Left Flank

Paraguay's president, Fernando Lugo, will become «the next leftist on the block» in the Americas. He admires more Chile's president, Michelle Bachelet, than Venezuela's, Hugo Chavez. He has several tasks facing him, all of which leftists should observe.

Mr Lugo has promised to improve health and education. The trickiest issue he faces is land, which remains the main source of wealth. Stroessner handed out vast tracts of state land to his cronies. Even by Latin American standards land ownership remains highly unequal. According to one guess, 1% of the population owns 77% of the farmland.

To complicate matters further, in recent decades Brazilians have bought up many smallholdings and turned them into vast soya farms, which have become the mainstay of the economy and of government revenues. Land invasions have sometimes been met with violence: in the past three years, a dozen peasant leaders have been murdered by gunmen hired by landowners. Mr Lugo says he will carry out an agrarian census to find out who owns what. He has also called for patience, noting that the constitution guarantees private property but also the right of all Paraguayans to a piece of land.

...Under Mr Lugo, Paraguay may open diplomatic relations with China, ending its current link with Taiwan.

But it is Mr Lugo’s relationship with Brazil that is likely to have the most impact on his presidency. The two countries share the Itaipu hydroelectric dam (still the world’s largest until China’s Three Gorges is completed). Paraguay uses less than a tenth of Itaipu’s electricity; under a treaty, it sells the rest of its half share of the power to its neighbour at a price which is well below spot prices in Brazil. Mr Lugo said that he wants to renegotiate the treaty, but he has recently sounded more conciliatory.

So much anticipation, so little hope...