Ex-Paraguayan dictator Stroessner dies at 93

updated 4:20 p.m. ET Aug. 16, 2006

BRASILIA, Brazil - Alfredo Stroessner, the canny anti-communist general who ruled Paraguay with a blend of force, guile and patronage for 35 years, becoming one of Latin America's most enduring dictators, died in exile on Wednesday. He was 93.

Stroessner died of a stroke after coming down with pneumonia following a hernia operation in Brazil's capital, where he lived in near total isolation during the 17 years since he was forced from power.

He seized power in a 1954 coup and governed Paraguay through fraud and repression, longer than any other contemporary head of state in the Western Hemisphere at the time. He was finally driven from power by his own generals on Feb. 3, 1989.

The blond son of a Bavarian immigrant and Paraguayan mother, he came to epitomize a generation of authoritarian leaders in Latin America, putting his name on schools, buildings and even a port, and describing virtually all his opponents as Marxist subversives.

‘Refuge to people with blood on their hands’
Under Stroessner, Paraguay became a refuge for Nazi war criminals — including the infamous Auschwitz SS doctor, Josef Mengele, who lived openly for a time in Paraguay's sizeable German community before moving on to Brazil. He also sheltered other right-wing dictators, such as Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza.

"Stroessner didn't have any problem giving refuge to people with blood on their hands," said Aaron Breitbart, a senior researcher with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "His death is no loss to democratic values in Paraguay."

Many Paraguayans still revile the man, and President Nicanor Duarte told reporters Tuesday, amid reports of Stroessner's failing health, that there were no plans to honor the former leader after his death.

Transformed nation
But Stroessner also brought Paraguay into the modern age, transforming a country with open sewers and no running water, even in the capital of Asuncion, into a relatively prosperous and modern nation. His public works projects included the huge, US$16 billion Itaipu dam, built jointly with neighboring Brazil, which began producing power in early 1985. But most of the wealth did not reach average citizens in the nation of 3.8 million people, and critics accused him of repression and corruption.

Following his ouster, Stroessner was granted political asylum and lived as a recluse in Brazil. Neighbors said they rarely saw him leave his house along the shores of Lake Paranoa in Brasilia.

Human rights activists say Stroessner's government was a key part of "Operation Condor," a network of right-wing military governments, secretly supported by U.S. intelligence agencies, that repressed leftist dissidents across South America in the 1970s and early 1980s.

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