One Secret to a Latin American Party’s Dominance: Buying Votes

The Espinillo Indigenous neighborhood is 13 miles from the closest polling station — and nobody within the village has a automotive.

So two weeks in the past, on the eve of Paraguay’s election, Miguel Paredes, a retired ambulance driver turned native politician, loaded the Indigenous households onto a bus and introduced them to the facet of a freeway, a brief stroll from the polls. “We want to look after them,” mentioned Mr. Paredes, 65, standing watch with six younger males he referred to as colleagues.

Then, after darkish, Mr. Paredes and his colleagues gathered among the Indigenous individuals and took down their identification numbers. Mr. Paredes advised them they have been to vote for the Colorado Party — the dominant, right-wing political pressure in Paraguay — and to verify their fellow neighborhood members did so, too. The younger males then walked the Indigenous individuals by a simulation of Paraguay’s voting machines on a cellphone, guiding them to vote for Colorado candidates.

With New York Times journalists inside earshot, Milner Ruffinelli, one of many younger males, slipped into the Indigenous language, Guaraní. “That money that was promised to you, that’s all there, too, and Mr. Miguel Paredes is going to see how to get it to you,” he mentioned. “We can’t give you anything here. You know why.”

Democracy is being examined throughout the planet. In some nations, leaders have attacked democratic establishments, together with within the United States, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico, whereas elsewhere they’ve upended the democratic course of altogether, as in Russia, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

At the identical time, web disinformation has fed swirling claims of hacked voting machines, lifeless voters and stolen ballots, undercutting religion in clear elections.

But in many countries, a much less seen, however simply as pervasive risk continues to afflict free and honest elections: shopping for votes.

Political events in Mexico have handed out present playing cards, groceries and even washing machines. Election observers mentioned final 12 months’s vote within the Philippines was tormented by “blatant vote buying.” In February, a politician in Nigeria was caught with $500,000 and a listing of potential recipients the day earlier than nationwide elections.

Last month in Paraguay, a nation of seven.4 million within the heart of South America, The Times discovered a particular sort of vote-buying, developed over a long time, on blatant show: Political operatives rounded up Indigenous individuals in Paraguay’s distant north and tried to manage or buy their votes.

On the weekend of nationwide elections, The Times witnessed representatives of the ruling Colorado Party trying to buy the votes of Indigenous individuals, and greater than a dozen Indigenous individuals mentioned in interviews that they’d accepted cash from the occasion simply earlier than voting.

In one case, a Colorado candidate for governor personally handed out 200,000 guaraníes, or almost $30 every, to greater than 100 Indigenous voters outdoors a polling station within the riverside city of Fuerte Olimpo, in response to interviews with 5 Indigenous individuals who took the cash. That quantity is equal to a number of weeks’ earnings for Paraguay’s poorest.

Nestor Rodríguez, chief of the Tomáraho Indigenous neighborhood that was given the cash, mentioned it was normal. “It’s just to buy clothes and things for your family,” he mentioned. He voted for that Colorado candidate, Arturo Méndez, due to guarantees of jobs and a brand new highway, he mentioned.

Mr. Méndez handily received the election. In an interview, he admitted to giving the Indigenous individuals money however mentioned it was solely as a result of they wanted meals and garments, and the federal government had forgotten them. “Yes, we help them. But not to induce their vote,” he mentioned. “It would be heartless not to.”

Paying individuals to vote a sure means is prohibited in Paraguay. Many funds are framed as monetary help, comparable to cash for lunch on Election Day.

In the bordering province of Concepción, the place there are 3,000 Indigenous residents, the Colorado candidate received the governorship by simply 28 votes. The shedding candidate is difficult the outcomes, claiming irregularities within the vote depend.

Vote shopping for can swing native elections, however hardly ever nationwide ones, mentioned Ryan Carlin, a Georgia State University professor who has studied the difficulty. Yet it at all times undermines democracy by “short circuiting the mechanisms of representation and accountability,” he mentioned. “If a vote is taken for granted and given in exchange for something else, there’s no policy promise on the other end.”

Many of Paraguay’s roughly 120,000 Indigenous individuals began integrating into trendy society just some a long time in the past, and plenty of political events — not simply the Colorado — have since sought to manage their votes.

In the times main as much as nationwide elections, occasion employees fan out throughout the Chaco, an unlimited, arid area that encompasses Paraguay’s northwestern half, the place almost half of the Indigenous stay.

At distant communities, the employees load Indigenous individuals onto buses, take them to fenced-in websites and ply them with meat and beer till the vote, in response to election observers, native activists and Indigenous individuals who have skilled it. The objective is to manage a neighborhood earlier than a rival occasion can.

On Election Day, occasion employees both pay the Indigenous individuals for his or her identification playing cards — thus proscribing them from voting — or bus them to the polls and hand them money.

The follow is so entrenched, it has developed its personal vocabulary: “herding” the Indigenous voters and placing them in “corrals.”

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

European Union election observers mentioned they witnessed such “corrals” in Paraguay’s 2013 and 2018 elections, and noticed a number of circumstances of vote shopping for within the April 30 election. Parties search to buy the votes of many Paraguayans, not simply the Indigenous, the observers mentioned.

The follow is a part of the strong political machine that has strengthened the Colorado Party’s grip on Paraguay, which it has managed for 71 of the previous 76 years, together with 4 a long time of army dictatorship.

The Colorado presidential candidate, Santiago Peña, received by 460,000 votes, with 43 p.c of the overall. (Paraguay has fewer than 80,000 Indigenous adults, in response to estimates.) Mr. Peña is the political protégé of Horacio Cartes, a former president and the present occasion chairman, who was sanctioned this 12 months by the U.S. authorities over accusations that he had bribed his option to energy.

The second- and third-place candidates have recommended that Mr. Peña’s victory was rigged, however haven’t introduced clear proof. The third-place candidate, whose supporters have blocked highways in protest, has been jailed on accusations of trying to impede elections.

In an interview earlier than the election, Mr. Peña mentioned that if vote shopping for occurs, it could not swing races.

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

Still, amongst Paraguayans, vote shopping for is an open secret. “It’s almost like without it, it’s not an election,” mentioned the Rev. José Arias, a Catholic priest who makes use of his sermons to discourage his Indigenous flock from promoting its votes. “People agree in theory,” he mentioned. “It’s just that many who agree also accept” the bribes.

At the freeway encampment, Mr. Paredes and Mr. Ruffinelli mentioned they weren’t handing out bribes. The Colorado Party paid for the bus, in addition to hen, noodles and cooking oil they gave to the neighborhood, they mentioned. But they have been there as a result of they’d constructed relationships over time, they mentioned, and have been pushing Colorado candidates as a result of they have been one of the best for the neighborhood.

Everyone was free to vote how they wished, Mr. Ruffinelli mentioned, however he anticipated them to vote Colorado.

“They already promised,” Mr. Ruffinelli mentioned. He rattled off statistics: The Indigenous accounted for 86 p.c of the 5,822 registered voters within the native voting precinct. He mentioned he could be analyzing the outcomes to attempt to verify whether or not “this community betrayed us.”

Some within the Enxet Sur neighborhood mentioned they’d settle for cash — however nonetheless vote towards the Colorados. “If the Colorados come with an offer, we’ll grab it, but we know how we’re going to vote: for change,” mentioned Fermin Chilavert, 61, one of many neighborhood’s elders.

Others had already taken the cash and have been planning to vote as requested, together with 10 neighborhood members who agreed to behave as “political operators” for the occasion on Election Day.

In a late-night assembly, Mr. Paredes and Mr. Ruffinelli defined to the operators that they have been to make sure different Indigenous individuals voted Colorado, together with by coming into polling cubicles with them. (Election observers mentioned political events often abuse legal guidelines permitting disabled individuals to be accompanied to the voting sales space.)

“You are going to enter with them, you are going to teach them and you are going to tell them where to click,” Mr. Paredes mentioned to the Indigenous individuals, many staring nervously on the floor.

The subsequent morning, Election Day, a truck cease close to the polling station was crammed with buses. They had ferried a whole lot of Indigenous individuals to vote, and every was adorned with decals of a political occasion, most for the Colorados.

On one bus with Colorado indicators, the Indigenous passengers mentioned they have been every given 100,000 to 150,000 guaraníes, or $14 to $21, and had voted Colorado.

The man working the bus, Catalino Escobar, mentioned the voters got a stipend to eat. (A sandwich and a Coca-Cola on the fuel station price $2.)

“I don’t know who the candidate is, to tell you the truth,” mentioned Mary Fernanda, 51, who mentioned she accepted 100,000 guaraníes to assist feed her kids. “I’m only voting out of necessity.”

When the votes have been counted, the Colorado Party once more dominated elections throughout Paraguay, retaining the presidency and strengthening its management of Congress.

The 19 Indigenous individuals who ran for nationwide or state seats all misplaced. Paraguay has by no means elected anybody who identifies as Indigenous to nationwide workplace.