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The pro-Stroessner celebrations have all but disappeared but Paraguay is yet to fully confront the legacy of military rule
William Costa in Asunción
Tue 10 Dec 2019 05.00 EST
For decades, it was known as the fecha feliz – the happy date – a cheerful-sounding name for the annual commemoration of South America’s longest-ruling military dictator.
Paraguay’s General Alfredo Stroessner used the nationwide birthday party as an element of his carefully cultivated cult of personality. And the celebration has shown enormous staying power, surviving both the coup that toppled Stroessner in 1989 and his death in exile in Brazil in 2006. But this 3 November, the General Stroessner polka – the celebration’s traditional adulatory soundtrack – was barely heard in the capital city. Instead, Asunción rang with music from anti-Stroessner parties.
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And as recent events in South America have shown, authoritarian pasts can weigh heavily on countries decades after democratic transition, despite outward signs of change. Chile is now well into its second month of turmoil, fueled in part by anger over the neoliberal policies introduced by Augusto Pinochet.
Fernando Robles, a Paraguayan lawyer, argues that his country has still not shaken off the dead hand of dictatorship.
He spent three years in prison for belonging to a clandestine anti-Stroessner movement – “We were all tortured. Horrifically tortured, as was the custom of Stroessner and his police force” – but Robles worries that many in his country do not understand the lessons of the past. “Today, a 15-year-old or an 18-year-old doesn’t even know that Stroessner existed. The education system doesn’t mention the dictatorship. There is no intention of teaching the past so that it doesn’t repeat itself.”
Paraguay’s relationship with its troubled past was thrust into the spotlight in September, by the discovery of human remains at a house once owned by Stroessner. The remains are still under analysis to determine if they are from victims of the dictatorship, said Dr Rogelio Goiburú, head of the justice ministry’s department for historical memory and reparation.
Goiburú has every reason to want to uncover the truth about the dictatorship’s crimes: his own father was murdered by Stroessner’s regime. “All imaginable crimes were committed under Stroessner,” he said.
Political opponents were forcibly disappeared, young girls were sexually enslaved by high-ranking officials, members of the LGBT community were targeted and indigenous peoples faced violence that has been labelled as genocide.
A 2008 report from the Paraguayan Truth and Justice Commission found that at least 423 people were murdered, 18,722 tortured and 3,470 forced into exile during the dictatorship.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/10/paraguay-dictator-alfredo-stroessner-dictatorship
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