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5 Populist Transparency I remember clearly the first time I was warned about hanging around with Jorge. I was meeting in Asunci—n with the director of an ngo about funding a crop diversification project that the map was shopping around to donors. The director was a well-known sociologist, and in the 1980s, she had been a vocal opponent of the Stroessner regime. She had even done an important study in the area where I now lived, and had met Jorge as a young leader. Campesinos spoke flatteringly of her as one of the few academics they’d met who was willing to get her trousers dirty. But while she spoke nostalgically about those days, her image of Vaquer’a was far from romantic, and she had clearly dropped the political edge that campesinos remembered from the Stroessner years. “Be careful with what they tell you,” she said. “People like Jorge are politicians, probably frustrated that things didn’t go his way during the transition. He wants to build up his following [grupo]. He sees everything through politics.” That picture of a man who couldn’t be trusted because of his desire for power, and of his devoted, if slightly suspicious flock, was supplemented by much more ominous warnings from less sympathetic quarters. I was told in Vaquer’a that Jorge was a known con artist with hidden mounds of wealth, and was irresponsible at the head of a mob. People cautioned me to watch myself with ese vivo (that live one). Later, when Populist Transparency 185 Jorge had been on television a few times, speaking Guaran’, a number of old friends who had been worried about me in the countryside now felt that their fears had been confirmed. At the very least, the story was that Jorge was a strong-arming blowhard who had duped his followers into supporting him, a caudillo opportunist who cowed his flock with rage and might at any moment move them to mass violence. Even the local ibr representative, who knew him quite well, honestly believed that Jorge was a hard drinker who lived lavishly on the backs of his supporters. And even campesinistas from Asunci—n who considered Jorge a friend and ally were fearful of Antonio, who they thought was liable to lose control at any moment. I will say this for the rumors: Jorge was a big man with a quick tongue who didn’t suffer fools easily. He and Antonio had a daily radio show in Vaquer’a, where they often invited people to talk about environmental and economic issues, but they just as often spent the hour excoriating their opponents. On stage, both were formidable orators who spoke loudly and commanded attention. And there were several occasions, most notably in Tekojoja after the evictions, when one of the brothers marched a crowd of chanting campesinos down the road in an attempt to intimidate those who had just burned down their houses. But, if anything, all of this struck me as quite a timid response to the pressures that they were under on a daily basis. They were, after all, reacting to the noxious fumigation of entire communities, constant intimidation, arson, arrest, theft of land from people who had nothing else, and even murder. Both Jorge and Antonio received constant death threats, delivered via friends and family members, or implied on the radio, and it was not uncommon for someone to show up at Jorge’s house with a gun tucked into his pants, shouting and acting erratic. During particularly tense periods, when Jorge was in Asunci—n, a group of friends would stay at his house to protect his family.1 Antonio had three times gone to jail on cooked-up charges, and once even had to wait as the police car he was in stopped by the mayor’s house so the officer could collect payment for the “fuel used” during the arrest. For Jorge’s part, a man in Tekojoja who worked as an informal real-estate agent for soy farmers accused him of attempted murder, claiming that Jorge had shown up at his house one night, in a drunken rage, and had shot him eleven times at point-blank range (miss­­­ ing every shot) before stumbling off into the darkness, in the process leaving his shoes by the man’s well. As a result of these charges, every two weeks both brothers had to spend one day and the equivalent of three days’ salary in...

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