In Paraguay's remote north guerrillas are still at large, armed and dangerous

Disir

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Across Latin America, the last guerrillas are leaving the jungle and laying down their weapons. Some have long since become respectable politicians: former rebel fighters have become presidents in Uruguay, Brazil and Nicaragua.

The hemisphere’s most powerful guerrilla group – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc – are engaged in tentative peace negotiations with the government, while the leaders of Peru’s once-feared Shining Path languish in jail.

But in the heart of South America, a relative latecomer to armed struggle is running rings around the authorities – provoking dark mutterings that the state itself is complicit in the group’s existence.

Just over a year ago, on 5 July, the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP) – a self-professed Marxist rebel group – kidnapped police officer Edelio Morínigo.

“The fourth of July, a Friday, was the last time my son came here. We never thought that the next day something so terrible was going to happen to us,” said Morínigo’s mother Obdulia Florenciano at her home in Arroyito, a poor rural area outside the town of Horqueta and a guerrilla stronghold.

Morínigo, then 24, disappeared while hunting in the forest with a group of friends. The last his family saw of him was a video in October, offering to exchange him for jailed EPP leaders.

...The idea that the EPP provides a convenient, controllable enemy is echoed by Olazar, the former secretary-general of the Movimiento Patria Libre (Free Fatherland Movement), whose armed wing split to form the nucleus of the EPP.

“Corruption is very strong within the security bodies, and it doesn’t suit them to finish this group off, because this would also end their economic support,” said Olazar at his home in Concepción.

He alleged that the FTC and police are also complicit in drug trafficking thought to be carried out by the EPP. In late June, the Chamber of Deputies created a commission to investigate corruption within the FTC.
In Paraguay's remote north guerrillas are still at large, armed and dangerous

And that would not surprise me in the least.
 

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