MENDOZA, Argentina (AP) ― The Mercosur trade bloc suspended Paraguay’s membership on Friday for having impeached and ousted its president but will not slap economic sanctions on the poor, landlocked country.
The South American group also announced that Venezuela will become a full member starting July 31, a move that will link the region’s most powerful agricultural and energy markets.
Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo was impeached by the country’s Congress a week ago in a fast-track trial triggered by a land eviction that killed 17 people in clashes between police and landless peasants.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez told other heads of state at a Mercosur summit Friday that the “democratic order was broken” in Paraguay because it carried out a two-hour trial where Lugo was not allowed a proper defense. It will be suspended from Mercosur until it holds presidential elections next year.
But Fernandez said Paraguay would not be slapped with economic sanctions because “they never hurt governments. They always hurt the people.”
Paraguay is among South America’s poorest nations and any economic sanction by the bloc would have been disastrous since half its trade is with fellow Mercosur founding members, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.
Mercosur barred Lugo’s replacement, former Vice President Federico Franco, from attending the summit. Franco says the transition of power in Paraguay was carried out according to the law.
Lugo said at first that he would attend the meeting in order to plead his case with regional leaders but later changed his mind. He then spoke out against retaliatory economic sanctions, which he said would only hurt ordinary Paraguayans.
The landlocked country is highly dependent on beef and soybean exports and is already suffering from a recent drought that parched soy fields and an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease last year that forced the slaughter of hundreds of cattle heads to prevent the spread of the contagious disease.
