ASUNCION, PARAGUAY — The election of Fernando Lugo as president of Paraguay signals the latest advance of the left in Latin America and the end of more than six decades of rule by a political party best known for a longtime anti-communist dictatorship.
Lugo, a bespectacled former Roman Catholic bishop, appears to be among the more moderate left-leaning leaders of South America, where only two major nations, Colombia and Peru, continue to be run by conservatives.
After sweeping to victory Sunday, he was quickly congratulated by the U.S. ambassador. State Department officials said Lugo has exhibited no outward hostility toward the United States.
"We're ready to work with him," said one State Department official, who declined to be identified because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue.
The now-dominant left in South America has taken many forms -- from the stridently anti-U.S. rhetoric of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales to the generally pro-Washington sentiments of Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Chile's Michelle Bachelet. Lugo, 56, dubbed "the bishop of the poor," is seen as independent from the U.S. but not hostile.
"Lugo is a bit of an unknown quantity . . . but the indicators are that he's a relatively moderate type," said Gerald McCulloch, a former U.S. diplomat who heads the Paraguayan-American Chamber of Commerce, a trade group.
It is a measure of the changing times in U.S.-Latin American relations that a president-elect like Lugo hardly raises eyebrows in Washington. A decade ago, a chief of state with Lugo's background probably would have sounded alarm bells. The ex-bishop endorses Liberation Theology, a doctrine criticized by the Vatican for Marxist influence.
Many observers on the continent say Washington's intense focus on the Middle East in recent years has contributed to its diminished influence in Latin America. A region that was once at the center of Cold War politics is now an afterthought, according to many Latin American analysts.
"I don't think this [election] is even on Washington's radar screen, given all the other stuff going on in the world," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.
Part of the perception that Lugo will govern as a moderate stems from the broad-based representation in Lugo's victorious Patriotic Alliance for Change, whose members range from the far left to the right. The coalition's key institutional anchor is Paraguay's Authentic Liberal Radical Party, a well-established conservative party with broad U.S. contacts.
