Paraguay's justice system is like the snake that only bites the barefoot, in the metaphor of Salvadoran bishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, murdered by the dictatorship and canonized by Pope Francis. While minor offenses are punished severely, people with power receive lenient treatment, which weakens democracy and the rule of law.
The Deputy Minister of Criminal Policy at the Ministry of Justice, Rubén Maciel, acknowledges that there is a “penal selectivity” – a selection that makes certain people more vulnerable to criminalization. He questions why those sentenced in the first instance to five years or more can obtain alternative measures, while defendants facing the same expected sentence suffer pretrial detention throughout the process.
Commissioner Óscar Ayala Amarilla, of the Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture (MNP), points out that the criminal procedural system makes alternative measures unfeasible for those who cannot provide real guarantees, generating “absolutely unequal treatment.” According to the MNP, 60% of the male prison population and 47% of the female prison population are being processed without conviction. The institution also warns of an increase in tuberculosis, syphilis, and HIV among inmates – one in five prisoners in Paraguay has tuberculosis, worsened by overcrowding.
In contrast, businesswoman Dalia López, a fugitive for six years, spent less than a month in a cell with all amenities and obtained house arrest with an electronic ankle bracelet. She is suspected of providing false documentation to former soccer player Ronaldinho Gaúcho and his brother Roberto, an episode that became a streaming series. While the world soccer idol was held for more than a month in the Agrupación Especializada, the alleged supplier of the documents serves her sentence at home.
Other cases illustrate the disparity: Anadelia Acosta Armoa, a former employee of the Chamber of Deputies, accused of embezzlement and fraud against two humble families from Caaguazú, avoided prison by posting bail. The former governor of Central, Hugo Javier González, sentenced to ten years for embezzling G. 5,105 million, is free. Former Colorado deputy Miguel Cuevas, sentenced to five years for illicit enrichment since 2023, is also not in prison. Óscar Ñoño Núñez, former governor of Presidente Hayes and brother of Senate President Basilio Núñez, sentenced to eleven years for losses of G. 52,500 million, serves house arrest.
These examples reveal a system that grants house arrest to those who defrauded the people but keeps incarcerated, in conditions of overcrowding and risk, 60% of prisoners without conviction. For critics, this penal selectivity undermines democracy itself.