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.

. . .

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.”

. . .

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.

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/learning/newssummaries/17stroessner_LN.html

Repression under Alfredo Stroessner
Between 1956 and 1989, while under the military rule of General Alfredo Stroessner, the indigenous population had more territory taken than at any other period in Paraguay's history and were subjected to systematic human rights abuses. In 1971, Mark Münzel, a German anthropologist accused Stroessner of attempted genocide against the indigenous peoples of Paraguay[1] and Bartomeu Melià, a Jesuit anthropologist stated that the forced relocations of the indigenous peoples was ethnocide.[2] In the early 1970s the Stroessner regime was charged by international groups of being complicit in genocide. However, because of the repressive actions undertaken by the state the indigenous tribes organized themselves politically and had a major role in bringing about the end of the military dictatorship and the eventual transition to democracy.[3][2][4] The state financed these repressive actions with U.S. aid, which totaled $146 million from 1962 to 1975 to Paraguay.[5]

Destruction of the Ache tribe
During the 1960s and 1970s, 85 percent of the Aché tribe died, with many hacked to death with machetes to make room for the timber industry, mining, farming and ranchers.[6] One estimate posits this amounts to 900 deaths.[7] According to Jérémie Gilbert, the situation in Paraguay has proven that it is difficult to provide the proof required to show "specific intent", in support of a claim that genocide had occurred. The Aché, whose cultural group is now seen as extinct, fell victim to the development by the state, who had promoted the exploration of Aché territory by transnational companies for natural resources. Gilbert concludes that though planned and voluntary destruction had occurred, it is argued by the state that there was no intent to destroy the Aché, as what had happened was due to development.[8]

Assessment of persecution as a genocide
The allegation of genocide by the state was brought before the Inter-American Hu man Rights Commission which has jurisdiction on allegations of genocide carried out by a state. The commission gave a provisional ruling that Paraguay had not carried out a genocide, but stated it had concerns over "possible abuses by private persons in remote areas of the territory of Paraguay".[9] The Whitaker Report of the United Nations listed the persecution of the Aché as an example of genocide.[10]

Whether or not genocide occurred in this case is contingent on the definition of genocide being used. If we use the definition used by Raphael Lemkin who coined the term, then there were genocides of indigenous peoples in Paraguay. The current Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide definition does not include political groups in their definition of genocide.[11][12]

. . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples_in_Paraguay


As you may have noticed, reports of savage, sadistic, bloodthirsty treatment of people unpopular with dictators always appear long after the actual crimes have occurred.