By Ernesto Londono @ NYTimes.com, Dec. 15

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — Even Paraguay’s antidrug chief couldn’t believe what was happening.

In October, officials there said they had foiled a plot to deploy a car bomb packed with 187 pounds of explosives to free a jailed drug lord. Days later, heavily armed men threatened in a video to kill the country’s attorney general. “There is a price on your head,” the men warned.  Then came two chilling murders: A lawyer who represented drug king pins was assassinated as she stepped out of a meeting, and a young woman was stabbed to death with a dinner knife while visiting a drug trafficker in prison.

“These past incidents are like scenes you only see in movies,” said Arnaldo Guizzio, the head of Paraguay’s counternarcotics agency. These crimes have one thing in common: The chaos is spilling over from Brazil. After fueling a record level of violence in Brazil, the drug war is spreading beyond the border, preying on Paraguay’s already weak institutions.

Much of the mayhem in the region has been fueled by American guns. So many American weapons were being shipped into Paraguay that officials in the United States took the rare step of halting commercial arms exports to the country this year [....]