70 years after Paraguay's dictatorship, protesters see its legacy in the entrenched right-wing party

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — It was one of the first actions taken by Paraguayans in public defiance of their overthrown dictator, a military strongman who unleashed a 35-year reign of terror, killing hundreds of people and imprisoning thousands more.

In a howl of dissent, crowds massed around the newly elected socialist mayor of Asunción, Paraguay’s capital, to tear down a bronze statue honoring Latin America’s longest-ruling dictator, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, two years after his 1989 ouster.

When the hulking metal finally came crashing down to a salvo of cheers, Stroessner’s large brass feet stayed planted on the plinth. Residents joke it remains an unwitting symbol of his entrenched presence in Asunción — 70 years ago to the day on Thursday that he seized power in 1954 coup and secured the virtually uninterrupted dominance of his conservative Colorado party.

“Stroessner planted a seed, and that seed has germinated,” said Emilio Barreto, an 84-year-old unionist’s son who was among nearly 20,000 Paraguayans estimated to have been tortured and imprisoned without charge during Stroessner’s rule. “Today we’ve been through 35 years of dictatorship and 35 years of so-called democracy."

Those who pushed the process of democratization after Stroessner’s downfall said they had wanted to believe their country was on the upswing, that its civic institutions were getting stronger.

But now activists say they've increasingly seen a trend in the opposite direction.

In a rare eruption of public outrage on Thursday, hundreds of protesters streamed through downtown Asunción, raising their fists and chanting, “Never again, dictatorship.”

“We're witnessing a curtailing of civil liberties,” said Hugo Valiente from Amnesty International in Paraguay, citing a series of recent government moves that he said “have the clear purpose of discouraging people from exercising freedom of association.”

A government spokesperson and Colorado party members did not respond to questions from The Associated Press.

Anxieties about democratic backsliding added urgency to the 70th anniversary — which also marks one year since President Santiago Peña's inauguration.

Leading Thursday's protest was Paraguay’s small but passionate opposition — including Kattya González, a center-left senator and vocal government critic who was summarily booted from the Senate last February.

She had garnered the third-most votes in last year’s legislative elections. But in a vote that rights groups said violated due process, she was ejected by allies of former President Horacio Cartes, a powerful cigarette tycoon sanctioned by the Biden administration for corruption who remains president of the Colorado party.

“We don’t see the popular will being reflected in our representative bodies,” González said. “That's why we're demonstrating today.”

The government has chalked her expulsion up to the will of Congress, where the Colorado party has a majority. In June, the party removed a lawmaker from its ranks who had similarly spoken out against Cartes’ alleged corruption.

Last week, Paraguay even demanded that the United States accelerate the departure of its ambassador after the White House imposed sanctions on a tobacco company that it alleged had paid millions of dollars to Cartes.

Cartes denies the allegations.

When Paraguay’s senate last month rushed through a contentious bill that expands government powers to audit nonprofits, the former mayor of Asunción raised alarm, recalling the symbolic triumph of 1991.

“Let's remember the moment we knocked down the statue," Carlos Filizzola said, "for its symbolism against what the dictatorship was."

The government said the bill aims to boost scrutiny of NGO finances to counter money laundering. Critics said it mimics so-called nonprofit transparency measures in place from Russia to Venezuela that send a chill through civil society. The United Nations appealed to Paraguay's lower house to reject it.

Experts argue that the past is still present in Paraguay because the government hasn't reckoned with the legacy of Stroessner, who entrenched the small South American country's highly unequal distribution of land ownership and turned Paraguay into a smuggling hub.

His enduring influence was never more obvious than in 2018, when Paraguay elected then-President Mario Abdo Benítez, the son of Stroessner’s personal secretary who had served as a pallbearer at the dictator’s 2006 funeral.

“The totalitarian control of Stroessner created a real identification between political party and the state,” said historian Milda Rivarola. “That’s what made the Paraguayan political regime so special, the only country on the continent that never really had a progressive government.”

Paraguay's left-wing opposition party held power just once — from 2008-2012 — before its president's impeachment.

“In our country, this history of the dictatorship is hidden, there’s no policy of memory,” said Rogelio Goiburú, who oversees efforts to recover victims' remains for the Justice Ministry and whose father was disappeared by the dictatorship.

Efforts to bring justice to those responsible for crimes against humanity have been far more extensive in neighboring Argentina, where courts have convicted hundreds of military officers of dictatorship-era crimes and forensic teams have identified 800 victims.

But in Paraguay, there have been no blockbuster trials of junta leaders. Public schools — many still decorated with plaques paying tribute to Stroessner — avoid mention of the 20th-century dictatorship in national history lessons.

The remains of just four victims have been identified with the help of Argentine researchers. Goiburú said the Justice Ministry commission has no budget or state support.

“I’m still putting up with everything because of that motto, ‘Never Again.’ We do this so we don’t lose our memory, so this doesn’t happen again," he said from a riverside park in dilapidated downtown Asunción. In 1991, Filizzola, the former mayor, named it Plaza of the Disappeared.

“That’s why we have to continue," he said.