Movimiento Popular Colorado

(MOPOCO)

   / Popular Colorado Movement

   One of five political parties that opposed the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay. The others were the Partido Comunista Paraguayo (PCP, Paraguayan Communist Party), the Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC, Christian Democratic Party), the Partido Liberal (Liberal Party), and the Partido Revolucionario Febrerista (PRF, February Revolutionary Party).

   MOPOCO was formed in the 1950s by two exiled factions of Stroessner’s ruling Partido Colorado (Red Party): the democráticos and the epifanistas. The latter was a democrático faction led by Epifanio Méndez Fleitas, a progressive and one of Stroessner’s chief rivals. MOPOCO favored a socialist program, including aggressive land reform and government by workers and peasants. It also denounced the support of Stroessner by the United States. In 1979, while still in exile, MOPOCO joined the PDC, the PRF, and a left-wing Liberal breakaway party in an opposition front called the Acuerdo Nacional (National Accord). Unlike the Liberals and the PRF, which Stroessner had allowed to return from exile in the 1960s, MOPOCO would not be allowed to return until 1984. Even then, its leaders were kept under surveillance, harassed, and detained by the police.