Andres Rodriguez

OF THE countries of Latin America none has had a more melancholy history than Paraguay. For nearly 180 years from 1811, when the country became independent from Spain, it had a succession of dictators, some bad, some very bad. One allowed no newspapers or schools. Another confiscated half the country. When Alfredo Stroessner was overthrown in 1989 it was assumed that Andres Rodriguez, the general who organised the coup against his old master, would be a dictator too. To many people's astonishment, in Paraguay and abroad, he freed political prisoners, ended the ban on opposition political parties, lifted newspaper censorship, reached an accord with his critics in the Roman Catholic church, and successfully stood for president in what was acclaimed as the cleanest dirty election in the country's history. What Mr Rodriguez started eight years ago is growing, albeit slowly, into a stable democracy.