Óscar Denis, the former vice president of Paraguay who has been kidnapped for 600 days by the Marxist group EPP

“The government’s declaration of victory is a sign of its defeat against the EPP, 600 days after the kidnapping of our father Oscar Denis His absence hurts us, even more than in those early days, because today we can clearly see that those responsible for his freedom, for our security, neither fulfill nor plan to guarantee that right.”

With those words, Beatriz Denis, marked on Monday the 600 days of captivity of her father, former Vice President of Paraguay Óscar Denis, by the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP).

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Óscar Denis, who held the Vice Presidency between 2012 and 2013, during the Federico Franco administration, was kidnapped in september 2020 on the outskirts of his ranch located near Concepción, the department in northeastern Paraguay, bordering Brazil.

As BBC correspondent Verónica Smink explained, Concepción is “the epicenter where the EPP operates, a paramilitary organization with a Marxist ideology, which fights for agrarian reform and finances itself mainly through kidnapping for ransom and the illegal sale of marijuana, that occurs in the area.

What is PPE

Until the kidnapping of the former vice president, the blow with the greatest impact attributed to the leaders of this group was that of Cecilia Cubas, daughter of former Paraguayan president Raúl Cubas (1998-1999), who was found dead five months after being held, in 2004.

At that time, the EPP was not yet called that, but was the armed wing of the Partido Patria Libre (PPL), a small far-left political force that emerged in the 1990s.

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This cell was dissolved after being accused of the kidnapping and death of Cubas, 31, but the group resurfaced in 2008 with the kidnapping of rancher Luis Lindstron, who was released two months later after paying a ransom.

Paraguayan President Mario Abdo, pictured here with FTC members in the attacked camp, announced that the operation had been “successful in every way.” (@MARITOABDO/TWITTER).

Although it began with less than 30 members, successive Paraguayan governments failed to eradicate the Marxist group, which is attributed some 70 deaths, including civilians, police and military.

Analysts consulted by the BBC indicated that the low number of troops, their conversion from an urban guerrilla to a group that operates in rural areas and the fact that they do not carry out a permanent military life -but instead alternate it with rural work- has hindered its dismantling as an organization.

For this reason, the Paraguayan government celebrated when on September 2, 2020, a group camp was discovered in the town of Yby Yaú, where the authorities found money, weapons, and electronic devices such as cell phones, laptops, cameras and film cameras.

A few weeks later, Denis was kidnapped, in what was considered a reprisal by the group for the military operation in his Yby Yaú camp.

questions to the government

Denis’s family asked the government to do more for his release and questioned the official statements that speak of the defeat of this Marxist group.

“We repudiate that the government is boasting of a strategic victory against the terrorist group that has our father in its clutches and an entire people in distress,” said Beatriz Denis, daughter of the former vice president.

In April of this year, Luis Apesteguia, spokesman for the Joint Task Force (FTC) created in 2013 to combat the Marxist group, had reported that the EPP was “strategically defeated”, since it could not recruit more followers and had had to seek refuge in indigenous communities.

However, the daughter of the former vice president said that kidnappings continuethat there are people who are still forced to pay “the revolutionary tax” and that there is no news of his father.

Denis’s family indicated that they no longer meet with FTC representatives. (GETTY IMAGES).

After these statements, Apesteguia replied: “We know the pain of the family. We know that everything we do or say, as long as they do not have their father back, will not be enough. We understand that pain perfectly, but we do not share the expressions they gave.

Among the new criminal acts that Beatriz Denis referred to is the kidnapping of three people in March of this year, two of whom they turned up dead.

The third is Carlos González, a retired teacher who was released with a message from the group in which he offers a information exchange about former vice president and police officer Edelio Morínigo, kidnapped in 2014, in exchange for information about Carmen Elizabeth Oviedo Villalba, the daughter of two of its leaders.

The teenager, known by the nickname Lichita, disappeared on November 30, 2020 and is the daughter of Alcides Oviedo and Carmen Villalba, currently in prison on charges of kidnapping and attempted murder.

The Marxist group believes that the Paraguayan state is behind this disappearance.

The family of Óscar Denis has expressed its agreement with an exchange of information of this nature that leads to knowing more about the whereabouts of his father.

Source: Elcomercio