The Global Far Right Flocks to Paraguay
Santiago Peña cosies up to ultraconservatives at the Foro Madrid.
A bunch of foreigners telling Paraguay not to listen to foreigners. It can only be the Foro Madrid, an international movement of “anti-globalists” that held its annual conference this week at the Central Bank of Paraguay (BCP) in Asunción.
Founded in 2020 by Fundación Disenso – the in-house think-tank of Spanish far-right party Vox – the objective of this year’s summit was to “strengthen the governments, candidates and proposals of patriotic and sovereign forces on both sides of the Atlantic.”
The forum, previously held in Lima, Bogotá and Buenos Aires, trumpets the re-election of Donald Trump and Daniel Noboa in Ecuador as evidence of a “historic political shift” in the region. And with progressives in retreat around the world, this year had the flavour of a victory lap.
The speakers were a who’s who of conservative leaders-in-waiting. José Antonio Kast, the Pinochet apologist, son of a Nazi emigre, and law-and-order populist currently leading the polls to become Chile’s next president. Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, who has called for a new reconquista of Spain from Muslim migrants.
Conservative politicians, journalists, academics and diplomats from Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, France, the United States, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, El Salvador, Israel and Barbados padded out the programme.
The forum also offered a window into how Paraguay’s president Santiago Peña is increasingly aligning his administration with the international far-right movement.
Dios, patria y familia
“Paraguay is a moral bastion,” said Peña in his opening keynote on Thursday, paraphrasing the “visionary” Ronald Reagan to describe his nation as a “shining country on a hill” and “an unbending guardian of the fundamental values of the West.”
“My country has always defended the triumph of good over evil, truth over relativism, beauty over ugliness, the family over radical progressivism, the free market over socialism” – he continued – “guided by the imposing and triumphant power of almighty God.”
Peña described how Paraguay is resisting not only “foreign impositions” but also “the barbarians within our walls, the ‘woke’ and their cancel culture that has inflicted so much damage.”
“Family, family, and more family is the key to a prosperous society, and us Paraguayans know this more than anyone,” he concluded, to a ripple of applause. “No to abortion on demand, no to [foreign] ideas of the family, and no to radical social experiments.”
The theme was taken up by Raúl Latorre, the leader of Paraguay’s lower house, who is increasingly being positioned as a potential successor to Peña.
“We raise our voice for freedom,” barked the normally mild-mannered congressman, “against gender ideology that seeks to rewrite the very foundations of biology, and the globalist ideologies that seek to impose the hell of uniformity, denying our own identity.”
“You can count on us in this fight for our fatherland, our God, and our families,” Latorre concluded, making the sign of the cross and pumping his fist in the air.
Congresswoman Lizarella Valiente – previously best known for cavorting in skimpy clothing on primetime TV along with her husband, embattled Asunción mayor Óscar “Nenecho” Rodríguez – also shared some pearls of wisdom with the conference.
“Homosexuality has become fashionable,” Valiente lamented, blaming the media, the music business, and the fashion and pharmaceutical industries for “interfering with the collective consciousness of our children and young people.”
Other Paraguayan speakers included Senator Gustavo Leite – the architect of an anti-NGO “gag” law passed late last year, and a prospective ambassador to Trump’s White House – controversial Minister for Youth Salma Agüero, and Enrique Vargas Peña, Paraguay’s answer to Tucker Carlson.
Strikingly, the Declaration of Asunción issued by the forum on Friday promises to jail “criminal leftists,” takes aim at the ICC and the EU for “collaborating” with Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and also brands Bolivia a “dictatorship” – something which is unlikely to go down well with Paraguay’s troubled but no-less-democratic neighbour to the north.
Isolationists, unite
Set aside the glaring irony of politicians and pundits who have spent years demonising European NGOs for allegedly meddling in Paraguayan politics rolling out the red carpet for a shady foreign foundation – funded by Spanish taxpayers – that openly seeks to do just that.
Peña’s speech is the clearest indication yet that Paraguay’s president – who has previously come out in favour of equal marriage and holding an open debate on decriminalising abortion – is caving to pressure from the hard-right wing of the Colorado Party. One conservative Venezuelan commentator was “tremendously surprised” – in a good way – by the president’s unexpectedly strident tone.
It’s a return to form for Paraguay’s ruling clique, who hosted the annual conference of the World Anti-Communist League – a macabre assortment of East Asian generals, renegade Nazis and Latin American death squads – under the Stroessner dictatorship in 1979.
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