Paraguay without Stroessner

Abstract

Before his displacement on February 3, 1989, only Kim Il Sung of North Korea and King Hussein of Jordan held power longer than Paraguay’s President Alfredo Stroessner. Stroessner’s reign, the stronato, had entered its thirty-fifth year in 1988 dependent, as always, on the president’s ability to maintain his position at the pinnacle of a system dominated by the National Republican Association — Colorado Party (ANR-PC) and backed up by the politically partisan armed forces. In the end Stroessner’s political failure was a function of age and poor health, and had been expected. More important, his passing from the scene in a way marks the end of an era in which individual dictators in military dress could lord over a Latin American nation. Stroessner, who in his seventy-sixth year was sometimes called the tyrannosaur, may be the last of the breed.

I am indebted to Mr. Richard S. Sacks for research and editorial assistance in the preparation of this essay.