Paraguay Reckons with Stroessner as Memory Refuses to Fade

Thirty-seven years after Alfredo Stroessner fell, Paraguay is still negotiating the meaning of his rule. Activists and opposition politicians warn against “relativizing” crimes, as others point to stability, development, and the infrastructure that still shapes daily life.

An Anniversary Where the Past Shows Up Uninvited

Paraguay commemorated this week the thirty-seventh anniversary of the fall of Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship, and the commemoration did not feel settled. It felt contested. The micro scene is the debate itself, still alive in public life, with human rights activists and opposition politicians urging the country not to fall into what they call the ‘relativization’ of the regime’s crimes, such as disappearances, torture, and political repression.

That word, relativization, lands like a warning label. It is the kind of language that tries to hold the line when an old argument returns in familiar clothes: yes, people suffered, but look at the roads; yes, repression, but also stability. The trouble is that this balancing act is not neutral in a place where the state once controlled who could organize, who could speak, and who could protest without paying a price.

Stroessner’s era began with a military coup in May 1954. He forced the incumbent president, Federico Chávez, to resign, then established a dictatorship that suspended Paraguay’s democratic process. It lasted thirty-five years. Long enough for fear to become a habit. Long enough for the only permitted political institution, the Colorado Party under Stroessner’s control, to become the channel through which ordinary life moved.

A sensory detail fits here because memory does not live only in archives. It lives in the way people’s voices tighten when they talk about the past in public, and then loosen when they talk about it at home. The dictatorship’s legacy persists in social attitudes, fear, and the way communities remember or suppress their experiences, shaping Paraguay’s ongoing identity.

What this anniversary does is pull that modulation back into the open.

How a Soldier Became the State, and the Party Became the Door

Stroessner was a career soldier born in Encarnación. His father was a German immigrant, and his mother was a local woman of Guarani, Indigenous descent. He joined the Paraguayan army at seventeen and became an officer two years later. During the war that began in 1932 when Bolivia attempted to seize the Chaco region, he was decorated for bravery and cited for superior performance of duty. Afterward, he was appointed to the Superior War College, excelled there, and rose quickly. By 1948, he was a brigadier general, described as the youngest general officer in South America.

Paraguay in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s was marked by political turmoil. Stroessner used his control of the Colorado Party and the army to take control of the government. That pairing, party and military, became the architecture of his rule.

The notes underline how complete that architecture was. Only the Colorado Party was permitted to operate. Attempts by other political groups to organize were ruthlessly suppressed. Evidence of protest could result in extreme forms of repression, including arrest, torture, death, and exile. Political action was permitted only for members of the party faithful and the military.

A grounded, everyday observation follows from that structure. When only one party is permitted, politics is no longer something you debate. It becomes something you navigate. The door you knock on matters. The person you know matters. Silence, too, becomes a membership card.

This is what activists mean when they fear relativization. In such a system, the costs were not only borne by prominent dissidents. The costs seeped into ordinary routines.

Stability, Itaipu, and the Price of an “Order” That Paid Itself

Stroessner’s tight political, economic, and social control did allow Paraguay to achieve a degree of political and financial stability. For much of his presidency, the Paraguayan economy experienced low inflation and incurred little external debt. In the late 1950s, he urged the business sector to adopt an economic program recommended by the International Monetary Fund. He crushed labor attempts to promote strikes. In the 1960s, the country experienced very little economic growth but remained politically stable.

Then came the years when development became the centerpiece of the argument. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Paraguay benefited from the construction of the Itaipu hydroelectric dam, described as the largest of its kind in the world. Brazil financed construction because it was desperate for electric power and, in turn, received most of the power the dam produced. The project furnished all the power Paraguay needed, provided jobs for domestic workers, and stimulated exports of major crops such as soybeans and cotton. Stroessner also used the economic partnership with Brazil to force Argentina to adopt a foreign policy favorable to Paraguay.

The regime opened hundreds of acres of land to the peasantry in an underdeveloped eastern border region and expanded the civil sector by creating scores of bureaucratic positions. Foreign aid, much of it from the United States, improved infrastructure and helped build roads, schools, and power plants. The United States also provided military assistance and trained more than two thousand Paraguayan officers in counterintelligence and counterinsurgency. Stroessner’s fierce anti-Communism helped him maintain strong ties with Washington, including his refusal to allow Communist countries to establish embassies in Paraguay during that period.

This is where the debate becomes hard to separate from Latin America’s broader twentieth-century story. Security alliances, anti-Communist politics, development projects like Itaipu, and a state that equated stability with obedience. While some see these as progress, others argue they masked systemic repression and corruption, complicating assessments of Stroessner’s legacy.

Paraguay became a South American leader in contraband activities. The armed forces were under Stroessner’s complete control, and he permitted them to enrich themselves through a wide range of illicit activities, including prostitution and drugs, provided they remained loyal to him. That detail sits uneasily beside the dam, the roads, and the schools. It suggests a regime that built while it extracted, that stabilized while it corrupted, that claimed sovereignty while allowing loyalty to be monetized.

The memorable line here is cold and straightforward: when a dictatorship lasts this long, it starts to bill itself as history.

By the 1980s, the regime began encountering severe economic difficulties. When work on Itaipu was completed, many construction jobs disappeared. Government spending rose beyond income. Foreign debt began to climb. Paraguay sought loans from Brazil and the World Bank, and much of the borrowed money was wasted on projects such as cement plants and a steel mill that proved economically inefficient. Contraband thrived due to Paraguay’s proximity to Brazil and Argentina, with illegal drug shipping proving especially lucrative. International pressure pushed the government to attempt stronger control of the drug flow.

In 1983, the United States began pressuring Stroessner to open the political arena to other parties. A political front called Acuerdo Nacional formed from opposition parties, and the Roman Catholic Church joined calls for political freedom.

The end came in February 1989 when General Andrés Rodríguez launched a coup, exploiting divisions within the Colorado Party and the army. Rodríguez’s move surprised many politicians because he was regarded as a favorite of Stroessner and had received substantial economic benefits in property, banking, construction, and manufacturing. Within two days, he sent Stroessner into permanent exile. Stroessner later died in Brazil in August 2006 at ninety-three. Rodríguez initiated gradual democratic reforms and won the May 1989 presidential election, a contest considered the least corrupt in Paraguayan history.

Stroessner’s thirty-five-year dictatorship, surpassed in length among twentieth-century Latin American leaders only by Fidel Castro, remains controversial. Many consider him a brutal dictator. Others consider him a brilliant leader who saved Paraguay from economic collapse.

The wager, for Paraguay now, is whether that split becomes a permanent fog. The activists warning against relativization are trying to keep one thing clear: development does not cancel repression. Stability does not erase torture. And anniversaries, if they mean anything, must tell the country that it can say so out loud.

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