MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Paraguayan guerrillas EML subdued after two key arrests

Despite the EML's elimination, the EPP is still active, Gen Acuña explained

Paraguayan authorities considered this weekend that after Saturday's arrest of Lourdes Ramírez de Ramos, wife of the armed group Ejército del Mariscal López (EML) leader Alejandro Ramos, the illegal organization has been fully dismantled. The couple's daughter Lourdes Teresita Ramos has also been detained recently. They are all believed to have been involved in the kidnapping and subsequent disappearance of cattle rancher Félix Urbieta. Prosecutor Pablo Zárate confirmed that the two women had been placed under pre-trial detention.

Despite these detentions and the fact that Alejandro Ramos Sr. died in 2018 and Alejandro Ramos Jr. was gunned down by the Paraguayan Joint Task Force (FTC), authorities keep looking for Urbieta's body, which is believed to have been buried in 2019.

The operation leading to Lourdes' arrest was carried out in the area of Belén Cué, Horqueta district, Concepción department, not far from where Urbieta is believed to have been buried. Days before and in a similar operation in the Salinas Cué company, in the district of Horqueta, the daughter of the couple, Lourdes Teresita Ramos, was captured. She reportedly spoke with the rancher's family and affirmed that the man died in 2019 after being forcibly captured by the EML on Oct. 12, 2016, from his Dos Hermanas ranch in Belén. The Urbieta family considers that Teresita is key to gathering information about Urbieta's whereabouts.

Alejandro Ramos parted company with the larger Paraguayan People's Army (EPP) guerrillas due to personal differences and created the EML as a family clan together with his children Alejandro Ramos Ramírez and Lourdes Teresita Ramos Ramírez.

Internal Defense Operations Command (CODI) Brig. Gen. Abel Acuña insisted that despite the EML's elimination, the EPP was still active, although “it has been reduced thanks to the intelligence operations and the operations that have been developed in the fight against terrorism.”