On the threshold:

...Corruption and contraband (the Washington Post reported on November 11, 1987 that nearly half of the 85,000 cars in Paraguay had been stolen from Brazilian motorists) have been rife throughout the Stroessner years, particularly during the boom years one decade ago...

...Now in its final stages, the Dialogue brought together social and political sectors to engage in discussions about Paraguay's future...

...In the short term, the possibilities for democratization are not very great, because the social organizations and the opposition political parties are just barely consolidating themselves," he told me...

...The initiative was sharply attacked by the government, which has refused to participate...

...As one woman reminded me, "Five years ago, no one here would even whisper the word, 'dictator.'" This gradual lessening of fear, combined with divisions in the government's ruling party, a growing consolidation of social organizations, and the shift toward popularly elected governments elsewhere in Latin America, spell hope for Paraguay...

...In a nation where street demonstrations are met with clubs and sticks, the participation of thousands of people in these church-organized marches signified a marked diminishing of fear...

...The president of the Paraguayan bishops' conference, Archbishop Ismael Rolon, called the Dialogue a "demonstration that where there is a plurality of opinion there can also be unity...

...The radio, increasingly bold since last year's closure of the independent and combative Radio Nanduti, has been under pressure to limit the scope of its coverage...

...While Stroessner is not expected to lose his eighth five-year term, some analysts predict he will claim closer to 80 percent of the vote this time around...

...Both the church and the state are struggling to claim the pope's visit as their own...

...All television is completely controlled by the government, and since the 1984 closure of Paraguay's foremost daily, ABC Color, Paraguay has had no opposition daily...

...Those who remain, aptly known as the "rented opposition," share the remaining 9 percent...

...With General Stroessner consistently claiming 91 percent of the votes, the opposition parties interested in challenging him have long since withdrawn from electoral politics...

...In this context, the Catholic church's radio station, Radio Caritas, and the Paraguayan bishops' conference newspaper, Sendero...

...Prospects for democracy there look better than they have in decades...

...Stroessner's relentless grip on the press contributes to surface perceptions that it is business as usual...

...In response, the church excommunicated thirty-seven militants implicated in the affair and called for a nationwide campaign against the government-inspired violence...

...Stroessner's efforts to court foreign investors at the expense of domestic producers further aggravated relations with Paraguayan industrialists...

...The regime is decaying from within, however, and that may accelerate the change...

...Democracy in Paraguay is virtually unknown...

...While the government bills the trip as a state visit, the bishops affirm that the visit is a pastoral mission...

...REPORT FROM PARAGUAY ON THE THRESHOLD PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRACY At first glance, the winds of democracy swirling through South America appear to have come to a standstill in Paraguay...

...Juan Ramon Chaves, head of the tradicionalista sector and Colorado party president for the last twenty-five years, was one of the few who managed to penetrate the police barricade -just long enough to present an unsuccessful resolution to suspend the convention...

...The "mili-tantes" sector of Stroessner loyalists, supported by the police, forcibly prevented the "tradicionalistas" faction of the Colorado party from entering the convention hall...

...More than 75 percent of Paraguay's current population has lived only under the government of the ruling Colorado party...

...When over three hundred members of the tradicionalista sector of the Colorado party published a document in December entitled,"The Democratic Thesis: No More Stroessner," one of the signators, Felipe Melgarejo, was forced into hiding after police arrested his wife and threatened to kill her and their children...

...On a trip I took to Paraguay in December, Paraguayan Bishop Mario Melanio Medina commented that a process that has been put into place over a thirty-year period cannot be easily undone in three to five years...

...The tradicion-'alisias had invoked the wrath of Stroessner for hinting at the need to begin thinking about the future of the party once Stroessner is gone...

...That campaign included moments of silence during Sunday Masses, the tolling of church bells once a week, and silent processions throughout the country...

...Some analysts predict, however, that the church media will be given a relatively free hand until after Pope John Paul II visits Paraguay in May...

...Stroessner has responded to the dissent in his party, now divided into at least seven factions, with brute force, even against previous long-time allies...

...One such procession in October in Asuncion, called by Catholic lay organizations and supported by Archbishop Rolon, gathered an estimated 30,000 people, the largest protest march in thirty-four years of Stroessner's rule...

...Stroessner's former supporters in the business community who were trying to compete through legitimate channels found themselves pushed out of the market...

...The crisis came to a head last August, during the Colorado party convention to elect new party leadership...

...Virginia m. bouvier Virginia M. Bouvier is a senior associate with the Washington Office on Latin America, and has written previously for Commonweal on events in South America.vents in South America...

...The freshly purged Colorado party then unanimously approved the candidacy of General Alfredo Stroessner for the next presidential election, scheduled for this February 14...

...Beneath Stroessner's carefully crafted veneer of "peace and progress'' there has arisen an incipient movement to change the course of Paraguayan history...

...The deterioration of the regime also stems from the inevitable aging of the dictator himself...

...This is not the first time that church and state in Paraguay have not seen eye-to-eye...

...The completion of the Itaipu hydroelectric dam with Brazil, however, and a drop in world market prices for soya beans and cotton (Paraguay's major exports), left Stroessner with fewer goods to distribute to his cronies in the military and in the Colorado party - the comer-stones of his power base...

...Human rights and peasant groups, the laity, indigenous and women's groups, labor and politicians, all hope to present their perspectives to the pope on the state of the union...

...Their history riddled with coups, countercoups, and revolutions, Paraguayans harbor no illusions that change will come rapidly...

...are key sources of information...

...Police prevented another dissident Colorado sector, the Ethicos, from presenting a proposal calling for blank votes in the upcoming election...

...Since coming to power thirty-four years ago, President General Alfredo Stroessner has effectively squelched dissent through an elaborate system of pyragues (spies), patronage, corruption, and, when needed, heavy-handed repression...

...Yet, in Paraguay today there is a mood of cautious optimism...

...Drug trafficking, contraband, and large-scale corruption expanded to cover the decline in foreign exchange...

...Two years ago, relations chilled significantly when Paraguay's bishops spearheaded a National Dialogue...

...Late last year, church-state relations became even icier when government officials openly backed "extraofficial" gangs connected to the government's Colorado party which had violently raided a parish hall and beaten a priest and a number of political leaders...

...While the seventy-five-year-old patriarch grooms his son, Gustavo, as his successor, other sectors of the governing Colorado party jockey for power...

...El Pueblo, the weekly bulletin of Paraguay's only legal opposition political party (the Revolutionary Febrerista party), was shut down in 1987...

...In the rural areas, I was told, officials seldom even bother to count the ballots...

...There is a saying in Paraguay that Paraguayans vote for their leaders, but they do not elect them...