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Analysis of the crime scene revealed that the farm had been used as a guerrilla
training camp. Other than the military-grade weapons and munitions, police found
uniforms, radios, bulletproof vests, satellite telephones, and mobile phones.
The criminal insurgency within Paraguay, however, has much more than a
guerrilla and revolutionary-style agenda.
Paraguay is a major producer of illicit cannabis, most or all of which is consumed
in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. As well, it is a key transshipment country for
Andean cocaine headed for Brazil, other Southern Cone markets, and Europe, this
thanks to weak border controls and extensive corruption. All of which is
exacerbated by money-laundering activities, especially in the Tri-Border area, due
to weak anti-money-laundering laws and poor enforcement.
These unique challenges to police and the military, who are faced with guerrilla
and terrorist-like insurgents, as well as traditional and transnational organized
criminals and gangs, quickly define any inability or weakness by the state to
interdict and protect life and property.
The border area city of Pedro Juan Caballero is 600 kilometers north of Asuncion,
near Ponta Pora, one of the major urban centers in the Brazilian state of Mato
Grosso do Sul. The border there stretches some 600 kilometers, from east to west,
without any significant policing, customs or military controls. Luis Rojas, director
of the state National Anti-Drug Secretariat, reported that there are more than 100
drug gangs, made up of Paraguayans and Brazilians, dedicated to the illegal
trafficking of marijuana produced in Paraguay and the cocaine that reaches from
Bolivia, Peru and Colombia.
There have been tensions between police and the Paraguayan military as to their
separate and coordinated roles in interdiction, as well as concerns as to the
available resources and specialized training that is lacking and much needed.
Counter-insurgency training, criminal/death investigations, crime scene
processing, intelligence analysis and informant recruitment, as well as counterintelligence to fight corruption, are urgently needed, among other tactical and
covert strategies. The military must be the primary enforcers against the EPP.
Paraguays problems have been exacerbated in the past by Venezuelas late
president Hugo Chavez interfering in national politics. On August 3, 2012 the
president of the Paraguayan Congress, Jorge Oviedo, accused a brother of Chavez