Alfredo Stroessner, the former general who ruled Paraguay for nearly 35 years through a combination of paternalistic politics, astute strategic alliances and ruthless repression, died Wednesday in exile in Brazil. He was 93.
The one-time South American strongman had come down with pneumonia after a hernia operation in Brasilia, where he had lived a hermetic existence since being forced from power in February 1989. He died of a stroke.
His grandson, Alfredo Dominguez Stroessner, said in a radio interview that Gen. Stroessner may be buried in his Paraguayan hometown of Encarnacion.
According to a report Tuesday in the daily newspaper Ultima Hora, Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte said he did not intend to officially commemorate the death of the former leader, who is still widely reviled in his homeland.
Gen. Stroessner, whose fierce anti-communist stance allied him with the regional Cold War aims of the United States, was haunted throughout his reign by charges of flagrant corruption and responsibility for, human-rights advocates say, the torture, disappearance and murder of hundreds if not thousands of political opponents.
Many of these alleged crimes were carried out under the notorious Operation Condor, a far-flung strategy by several right-wing South American governments, particularly Paraguay, Augusto Pinochet’s Chile and the Argentine junta led by Jorge Rafael Videla, to crush left-wing opposition throughout the continent in the 1970s and early ’80s.
In a part of the world and an era that gave rise to numerous iron-willed leaders from the right and the left, Gen. Stroessner was notable both for the duration and the comprehensiveness of his power.
Working through the ruling Colorado Party, with nothing more than token opposition, he forced government employees, military personnel and other civilian workers to join the party and support him. His name was emblazoned on schools and airports, and he tried to create a cult of personality by ensuring that his portrait graced as many public buildings, businesses and living rooms as possible.
Opponents condemned his alleged handing out of economic favors to cronies, brutal silencing of dissident voices and use of fraudulent electoral methods to maintain his decades-long rule.
His country, parodied during his epoch as the epitome of a reflexively authoritarian and self-aggrandizing Latin American dictatorship, also became a haven for Nazi war criminals such as Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz death camp physician who conducted brutal experiments on inmates, and for fellow right-wing autocrat Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, who was assassinated while living in exile in Paraguay.
Gen. Stroessner, who was spared the pressure to account for his past actions by fleeing to Brazil, said his totalitarian grip was necessary to propel his country into the modern global economy.
He dismissed his foes as Marxist terrorists intent on thwarting Paraguay’s move from a moribund and disordered economic past to a more stable and prosperous future. Among his regime’s most touted accomplishments was the joint construction with Brazil of the massive, $16 billion Itaipu hydroelectric power plant on the Parana River on the border between the two countries.
Despite heavy investment in highways, sewers, public water supplies and other basic infrastructure during Gen. Stroessner’s tenure, Paraguay remained one of the region’s poorest countries at the time of his ouster in a coup by his former military and political protege, Gen. Andres Rodriguez.
Gen. Stroessner was the son of a German immigrant father and a Paraguayan mother and became a career military man. He joined the national army while still in his teens and rose swiftly through the ranks.
By 1948 he was a brigadier general, and he later became army chief of staff. As a top military commander, he led the 1954 coup that deposed President Federico Chavez.
During his first three decades in power, Gen. Stroessner bought the loyalty of key military officers by appointing them to administer state-run companies, which allowed certain of his favorites to acquire vast personal wealth. Although he was continually re-elected as president, in several cases he was either the only candidate or the election results were broadly regarded as suspect.
As popular unrest over his regime mounted during the mid-1980s, deepening into violent street clashes in Asuncion, the nation’s capital, a faction of the Colorado Party turned on Gen. Stroessner. He was further weakened by the continent’s shifting political winds.
Gen. Stroessner tried to reassert control by forcing a number of military officers into retirement. But when his former right-hand man Rodriguez led a rebellion in February 1989 that left hundreds of soldiers and police dead, Gen. Stroessner surrendered and went into exile.
