Over the course of many months, I’ve pointed out that many countries in Latin and South American are rejecting so-called “free trade” and the neo-liberal model it promotes. The evidence: the election of leaders who can perhaps be broadly defined as “populist” but mainly stand out in their belief that the global economic model promoted by the U.S. is not working for hundreds of millions of people.

What seems to me a further indication of what is transpiring can be found in, of all place, Paraguay. The country’s ruling party has held tight on to power since 1947. You might remember Gen. Alfredo Stroessner who held the presidency for almost four decades during which he gave safe haven to ex-Nazis. But, apparently, there is a possibility that a populist could win the presidency. In today’s New York Times, you can read the story of Fernando Lugo Mendez, who leads all possible presidential candidates in the polls:

No political party currently in power anywhere in the world has governed longer than the Colorado Party here, not even the Kim family’s Communist dynasty in North Korea. But a charismatic Roman Catholic bishop recently suspended by the Vatican is threatening that hegemony and has emerged as the front-runner for next year’s presidential election.

Known as “the bishop of the poor,” Msgr. Fernando Lugo Méndez has been strongly influenced by liberation theology, which emerged in Latin America in the 1960s and contends that the Roman Catholic Church has a special obligation to defend the oppressed and downtrodden. But he is reluctant to position himself on the political spectrum, saying that he is interested in solutions, not labels.

“As I am accustomed to saying, hunger and unemployment, like the lack of access to health and education, have no ideology,” he said in an interview here. “My discourse, my person and my testimony are above political parties, whose own members are desirous of change and want an end to a system that favors narrow partisan interests over those of the country.”

The church and the government are doing everything possible to keep him off the ballot because they are a man who holds these beliefs:

Monsignor Lugo, 55, is a spellbinding orator in both Spanish and Guaraní, the indigenous language spoken by the peasants and urban poor who make up a majority of the population in this landlocked country of 6.5 million. In speeches, he rails against corruption and injustice, saying, “There are too many differences between the small group of 500 families who live with a first-world standard of living while the great majority live in a poverty that borders on misery.”

The rest of the story is here. An election to watch.