Brazil-Paraguay Ties Strained Amid Spying Scandal Over Itaipu Dam, Hydropower

Itaipu extends for 5 miles across the Barana River between Paraguay and Brazil, and is one of the most powerful hydroelectric dams in the world. In 2016 alone, the bilateral facility, whose installed energy has produced enough energy to meet the demand for electricity in Paraguay for more than seven years. Itaipu is the most expensive individual being on the ground, according to Guinness World Records. It is also one of the most controversial areas-now the spying scandal center that provokes bitter contracting competitions.

Brazil and Paraguay built the joint dam for 50 years to defuse the border crisis. But the construction of ITAIPU was steeped in deep corruption, and the final cost escalated (including payment of subsequent debts) to more than $ 63 billion. Paraguayan has long complained that ITAPU of 1973, signed between two military dictatorships, is unfair. Miscellaneous, the dam is a joint venture, with the energy produced by the 50/50 division. However, for decades of decades of the smaller and less manufactured of Paraguay (6 million people), the treaty obligated to give up its surplus authority in Brazil (210 million) with ventilation rates.

Itaipu extends for 5 miles across the Barana River between Paraguay and Brazil, and is one of the most powerful hydroelectric dams in the world. In 2016 alone, the bilateral facility, whose installed energy has produced enough energy to meet the demand for electricity in Paraguay for more than seven years. Itaipu is the most expensive individual being on the ground, according to Guinness World Records. It is also one of the most controversial areas-now the spying scandal center that provokes bitter contracting competitions.

Brazil and Paraguay built the joint dam for 50 years to defuse the border crisis. But the construction of ITAIPU was steeped in deep corruption, and the final cost escalated (including payment of subsequent debts) to more than $ 63 billion. Paraguayan has long complained that ITAPU of 1973, signed between two military dictatorships, is unfair. Miscellaneous, the dam is a joint venture, with the energy produced by the 50/50 division. However, for decades of decades of the smaller and less manufactured of Paraguay (6 million people), the treaty obligated to give up its surplus authority in Brazil (210 million) with ventilation rates.

In 2023, both countries pushed the last batch of ITAIPU construction debts, and the conditions of the main transferred treaty. Since then, the bilateral re -negotiation process, which was conducted behind closed doors, has held a glimmer of hope that Paraguay can struggle with a more competitive price for the hydroelectric power, as well as the right to sell it to Brazil’s private energy providers. Meanwhile, Brazil sought to maintain access to the captured price capacity that submitted nearly five requests in the country.

Mercedes -Kansi, the former deputy minister of miners and energy in Paraguay, said that the ITAPU review is of “transcendent” importance for Barjway. “Brazil Paraguay has greatly harmed. This is an opportunity to find out what was wrong, correct, and modify.”

External players also notice possible profits to re -negotiate. During a US Senate’s hearing in May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated the talks, noting that the abundant Barajway force gives it a “enormous opportunity” to become a leader in artificial intelligence, and encourage “smart investors” to establish data centers in the country.

This fever mix of geopolitical competition, technological competition, and historical grievances, exploded in the open in late March. The Brazilian news company UOT has revealed that the Brazilian National Intelligence Agency, ABIN, has infiltrated the contacts of about half of the Paraguayan officials involved in ITAPU negotiations.

A statement from the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sought to reduce the severity of the penetration. She said that the digital intrusion began under the leadership of former President Gere Bolsonaro, who was governing 2019 to 2023, and was suspended as soon as President Luiz Inosio Lula Da Silva became aware of him nearly three months after his post in January 2023. He also promised to conduct a comprehensive investigation of digital spy.

Such assurances were not sufficient for Paraguay President Santiago Benia, who ordered the investigation, and the Paraguay Ambassador to Brazil for consultations, and he called the representative of Brazil in Asnesion, the capital of Paraguay, to demand an explanation. Foreign Minister Paraguay Robin Ramirez Lizcano suspended the ITAIPU talks – which were due to a conclusion at the end of May – until the full Brazil submitted “the intelligence required against our country”, describing the penetration as “a violation of international law and interference in the internal sciences in one country in another.”

Miguel Carter, political scientist Paraguay, said the diplomatic crisis is deeply resenting “national imagination” against Brazil. This is due to the Paraguay War 1864-1870 against Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, which witnessed that half of Paraguay’s population dies with some estimates, especially from illness and hunger. Benia conducted an interview with Argentina Metter Radio in April on the issue of espionage, Benia acquired the same “war of genocide” and the occupation of Brazil for a six -year Bragway, which followed. “Unfortunately, this episode opens those old wounds,” he added. “As a country, we are very worried.”

The scandal continued on low heat with more information about the size of the secret activity. On June 18, UOL revealed that spying was not a single penetration. Instead, a long-term Brazilian monitoring program was called the Duque Operation, and he obtained secret Paraguayan documents-including a major speech by Paraguay’s Minister of Paraguay at the time shortly before his delivery in March 2023-continuing until June of that year, six months after Lula State. The port also suggested that at least one diplomatic official from Paraguay had cooperated with data breach.

Benia met Lula on the sidelines of the Mirosor summit in Buenos Aires on July 3. Paraguay president later posted on social media that they had “an explicit and productive discussion.” He said that they discussed ITAIPU and the need for a “fair and balanced deal”, adding that he had expressed his “concern about the spying issue” and repeated Paraguay’s request to explain in the interest of “respect and dialogue.”

The bombing came in a sensitive moment for Mercosur, which is attracted between left -wing governments in Bolivia and Brazil, and the radical liberalism of Argentine President Javier Miley, and deepening the social conservative Benia. The relations between Lola and Benya’s departments had already decreased in deep freezing earlier in March, before the first investigation of the UOL was published, when five progressive governments – including Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay – withdrew their support for Lizcano’s attempts to become the U.S. Secretary -General. In another sign of the expansion of ideological divisions, an ABIN official accused the Central Intelligence Agency of seeking to raise public opinion Paraguayan against Brazil.

“If the decline between the two countries is growing and deepening, this may affect cooperation on other issues,” said Julieta Hidovan, a joint analyst of Argentine, Julieta Hydeovan, citing joint efforts to address joint efforts to confront joint efforts to confront drugs. The dilemma about the espionage associated with ITAIPU will make it difficult to present a unified front against US President Donald Trump, who imposed a 10 percent tax on most countries of South America, including those in Mercosor. Meanwhile, Paraguay’s ambassador is no longer yet to Brazilia. “It is a dangerous moment when an allied country uses, negotiating an important bilateral issue, a [surveillance] “There is a tool like this victim and the perpetrator,” he said.

However, while Brazil benefits from prolonging the improper current situation, the time works against Paraguay. Although approximately 100 percent of the country’s electricity demand is provided by electrical energy, industry bodies are now expecting that the Paraguay residues can be calculated completely over the next few years. In 2024, the country used more than 30 percent of the total dam, a sharp leap of 20 percent in previous years. Climate change is the water levels in the Paraná River, which pays 20 ITAIPU turbines, and the demand for air conditioning in Paraguay extends with high temperatures about 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. Intensive energy industries, including the coded currency mining, consumes a larger share of electricity in the country.

The Benia administration is scrambling to explore additional energy sources, including nuclear dams, solar energy and the smaller photovoltaic. “Today, we have a strong weapon in the negotiations: our surplus electricity. Tomorrow, we will not do it,” said excuse, the former minister. “We must request market prices or refuse to sell them to Brazil.”

Paraguay’s ability to stand on the principle as well. In addition to being a major diplomatic player in South America and military domination, Brazil is the first destination for Paraguay’s exports (mainly cow meat, soybeans and energy) and its primary source of foreign investments. “The problem with the relationship between Brazil and Paraguay is the non -similarity between the two,” he said. “Paraguay always plays with the oblique council against it.”

But Heduvan sees some bullish trend for the weak: the espionage scandal was born internationally with Paraguay. The Brazilian diplomats interpreted public intervention by Rubio – who met with Benia in January – where the Trump administration set its thumb on the standards for Paraguay. The country is a long -term American ally in South America, a strong supporter of Israel, and the last country remaining on the continent recognizes Taiwan. In the last year of the Biden Administration, Hidofan, including the call of Rubio, then a member of senator, said to visit Assason last February. “Betting pays off.”

Carter said that Paraguay did not completely flourish a photovoltaic bonus. ITAIPU furniture with additional turbines, or a 50 -year -old mechanism with a new technology, can add another 4000 megawatts to its installed capacity, generating revenues from energy exports for years to come. Carter also believes that the talks about the future of the dam, when they resume, should expand to include compensation for the questionable reviews of ITAIPU in the 1990s and early the first decade of the twentieth century, which the two countries agreed to after a financial crisis in Brazil, whose ability to pay their share. Added to the total cost of the project through tens of billions of dollars – the money that Paraguay could have invested in hospitals, roads and schools.

The original societies in Paraguay also call for remedy. Nearly 700 families of the flood water were displaced in the dam – which was also flooded with Sallaos del Gaier, a huge series of waterfalls. Carter, editor -in -chief of a coming volume analyzes the history of the mysterious dam. “There is a real account that must be done.”