BBC NEWS | Americas | Obituary: Alfredo Stroessner Obituary: Alfredo Stroessner Alfredo Stroessner's rule was marked by political repression Alfredo Stroessner was Paraguay's military leader for 35 years, from 1954 to 1989. Under his rule the country became a haven for Nazi war criminals, peaceful opposition was crushed and the indigenous population was persecuted. Stroessner was one of the great strongmen of South American politics. Indeed, during the 20th Century, only Cuba's Fidel Castro served as head of state in the continent for a longer period of time. A violent dictator to many, others - most notably in the United States - saw him as a bulwark against communism. Coup Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda was born in Encarnacion in southern Paraguay in November 1912. The son of a German brewer, he joined the army at the age of 17, becoming a junior officer two years later.

Between 1932 and 1935 he saw action in the Chaco War, a conflict between Paraguay and Bolivia over an area incorrectly believed to contain vast oil reserves. Gen Stroessner's rule was marked by political repression... opponents were forced to flee into exile... Those who remained were harassed or imprisoned, and the media was heavily censored Paraguay's victory was also Gen Stroessner's, and he progressed easily through the army's ranks. During the 1940s Paraguay became increasingly unstable, descending into civil war in 1947. Alfredo Stroessner was a key player through all this tumult. By 1948 he was a brigadier general, the youngest general in the whole of South America. Three years later he was named commander in chief of the country's armed forces, becoming a hugely powerful figure. And on 4 May 1954, General Stroessner led a military coup which toppled the government of Federico Chavez, before becoming president a few months later.

This continued the Paraguayan tradition, under which no president was elected democratically between its independence from Spain in 1811 and free elections in May 1993. War criminals Gen Stroessner's rule was marked by political repression. Many of his opponents were forced to flee into exile. Those who remained were harassed or imprisoned, and the media was heavily censored. A personality cult sprung up around the general and his portrait became a regular sight throughout the country. Josef Mengele was given shelter in Paraguay He also sought to forcibly assimilate Paraguay's indigenous Ache population, a policy which ended in bloodshed, sexual slavery and servitude. And Paraguay became a bolt-hole for Nazi war criminals, including for a time the former SS doctor at Auschwitz, Josef Mengele. For a time, Paraguay was highly favoured by the United States. Indeed, in 1965, Asuncion sent troops to fight with US Marines in the Dominican Republic in 1965 in what the US later said was a move to prevent a communist takeover. But, later in his rule, Washington became increasingly unsettled about Paraguay's poor human rights record, gradually withdrawing its support as the years went by.

Gen Stroessner's achievements were limited. Together with the Brazilian government, he oversaw the building of the Itaipu dam on the Parana River. This project, which also included the construction of the world's largest hydroelectric plant, vastly increased Paraguay's export revenues through the sale of electricity. Stroessner was "re-elected" eight consecutive times before being himself overthrown in a military coup in February 1989 and going into exile in Brazil. Alfredo Stroessner | president of Paraguay | Britannica.com president of Paraguay Alternative Titles: Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda, Stroessner Matiauda, Alfredo Alfredo Stroessner Luis María Argaña Ferraro Alfredo Stroessner, in full Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda (born Nov. 3, 1912, Encarnación , Para.—died Aug. 16, 2006, Brasília , Braz.), military leader, who became president of Paraguay after leading an army coup in 1954. One of Latin America’s longest-serving rulers, he was overthrown in 1989.

Alfredo Stroessner. Frank Scherschel—Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Stroessner, the son of a German immigrant, attended the Military College in Asunción and was commissioned in the Paraguayan army in 1932. He rose through the ranks to become general and in 1951 was made commander in chief of the armed forces. In 1954 he deposed President Federico Chávez and later assumed the presidency after an election in which he was the sole candidate for the office. Stroessner attempted to placate the rural poor and urban labourers and at the same time supported the interests of the large landholders and businessmen. His administration stabilized the currency, moderated inflation, and provided some new schools, public health facilities, and roads; a large part of the national budget, however, was spent on the paramilitary forces necessary to preserve his authority. During Stroessner’s presidency, Paraguay participated in the building of the massive Itaipú Dam along the Brazil-Paraguay border in 1975–82.

Stroessner’s supporters dominated the nation’s legislature and courts and had the constitution modified in 1967 and 1977 to legitimize his six consecutive elections to the presidency. His administration actively participated in Operation Condor , a clandestine campaign coordinated by several South American rulers to eliminate their opponents. It was responsible for numerous extralegal arrests, extraditions, and other human rights abuses. In addition, Stroessner allowed Paraguay to serve as a refuge for a number of international fugitives, including Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele . Stroessner was elected to an eighth successive term as president in 1988 but was overthrown by a military coup in 1989. He thereupon went into exile in Brazil , where he was granted political asylum. In the early 21st century Paraguay unsuccessfully sought his extradition on charges relating to Operation Condor.

Learn More in these related articles: in Paraguay Alfredo Stroessner | The Economist Alfredo Stroessner General Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda, dictator of Paraguay, died on August 16th, aged 93 Aug 24th 2006 Tweet AP NOT only Africa has a heart of darkness. South America has one too, squeezed in the tight embrace of Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil. Two great rivers, the Paraguay and the Paraná, flow through Paraguay and past it, but travellers have little reason to come to this empty, landlocked place. The dry western chaco has no gold or oil, though wars were fought on the supposition it did; the east is more fertile, but still poor. The people are mostly Indian farmers, the army dangerously unpredictable. It is good ground for dictators. For 35 years, from 1954 to 1989, Alfredo Stroessner ruled there. Under him, although he brought electrification, asphalt roads and friendship with America, the place became yet more isolated and benighted.

The economy was based on contraband: whisky, cigarettes, passports, coffee, cocaine, luxury cars, rare bird skins, anything, until the unofficial value of Paraguay's exports was said to be three times the official figure. The style of government was a spoils system, underpinned by terror of a vicious network of spies and secret police. Foreign policy was a buddies' brigade with other dictators—Videla of Argentina, Pinochet of Chile—to co-ordinate counter-terrorism and assassinations. And the most famous tourist was Josef Mengele, the fugitive doctor of Auschwitz, riding into a village in the Paraguayan wilderness to be welcomed and protected. General Stroessner himself was not seen much. His blue-eyed portrait, in white uniform with gold braid and multiple medals, stared down from walls in offices and private houses alike; but he was stocky and dull, the typical son of a German immigrant brewer, and preferred desk-duties to speeches and parades. He would work, breaking only for siesta, from six in the morning until nine at night.

Much of his day was spent, like some Roman emperor, receiving the petitions of the long lines of ordinary citizens who filed towards his inner sanctum. Related items Andres Rodriguez May 1st 1997 He did not give interviews to the press, having no wish to reveal himself. A single conversation, with Isabel Hilton of Granta when he had just begun his long exile in Brasilia in 1989, is almost all obituarists have to go on. In this he prided himself especially on bringing Paraguay peace. He had avoided “negative political movements”, imposing stability and order. As he said the word, orden, he rolled it sensuously round his mouth. But it had a different meaning for him: the political opponent “disappearing” in a bricked-up cell, the newspaper ABC Color closed down for five years, or the “communist” agitator (he saw such phantoms everywhere, they unloosed American aid) silenced by near-drowning in a bath of dirty water. He told Ms Hilton there had been no torture.

But five tonnes of secret-police files turned up three years later, stacked from floor to ceiling of a police station in suburban Asunción, to give the lie to that. A party of his own His main machine of power was not the army. Although he was a distinguished soldier, rising to brigadier-general by the age of 36, and indeed had done nothing else in life since he was 17, he did not trust military men. He himself had skilfully ridden the divisions in the army to seize power from a civilian president in 1954. His policy was to keep the officers sweet with a cut from the smuggling revenues or a share of the contracts for his grandest project, the Itaipu hydroelectric plant built with Brazil on the Paraná. Some cronies amassed fortunes. General Andrés Rodríguez, who eventually overthrew him in what he contemptuously called a cuartelazo, or barracks revolt, built himself a replica of the Palace of Versailles. As a firmer, more loyal base than these soldiers, General Stroessner used the Colorado (“Red”) party, a right-wing body that became steadily more so as its moderate politicians were ejected.

Membership of the party was compulsory for all teachers, doctors, engineers, officers or those who hoped for government service. In a population of 3.8m, 900,000 belonged to it, their party dues docked from their salaries. Every four years, in a conspicuous show of phoney democracy, General Stroessner stood as the Colorado candidate and was elected, sometimes—as his supporters joked—with more than 100% of the vote. He won eight straight elections, and the constitutional bar to three consecutive terms or more was quietly set aside. There was some resistance. The Catholic church got restive, especially when the general ignored calls for land reform from the indigenous poor. The Americans, fed up at last with his wiliness and his human-rights abuses, began to part company with him in the late 1970s. Paraguayans as a whole, however, were much slower to be disillusioned. It was true that he treated the country as his fief, to the point of picking out teenage girls for himself when he presented school diplomas; but he paid for the girls, set them up in houses, and gave their relatives money.

You could argue that the Itaipu project left Paraguay with only 2% of the energy and 15% of the contracts; but that 15% had given the country, for eight years in the 1970s, the highest rate of growth in Latin America. General Stroessner was a master-dispenser of illegal spoils. Yet the dark truth of his Paraguay was that he co-opted even his opponents into that system with him.

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20, 2011 SCORZA / AFP / Getty Images Tiny, landlocked Paraguay had the ignominy of being home to one of the 20th century's longest-ruling dictators. Alfredo Stroessner, a military officer, swept into power in 1954 in a typical South American palace coup and clung to power until 1989  a bad year for tyrants. TIME wrote of Stroessner after his fall, "A dinosaur among despots, Stroessner ruled with absolute authority longer than any other leader in the western hemisphere and was second only to North Korea's Kim Il Sung as the world's most durable dictator." As with many of Latin America's autocrats, his rule was tolerated by Washington because of his professed anticommunism. He kept the country under an almost permanent "state of siege" for four decades, and torture, kidnappings and police brutality became hallmarks of his regime. Stroessner was ousted in February 1989 by generals who feared the strongman was grooming his cocaine-addicted son to be next in line. He died in exile in Brazil in 2006.

Special Reports - Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, Colorful Dictator of Paraguay for 35 Years, Dies in Exile at 93 Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, Colorful Dictator of Paraguay for 35 Years, Dies in Exile at 93 Agence France-Presse - Getty Images In 1973, around the middle of his rule, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, center, visited Francisco Franco in Madrid. By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO GEN. Alfredo Stroessner, the former president of Paraguay whose harsh and capricious 35-year hold on power made him South Americas most enduring dictator during the cold war and gave him the aura of a character out of a Gabriel Garcï¿½a Mï¿½rquez novel, died yesterday. He was 93. The cause of death was a stroke, The Associated Press said, citing information from a grandson, Alfredo Domï¿½nguez Stroessner. General Stroessner had lived in Brazil since 1989, moving there after his ouster by his second in command, Gen.

Andrï¿½s Rodrï¿½guez, a relative by marriage. Formally, General Stroessner was a fugitive from justice, wanted by the Paraguayan courts for trial on charges of homicide. Despite an extradition treaty between Brazil and Paraguay, however, there were never any serious moves to bring the general to justice in his home country, where his cabinet members and associates remained the stewards of government long after his fall. Under the terms of his asylum in Brazil, General Stroessner was forbidden to get involved in politics, and he unfailingly stuck to his part of the bargain. He and a son, Gustavo Adolfo, split their time between a gated house by the South Lake in Brasï¿½lia, the capital, and a fazenda, or ranch, outside Belo Horizonte. 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 Asunciï¿½n, 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 Asunciï¿½n who has written several books on the Stroessner era. Never one for understatement, President Stroessners name, written in neon, flashed nightly over the Asunciï¿½n cityscape during his reign, and his face was plastered daily in newspapers and on television. He was known for turning up in his powder-blue military uniform every Thursday at the general staff headquarters of the armed forces, driving home his authority as commander in chief. One former American ambassador to Paraguay, Robert E. White, remembered General Stroessner as darkly brilliant at profiting from others mistakes. Once, Mr. White recalled, the Paraguayan ambassador to Argentina had gambled away the embassys entire budget. The ambassador was immediately summoned to Asunciï¿½n and was handed a confession to sign. General Stroessner then promoted him to foreign minister. He could never have an independent thought or deed after that, Mr. White explained.

General Stroessners takeover in 1954 put an end to decades of instability, in which presidential faces seemed as fleeting as the pictures on a slot machine. His small landlocked nation had no experience of a democratic transition of power in its 143-year history. Paraguay was an underpopulated backwater the size of California, with a penchant for wars that would swallow its male population in battles of dubious, if operatic, purpose. Among the worst was a disastrous war Paraguay waged simultaneously against Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil from 1865 to 1870, which shrank its population from 525,000 to 221,000 and left the nation with only 28,000 men. The 1930s and 40s were a period of turmoil for Paraguay, which suffered 100,000 dead between 1932 and 1935 in a war with Bolivia over the desolate Chaco region, a swampland that ultimately had none of the mineral resources the two sides imagined were there.

It was in the Chaco War, however, that Alfredo Stroessner distinguished himself and was promoted to second lieutenant of artillery. By the time the war ended, he had been promoted again to first lieutenant. The son of a German immigrant from Bavaria and his indigenous peasant wife, a member of the majority Guaranï¿½ people, Alfredo Stroessner was born Nov. 3, 1912, in Encarnaciï¿½n, on the Argentine border southeast of Asunciï¿½n. His father, Hugo Stroessner, was an accountant at a brewery. President Stroessner seldom spoke of his parents, and his official biography listed no siblings. His studies geared young Alfredo for a military life. He completed his basic education in Asunciï¿½n and in Rio de Janeiro, entering the Asunciï¿½n Military College in 1929. Before completing his studies there, he joined the war effort against Bolivia. In 1940, he traveled to Brazil for artillery training, and in 1943, Captain Stroessner was honored with a nomination to Paraguays Superior War College, graduating in 1945.

He profited well from the power grabs that surrounded him, typically backing and then betraying the presidents he served , according to Paul H. Lewis, author of the 1980 book, Paraguay Under Stroessner. He climbed from commander of an artillery regiment to commander in chief of the army in 1951. Between 1948 and 1954, six presidents of Paraguay were overthrown through military takeovers. After his own successful coup, General Stroessner repelled two efforts to unseat him, one in 1955 by Epifanio Mï¿½ndez Fleitas, president of the Central Bank, who was a friend of President Juan Domingo Perï¿½n of Argentina, and another in November 1956 by Rafael Franco, a former dictator. In 1959, General Stroessner briefly experimented with lifting a state of siege that had been in force since 1930, and restoring constitutional liberties. But when student protests over trolley fare increases broke out, so did the reflexes of the iron hand.

General Stroessner restored the state of siege, and the police put an end to the demonstrations with the wholesale arrest and torture of the protesters. Were it not for an occasional headless body floating down the Paranï¿½ River, it might be possible to consider the gaudily uniformed and medaled dictator of Paraguay  the last of the breed in South America  a character out of Gilbert and Sullivan, Joseph P. Lash wrote in The New York Post in 1961. But General Stroessner surprised the political pundits and held on through seven successive elections marked by rigged voting. In time he became the prototype for a new crop of South American dictators friendly to American interests. Backed by the United States, military rulers later seized power in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia. Security forces in these countries worked closely together, formalizing their cooperation in a joint intelligence plan called Operation Condor. Though Condors official goal was to undercut Marxist or terrorist threats to the dictatorships, in practice it served to uproot almost any political opposition or stirrings for democracy in its member nations.

General Stroessners harshest repression occurred in the 1950s and the 1970s. Senator Carlos Levi Rufinelli, the leader of the opposition Liberal party, had been imprisoned 19 times and tortured 6 times by 1975. Most of the time I did not know what they wanted, he told The New York Times that year. They did not even know what they wanted. But when they put the needles under your fingernails, you tell them anything. You denounce everybody, and then they say, See, you were lying to us all the time." _________________ A president who thirsted for legitimacy even as he relied on fear to stay in power. _________________ President Stroessner enjoyed all the trappings of dictatorship: guaranteed electoral victories, an absence of checks and balances, unremitting public adulation and regular kickbacks. Nonetheless, he bridled at being called a dictator. So, you have come to see the dictator, he once told a visiting reporter in the 1960s.

He was unsmiling, and there was flat sarcasm in his voice, the reporter noted. General Stroessner frequently complained that the international news media overlooked the advances he had brought to Paraguay. His most ambitious project was the multibillion-dollar Itaipï¿½ Dam, the largest in the world at the time of its construction in the 1970s. Brazil financed it in exchange for the right to purchase electricity at reduced rates for several years. Throughout his decades in office, he made a practice of personally inaugurating every new school or filtration station that opened and inviting the entire diplomatic corps to watch.

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. George Landau, who preceded Mr. White as the American ambassador, recalled that General Stroessner treated his cabinet roughly. He was God to them, Mr. Landau said. For his part, Mr.

Landau described the Paraguay of General Stroessner as benign, as dictatorships go. Those arrested, he said, could usually win release if they had friends in the right places. He said that many times, President Stroessner complained that he wanted only to retire to a life of fishing and hunting, but that his country needed him. He believed, as most dictators do, that he was absolutely irreplaceable, Mr. Landau recalled. President Stroessner got his chance to retire in February 1989, when a military faction led by General Rodrï¿½guez seized power in a coup. General Rodrï¿½guez, who was nicknamed the Tiger, pounced when he appeared to be losing his standing in the battle for succession after President Stroessners death. Rebel troops attacked the presidential guard and ended the Stroessner era, after one-third of a century, with eight hours of combat that caused numerous casualties. Paraguayans celebrated in the streets as General Rodrï¿½guez spoke of democracy and human rights.

But he promoted himself to president the day after the coup, and was voted into the job three months later. It was not until 1993 that Paraguayans could elect a civilian president. President Stroessner did not leave in disgrace, but flew out of Asunciï¿½n airport after a ceremony that Paraguayans who watched it on television remember as being more suitable for a statesman embarking on an overseas visit than a fleeing dictator. His ouster came through military jockeying, rather than from a democratic groundswell, and little changed in Paraguay immediately after his departure. Civil liberties eventually returned, but citizens were so disconnected from the political system and so conditioned to fear that they had little to say. The same acceptance of corruption prevailed, and even the faces of the leaders remained the same for several years. What you have is Stroessnerism without Stroessner, Mr. Landau said in an interview in 1999. Not in terms of civil liberties, but in terms of corruption. Once in exile, General Stroessner never traveled openly outside of Brazil, perhaps fearful of sharing the fate of Gen.

Augusto Pinochet, who traveled to London for medical care and ended up fighting extradition to Spain to face trial for his acts as dictator of Chile. Mr. Landau said General Stroessner wrote him around 1997, asking for help in securing authorization to visit the United States for a gallbladder operation. The ambassador advised the general to stay away, warning that he could become the target for a lawsuit by Paraguayans. General Stroessner ended up having the operation in Sï¿½o Paulo, Mr. Landau said. General Stroessner was married to the former Eligia Mora. They had a daughter, Graciela Concepciï¿½n de Domï¿½nguez, and another son, Alfredo, who died in the 1980s; he had been a cocaine addict who had married General Rodrï¿½guezs daughter Martha and had treated her badly. It was not clear who survived him, other than his grandson.

Martï¿½n 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. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New Times, OBITUARIES, of Thursday, August 17, 2006.

Wehaitians.com, the scholarly journal of democracy and human rights More from wehaitians.com Stroessner, Paraguay’s Enduring Dictator, Dies - The New York Times The New York Times Americas |Stroessner, Paraguay’s Enduring Dictator, Dies Search Continue reading the main story Photo Paraguay's President Alfredo Stroessner, left, and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco at a ceremony in Madrid in 1973. Credit Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, the former president of Paraguay whose 35-year hold on power made him South America’s most enduring dictator during the cold war, died today in exile in Brazil. He was 93. General Stroessner had developed pneumonia after a hernia operation, The Associated Press reported. He had lived in Brazil since 1989, moving there after his ouster by Gen. Andrés Rodríguez, a relative by marriage and his second-in-command. Formally, General Stroessner was a fugitive from justice, wanted by the Paraguayan courts for trial on charges of homicide.

Despite an extradition treaty between Brazil and Paraguay, however, there were never any serious moves to bring the general to justice in his home country, where his cabinet members and associates remained the stewards of government. Under the terms of his asylum in Brazil, General Stroessner was forbidden from involvement in politics, and he unfailingly stuck to his part of the bargain. He and his son, Gustavo Adolfo, split their time between a gated house by the South Lake in Brasília, the capital, and a ranch outside Belo Horizonte. Continue reading the main story General Stroessner, a tall, husky artilleryman proud of his crisp military bearing, seized power in Paraguay in 1954, through a surgical coup that took only one life at its start: that of Roberto Le Petit, a police chief who also served as minister of agrarian reform and who was in charge of redistributing land to the poor. Soon, however, General Stroessner won American help in establishing his secret police, and hopes that his dictatorship would give way to democracy faded before a string of elections in which he faced token or no opposition and that were generally considered to be fraudulent.

Today, Paraguay remains the country with the most uneven distribution of land and wealth on the planet, followed by Brazil. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 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 on the run, with new passports and visas sold for a price. Among those it 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 1970s. The other keys to General’s Stroessner’s longevity as president were his alliance with the Colorado Party, which has run Paraguay uninterrupted for more than a century, his grip on the military and his skill at exploiting the weaknesses of others. The general also found help in Paraguay’s past, which has 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, an Asunción physician who has written several books on the Stroessner era. President Stroessner was never one for understatement. His name, written in neon, flashed nightly over the Asunción cityscape during his reign, and his face was plastered daily in newspapers and on television. He was known for turning up in his powder blue military uniform every Thursday at the general staff headquarters of the armed forces, driving home his authority as commander in chief. One former American ambassador to Asunción, Robert E. White, remembered General Stroessner as darkly brilliant at profiting from the mistakes others made. Once, Mr. White recalled, the Paraguayan ambassador to Buenos Aires had gambled away the embassy’s entire budget. Immediately, the ambassador was summoned to Asunción and handed a confession to sign. Then General Stroessner promoted him to foreign minister. “He could never have an independent thought or deed after that,” Mr. White explained.

General Stroessner’s takeover in 1954 put an end to decades of instability, in which presidential faces seemed as fleeting as the pictures on a slot machine. In the 27 years before his coup, his small landlocked nation had had 22 presidents, and no experience of a democratic transition of power in its 143-year history. Paraguay was an underpopulated, backwater nation the size of California, with a penchant for impossible wars that would swallow its male population in battles of dubious, if operatic, purpose. Among the worst of these was a disastrous war Paraguay waged simultaneously against Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil from 1865 to 1870, which shrank its population from 525,000 to 221,000, and left the nation with only 28,000 men. The 1930’s and 40’s were a period of turmoil for Paraguay, which had suffered 100,000 dead in the Chaco war with Bolivia, which was fought over a swampland that ultimately had none of the mineral resources the two sides imagined was there.

It was in the Chaco War, however, that Alfredo Stroessner distinguished himself and was promoted to second lieutenant of artillery. By the time the war ended, he had been promoted again to first lieutenant. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The son of a German immigrant from Bavaria and his Guarani Indian wife, Alfredo Stroessner was born Nov. 3, 1912, in the Paraguayan town of Encarnación, on the Argentinean border southeast of Asunción. His father, Hugo Stroessner, owned a brewery. President Stroessner seldom spoke of his parents, and his official biography listed no siblings. His studies geared young Stroessner for a military life. He completed his basic education in Asunción and in Rio de Janeiro, entering the Asunción Military College in 1929. Before completing his studies there, he joined the war effort against Bolivia. In 1940, he traveled to Brazil for artillery training, and in 1943, then Captain Stroessner was honored with a nomination to Paraguay’s Superior War College, graduating in 1945.

He profited well from the power grabs that surrounded him, typically backing and then betraying the presidents he served, according to Paul H. Lewis, author of the 1980 book, “Paraguay Under Stroessner.” He climbed from commander of an artillery regiment to commander in chief of the army in 1951. Between 1948 and 1954, six presidents of Paraguay were overthrown through military takeovers. After his own successful coup, General Stroessner repelled two attempts to unseat him, one in 1955 by Epifanio Mendez Fleitas, president of the Central Bank and a friend of President Juan Domingo Peron of Argentina, and another in November 1956 by Rafael Franco, a former dictator. In 1959, General Stroessner briefly experimented with lifting a state of siege that had been in force since 1930, and restoring constitutional liberties. But when student protests over trolley fare hikes broke out, so did the reflexes of the iron hand.

General Stroessner restored the state of siege, and the police put an end to the demonstrations with the wholesale arrest and torture of the protesters. “Were it not for an occasional headless body floating down the Parana River, it might be possible to consider the gaudily uniformed and medaled dictator of Paraguay — the last of the breed in South America — a character out of Gilbert and Sullivan,” Joseph P. Lash wrote in The New York Post in 1961. But General Stroessner surprised the political pundits and held on through seven successive elections marked by rigged voting. In time he became the prototype for a new crop of South American dictators friendly to American interests. Backed by the United States, military rulers later seized power in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia. Security forces in these countries worked closely together, formalizing their cooperation in a joint intelligence plan called Operation Condor. Though Condor’s official goal was to target Marxist or terrorist threats to the dictatorships, in practice it served to uproot almost any political opposition or stirrings for democracy in its member nations.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story Condor also coordinated the assassination of opposition figures abroad, and was believed responsible for the car-bomb killing of Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States, and Ronni Moffitt, his staff associate, on Washington’s Embassy Row in 1976; the death of Chile’s former defense minister, Carlos Prats, and his wife on a Buenos Aires street, and the attempted assassination of Senator Bernardo Leighton of Chile in Rome. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy General Stroessner’s harshest repression occurred in the 1950’s and the 1970’s. Senator Carlos Levi Rufinelli, the leader of the opposition Liberal party, had been imprisoned 19 times and tortured six times by 1975. “Most of the time I did not know what they wanted,” he told The New York Times that year. “They did not even know what they wanted. But when they put the needles under your fingernails, you tell them anything.

You denounce everybody, and then they say: ‘See, you were lying to us all the time.’” President Stroessner enjoyed all the trappings of dictatorship — guaranteed victories at election time, an absence of checks and balances, unremitting public adulation and regular kickbacks. Nonetheless, he bridled at being called a dictator. “So, you have come to see the dictator,” he once told a reporter who had come to interview him in the 1960’s. “He was unsmiling, and there was flat sarcasm in his voice,” his visitor noted. An official biography of President Stroessner in 1968, distributed by the Paraguayan Foreign Ministry when he visited Washington, underscored his thirst for legitimacy. It noted every foreign trip the general had made and every visiting head of state or award he had received, from the United Arab Emirates’ “Collar of the Nile” prize in 1958 to the “Civil Medal,” awarded by the Inter-American Press Association three years later. The resume made no mention of his coup, but it gave election results listing total votes cast for General Stroessner and the other “candidates” in each election since 1954.

General Stroessner frequently complained that the international press overlooked the advances he had brought Paraguay. His most ambitious modernization project was the Itaipu Dam, whose construction Brazil financed in exchange for the right to purchase electricity at reduced rates for several years. Throughout his decades in office, he made a practice of personally inaugurating every new school or filtration station that opened, and inviting the entire diplomatic corps to watch.

John Vinocur, writing in The New York Times Magazine in 1984, offered this snapshot of Paraguay as its army goosestepped 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.” Mr.

White, who served in Asunción from 1977 to 1979, could still recite the opening of each night’s newscast 20 years later: “El Señor Presidente de la República, Jefe de la Brigada, Don Alfredo Stroessner . . .” He described General Stroessner as “dour and crotchety, and amoral and in love with power.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. White said that when he arrived in Paraguay, the Stroessner regime was holding 1,700 political prisoners, and he spent much of his time as ambassador winning their release. By the time he left, he said, it was holding only three. George Landau, who preceded Mr. White as the American ambassador, recalled that General Stroessner treated his cabinet roughly, and said, “He was God to them.” For his part, Mr. Landau described the Paraguay of General Stroessner as “benign, as dictatorships go,” and said those arrested could usually win release if they had friends in the right places.

He said that many times, President Stroessner complained that he wanted only to retire to a life of fishing and hunting, but that his country needed him. “He believed, as most dictators do, that he was absolutely irreplaceable,” Mr. Landau recalled. “He talked himself into a sense of duty.” President Stroessner got his chance to retire in February 1989, when a military faction led by General Rodríguez seized power in a coup. General Rodríguez, who was nicknamed “The Tiger,” pounced when he appeared to be losing his standing in the battle for succession after President Stroessner’s death. Rebel troops attacked the presidential guard and ended the Stroessner era, after one-third of a century, with eight hours of combat that caused numerous casualties. Paraguayans celebrated in the streets as General Rodríguez spoke of democracy and human rights. But he promoted himself to president the day after the coup, and was voted into the job three months later. It was not until 1993 that Paraguayans could elect a civilian president.

President Stroessner did not leave in disgrace, but flew out of Asunción airport, after a ceremony that Paraguayans who watched it on television remember as being more suitable for a statesman embarking on an overseas visit than a fleeing dictator. His ouster came through military jockeying, rather than from a democratic groundswell, and little changed in Paraguay once he left. Civil liberties eventually returned, but citizens were so disconnected from the political system and so conditioned to fear that they had little to say . The same acceptance of corruption prevailed, and even the faces of the leaders remained the same, with only one of them gone. “What you have is Stroessnerism without Stroessner,” Mr. Landau said in an interview in 1999. “Not in terms of civil liberties, but in terms of corruption.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Once in exile, General Stroessner never traveled openly outside of Brazil, perhaps fearful of sharing the fate of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who traveled to London for medical care and ended up fighting extradition to Spain to face trial for his acts as dictator of Chile. Mr.

Landau said General Stroessner wrote him around 1997, asking for help in securing authorization to visit the United States for a gall bladder operation. The ambassador advised the general to stay away, warning he could become the target for a lawsuit by Paraguayans. General Stroessner ended up having the operation in São Paulo, Mr. Landau said. . Martín Almada, a schoolteacher imprisoned during the 1970’s as an “intellectual terrorist,” said that 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 remembered.

- Alfredo Stroessner | Military Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Gustavo Graciela Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda (also Strössner or Strößner; November 3, 1912 – August 16, 2006), was a Paraguayan military officer who served as President of Paraguay from 1954 to 1989. He ascended to the position after leading an army coup in 1954. His 35-year long rule, marked by an uninterrupted period of repression in his country, was the longest unbroken rule by one individual in the history of South America. His rule is ranked 14th-longest among other non-royal national leaders since 1870, and made him one of the world's longest-serving non-Communist heads of state. General Stroessner was born in Encarnación, Paraguay . He entered the national military school at the age of 16 and received his commission in 1932. By 1940, he had risen to the rank of major and joined the general staff in 1946.

When civil war broke out in 1947, he initially remained loyal to President Higinio Moríñigo , then backed Felipe Molas López in a successful coup against Morínago. He then backed Federico Chávez against Lopez and by 1951 he was army chief of staff. In 1954, he ousted Chávez, becoming president after winning an election in which he was the sole candidate. An arch anti-communist, Stroessner had the backing of the United States. His supporters packed the legislature and ran the courts, and he ruthlessly suppressed all political opposition. He kept his country in what he called a constant "state of siege" that overruled his democratic constitution, enforced a cult of personality , and used torture against political opposition. Membership in his Colorado Party was a prerequisite for job promotion, free medical care and other services. The constitution had to be modified in 1967 and 1977 to legitimize his six consecutive elections to the presidency. In 1988, he won an unprecedented eighth term on a majority, according to official figures, of between 90 and 98 percent of the registered vote.

During Stroessner's rule, Paraguay became a sanctuary for smugglers in arms, drugs and everyday goods such as whisky and car parts. Stroessner provided refuge for French-born international heroin dealer Auguste Ricord ; strongmen such as Argentina's Juan Perón and Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza Debayle (later assassinated in Paraguay); and war criminals, including Dr. Josef Mengele , the Nazi doctor known as the "Angel of Death" who performed genetic experiments on children. Stroessner was forced from power in 1989 in a military coup led by strongman General Andrés Rodríguez . Stroessner was forced into exile in Brazil, where he spent the last 17 years of his life. Following a bout of pneumonia, he tried to return to his homeland to die, but was rejected by the government. He died in Brasília on 16 August 2006 of complications from a hernia operation.

Contents Edit Stroessner's parents were Hugo Strößner, who emigrated from Hof, Bavaria, Germany, and worked as an accountant for a brewery, and Heriberta Matiauda, who grew up in a wealthy Paraguayan family of Criollo Spanish descent. He joined the Paraguayan army in 1929, becoming a lieutenant in 1931. During the Chaco War against Bolivia (1932–1935) he enlisted as an artillery cadet and fought in the Battle of Boquerón . After the war he rose steadily in rank. In the Paraguayan Civil War he commanded the artillery division at Paraguarí that ensured President Moríñigo won by staying loyal and destroying a working-class rebel area of Asunción . He eventually became a brigadier and the youngest general officer in South America in 1948. Presidency Edit Stroessner objected to President Federico Chávez 's plans to arm the national police and threw him out of office in a coup d'état on May 4, 1954.

After a brief interim presidency by Tomás Romero , Stroessner was the only candidate in a special election on July 11 to complete Chávez' term. He was reelected seven times—in 1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, and 1988. He appeared alone on the ballot in 1958. In his other elections, he won by implausibly high margins; the opposition was lucky to get over 20 percent of the vote. He served for 35 years, with only Fidel Castro having a longer tenure among 20th-century Latin American leaders. Soon after taking office, Stroessner declared a state of siege, which allowed him to suspend civil liberties and rule by decree. It was renewed every 90 days until 1987. Although the state of siege was technically restricted to the capital after 1970, the courts ruled that anyone charged with security offenses could be brought to the capital and indicted under the state-of-siege provisions.

Thus, for all intents and purposes, Stroessner ruled under what amounted to martial law for virtually his entire tenure. A devoted anti-communist, he justified this action as a necessary tool to protect the country. Paraguay enjoyed close military and economic ties with the United States and supported the US invasion of Dominican Republic . [2] The Stroessner regime even offered to send troops to Vietnam alongside the Americans. [3] Between 1962 and 1975 the United States provided $146 million to Paraguay's military government and Paraguayan officers were trained at the US Army School of the Americas . [4] Although the military and security forces under Stroessner received less material support from the United States than other South American countries, strong inter-military connections existed through military advisors and military training. Between 1962 and 1966, nearly 400 Paraguayan military personnel were trained by the United States in the Panama Canal Zone and on US soil. [5] Strong Paraguayan-U.S. relations continued until the Carter Administration emphasized a foreign policy that recognized human rights abuses. The Reagan Administration boycotted the country as well.

[6] As leader of the Colorado Party , Stroessner exercised nearly complete control over the nation's political scene. Although opposition parties were nominally permitted after 1962 (the Colorado Party had been the only legal party in the country since 1947), Paraguay remained for all intents and purposes a one-party state. Elections were so heavily rigged in favor of the Colorados that the opposition had no realistic chance of winning, and opposition figures were subjected to varying degrees of harassment. While Stroessner's rule saw more stability than any living Paraguayan had known, it came at a high cost; corruption was rampant (Stroessner himself did not dispute charges of corruption at some levels in his government) and the Stroessner government's human rights record was considered one of the poorest in South America.

[7] During Stroessner's regime, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people were murdered, and 400 to 500 more were "disappeared." [8] Operation Condor Edit Paraguay was a leading participant in Operation Condor , a campaign of state-terror and security operations officially implemented in 1975 which were jointly conducted by the right-wing military governments of six Latin American countries (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil). Human rights violations characteristic of those in other Latin American countries such as kidnapping, torture, forced disappearance and extrajudicial killing , were routine and systematic during the Stroessner regime. Following executions, many of the bodies of those killed by the regime were dumped in the Chaco or the Rio Paraguay. The discovery of the " Archives of Terror " in 1992 in the Lambaré suburb of Asunción , confirmed allegations of widespread human rights violations. Pastor Coronel was the chief of the pyragüés (hairy-footed in Guaraní ) or secret police.

He would interview people in a pileta, a bath of human excrement or ram electric cattle prods up their rectums. The Secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party was dismembered alive with a chainsaw while Stroessner listened on the phone. [9] Under Stroessner, egregious human rights violations were committed against the Aché Indian population of Paraguay's eastern districts. The Aché Indians resided on land that was coveted and had resisted relocation attempts by the Paraguayan army. The government retaliated with massacres and forced many Aché into slavery. In 1974 the UN accused Paraguay of slavery and genocide. [4] Stroessner was careful not to show off or draw attention from jealous generals or foreign journalists. He avoided rallies and took simple holidays in Patagonia. He did become more tolerant of opposition as the years passed, but there was no change in the regime's basic character. During Stroessner's rule, no Communist nations had embassies in Paraguay, with the sole exception of non-aligned Yugoslavia.

[10] Stroessner made many state visits, including to Emperor Hirohito of Japan, President Lyndon Johnson of the United States, President Charles de Gaulle of France, to South Africa] [11] and several visits to West Germany , although over the years his relations with West Germany deteriorated. Since he had always been known as pro-German, this worsening of relations, combined with his feeling that the U.S. had abandoned him, were regarded as personal blows to Stroessner. President Stroessner. Stamp Scott no. 1452 It is assumed that the Roman Catholic Church is the only reason Stroessner did not have absolute control over the country. [12] After the destruction of Asunción University in 1972 by police, the Archbishop of Paraguay Ismael Rolón Silvero excommunicated the minister of the interior and the chief of police, and proscribed the celebration of Holy Mass in a sign of protest against the Stroessner regime. When Pope John Paul II visited Paraguay in 1988, his visit bolstered what was already a robust anti-Stroessner movement within the country.

[13] Stroessner gave a written television interview to Alan Whicker as part of a documentary The Last Dictator (UK: 7 April 1970) for the television series Whicker's World . The programme was released in a Region 2 DVD boxset by the UK's Network imprint. Economics Edit Stroessner was known for several positive economic policies, including the building of the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world in Itaipu Dam , developing Paraguay's economy : although Paraguay received only 15% of the contracts, it was a major factor allowing the country to have the highest rate of growth in Latin America for most of the 1970s. [14] Stroessner also dedicated large proportions of the Paraguayan national budget to the military and police apparatus, both fundamental to the maintenance of the regime. According to a 1963 article from Time magazine magazine, Stroessner spent 33% of the 1962 annual budget on army and police, 15% for education , and 2% for public works.

[15] There was no income tax and public spending was the smallest percentage of GDP in Latin America. Furthermore the construction of the Itaipu Dam, as well as the subsequently built Yacyretá Dam on the Paraguay-Argentina Border, displaced thousands of Paraguayans, pushing them from their homes, often without any restitution.[ citation needed ] The Itaipu Dam displaced at least 80,000 Paraguayans, and the Yacyretá will have displaced at least that many by December 2008.[ citation needed ] 160 workers died building the Itaipu Dam. [16] Stroessner was also known for many projects that improved the country's infrastructure.

Amongst these were the improvement of highways and the issuing of 15-20 hectare land grants to military personnel upon completion of their service, provided that the land would be used for farming purposes.[ citation needed ] Over 10,000 soldiers took up this offer.[ citation needed ] Most impressive was that by the end of the Stronato, the second biggest city was Puerto Flor de Lis (renamed "Puerto Presidente Stroessner," then " Ciudad del Este "), founded just 32 years before. Downfall Edit In April 1987, Stroessner lifted the state of siege as part of the run-up to elections the following spring. However, several draconian security laws remained in effect, meaning that the substance (if not the form) of the state of siege was still in place. As had been the case for over three decades, opposition leaders continued to be arbitrarily arrested and opposition meetings and demonstrations were broken up (often brutally). Stroessner was nominated by the Colorados once again, and was the only candidate who was allowed to campaign completely unmolested.

[17] Under these circumstances, the February 1988 election was no different from past elections, with Stroessner officially registering 89 percent of the vote—a margin that his rivals contended could only have been obtained through massive fraud. [18] On February 3, 1989, only six months after being sworn in for his eighth full term, Stroessner was ousted in a bloody coup d'état led by General Andrés Rodríguez . One reason for the coup was that the generals feared one of Stroessner's offspring would succeed him. Of the two, Freddie was a cocaine addict and Gustavo, a pilot, was loathed for being homosexual. A more outlandish rumour was that Lino Oviedo threatened Rodríguez with a grenade if he did not launch the coup. The two generals, Rodríguez and Oviedo, fought a brief artillery duel over Asunción. [19] After the coup, Stroessner fled to Brazil, where he lived in exile for the next seventeen and a half years.

The eastern city Puerto Flor de Lis, which had been renamed Puerto Presidente Stroessner in his honor, in 1989 was again renamed Ciudad del Este . Asunción 's airport had been named after him during his regime, but was later renamed Silvio Pettirossi International Airport . Stroessner died on August 16, 2006, in Brasília , at the age of 93. The immediate cause of death was a stroke. He had been suffering from pneumonia after undergoing a hernia operation. [20] The Paraguayan government preemptively dismissed any suggestions for honoring the late president within Paraguay. [21] He tried to return to Paraguay before his death, to die in his homeland, but he was rebuked and threatened with arrest by the government. Family Stroessner, Alfredo Encyclopedia > History > Biographies > Paraguay History: Biographies Alfredo Stroessner Stroessner, Alfredo (älfrāˈħō shtrsˈnər) [ key ], 1912–2006, president and dictator of Paraguay (1954–89).

Of a German Paraguayan family, he was commissioned an officer (1932) and fought in the Chaco War (1932–35). Named commander in chief of the armed forces (1951), he engineered the coup (1954) that toppled Federico Chávez and became president that same year. Retaining command of the armed forces, he suppressed all opposition, and turned Paraguay into a refuge for Nazi war criminals. He was "reelected" eight consecutive times (1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988) making his rule the longest in 20th-century Latin American history. With Brazil, he built the Itaipú Dam on the Paraná River; its power plant, the world's largest hydroelectric station, dramatically increasing export revenues through the sale of electricity. Though essentially authoritarian, he gradually permitted opposition political activity. He was overthrown in a military coup (1989) and spent the rest of his life in exile in Brazil. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. Alfredo Stroessner [an error occurred while processing this directive] Alfredo Stroessner Current Residence: Brazil Biography: Of a German Paraguayan family, Alfredo Stroessner was commissioned an officer (1932) and fought in the Chaco War (1932-35). Named commander in chief of the armed forces (1951), he engineered the coup (1954) that toppled Federico Chï¿½vez and became president that same year. Retaining command of the armed forces, he suppressed all opposition, and turned Paraguay into a refuge for Nazi war criminals. He was "reelected" eight consecutive times (1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988) making his rule the longest in 20th-century Latin American history.

With Brazil , he built the Itaipï¿½ dam on the Paranï¿½ River; its power plant, the world's largest hydroelectric station, dramatically increasing export revenues through the sale of electricity. Though essentially authoritarian, he gradually permitted opposition political activity. He was overthrown in a military coup (1989) and went into exile. News Clippings: Alfredo Stroessner -Top 15 Toppled Dictators- Printout - TIME Alfredo Stroessner By Ishaan Tharoor Tiny, landlocked Paraguay had the ignominy of being home to one of the 20th century's longest-ruling dictators. Alfredo Stroessner, a military officer, swept into power in 1954 in a typical South American palace coup and clung to power until 1989  a bad year for tyrants.

TIME wrote of Stroessner after his fall, "A dinosaur among despots, Stroessner ruled with absolute authority longer than any other leader in the western hemisphere and was second only to North Korea's Kim Il Sung as the world's most durable dictator." As with many of Latin America's autocrats, his rule was tolerated by Washington because of his professed anticommunism. He kept the country under an almost permanent "state of siege" for four decades, and torture, kidnappings and police brutality became hallmarks of his regime. Stroessner was ousted in February 1989 by generals who feared the strongman was grooming his cocaine-addicted son to be next in line. He died in exile in Brazil in 2006.

Question: Alfredo Stroessner was a dictator of which South American country from 1954 to 1989?
Answer: PARAGUAY