1962-1975:
The dictatorship of a poor man's Nazi, Alfredo Stroessner, recieves $146 million in US aid, never receiving condemnations for its human rights abuses, the genocide of the indigenous Ache, drug trafficking and open arms policy for ex Nazis until the 1980s. The condemnation shortly precedes a 1988 coup. Stroessner takes exile in Brazil.
http://www.us-uk-interventions.org/Paraguay.html~~~~~Alfredo Stroessner; Paraguayan Dictator
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 17, 2006
~snip~
With a network of informants and the backing of the military, he tortured dissidents, both real and perceived.
A Paraguyan senator, Carlos Levi Rufinelli, a member of the token opposition party, told the New York Times in 1975: "I was a prisoner 19 times, and I was tortured six times. Most of the time, I did not know what they wanted. They did not even know what they wanted. But when they put the needles under your fingernails, you tell them anything, you denounce everybody, and then they say, 'See, you were lying to us all the time.' "
A schoolteacher, Martin Almada, was arrested in 1974 and tortured for 10 days because of his union efforts to increase teacher pay. While he was in prison, his screams were recorded and played over the phone to his wife. She died of a heart attack after the police sent his bloodied clothes to her home and told her to collect his corpse. He was not, in fact, dead and later became one of the country's post-dictatorship human rights champions.
~snip~
Gen. Stroessner, an anti-Communist, provided reliable Cold War support to the United States. He offered to contribute troops to the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. He also actively supported "Operation Condor," the effort among other right-wing Latin American regimes to eliminate alleged leftist political threats. Operation Condor was aided by U.S. intelligence agencies.
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/16/AR2006081601729.html~~~~~Timeline:
~snip~
Stroessner regime
1955: Stroessner declares state of siege and removes various civil rights from the people.
1959: Achne tribe enslaved and wiped out by order of Stroessner
1965-66: Assists USA in the invasion of the Dominican Republic
1972: University of Asunción is destroyed by police. The Archbishop of Paraguay, Ismael Rolón Silvero, excommunicates chief of police and minister of the interior
1974: Human rights abuses in Paraguay come to notice internationally, and Stroessner is accused of Slavery, Genocide
, corruption, torture and kidnapping, as well as supposedly protecting ex-Nazis living in Paraguay
1988: Pope John-Paul II visits Paraguay, increasing anti-Stroessner morale
1989: General Andrés Rodríguez starts an uprising against Stroessner, and succeeds after an artillery duel over Asunción, after which Stroessner flees to Brazil. Rodriguez appointed president after 35 years of oppression
Modern Period
1992: Rodriguez makes reforms including abolishing the death penalty, releasing many political prisoners and slaves and prosecutes and imprisons the main perpetrators of Stroessner's regime.
1993: Juan Carlos Wasmosy is elected president. However, he frees several of Stroessner's associates from prison, and re-posts them to their former government positions.
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_history_of_Paraguay
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