, Santiago Abascal, attended the assembly and referred to as the Paraguayan executive “a great ally”.
Mahmoud Abbas speaks by way of video convention to the UN Normal Meeting in New York on September 25.
Sarah Yenesel / EPA
The Paraguayan executive’s posture is spearheaded through two key figures within the Colorado birthday celebration – Raúl Latorre, president of the decrease area of Congress, and Gustavo Leite, the just lately appointed Paraguayan ambassador to the United States. Each males are imaginable applicants to exchange Peña within the presidency in 2028.
Vehemently adverse to feminism, abortion and homosexual marriage, they time and again tension that Paraguay is an “island of conservatism”. They’re additionally adverse to what they see as subversive overseas NGOs that input the rustic underneath the duvet of building cooperation.
In January, Latorre attended a Brussels assembly of Patriots for Europe, an excessive appropriate grouping of Ecu Parliament participants. The next month, he spoke at a CPAC in Washington attended through Trump. And at a CPAC in Budapest a number of months later, Latorre and Leite condemned the UN Sustainable Construction Objectives, the EU and “globalists” akin to Invoice Gates and George Soros.
In his formal credentials rite within the White Space on September 5, Leite posed with Trump dressed in a “Make America Great Again” cap. So that you could curry favour with the United States president, he expressed his choice to halt what he referred to as unlawful efforts through China to opposite the present diplomatic popularity of Taiwan through investment opposition politicians in Paraguay.
Conservative political custom
Paraguay’s longstanding right-wing political custom has facilitated this political alignment. In 1887, German colonists established a colony at Nueva Germania within the north of Paraguay. The colony was once impressed through the beliefs of an Aryan grasp race.
The primary Latin American department of the German Nationwide Socialist birthday celebration, referred to as the Nazi birthday celebration, was once additionally based in Paraguay in 1929. And through 1939 Nazi swastikas and portraits of Adolf Hitler had been prominently displayed in German faculties and companies in Asunción and the Mennonite colonies of western Paraguay’s far off Chaco area.
All through the second one international warfare, the Frente de Guerra faction of pro-fascist army and law enforcement officials exercised a powerful affect over the Paraguayan executive in alliance with the extraordinary conservative Tiempista lay motion throughout the Catholic Church.
This extremist custom was once bolstered throughout the brutal rule of Alfredo Stroessner, son of a German immigrant, from 1954 to 1989. His regime was once a staunch best friend of apartheid South Africa and likewise was a haven for Nazis fleeing Europe. They had been attracted through Stroessner’s virulent anti-communism and safe through a common custom of German immigration.
Those folks incorporated Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi physician on the Auschwitz focus camp, who was once granted Paraguayan citizenship in 1959 in his personal title. A number of thousand lesser recognized figures within the SS paramilitary organisation and Gestapo secret police migrated to Paraguay’s Mennonite colonies and German communities.
The Colorado birthday celebration, during which Stroessner dominated the rustic, continues to dominate the political enviornment and can pay lip provider to his reminiscence.
Former Paraguayan president, Horacio Cartes, speaks on the 138th anniversary birthday celebration of the Colorado birthday celebration on 11th of September.
Juan Pablo Pino / EPA
There could also be a extra prosaic reason why for Paraguay’s alignment with Trump. In July 2022, throughout the presidency of Joe Biden, the United States State Division declared former Paraguayan president Horacio Cartes (2013-2018) “a significantly corrupt person”. It cited his alleged ties to world crime, cash laundering and hyperlinks to world terrorism.
Cartes is the richest individual in Paraguay. He bankrolls the Colorado birthday celebration and handpicked Peña to do his bidding within the presidency. America tightened sanctions in opposition to his sprawling trade empire in August 2024, forcing him to divest possession of Tabacalera del Este. Referred to as Tabesa, the corporate has mechanically been accused of smuggling cigarettes all through the Americas.
Since Trump returned to energy in January 2025, Cartes has been doing the whole thing to curry favour with the United States management as a way to get the sanctions got rid of. To this point, he has been unsuccessful.
