The Villalba Clan: understanding the two-ringed familial leadership of the Paraguayan People’s Army

Abstract

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This article analyzes the role of familial leadership in insurgent organizations through the case of the Paraguayan People’s Army (Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo - EPP), a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group that emerged in 2008 and developed a unique ideological framework known as Francismo del Siglo XXI. Drawing on a multidisciplinary methodology that combines bibliographic research, official judicial documents, media sources, and expert interviews, the article explores how kinship-based leadership structures shape cohesion, trust, and organizational resilience. Specifically, we state that the EPP developed a ‘two-ringed strategy’ which positioned founding figures and their relatives at the core of the organization, surrounded by a secondary circle of members with strong familial and affective ties. Despite this familial leadership fostering loyalty and protection against state infiltration, it also introduced severe limitations such as the concentration of power, internal divisions, and the formation of splinter groups. The article concludes that this rigid familial leadership model, once a source of strength, has likely become a vulnerability to the group, thus evidencing how kinship-based leadership can simultaneously strengthen and undermine insurgent organizations.