The paraguayan railway: between public and private rights

Abstract

The Paraguayan railway has gone through a legal process of great institutional complexity that clearly reflects the normative confusion of the State itself. What began as an autonomous entity under the direct oversight of the public administration was ultimately transformed into Ferrocarriles del Paraguay S.A. (FEPASA), a state-owned company paradoxically governed by private law. Following the fall of the regime in 1989, the country embarked on a modernization process that sought to reform the structure of public entities, albeit without a clear direction. Subsequently, attempts to convert autonomous bodies into state-owned corporations multiplied but foundered due to a lack of legal coherence, social resistance, and legislative improvisation, resulting in an incomplete decentralization. This study aims to analyze the process of FEPASA’s creation, transformation, and operation, identifying its legal foundations, its particularities within the system of public enterprises, and the implications generated by its hybrid model in the administrative and economic spheres. It emerges as an exception−a legal hybrid that combines a state-owned nature with a private law regime, sustained by Law No. 1615/00 and its ratification through Law No. 1955/2002. The research is qualitative in approach, non-experimental in design, descriptive in scope, and dogmatic in type, based on legal-administrative documentary analysis. The results reveal that the modern Paraguayan system of public enterprises is built upon a conceptual void and demands comprehensive legislative reform to restore coherence to the institutional framework.