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Paraguay POLITICAL DYNAMICS
In the late 1980s, Paraguay was an authoritarian regime under
the personalistic control of Stroessner. Whereas Francia took the
title of The Supreme Dictator (El Supremo Dictador), Carlos Antonio
López The Most Excellent One (El Excelentísimo), and Francisco
Solano López The Marshall (El Mariscal), Stroessner called himself
The Continuer (El Continuador). Indeed, not only did Stroessner
continue the authoritarian tradition of these three nineteenthcentury dictators and the twentieth-century example of Estigarribia
and Higinio Morínigo, he also remained in office for more than
three decades. Stroessner assumed power following a more open but
highly unstable period in Paraguay's history.
The political instability of the immediate postwar period,
culminating in the civil war in 1947, offered important lessons for
most Paraguayans. As Riordan Roett and Amparo Menéndez-Carrión put
it: "Paraguayans have thus learned to equate open politics with
weakness and authoritarian politics with strength." The
personalistic nature of Stroessner's regime, which is known as the
Stronato, is evident in the names of the capital's airport
(President Alfredo Stroessner International Airport), the second
largest city (Puerto Presidente Stroessner), and in a prominent
neon sign on top of a building in the central square of Asunción
that flashes: "Peace, Work, Well-being with Stroessner."
Stroessner's enduring, active, and highly involved control
completely determined the workings of the structure of government.
Not only does the Constitution of 1967 grant the president
extensive powers in relationship to the other institutions, but the
powers of the central government far outweigh those of other
levels. Furthermore, Stroessner personally picked all important
civilian and military personnel.
Despite the authoritarian nature of his rule, Stroessner argued
in his speeches that the country had a functioning democracy,
pointing with pride to the multiparty character of the legislature
and the constitutional requirement of separation of powers. At the
same time, however, Stroessner insisted on an "authentically
Paraguayan democracy." Such a democracy required, in Stroessner's
view, a strong government in order to ensure the state of law.
Paraguayan democracy also meant freedom and security without
anarchy and terrorism.
Data as of December 1988
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