Horacio Cartes, a millionaire cigarette and soft drink magnate won Paraguay's presidential election. Cartes touted a pro-business agenda. He also compared gay people to monkeys and threatened to shoot his son’s balls off if he discovered his son was gay.
One of the country's richest men and a member of the "tiny elite that controls just about everything in Paraguay. About 1 percent of the population controls 77 percent of the arable land.
Cartes has been linked to drug running and money laundering by his critics, but he has never been charged with those crimes and denies any wrongdoing. In the 1990s he spent time in jail on suspicion of foreign-exchange fraud (he was never convicted). In 2000 a plane loaded with cocaine and marijuana was found on land he owns. A cable published in 2011 by Wikileaks suggested that America's government suspected him of money-laundering and involvement in drug-trafficking . Brazil's Congress has accused him and other Paraguayan cigarette manufacturers of supplying their country's vast black market: Paraguay produces 45 billion cigarettes a year, nearly ten times what it consumes and exports legally.
In Asunción, the capital, the first of the televised debates between the presidential candidates was twice interrupted by power cuts—even though Paraguay is the world's biggest producer of hydropower.
Paraguay's poverty runs near 40 percent and per-capita gross domestic product was just $5,413 in 2011, the second-lowest in South America behind only Bolivia. Taxation is highly regressive, with four-fifths falling on consumption. The previous government managed to raise income tax to 10% for incomes above 120 times the minimum wage! Hardly crippling!
One of the country's richest men and a member of the "tiny elite that controls just about everything in Paraguay. About 1 percent of the population controls 77 percent of the arable land.
Cartes has been linked to drug running and money laundering by his critics, but he has never been charged with those crimes and denies any wrongdoing. In the 1990s he spent time in jail on suspicion of foreign-exchange fraud (he was never convicted). In 2000 a plane loaded with cocaine and marijuana was found on land he owns. A cable published in 2011 by Wikileaks suggested that America's government suspected him of money-laundering and involvement in drug-trafficking . Brazil's Congress has accused him and other Paraguayan cigarette manufacturers of supplying their country's vast black market: Paraguay produces 45 billion cigarettes a year, nearly ten times what it consumes and exports legally.
In Asunción, the capital, the first of the televised debates between the presidential candidates was twice interrupted by power cuts—even though Paraguay is the world's biggest producer of hydropower.
Paraguay's poverty runs near 40 percent and per-capita gross domestic product was just $5,413 in 2011, the second-lowest in South America behind only Bolivia. Taxation is highly regressive, with four-fifths falling on consumption. The previous government managed to raise income tax to 10% for incomes above 120 times the minimum wage! Hardly crippling!
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