Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguayan Ex-Dictator, Dies
Diana Jean Schemo
Aug. 17, 2006
General Stroessner, a tall, husky artilleryman proud of his crisp military bearing, seized power in Paraguay in 1954, through a coup. He quickly won American help in establishing his secret police, but hopes that his dictatorship would give way to democracy faded during a string of elections in which he faced token or no opposition and which were generally considered to be fraudulent. During his long rule, Paraguay was the country with the most uneven distribution of land and wealth.
Under General Stroessner, Paraguay’s security forces became so efficient at intimidating potential opposition figures that eventually fear itself — fear of arrest, torture, exile and murder — became one of his prime levers for staying in power.
The country became a haven for Nazis, with new passports and visas sold for a price. Among those sheltered was Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death” who selected victims for the gas chambers at Auschwitz and conducted medical experiments on humans. In addition, hundreds of political prisoners and their families were imprisoned at concentration camps like Emboscada, about 20 miles outside the capital city of Asunción, in the 1970’s.
The other keys to General’s Stroessner’s longevity as president were his alliance with the Colorado Party, which remains in power today; his grip on the military; and his skill at exploiting the weaknesses of others. The general also found help in Paraguay’s authoritarian past, which effectively paved the way for dictatorship by one figure or another. “He didn’t break any prior democratic tradition, as existed in other countries,” said Alfredo Boccia Paz, a physician in Asunción who has written several books on the Stroessner era.
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John Vinocur, writing in The New York Times Magazine in 1984, offered this snapshot of Paraguay as its army goose-stepped down the boulevards to celebrate General Stroessner’s 30 years in power: “A continual state of siege over the entire period that literally places the president above the law; people with occasionally uncontrollable urges to fall into rivers or jump from planes with their arms and legs bound; serenades in front of the presidential palace featuring the ever-popular ‘Forward, My General’ and ‘Congratulations, My Great Friend’; foreign thieves, brutes and madmen hidden at a price; an economy administered so corruptly it is officially explained away as the ‘cost of peace’; a United Nations voting record on so-called key issues more favorable to the United States than any other ‘ally;’ a party newspaper that prints six front-page color pictures of the general every day.”
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Martín Almada, a schoolteacher imprisoned during the 1970’s as an “intellectual terrorist,” said General Stroessner’s legacy was “terror and corruption.” Mr. Almada’s wife died at the age of 33 after, he said, security agents played her a tape of his screams under torture.
In 1992, Mr. Almada discovered a trove of government documents that came to be known as the Archives of Terror, which detailed the political arrests of thousands of Paraguayans and unveiled the workings of Operation Condor. “Fear became our second skin,” Mr. Almada said.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/learning/newssummaries/17stroessner_LN.html
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