A secret behind the dominance of a Latin American party: buying votes

The Espinillo Indigenous community is 13 miles from the nearest polling station – and no one in the village has a car.

So two weeks ago, on the eve of elections in Paraguay, Miguel Paredes, a retired ambulance driver turned local politician, packed the indigenous families into a bus and took them to the side of a highway, a short walk from the polls. “We want to take care of them,” said Mr Paredes, 65, as he stood guard with six young men he called colleagues.

Then, after dark, Mr. Paredes and his colleagues gathered some indigenous people and wrote down their identification numbers. Mr. Paredes told them to vote for the Colorado Party – the dominant right-wing political force in Paraguay – and to ensure that their community members did too. The young men then led the indigenous people through a simulation of Paraguay’s voting machines on a phone, guiding them to vote for candidates from Colorado.

With New York Times journalists within earshot, Milner Ruffinelli, one of the young men, slipped into the native language, Guaraní. “That money you were promised is all there, and Mr. Miguel Paredes is going to see how he can get it to you,” he said. “We can’t give you anything here. You know why.”

Democracy is being tested all over the planet. In some countries, leaders have attacked democratic institutions, including in the United States, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico, while in others they have overthrown the democratic process altogether, such as in Russia, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

At the same time, disinformation on the internet has led to swirling claims of hacked voting machines, dead voters and stolen ballots, undermining belief in clean elections.

But in many countries, a less visible, but just as ubiquitous, threat continues to plague free and fair elections: vote buying.

Political parties in Mexico have handed out gift cards, groceries and even washing machines. Election observers said last year’s vote in the Philippines was plagued by “buy blatant votes.” In February, a politician in Nigeria was caught with $500,000 and a list of possible recipients the day before the national elections.

Last month, in Paraguay, a country of 7.4 million people in central South America, The Times found a high-profile form of vote-buying that had been developed over decades on blatant display: political agents rounded up indigenous peoples in remote northern Paraguay and tried to buy their votes.

On the weekend of the national election, The Times witnessed representatives of the ruling Colorado Party attempt to buy the vote of the Native people, and more than a dozen Native people said in interviews that they took money from the party just before voting. had adopted.

In one instance, a Colorado governor-designate personally handed out 200,000 guarantees, or nearly $30 each, to more than 100 native voters outside a polling station in the riverside town of Fuerte Olimpo, according to interviews with five native people who took the money . That amount is equivalent to a few weeks’ income for the poorest of Paraguay.

Nestor Rodríguez, head of the Tomáraho Indigenous Community who received the money, said it was standard. “It’s just to buy clothes and stuff for your family,” he said. He voted for that Colorado candidate, Arturo Méndez, because of the promise of jobs and a new path, he said.

Mr. Méndez handily won the election. In an interview, he admitted to giving money to the indigenous people, but said it was only because they needed food and clothing and the government had forgotten about them. “Yes, we help them. But not to provoke their vote,” he said. “It would be heartless not to.”

Paying people to vote a certain way is illegal in Paraguay. Many payments are for financial assistance, such as money for Election Day lunch.

In the neighboring province of Concepción, home to 3,000 indigenous residents, the candidate from Colorado won the governorship by just 28 votes. The losing candidate challenges the results, alleging irregularities in the vote count.

Vote buying can affect local elections, but rarely national elections, said Ryan Carlin, a Georgia State University professor who has studied the issue. Yet it always undermines democracy by “short-circuiting the mechanisms of representation and accountability,” he said. “If a vote is taken for granted and given in exchange for something else, there is no policy promise on the other side.”

Many of Paraguay’s approximately 120,000 indigenous people began to integrate into modern society only a few decades ago, and many political parties—not just the Colorado—have tried to control their votes ever since.

In the days leading up to the national election, party operatives fan out over the Chaco, a vast, arid region encompassing the northwestern half of Paraguay, home to nearly half of the indigenous population.

In remote communities, the workers load Indigenous people into buses, take them to fenced locations and shower them with meat and beer until the vote, according to election observers, local activists and Indigenous people who witnessed it. The goal is to take control of a community before a rival party can.

On election day, party operatives either pay indigenous people for their ID cards – which prevent them from voting – or take a bus to the polls and hand over cash.

The practice is so ingrained that it has developed its own vocabulary: “herding” the native voters and placing them in “corrals.”

“It’s like we’re animals that can be bought,” says Francisco Cáceres, 68, a member of the Qom Indigenous group.

European Union election observers said they witnessed such “corrals” in Paraguay’s 2013 and 2018 elections, and saw multiple instances of vote buying in the April 30 elections. Parties are trying to buy the votes of many Paraguayans, not just the indigenous people, the observers said.

The practice is part of the robust political machine that has strengthened the Colorado Party’s grip on Paraguay, which it has controlled for 71 of the past 76 years, including four decades of military dictatorship.

Colorado presidential candidate Santiago Pena won by 460,000 votes, with 43 percent of the total. (Paraguay is estimated to have fewer than 80,000 Indigenous adults.) Mr. Peña is the political protégé of Horacio Cartes, a former president and current party chairman, who was sanctioned by the US government this year over allegations that he made his way to power.

The second and third place candidates have suggested that Mr Peña’s victory was rigged, but have failed to provide clear evidence. The third-place candidate, whose supporters have blocked highways in protest, has been jailed on charges of attempting to obstruct elections.

In a pre-election interview, Mr Peña said if votes are bought it would not change the races.

“The vote-buying argument doesn’t really have much evidence,” he said. “It has never been possible to demonstrate a mass buying scheme. If 2.5 to 3 million people vote, how many votes should we buy?”

Yet vote buying among Paraguayans is an open secret. “It’s almost like without it, it’s not an election,” said Rev. José Arias, a Catholic priest who uses his sermons to dissuade his native flock from selling their votes. “People agree in theory,” he said. “It’s just that many who agree also accept” the bribe.

At the highway camp, Mr. Paredes and Mr. Ruffinelli said they did not hand out bribes. The Colorado Party paid for the bus, as well as chicken, noodles and cooking oil that they gave to the community, they said. But they were there because they built relationships over time, they said, and they pushed Colorado candidates because they were the best for the community.

Everyone was free to vote however they wanted, Mr. Ruffinelli said, but he expected them to vote Colorado.

“They already promised,” Mr. Ruffinelli said. He rattled off statistics: Indigenous people represented 86 percent of the 5,822 registered voters at the local polling station. He said he would analyze the results to try to determine if “this community has betrayed us”.

Some in the Enxet Sur community said they would accept money but still vote against the Colorados. “If the Colorados come up with an offer, we’ll take it, but we know how we’re going to vote: for change,” said Fermin Chilavert, 61, one of the community’s elders.

Others had already taken the money and planned to vote as requested, including 10 community members who agreed to act as “political operators” for the party on Election Day.

At a late night meeting, Mr. Paredes and Mr. Ruffinelli explained to the operators that they had to ensure that other Native peoples would vote for Colorado, including by entering the voting booths with them. (Election observers said political parties regularly violate laws allowing disabled people to be escorted to the polling booth.)

“You’re going to go in with them, you’re going to teach them and you’re going to tell them where to click,” Mr. Paredes told the natives, many staring nervously at the ground.

The next morning, Election Day, a truck stop near the polling station was full of buses. They had transported hundreds of Native people to vote, and each was decorated with decals of a political party, most of them for the Colorados.

On a bus with Colorado signs, the native passengers said they each got 100,000 to 150,000 guarantees, or $14 to $21, and voted for Colorado.

The man driving the bus, Catalino Escobar, said voters were fed an allowance. (A sandwich and a Coca-Cola at the gas station cost $2.)

“I don’t know who the candidate is, to tell you the truth,” said Mary Fernanda, 51, who said she accepted 100,000 guarantees to help feed her children. “I only vote out of necessity.”

When the votes were counted, the Colorado Party again dominated elections across Paraguay, retaining the presidency and strengthening its control over Congress.

The 19 Indigenous people who ran for national or state seats all lost. Paraguay has never elected anyone who identifies as indigenous to a national office.