Alfredo Stroessner

President of Paraguay (1954-1989)

• Born: November 3, 1912
• Birthplace: Encarnación, Paraguay
• Died: August 16, 2006
• Place of death: Brasilia, Brazil

Cause of notoriety: Stroessner, Paraguay’s entrenched dictator for thirty-five years, ruled with an iron hand and ruthlessly suppressed dissent.

Active: 1954-1989

Locale: Paraguay

Early Life

Alfredo Stroessner (ahl-FRAY-thoh STREHS-nuhr) was born into a middle-class family in Encarnación, across the River Paraná from Argentina; his father, of German origin, was an accountant.

Stroessner joined the Paraguayan Army in 1929 and, by the time he was twenty, was an active infantry combatant in the Chaco War with Bolivia (1932-1935). The Chaco War was the crucial formative experience for Stroessner’s generation of Paraguayans. Paraguay had long been demoralized by its catastrophic loss in the War of the Triple Alliance (1865-1870). In Stroessner’s generation, however, the military had gained prestige through its role in the Chaco War, in which Paraguay had, to a certain degree, prevailed. The Paraguayan military capitalized on its Chaco prestige even long after its one war hero, General Marshal José Félix Estigarribia, had died.

Estigarribia’s premature death in an airplane crash after he had been elected president created opportunities for paid ascension in the Paraguayan political order. Stroessner rapidly rose in army ranks and also associated himself with the conservative Colorado Party. He played an active role in suppressing a coalition of leftist groups in the Paraguayan Civil War of 1947. By 1954, Stroessner was the commanding general of the army. In this role, he led a military coup against President Federico Chávez and became the president of Paraguay in 1954.

Political Career

Stroessner was a modernizer, building roads and encouraging the cultivation of land by retired soldiers. Even his detractors conceded that the dictator had a strong work ethic. Stroessner was well known for sleeping very little and managing the affairs of the country around the clock. This kind of vigilance was necessary for Stroessner to keep control over the military, which, in turn, controlled Paraguay.

Stroessner was intolerant of any opposition and jailed, killed, or exiled anyone who remotely questioned his regime’s authority. He seized upon the rise of leftist insurgencies in South America during the late 1960’s in order to mount savage “counterterrorism” programs. During this period, similar “bureaucratic-authoritarian” regimes were in place in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Stroessner collaborated with these regimes to form Operation Condor, a campaign of assassination, kidnappings, torture, and secret intelligence against any political dissenters. Paraguay’s civil society came under the control of Stroessner’s trademark stronismo, an umbrella term used by Paraguyans to refer both to the administration’s use of torture of opponents and to the opportunistic self-enrichment of Stroessner and his military and political associates. Stroessner especially feared the indigenous Guaraní people (Guaraní speakers make up the majority of Paraguay’s population), and his regime sought to withhold all resources from them.

Stroessner’s opposition to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his own anticommunist stance earned him general support from the United States and its allies during most of his presidency. However, in the late 1970’s, domestic dissent became more visible and bolder; protesters were perhaps energized by U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s call for pro-human rights practices among American allies. Stroessner arrested and exiled opposition leader Domingo Laíno of the Authentic Liberal Radical Party.

In this period, many Western leaders and citizens considered Stroessner a quasi-fascist, as much for his German name and right-wing policies as for the persistent rumors that surviving Nazi war criminals, such as Josef Mengele, had been given asylum in Paraguay. Stroessner therefore attained disrepute among Western leaders greater than that of his neighboring authoritarian rulers, who ran countries that seemed better suited to U.S. strategic needs and were thus treated more gingerly. Stroessner became an international pariah before he was overthrown at the age of seventy-six in a 1989 coup led by General Andrés Rodríguez Pedotti. He fled to Brazil and was granted asylum there. He lived in isolation until his death from a stroke in 2006. Paraguay’s current president, Nicanor Duarte, told reporters there were no plans to honor Stroessner publicly.

Impact

Alfredo Stroessner will be remembered for bringing Paraguay into modern times; he will continue to be reviled for the oppressive and fraudulent means by which he effected that goal. The legacy of his brutal regime—the longest in Latin American history—is still felt. Though Stroessner’s dictatorial regime was overthrown and democratic elections have been held in Paraguay since 1989, Stroessner’s right-wing Colorado Party nonetheless continued in power into the twenty-first century. To Latin American scholars, Paraguay’s scenario is atypical when considering the region’s later-twentieth century democratic transitions: Authoritarian regimes characteristically are succeeded by a set of new parties contending for power. However, Paraguay found it hard to start with a clean slate, and many of its old political patterns seemed to be too entrenched to change very dramatically. The fundamental injustices and inequities in Paraguay have been left unremedied.

Bibliography

Bouvier, Virginia. Decline of the Dictator. Washington, D.C.: Office on Latin America, 1988. A researcher for a leading Washington organization monitoring Latin American affairs discusses the condition of Paraguay as the end of the Stroessner regime approaches.

Gimlette, John. At The Tomb of the Inflatable Pig. New York: Random House, 2004. An irreverent travelogue that contains some anecdotes about the gruesome Stroessner era.

Miranda, Carlos R. The Stroessner Era: Authoritarian Rule in Paraguay. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990. A comprehensive academic treatment of the Stroessner period.

Roa Bastos, Augusto. “The Exiles of the Paraguayan Writer.” Review: Latin American Literature and Arts, (September-December, 1981): 24-30. Paraguay’s most famous novelist discusses “the two Paraguays”: the nation of exiles from the Stroessner regime and those who stayed in the country.

Roett, Riordan. “Paraguay After Stroessner.” Foreign Affairs 68, no. 2 (Spring, 1989): 124-142. In an article published just after Stroessner’s overthrow, a leading international affairs expert assesses the dictator’s legacy and the prospects for Paraguayan political renewal.