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Paraguay Consolidation of the Stroessner Regime
The son of an immigrant German brewer and a Paraguayan woman,
Stroessner was born in Encarnación in 1912. He joined the army when
he was sixteen and entered the triservice military academy, the
Francisco López Military College. Like Franco and Estigarribia,
Stroessner was a hero of the Chaco War. He had gained a reputation
for his bravery and his abilities to learn quickly and to command
and inspire loyalty in troops. He was also known to be thorough and
to have an unusual capacity for hard work. His extremely accurate
political sense failed him only once, when he found himself in 1948
on the wrong side of a failed coup attempt and had to be driven to
the Brazilian embassy in the trunk of a car, earning him the
nickname "Colonel Trunk." Career considerations and an antipathy
for communists possibly caused Stroessner to decide against joining
the rebels in 1947. Morínigo found his talents indispensable during
the civil war and promoted him rapidly. Because he was one of the
few officers who had remained loyal to Morínigo, Stroessner became
a formidable player once he entered the higher echelons of the
armed forces.
Repression was a key factor in Stroessner's longevity
(see Opposition Parties
, ch. 4;
Security and Political Offenses
, ch. 5).
Stroessner took a hard line from the beginning in his declaration
of a state of siege, which he renewed carefully at intervals
prescribed by the constitution. Except for a brief period in 1959,
Stroessner renewed the state of siege every three months for the
interior of the country until 1970 and for Asunción until 1987. He
was lucky from the outset; the retirement of González and the death
of Molas López had removed two of his most formidable opponents.
Another helpful coincidence was the September 1955 Argentine coup
that deposed Perón, thus depriving Méndez Fleitas of his main
potential source of support. After the coup, Perón fled to
Asunción, where his meddling in Paraguayan politics complicated
Méndez Fleitas's position further and intensified the political
struggle going on behind the scenes. Forced to play his hand after
the Argentine junta compelled Perón to depart Asunción for Panama
in November, Méndez Fleitas prepared to stage a coup in late
December. However, Stroessner purged the military of Méndez
Fleitas's supporters and made him go into exile in 1956.
To observers, Stroessner did not seem to be in a particularly
strong position. He was hardly in control of the Colorado Party,
which was full of competing factions and ambitious politicians, and
the army was not a dependable supporter. The economy was in bad
shape and deteriorating further. Stroessner's adoption of economic
austerity measures proved unpopular with military officers, who had
grown used to getting soft loans from the Central Bank; with
businessmen, who disliked the severe tightening of credit; and with
workers, who went out on strike when they no longer received pay
raises. In addition, the new Argentine government, displeased with
Stroessner's cordial relations with Perón, canceled a trade
agreement.
A 1958 national plebiscite elected Stroessner to a second term,
but dissatisfaction with the regime blossomed into a guerrilla
insurgency soon afterward. Sponsored by exiled Liberals and
Febreristas, small bands of armed men began to slip across the
border from Argentina. Venezuela sent large amounts of aid to these
groups starting in 1958. The following year, the new Cuban
government under Fidel Castro Ruz also provided assistance.
Stroessner's response was to employ the state's virtually
unlimited power by giving a free hand to the military and to
Minister of Interior Edgar Ynsfrán, who began to harass, terrorize,
and occasionally murder family members of the regime's foes. A
cycle of terror and counter-terror began to make life in Paraguay
precarious.
The guerrillas received little support from Paraguay's
conservative peasantry. The Colorado Party's peasant py
nandí irregulars ("barefoot ones" in Guaraní), who had a welldeserved reputation for ferocity, often tortured and executed their
prisoners. Growing numbers of people were interned in jungle
concentration camps. Army troops and police smashed striking labor
unions by taking over their organizations and arresting their
leaders.
In April 1959, however, Stroessner grudgingly decided to heed
the growing call for reform within the army and the Colorado Party.
He lifted the state of siege, allowed opposition exiles to return,
ended press censorship, freed political prisoners, and promised to
rewrite the 1940 constitution. After two months of this democratic
"spring," the country was on the verge of chaos. In late May,
nearly 100 people were injured when a student riot erupted in
downtown Asunción over a bus fare increase. The disturbance
inspired the legislature to call for Ynsfrán's resignation.
Stroessner responded swiftly by reimposing the state of siege and
dissolving the legislature.
An upsurge in guerrilla violence followed, but Stroessner once
again parried the blow. Several factors strengthened Stroessner's
hand. First, United States military aid was helping enhance the
army's skills in counterinsurgency warfare. Second, the many purges
of the Colorado Party had removed all opposition factions. In
addition, Stroessner's economic policies had boosted exports and
investment and reduced inflation, and the right-wing military coups
in Brazil in 1964 and Argentina in 1966 also improved the
international climate for nondemocratic rule in Paraguay.
Another major factor in Stroessner's favor was a change in
attitude among his domestic opposition. Demoralized by years of
fruitless struggle and exile, the major opposition groups began to
sue for peace. A Liberal Party faction, the Renovation Movement,
returned to Paraguay to become the "official" opposition, leaving
the remainder of the Liberal Party, which renamed itself the
Radical Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Radical--PLR), in exile. In
return for Renovationist participation in the elections of 1963,
Stroessner allotted the new party twenty of Congress's sixty seats.
Four years later, PLR members also returned to Paraguay and began
participating in the electoral process. By this time, the
Febreristas, a sad remnant of the once powerful but never terribly
coherent revolutionary coalition, posed no threat to Stroessner and
were legalized in 1964. The new Christian Democratic Party (Partido
Demócrata Cristiano--PDC) also renounced violence as a means of
gaining power. The exhaustion of most opposition forces enabled
Stroessner to crush the Paraguayan Communist Party (Partido
Communista Paraguayo--PCP) by mercilessly persecuting its members
and their spouses and to isolate the exiled Colorado
epifanistas (followers of Epifanio Méndez Fleitas) and
democráticos, who had reorganized themselves as the Popular
Colorado Movement (Movimiento Popular Colorado--Mopoco).
Under "liberalization," Ynsfrán, the master of the machinery of
terror, began to outlive his usefulness to Stroessner. Ynsfrán
opposed political decompression and was unhappy about Stroessner's
increasingly clear intention to stay president for life. A May 1966
police corruption scandal gave Stroessner a convenient way to
dismiss Ynsfrán in November. In August 1967, a new Constitution
created a two-house legislature and formally allowed Stroessner to
serve for two more five-year presidential terms
(see Constitutional Development
, ch. 4).
Data as of December 1988
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