Horacio Cartes
Horacio Manuel Cartes Jara is a Paraguayan politician and businessman who is serving as president of the Colorado Party since 2023, having previously served as president of Paraguay from 2013 to 2018.
Cartes owned about two dozen businesses in his Grupo Cartes conglomerate until he left the conglomerate in 2023, including tobacco, soft drinks, meat production, and banking. He was president of Club Libertad football club from 2001 until 2012, and president of the national team inside the Paraguayan Football Association during the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification. A 2021 affidavit made by Cartes showed that his net worth was $490 million, making him one of Paraguay's wealthiest people. Cartes's politics and influence led to the creation of a political movement known as Cartismo, of which he is the central figure, which has influenced the direction of the Colorado Party and Paraguayan politics at large.
Between 2022 and 2023, he was classified as "significantly corrupt" and as a result subsequently subjected to economic sanctions by the United States, which accuses him of involvement in transnational crime and terrorist organizations.
Business career
Cartes' father was the owner of a Cessna aircraft franchise holding company and the young Horacio studied aviation mechanics in the United States. At the age of 19, he started a currency exchange business which grew into the Banco Amambay. Over the following years, Cartes bought or helped establish 25 companies including Tabesa, the country's biggest cigarette manufacturer, and a major fruit juice bottling company.In 1986, Cartes spent 60 days in jail during a currency fraud investigation. He was accused of making millions of dollars by obtaining a central bank loan at a preferential exchange rate and then moving it through his money exchange business before buying farm equipment in the U.S. The case was eventually dropped.
In 1989, Cartes was again jailed on charges of currency fraud for seven months. He was eventually cleared by a court.
In 2000, the anti-drug police seized a plane carrying cocaine and marijuana on his ranch. He claimed that the plane had made an emergency landing, that he had no involvement with the drug trade and that he opposed the legalization of narcotics.
Cartes' name appears in the Offshore leaks files in connection with a Cook Islands financial entity linked to Cartes' Paraguayan bank Banco Amambay. A classified WikiLeaks cable from 2010 mentioned Cartes as the focus of a money laundering investigation by the DEA.
Early political career
Until 2008, Cartes was uninvolved in politics and was not registered as a voter. He joined the conservative Colorado Party in 2009 and said he wanted to counter the swing to the left in Latin American politics. He became known as an efficient politician uncompromised by his party's past support of the military dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled until 1989.In regards to allegation of his connections to the drug trade, as well as being targeted by the DEA, he said during his presidential campaign: "I wouldn't want to be president if I had ties to drug traffickers. Go to the courts and check. There's nothing, not a single charge against me."
President of Paraguay
Election
Cartes was the Colorado candidate at the 2013 presidential election. The BBC suggested that his convincing points during his campaign were the promises to raise private capital to upgrade the country's infrastructure, to modernise its public enterprises, to attract international investments, and job creation. On 21 April 2013, he was elected President of Paraguay with 45.80% of the votes. When he took office on 15 August, it marked only the second time in the country's 202 years of independence that a ruling party peacefully transferred power to the opposition.In regards to the impeachment of Lugo and the negative reception the country was given in the aftermath by Latin American leaders, Cartes defended the legality of the impeachment and said that Paraguay should not withdraw from Mercosur, pointing to the economic benefits of the common market and freedom of trade.
He was sworn in on August 15, 2013, and used his inaugural address to declare a war on poverty in Paraguay. His inauguration was attended by fellow conservative South American, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, as well as Argentina's Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Peru's Ollanta Humala, Brazil's Dilma Rousseff, Uruguay's José Mujica and Taiwan's Ma Ying-jeou.
Cabinet
Cartes announced his cabinet in August 2013 upon being sworn in. He selected mainly technocratic candidates for the positions.| Portfolio | Minister | Term | - | |
| Vice President | Juan Afara | - | ||
| Minister of Finance | Germán Rojas | August 2013 – January 2015 | - | |
| Minister of Finance | Santiago Peña | January 2015 – June 2017 | - | |
| Minister of Finance | Lea Giménez | June 2017 – August 2018 | - | |
| Minister of Foreign Relations | Eladio Loizaga | - | ||
| Minister of National Defense | Gen. Bernardino Soto Estigarribia | August 2013 – November 2015 | - | |
| Minister of National Defense | Diógenes Martínez | November 2015 – | - | |
| Minister of the Interior | Francisco de Vargas | August 2013 – November 2016 | - | |
| Minister of the Interior | Tadeo Rojas | November 2016 – April 2017 | - | |
| Minister of the Interior | Lorenzo Darío Lezcano | April 2017 – | mainly as a consequence of the violent repression of protesters by the police on 31 March 2017. | - |
| Minister of Industry and Commerce | Gustavo Leite | - | ||
| Minister of Agriculture and Livestock | Jorge Gattini | - | ||
| Minister of Public Works and Communications | Ramón Jiménez Gaona | a former Olympic athlete | - | |
| Minister of Housing and Habitat | Soledad Núñez | October 2014 – 2018 | ||
| Minister of Health and Social Welfare | Dr. Antonio Barrios | Cartes' personal physician | - | |
| Minister of Education and Science | Marta Lafuente | August 2013 – May 2016 | Lafuente resigned in May 2016, | - |
| Minister of Education and Science | Enrique Riera Escudero | May 2016 – | - | |
| Minister of Justice | Sheila Abed | August 2013 – January 2016 | - | |
| Minister of Justice | Carla Bacigalupo | January 2016 – July 2016 | - | |
| Minister of Justice | Ever Martínez | July 2016 – | - | |
| Minister of Labor, Employment, and Social Security | Guillermo Sosa | - | ||
| Minister of Women | Ana María Baiardi | - | ||
| Sports Secretary | Víctor Pecci | - |
Education
In 2015, massive student protests occurred in Paraguay. The demand of students was a better quality of education, demanding an increase in the education budget to reach 7% of the national GDP as requested by UNESCO; at the time education spending represented 3.9% of GDP and was one of the lowest in the region.Foreign relations
On May 21, 2018, the Paraguayan embassy moved to Jerusalem, becoming the third country in the world to recognize the city as the diplomatic capital of Israel. However, Cartes's successor Mario Abdo Benítez reversed the decision on September 5, 2018.Promotion of regulatory reforms
During his term, the executive branch promoted the creation of a Superintendency of Retirement and Pensions.In September 2014, Cartes appointed Benigno López as head of the , in April 2017, Guillermo Sosa as Minister of Labor, and in June 2017, Lea Giménez as Minister of Finance.
In July 2017, Guillermo Sosa stated that this position would ensure the safekeeping of the funds, protecting them from possible “cases of fraud, such as what happened with the funds of the Pension Fund.”
In September 2017, Benigno López insisted that a regulator like the Superintendency was necessary to safeguard investments, citing, for example, the losses of the Itaipu Pension and Retirement Fund that occurred when no such body existed.
Benigno López, in 2011, when he was Director of the Central Bank of Paraguay, had already indicated that the Cajubi financial scandal was similar to the emblematic case of the Paraguayan banks Union and Oriental that had erupted a decade earlier during the administration of President Luis Angel González Macchi.
In May 2018, the Minister of Finance, Lea Giménez; the Minister of Labor, Guillermo Sosa; the President of the Central Bank of Paraguay, Carlos Fernández Valdovinos; and the head of the Social Security Institute, Benigno López, held a press conference explaining the urgency and necessity of having a Superintendency of Pensions and Retirement.
In August 2018, Benigno López, accompanied by Lea Giménez, met with representatives of the Senate, stating that the Superintendency was necessary to prevent further scams like the Cajubi case.