Former Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo was ousted from power Friday, after an impeachment trial found him guilty of mishandling a deadly clash between land reform protesters and police in the north of the country. Vice President Federico Franco was quickly sworn in as president, with Lugo calling the entire process a “parliamentary coup.”
Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, told Trend Lines, “This is not a coup in the traditional sense, because obviously they did not pull out the armed forces, and they at least stayed within the definition of the law.” But, Isacson added, “the definition of a coup is becoming more and more elastic in Latin America.”
Traditional elites who want to remain in power realize that they cannot use the same strategies that worked during the Cold War, Isacson said, such as “ignoring the law completely, pulling out the armed forces and using violence or the threat of violence to stamp out dissent.”