Tuesday, September 8, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
PARAGUAY: Tension Surrounding Former Coup Leader on the Rise
Raúl Pierri
- Former Paraguayan army chief Lino César Oviedo, convicted of staging a frustrated coup and accused of planning the murder of a vice-president, announced his return to the country this month, at a time when intriguing new versions about the assassination have begun to circulate.
The former general was convicted and sentenced in 1998 by a military court to 10 years in prison for an aborted April 1996 coup against the government of Juan Carlos Wasmosy (1994-1998).
Although the sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court, Oviedo was pardoned by President Raúl Cubas (1998-1999), and fled to Argentina, and later Brazil, where he was granted political asylum.
Oviedo is also wanted for allegedly masterminding the 1999 assassination of Vice President Luis María Argaña.
The fugitive, who is living just across the border in the southern Brazilian city of Foz de Iguazú, recently announced that he would return to Asunción on Jun. 28 to present himself before the Supreme Court and ask for a retrial.
Although his supporters say they are confident that the Supreme Court, which was purged by President Nicanor Duarte, will allow the former general to return to politics, his opponents hope he ends up behind bars.
Paraguay’s armed forces chief José Key Kanasawa ordered a beefing up of border controls, and Oviedo is to be arrested if he attempts to enter the country. But the former general has asked the Brazilian government to help guarantee his safe arrival in Asunción.
Oviedo ”is a coward, a charlatan and a liar,” ex-president Wasmosy, the former general’s main political foe, told IPS.
Wasmosy, a senator-for-life, speculated that the announcement of Oviedo’s return might be merely a farce aimed at destabilising the political situation in Paraguay.
A BIT OF HISTORY
Oviedo, found guilty of staging a coup against Wasmosy, was disqualified from running in the 1998 elections.
But his list of candidates within the ruling Colorado Party took more votes than Wasmosy’s faction, and Cubas, who was to be the former general’s vice-presidential running-mate, was elected as the new president, and Argaña, from a rival sector within the Colorado Party, became vice-president.
One of the first things Cubas did as president was to pardon Oviedo.
Against the backdrop of tension over Oviedo, Argaña’s car was intercepted by gunmen on Mar. 23, 1999 and he was killed.
The next day, the lower house of Congress sought to impeach Cubas for protecting Oviedo, who was considered the mastermind of Argaña’s murder. On Mar. 26 the tension increased when eight demonstrators were killed in an anti-government protest in the capital.
Cubas resigned and fled to Brazil, and the president of the Senate, Luis González Macchi, from Argaña’s faction of the Colorado Party, was appointed president.
In the meantime, Oviedo escaped to Argentina and then Brazil. In December 2001, the Brazilian government turned down an extradition request from the Paraguayan courts.
The head of Oviedo’s followers in the lower house, Deputy Gustavo Mussi, told IPS that if the former general is acquitted, ”he will be the next president of Paraguay, without a doubt.”
Mussi, of the National Union of Ethical Citizens (UNACE) party, said the situation has changed ”since the composition of the Supreme Court was renovated.”
”Oviedo is coming back to turn himself in, to allow the courts to decide what he should do,” he added.
MURDERED TWICE OVER?
Meanwhile, new versions about Argaña’s death have begun to circulate. The Brazilian magazine Istoé published interviews with his chauffeur and secretary, Raúl Barrios and Luis Recansens, who said the vice-president was already dead when the group of gunmen opened fire on his car.
According to the new testimony, Argaña died in the early hours of the morning of Mar. 23, 1999 in the apartment of his mistress.
Recansens said he and a bodyguard took the corpse to the Argaña residence, where family members and political leaders from the Argaña faction of the ruling party – including one of the vice-president’s sons, Nelson Argaña, now a senator, and Duarte, today’s president – reportedly gathered.
Recansens told Istoé that Nelson Argaña ordered him and the bodyguard to wait in an office, and that they later heard two shots, which apparently came from the bedroom where the vice-president’s body had been placed.
Recansens and Barrios implied that the Argaña family and other political leaders tried to make the vice-president’s death look like an assassination in order to save the family from shame over his infidelity, while at the same time getting rid of his main political rival, Oviedo.
”They are saying that nine sons and daughters, 40 grandchildren, 25 doctors, 10 prosecutors and 10 judges agreed to a plan to kill a corpse,” Senator Argaña, who served as defence minister in the González Macchi administration (1999-2003), told IPS.
”There are many things we can discuss, but it makes no sense to talk about this. It’s simply outrageous,” he added.
Five people were sentenced as the ”material authors” of the assassination, while Oviedo and then senator Víctor Galeano were charged with orchestrating the crime. Galeano, also a fugitive from justice, is living in Uruguay.
”According to Paraguay’s legislation, a case cannot go to the plenary phase (of trial) as long as the accused is on the run, so we are praying Oviedo will keep his promise and come back,” said Argaña.
The senator refuted statements by one of the men convicted of the murder, Luis Alberto Rojas, who accused him of paying one of the other convicts to plead guilty.
Barrios, the former chauffeur, who miraculously survived the attack, accused Attorney-General Oscar Latorre, a former lawyer for the Argaña family, of pressuring him in 1999 to lie about Argaña’s death and to positively identify four suspects arrested by the police as the perpetrators of the attack.
The former chauffeur ”is a fraud,” Latorre said in an interview with IPS. ”He is lying when he says I pressured him, because when he testified for the first time, I wasn’t the Argaña family’s lawyer yet.”
”This is part of a simple-minded plan that doesn’t stand up to the slightest analysis. Argaña was killed in a cowardly manner, and the murderers were fully identified. They (the Oviedo faction) are resorting to all kinds of tricks and maneuvers to change the story,” he added.
Latorre said he did not have ”the slightest doubt” that the whole thing was a plan by Oviedo to discredit the Duarte administration and pave the way for the former general’s return to Paraguay.
Barrios’ testimony emerged just when members of the opposition in Congress are demanding that Latorre be impeached on corruption charges.
Wasmosy also told IPS that the rumours about Argaña’s death came from witnesses paid by Oviedo.
”They have all been paid,” said the former president. ”And Oviedo should be asked where he gets all of his money to move around,” he added, alluding to ties to the drug trade.
GROWING CLAMOUR FOR FULL INVESTIGATION
Benjamín Riveros, the lawyer representing Rojas, one of the men convicted of the murder, commented to IPS that ”we are studying whether to repeat the request for assistance from investigators” from the FBI (the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation), Britain’s Scotland Yard, or Israel’s Mossad.
The lawyer plans to file a request with the appeals court for a reopening of the case, because of the emergence of new evidence (the statements from Recansens and Barrios).
Human rights activist Martín Almada, winner of the Right Livelihood Award 2002 (the ‘Alternative’ Nobel Prize), said Oviedo’s return to Paraguay could lead to a reopening of the investigation into Argaña’s death, which would be ”good for democracy.”
”There are many things that don’t jibe,” he said in an interview with IPS. ”It is strange that Argaña’s relatives…did nothing to clarify the murder. I believe that for the health of democracy, a complete investigation should be carried out. I’m in favour of exhuming the body.”
Galeano, meanwhile, the former senator now living in Uruguay, remarked to IPS that he also plans to return to Paraguay this month to present himself in court, and said the accusation against him is ”totally absurd.”
”What we least needed was Argaña’s death. I had great esteem for him,” he said.
Galeano said he fled to Uruguay to escape ”the brutal persecution” to which pro-Oviedo legislators fell victim. He said some of them were ”tortured” by the security forces, including the current head of UNACE, Enrique González Quintana.
”This return, which will be public, not clandestine, will mark the start of Oviedo’s reinsertion into Paraguayan politics,” he said.
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