Ex-Paraguayan dictator Stroessner dies (US and Pinochet pal)

[Say_What]

US pal dictator Strossner kicks the bucket. Dictator from 1954–1989, 35 years but that was okay with Tio Sam.

A long time DU reader :hi: who lived all through the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile used to say that Paraguay is a very scary place.

<clips>

BRASILIA, Brazil - Alfredo Stroessner, the canny anti-communist general who ruled Paraguay with a blend of force, guile and patronage for 35 years before his ouster in 1989, died in exile on Wednesday. He was 93.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060816/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/obit_stroessner

_________________________________________________________________________________

Background:

<clips>

...Stroessner despised communism and his regime thus found itself friendly to United States interests. During Stroessner's rule, no communist nations had embassies in Paraguay, with the sole exception of Yugoslavia. He was also respected for the financial discipline of his policy of re-paying loans granted to the Paraguayan government by the World Bank and other institutions and thus keeping the currency stable. The friendship with the U.S. continued for many years until the Carter Administration and then the Reagan Administration began to boycott his regime and country.

As a statesman, Stroessner made numerous state visits, including to Emperor Hirohito of Japan, President Johnson of the United States, President Charles de Gaulle of France and several visits to West Germany, although over the years his relations with West Germany soured. 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.

Although Stroessner was a very strict autocrat, he did become more tolerant of political opposition over the course of time. However, it is estimated by some that his regime, which took part in Operation Condor with Augusto Pinochet and Jorge Rafael Videla, cost the lives of between 400 and 3,000 people due to strong-arm tactics during his 35-year rule. His regime is also blamed for torture, kidnappings and widespread corruption, of which the "terror archives", discovered in 1992 in Lambaré suburb of Asunción, gave proof; he has not disputed charges of corruption at some levels in his government. Stroessner also had very poor relations with the Roman Catholic Church and is blamed for numerous actions against the church; some maintain that the Catholic Church is the only reason Stroessner did not have absolute control over the country.

Stroessner showed definite sympathies to ex-Nazis, as he allegedly granted asylum and hid numerous ex-Nazis in Paraguay, including the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, after the Second World War. The Mengele Affair resulted in a great deal of very bad press for Stroessner and he was heavily criticized by the world media for his alleged involvement. His regime also lost foreign support because of the genocidal acts it committed against the Aché by New Tribes Mission. Some were tortured in the infamous Tecnica torture center as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfredo_Stroessner


Stroessner with another US favorite dictator Pinochet

[warrens]

1. Hope it was lengthy and REAL painful....nt

[dipsydoodle]

2. and the other similar

scumbags from the same era suffer the same too.

But obviously not Fidel. :)

[Say_What]

5. Stroessner and Pinochet's long relationship with Tio Sam

underscore the hypocrisy of the *dictator* and *free elections* hysteria spewed by Washington in regards to Cuba.

It should also be noted that these two and not the only *dictators* supported by the USSA. Today there's the Bush pal Uzbekistan dictator who boils people alive.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/us-and-uz.htm

[dipsydoodle]

8. The list isn't up to date

Azerbaijan is missing. They do as please using the illusion of democracy. The independant observors got kicked out and the USA did zilch - just need to get the oil running.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5348075&ft=1&f=1006

I was highly amused to read that the "oh so protected pipeline" is already rusting and unlike the Alaskan one it's buried underground to help keep it secure from attack. :rofl:

[mikeargo]

18. I hope the bastard...

rots in Hell. And I hope Pinochet is next.

[endarkenment]

3. I didn't know that sick fuck was still alive.

Last nazi standing?

[Tom Joad]

4. How appropriate. Soon to be followed by US buddy Ariel Sharon.

They had much in common, but the latter having killed so many more. 3,000? For Sharon, that was a days work.

[Xeric]

6. Good book on Paraguay that I read recently

"At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay" by John Gimlette

Over the past 500 years, Paraguay has been invaded by successive waves of conquistadors, missionaries, Mennonites, Australian socialists, fugitive Nazis and, perhaps most improbably, Islamic extremists. "An island surrounded by land," bordered by vast deserts and impenetrable jungles, Paraguay is a country uniquely suited for those seeking to drop out of sight or, like Gimlette, find themselves. The author was 18 when he first traveled to Paraguay more than two decades ago; return visits only deepened his appreciation for the nation and its tragicomic past. Gimlette seems to have gone everywhere and talked to everyone. He boats down piranha-infested rivers, hobnobs with Anglo-Paraguayan socialites and hunts down the former hiding place of notorious Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele. Gimlette, a travel writer and lawyer in London, proves a chatty, amiable guide to local institutions like the national railway (which has no running trains) and native wildlife, like the fierce, raccoon-like coatimundis (who, Gimlette writes, "make up for their absence of pity with fistfuls of dagger-like claws"). Yet he doesn't shirk from the nastier aspects of Paraguay's bloody history. Gimlette describes in horrific detail, for example, the rape and conquest of the Guarani Indians as well as the brutally repressive regime of Don Alfredo Stroessner (whose U.S.-backed dictatorship lasted longer than any other in the Western Hemisphere).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400078520/sr=8-1/qid=1155745108/ref=sr_1_1/002-4035441-1716846?ie=UTF8

Stoessner was one of many malignant dictators of the country. The history of Paraguay is particularly tragic.

Probably not in the top ten vacation spots either.

[ovidsen]

7. LOVE the hats!!

I mean, what was with all those right wing Latin American military rulers and their HATS??

Inspired by Monty Python? Groucho Marx?

Stroessner - please do not RIP....

[DemoTex]

9. See Isabel Hilton's interview with Stroessner in Granta 31 (Spr '90)

Granta 31: The General

Nobody has ever got through to the "General," General Alfredo Stroessner who, until deposed in 1989, was one of the world's longest reigning dictators. Nobody had ever got an interview: nobody, that is, until Isabel Hilton, following the suggestions of the General's former mistresses, tracked him down to his hiding place in Brazil.

http://www.granta.com/back-issues/31

Isabel Hilton re-visited her subject in Granta 87 (Fall 2004) in The Enduring General.

[gratuitous]

10. Stroessner dies, goes to hell

Sitting next to Franco, waiting for Pinochet to arrive.

[Say_What]

11. Stroessner, Operation Condor and Orlando Letelier

September 21, 2006 marks the 30th anniversary of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, in Washington, DC. The first terrorist act on US soil, it was part of Pinochet's Operation Condor, which carried out political assasinations around the globe. Bush I, as CIA dirctor, had word that this was gonna happen and did nothing to prevent it.

From the pdf titled The Paraguayan Caper, October 1976 with this bit of information about Orlando Letellier.

.."If the fact that we intentionally witheld information on the Letelier investigatio became public, we would be subject to a storm of criticism. I recognize that we run the risk of leaks. In my judgement we run great risks if we appear to withold information."

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20001113/

[robinlynne]

12. Paraguay is indeed very scary. I was there many years ago. the poorest

country in Latin America, the oldest dictator (lognest dictatorship) in Latin America. Extreme poverty and huge mansions. I particularly remember the presidential palace with its neon sign that said something about work peace and freedom, and reminded me of germany in the 40s.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Extreme poverty and huge mansions.Sounds like a right-winger's dream!

The mental image of the sign almost triggers a gag reflex. Wildly bad taste, coming from a monster.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Paraguay in Transition

by William Stief
ASUNCION, PARAGUAY--For nearly 35 years, until February 3, 1989, General Alfredo Stroessner ruled as the dictator of Paraguay. He and his Colorado Party, founded as the National Republican Party September 11, 1887, in emulation of the U.S Republican Party, ran "a patrimonial system," according to Fernando Masi, an economist who worked for the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and who now heads the Paraguayan Institute for Latin American Integration.

That meant, Masi says, that Stroessner "distributed the wealth of the state to a small group of people, creating a new military-civilian elite which had big farms, numbered bank accounts in Switzerland five or six houses apiece." Stroessner also abolished export taxes in the 1960s to benefit himself and his allies.

Typical of the new elite, Masi says, was the Colorado Party chairman, Juan E. Pereida. He had 40 storage containers on the border from which goods were smuggled into Brazil. He also had "four or five planes, 100 suits and his wife had 40 pairs of shoes"--not in Imelda Marcos' league, but enough to live comfortably in a country where the 1988 per capita income was about $1,200.
(snip)

Some have credited Stroessner with improving Paraguay's infrastructure, but the facts point in a different direction. There are only 88,000 telephones and 1,250 miles of paved roads in Paraguay and only Asuncion and a small city near the Brazilian border have running, potable water.
(snip/...)

http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1989/07/steif-paraguay.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And to think they built the world's largest, dam, too!

[Say_What]

15. ....in emulation of the U.S Republican Party"...

That gets the "No Shit Sherlock" award for the day! :bounce:


Change the names in this piece and it could be the Bush cabel:

From the article:


...That meant, Masi says, that Stroessner "distributed the wealth of the state to a small group of people, creating a new military-civilian elite which had big farms, numbered bank accounts in Switzerland five or six houses apiece." Stroessner also abolished export taxes in the 1960s to benefit himself and his allies.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

13. You'll excuse me while I figuratively dance on his grave.

And if you think I'm being innapropriate, fuck off.

[Judi Lynn]

16. So glad you uncovered the information showing Jimmy Carter was

the one to start the process of pushing this creep away from the U.S.

Had never heard it, due to a profound lack of awareness on events in Latin America, which I hope to correct.

Jimmy Carter made an important choice in shutting the door to this fiend, turning him away. It's a raw, vicious insult to people everywhere that he was supported so strongly before that, as he had a true appetite for human suffering for the poor and helpless, just like so many of these monsters our right-wing idiot pResidents loved.

[Say_What]

17. Pres: Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, and Ford---School of the Americas

<clips>

...Secret files discovered several years ago outside the
Paraguayan capital of Asuncion, which have become known as the
Terror Archives, and files of the Brazilian military could
also shed new light on what US intelligence agencies,
diplomats, and military knew about what went on in the dirty
wars in the region (see NotiSur, 1993-02-16, 1993-09-03).
Many leaders of the military regimes were trained at the US
School of the Americas, then in Panama.

A number of prominent US officials, including former
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief and former President
George Bush, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and
officials in the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan
administrations could be drawn into several investigations now
being conducted in Latin America if evidence surfaces of their
knowledge or complicity.

http://ladb.unm.edu/notisur/sample-feature.php3

Carter was the only one with decency and cojones enough to cut the bastard loose. LBJ even gave Stoessner a chess set. :eyes:


http://128.83.78.247/giftsofstate/individualGifts.cfm?ID=101

[Judi Lynn]

19. Great article! If Stroessner could have lived longer, it looks as if he

could have FINALLY gotten his ass handed to him, in time!

From the article:

Stroessner could be indicted
On May 10, Paraguayan Judge Ruben Dario Frutos declared
Stroessner "an uncooperative witness and in contempt of court"
in an investigation into the disappearance of Agustin Goiburu.
Frutos said it was the first step toward issuing an
international arrest warrant, which could be followed by an
extradition request to Brazil.
Goiburu, a doctor at a police clinic in Asuncion, was
persecuted for opposing the Stroessner regime (1952-1989) and
for his membership in the Communist Party. In 1959, Goiburu
refused to sign death certificates listing natural causes for
victims who died while being tortured. He finally went into
exile, and on Feb. 9, 1977, was kidnapped as he left the
Hospital San Martin in the Argentine city of Parana, across
the border with Paraguay. He was never seen again. Judge
Frutos' document states that his kidnapping and disappearance
was the work of Operation Condor.

Paraguay's Terror Archives
Much of what is known about Operation Condor comes from
the Terror Archives, five tons of documents uncovered in
Paraguay through the efforts of human rights activist Martin
Almada. Almada and Judge Jose Fernandez found the files in
December 1992 during an inspection of a police station in the
Asuncion barrio of Lambare (see NotiSur, 1993-02-16, 1993-09-
03).
Almada was kidnapped in 1974 and tortured by security
forces in Paraguay. He recently went to the US to request
that the US State Department make public its documents
relating to the Stroessner dictatorship, which he said would
make clearer the coordinated repression among the region's
security forces.
"I was interrogated and tortured by officers from those
countries," said Almada. "Col. Jorge Oteiza Lopez of the
Chilean Air Force and police inspector Hector Garcia Rey of
Argentina interrogated and tortured me."
During the three years that he was held in a detention
center in Paraguay known as The Sepulcher, Almada says he saw
more than 1,200 people who were tortured, many of them from
neighboring countries.
(snip)

Justice may have eventually caught up with him, all these years later.

That's the way it goes. We don't even find out what has been done in our names until decades later, as it has worked in Latin America, and many Americans simply don't give a ####, assuming if American right-wing Presidents wanted to butcher great numbers of Latin Americans, wiping out entire villages, they must have been doing something to deserve it.



Murderous old U.S. supported, Nazi-loving fart Stroessner

[Judi Lynn]

20. What's the idea behind these Presidential gifts?

Aren't we all a little too grown-up for this trashy custom? It's somewhat embarrassing!

Do you remember when people used to save Green Stamps, or those coupons on packs of cigarettes? That chess set reminded me of a President with a draw full of cigarette coupons and a catalogue, trying to guess what spiffy present would be just right for his dictator friend.

You'd think the boatloads of foreign aid to bribe cooperative stooge/puppets would be enough!

[theanarch]

21. now i know why it's been so damn hot this summer...

...it isn't global warming at all; it's just Satan stoking up the furnaces of Hell to receive the souls of Stroessner, Sharon, et al...

[Vidar]

22. Would have preferred him at the end of a rope, but dead is dead.

[Judi Lynn]

23. Ex-Paraguay ruler buried in exile

Last Updated: Friday, 18 August 2006, 00:54 GMT 01:54 UK
Ex-Paraguay ruler buried in exile

Brazil and Paraguay did not send an official representative
Paraguay's former military ruler Alfredo Stroessner has been buried in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia.
About 60 mourners attended the private ceremony, mostly family. Neither the Brazilian nor Paraguayan governments sent an official representative.

The 93-year-old died in Brasilia on Wednesday after contracting pneumonia following an operation for a hernia.

General Stroessner, who led a military coup in 1954, had lived in exile in Brazil since being ousted in 1989.

Paraguay had said earlier it would not pay tribute to him as he was a renegade from justice and was wanted for questioning over alleged rights abuses.

Gen Stroessner's family say they would like to move his body back to Paraguay at some point.

Operation Condor

Gen Stroessner was renowned as a staunch anti-communist, and was an ally of apartheid South Africa and Chile's General Augusto Pinochet.

Hundreds of files discovered after his departure revealed Paraguay's extensive role in the repression of left-wing activists across southern Latin America in what was known as Operation Condor.
(snip/...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5261818.stm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Paraguay's Stroessner dies a free man
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Sat, 08/19/2006 - 00:39.

Like Guatemala's genocidal Romeo Lucas Garcia a few weeks back, Paraguay's brutal former dictator Alfredo Stroessner has died a free man in comfortable exile—despite vain efforts to have him extradited back home to face justice. We have noted that there have been some recent arrests of those involved in the bloody Operation Condor network established by the Southern Cone dictators in the '70s to coordinate their "dirty war" against leftist dissidents. But the masterminds, like Stroessner and Augusto Pinochet appear untouchable. From the London Times, Aug. 17 (emphasis added). The term "longest-serving" is likely an unintentional irony. "Longest-ruling" would have been a better choice. The only things Stroessner ever "served" were his own power, Paraguay's deeply reactionary landed elite, and US imperialism's anti-communist designs.
(snip/...)

http://ww4report.com/node/2344

[mitchum]

24. The bastard will now serve some good as food for worms

[Psephos]

25. No pal of mine n/t

[happydreams]

26. The name Stroessner has a Germanic ring to it.

He wouldn't have been a beneficiary of Dulles's "ratline" would he?

[Akim]

27. Because it is German. His parents were German immigrants. n/t

[Odin2005]

28. Many German Catholics immigrated to southern South America

[Akim]

29. Hundreds of Thousands Before Hitler's Time and Italians Too n/t