Paraguay announced on Tuesday that he reminded his ambassador to Brazil a day after the Brazilian authorities admitted that their country’s intelligence agency had been spying on Paraguaya officials in 2022. The Paraguay government also said it would suspend negotiations with Brazil over the massive hydroelectric dam working with its more powerful neighbor.
Paraguay’s decision came after Brazil’s Foreign Ministry revealed that the administration of Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing predecessor of the current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, did spying against the small South American nation.
The government of Lula insisted that it stopped the oversight of Paraguay immediately after becoming aware of it without expanding or targeting the nature of the operation.
Brazilian news website UOL reported that the country’s intelligence agents infiltrated Paraguayan computer systems to obtain Intel about sensitive tariff negotiations associated with the Itaipu Dam on their shared border.
Paraguay said on Monday that it would stop talks that had been going on with Brazil for months about the cost of water power generation of the Itaipu Dam until Brazil could make clear “the intelligence action ordered against our country.”
The Paraguay Foreign Ministry said it was an investigation into what exactly happened between June 2022 and March 2023, when the spying operation took place under the then President Bolsonaro. Paraguaya authorities said they were unaware of such infiltration.
“It is a violation of international law, the interference in the internal affairs of one country in another,” Rubé Lezcano, Foreign Minister of Paraguay, told journalists. “We are under constant attack, and the ministry takes all necessary steps to defend our confidential information.”
Lezcano said the ministry is reminiscent of the Ambassador of Paraguay in Brazil and also called the Brazilian ambassador in Paraguay to deliver a formal explanation on the cyber-pipeline campaign.
The move does not represent a permanent split in diplomatic relations, as Brazil’s embassy will remain open in Paraguay.
But the disagreement does reflect a revival of historical tension between the neighbors dating from the invasion of Brazil in the country in the 1860s, which began a cruel war in which Paraguay lost a quarter of his territory and most of his male population.
The Itaipu Dam, with the ability to generate about 14,000 megawatts of electricity, has long been a sore topic in Paraguay. Many Paraguayane considers the original treaty – in the command of Paraguay to separate to Brazil, which part of the energy does not use it domestically, rather than selling to other countries – as an insult to the country’s sovereignty.
