General Alfredo Stroessner
Stroessner toppled President Federico Chavez in a coup in 1954, and succeeded in being elected for eight five-year terms of office after revising the constitution, which had banned him from serving for more than two.
Stroessner's dictatorship most resembled that of Franco in Spain. Like Franco, Stroessner provided stability after a civil war; his motto, "Peace, Justice, Democracy", played to the hopes of an isolated society fearful of political instability.
Stocky, with light-coloured hair and blue eyes, Stroessner looked as if he had just emerged from a German bierkeller . His father had emigrated from Bavaria in the 1890s to start a brewery in the small town of Encarnacion.
Much was made of Stroessner's sympathy for Nazism - he provided a haven for Josef Mengele, the chief doctor at Auschwitz, among other undesirables - yet he was as much a Paraguayan peasant at heart: devious, calculating and shrewd, with little in the way of a political ideology.
In the murky world of Latin American politics, he was adept in the arts of "guided democracy", tolerating a token opposition while ensuring that any real opposition was snuffed out. The speciality of his chief torturer, Pastor Coronel, was said to be conducting interviews with the subject immersed in a bath of human excrement. Further encouragement would be administered with an electric cattle-prod.
But while Stroessner's regime was responsible for gross abuses of human rights, on the whole he used a gloved fist, presiding over a system which converted his country of 3.8 million people into a vast family enterprise.
He built roads and bridges and brought wealth through his agreement with Brazil to build a huge hydro-electric project on the Parana river.
In the late Seventies, despite its lack of mineral resources, Paraguay enjoyed the highest rates of growth in Latin America. Money generated by the hydro-electric project provided enough wealth for Stroessner to appear the benevolent dictator.
Stroessner developed the country's Colorado Party into an extended patronage machine. Civil servants, the military, teachers, doctors and engineers were compelled to join the party, and those who accepted Stroessner's ritual re-election every five years were rewarded with a share of the spoils.
His portrait hung everywhere. Schools, buildings and roads were named after him - even a town, Puerto Stroessner. His reputation as a ladies' man, with many illegitimate offspring to his credit, added to his aura of machismo.
Much of the largesse at his disposal derived from the traditional Paraguayan activity of smuggling. Under Stroessner Paraguay became the contraband centre of the region, the value of its exports estimated at three times the official figure. Stroessner's cronies took their cut of everything from illegal arms shipments to bootleg cigarettes and illegal drugs.
But the benefits made little difference to the lives of Paraguay's poverty-stricken peasantry, and Stroessner came into conflict with a Catholic Church which aligned itself with campaigns for social justice and land reform. In the Eighties it was joined by an increasingly critical United States, whose ambassador was threatened with expulsion on several occasions for criticising press censorship.
By the late Eighties Stroessner's advancing age, and moves towards democracy elsewhere in South America, prompted a growing number in his own party to break the taboo on discussing the succession. In February 1989 he was ousted in a palace coup and fled into exile in Brazil.
Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda was born on November 3 1912 at Encarnacion. His mother, Heriberta, came from a wealthy Paraguayan family. After leaving school at 16 Stroessner joined the Paraguayan army, becoming a lieutenant. He fought with distinction in the Chaco War against Bolivia in 1932, and rose steadily in rank.
Although Paraguay won the Chaco war, the conflict exhausted the country's finances and plunged it into nearly 20 years of upheaval, with several coups.
In 1948, Stroessner helped bring Federico Chavez to the presidency, and was rewarded with the appointment, in 1951, as Commander-in-Chief of Paraguay's armed forces. But in May 1954 Stroessner overthrew Chavez in a bloody coup, and in July elections he stood unopposed as the presidential candidate of the Colorado Party.
After coming to office he declared a "state of siege", which gave him a free hand in dealing with opposition.
He had every reason to feel insecure. The economy was in poor shape, the Colorado Party was full of competing factions, and the loyalty of the army was far from assured. Economic austerity measures proved unpopular, and in 1958, after he had been elected to a second term, dissatisfaction blossomed into a guerrilla insurgency backed by Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba.
Stroessner's military launched a campaign of terror against the regime's foes and their families. Hundreds were rounded up. Reports of torture were commonplace, and many languished for years in jails and at prison camps.
By the early Sixties, American military aid had improved the army's skills in counter-insurgency warfare; purges had removed all serious opposition in the Colorado Party and Stroessner's economic policies were beginning to pay dividends with higher exports and investment, and low inflation. Right-wing military coups in Brazil (in 1964) and Argentina (in 1966) also improved the political climate.
Demoralised by years of exile, in the early Sixties a Liberal Party faction, the Renovation Movement, returned to Paraguay to become the "official" opposition for the 1963 elections. Stroessner, under pressure from the US to permit some form of democracy, allotted the new party 20 of Congress's 60 seats.
The Renovation Movement's example was followed by other "opposition" groups. In 1967 a new constitution created a two-house legislature and allowed Stroessner to serve for two more five-year presidential terms.
Stroessner's foreign policy rested on a fervent anti-Communism, diplomacy to retain independence from Brazil and Argentina, and support for the United States. His reward was some US$160m worth of aid between 1954 and 1976. In 1968, he formally visited Washington.
His main opposition within the country was the Catholic Church. In 1972, after the Catholic University of Asuncion was trashed by police, the Archbishop of Paraguay excommunicated the minister of the interior and the chief of police and prohibited the celebration of mass throughout the country in protest. Three years later, after Stroessner ordered troops to smash the Catholic Agrarian League, 1,000 were arrested and seven Jesuit priests deported. Others died under torture.
With the arrival of Jimmy Carter in the White House, Stroessner's relationship with the US began to falter as a result of human rights abuses and the absence of reform.
In 1987 the US ambassador was tear-gassed while attending a reception sponsored by an anti-Stroessner group. In the same year Reagan suspended Paraguay from taking advantage of preferential tariffs for its exports.
Pope John Paul II's visit, in May 1988, during which he was greeted by large, enthusiastic crowds, gave new heart to opponents of the regime, and in November a silent protest march attracted an estimated 50,000 participants.
On February 3 1989, he was ousted in a coup d'etat led by General Andres Rodriguez, his former right-hand man. Stroessner went into exile in Brazil, where he lived comfortably for the rest of his life.
Alfredo Stroessner married, in 1940, Eligia Delgado, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.
©Telegraph
