Part Two: Alfredo Stroessner: The Luckiest Dictator

hair and skincare has been really important to me. Yeah, yeah, he had. He had a lot to say about that in the Latin language, which he was the first Roman theologian to use. Um, I'm just learning about him now on Wikipedia. I don't know why I went with this as the introduction for the Abody Knows, Robert, nobody knows, Nobody knows, nobody knows. But you know what this is now a podcast dedicated to the Antipope Novation, who lived

from two hundred eighty to two hundred and fifty eight. Wow. Yeah, well it's a big change from my last episode, which was of course dedicated to a dead groundhog. So that's right, that's right. They have a lot in common, the Antipope and that ground log hog that built Blasio. Did build a Blasio? Drop the anti incredible you gave us. Yeah, I'm gonna make one more request from the artists to our fans, which is a like a like a romance, a Roman style relief, like the ceiling of the U

of the static. That's like, yeah, that's like antipope novation and that fucking groundhog holding hands in the sky. Find a building. It doesn't matter who owns it. Drawn that as Amia, I know we will send you a titia. Let those two kings be the symbol of our next revolution. Hand in pull the Antipope writing into battle on the

graund hook. Finally, Deblasio will get his comeuppance. So, speaking of Bill Deblasio, the first official Nazi party outside of Germany, was formed in Paraguay in nineteen twenty seven under a mango tree in the capital. While Forster, that anti Semitic philosopher we talked about last time, had been a miserable failure in his goal of creating an Aryan sanctuary, his published writings traveled across the world and became kind of a leading light for several generations of German anti Semites.

One of these anti Semites was a guy you might have heard of named Adolf Hitler. He comes across Forrester's readings as a young man, and he reveres them so much that when he comes to power, he sends a bunch of German soil over to Paraguay so that local Nazis can cover Forster's grave. He also allegedly sends along a tombstone plaque with the words the place where the Father of Nazism lies inscribed upon it. Um. Now there's Yeah, we have any lists in Paraguay. That's a great thing

to tag. Yeah that that would be a nice thing to destroy. Yeah, yeah there is, Yeah, groundhog, that fucker do that. Give it the old build a Blasio treatment and drop it. M Now there's There is debate over whether or not Hitler is the person who sent this plaque, but the plaque does exist. British historian Ben McIntyre is one of the people who considers it it likely that Hitler would have said this. Obviously, that doesn't mean that he was like the only ideological father of Nazism Hitler.

Hitler could be a flatterer when he wanted to be. But it does there is like it is kind of beyond arguing that Hitler was a fan of this guy and that Forster influenced his attitudes. Um. As a result of all this, it is perhaps not surprising that Nazism held an a lure to some segments of the Paraguayan populace. The nation's first National Police Director named his son Adolpho,

and demanded police cadets where swastikas on their uniforms. This is this is a post nineteen five swastica right, No, no, no, these are pre forty five. Okay, still still probably a poor decision. Yeah, Um did he then say it's just

a Buddhist symbol, bro or yeah, yeah, it means peace time. Yeah. Now. Paraguay, also, speaking of bad decisions, sided with the Nazis in World War Two initially, Um, so they kind of switched their allegiances midway through the war when it's like, you know what, look, Paraguay's got a history of being on the wrong side of wars. We don't want to risked at this time. And obviously also like it doesn't really matter what side of World War two Paraguay was on. They are a

landlocked country in South America. They're not going to play a role in the fighting the government. Though the Paraguayan government does switch their allegiances right before the end. It is worth noting that the Paraguayan Nazi Party refuses to give up the ghost until nineteen forty six, So Paraguay's Nazi Party lasts longer than the original one. That's a

great at least later. Yeah, well well done. Then after the war, this tiny landlocked nation seemed like an enticing new home to dozens of former ssmen and other fascist war criminals. Paraguay already had a modest German speaking population based around Mennonite colonists, but it was also full of and this kind of made it less desirable. It was also a place where a lot of white Russian officers had fled, some of whom had helped out in the

Chaco War. These guys, some of them didn't like the ass some of them were always were also very sympathetic to the Nazis because, like you know, Stalin and the white Russians not a not a not a great mix um. So on the whole this huh fucking white Russians end up everywhere. I've recently been on a kick about reading about white Russians in the Spanish Civil War who end up yeah, all over the international brigades. Yeah, and a lot of these guys are Czarists. A lot of these

guys are fascists. A lot of these guys are the kinds of Czarists that are basically fascists. In any case, it's a nice place to be a Nazi. After World War Two, Paraguay, so Nazis start filtering in there. A lot of them settle with Mennonites. At least one Mennonite community adopts a pro Nazi school curricula for its children as a result of this. God, yeah, don't speak that shit into reality because understantists will be all over it. Yeah,

fucking Mennonazis, Jesus, others simply took Nazis. Be fair if they if they'd all been Mennonites, and we probably would have had quite so many issues with them. No, No, although speaking yeah, they they I mean they already mostly

did shit on horseback anyway. As as illustrated and probably the best scene of a Band of Brothers, God, that show did a lot, right, there's this great scene where like a bunch of American soldiers are like riding in after kind of the Nazi regime collapses, and they see all these like German po doubles hauling shit on horses while they're on the back of a jeep, and they're like fucking horses. Like, you thought you could win this war and you've got fucking horses. What's wrong with you people?

It's very funny. So yeah, these Nazis start winding up all over the fucking place, and they decide, like, you know what Paraguay would be great for is a smuggling base for Odessa, the organization of former ss men who helped each other smuggle themselves into other countries in order to avoid prosecution for doing a holocaust. Now, some of my sources will argue that like Stressner, the kind of guy who wasn't really logically committed to much of anything

other than being in power. But that's also essentially the ideology of a lot of surviving Nazi officials. So Stressner and the Nazis got along pretty well. And there are some allegations, most notably from Alex Schumtov, that Stressner was at least Nazi curious Schumatov basically claims that in his early life Stressner had little contact with Germans in Paraguay, but that this changed in his thirties and he kind of became a Germanophile, you know, getting in touch with

his dad's people. I'm gonna quote from Vanity Fair again here. One of Stressner's German buddies was Hans Rudel, a flying ace in the Luftwava who flew more missions than anyone, destroyed a cruiser, a battleship five hundred nineteen Russian tanks, was shot down twice, lost his right leg below the calf, but continued to excel at tennis and water skiing. Was the idol of the post war German right, the embodiment of Aryan perfection. Hitler created a special metal with him,

the Knight's crossed with golden oak leaves. After the war, he tried out planes for the Argentinian government, and when Perone fell in nineteen fifty five, was given asylum by his friend Stressner. When Argentina was no longer safe for x Nazis, Rudel went to Paraguay as well and worked in the Ferretta Paraguaya and on Suncon selling BMW's telephone, cement and iron. He also worked for Odessa, So he's like, he's like a BMWU dealer who's smuggling lavafa SS out

of Europe and into Argentina. It's like the forest gump of Nazis here here, all the high points fucking Argentina. Mm. Yeah, he's all over the fucking place. In addition to selling used cars. Yeah, so I gotta have a side hustle. Stressner and Rudel become fast friends and working with Rudel, Stressner sets up a system whereby new passports and visas can be sold for an exorbitant price, of which he

got to cut two old Nazis. And one of the Nazis who takes advantage of this very forgiving Paraguayan government policy is another fella you might have heard of, doctor Joseph Angola. So, oh good, it's good. That's yeah, so I was looking forward to that. It's Friday afternoon. Yeah, so if you if you're not up on your Mangola. The kind of cliffs notes of this guy is that he's a doctor at Auschwitz superform's fatal experiments on fifteen

hundred sets of twin children. Um, he did shit like inject colored eye into like the eyes of toddler's color die into the eyes of toddlers who were twins, to like see if it affected the other twin. It was like nonsense, it was, it was crazy nonsense. That's doctor Joseph Mangola. He's a terrible person. We will cover him at some point. He's one of those guys like Durrel Wanger, who he's not like. Mangola himself is not the most fascinating individual. So a lot of it's just kind of

a list of horrible war crimes. Um, but we'll get him one of these days. I know, I know the subreddits crying out from Mangola, and eventually I Am going to show them why they don't want what they think they want. No one's going to have a good time with this episod so um it is. It is weird. The people are demanding Mangola. Got a lot of Mangola stands in the audience who can't wait to get their mangelicque out. Um got a Mangola pill. Nope, nope, no,

that was not a mistake. No, that was a mistake. Ah, let's move it on, Let's move it on so Mangola. One report from a German Paraguay and who was in country at the time says that Mangola in nineteen fifty nine made us say a living in Paraguay as a salesman for a manure spreading business. Post war Nazi careers are always like what weird? Why did they make them do shit? Like if you're just fucking like put them in a hotel or something like these comedy fucking jobs. Yeah, no,

they're making money. The guy who claimed this told Alex Schumatov, I didn't know he was a doctor, and we talked about business and never the war. I figured he didn't want to talk about it. Probably probably did, I see from Probably didn't want to talk about the war. Yeah. Whatever. So some reports do allege that Stressner and Mangola were

close friends also and knew each other well. I have not come across any convincing evidence of this, but he's certainly it's almost certain that Mangola traveled through and spent time in Paraguay. He gets citizenship at one point in time. Um, so it's certainly possible that he and Stressner had a degree of social interactions together. Now, that's all pretty bad, James. When you are smuggling, doctor Joseph Mengel at a safety, that's a bad thing to do. That's that's high up

on the list of least forgivable things. And I'm I'm very pro smuggling, but not if you're smuggling Nazis. You know, Finnyl totally fine, old electronics that you stole from people's cars, great catalytic converters, excellent. Yeah, some chop today. I was really proud of him. M Exactly. We need, we need, we need the smuggling community to come together against smuggling,

Joseph Mangela. Places. Look, not even once, folks, not even once. Anyway, the government's tolerance of Nazis led the fairly small Paraguay and Jewish population to have some awkward experiences after World War Two. And this is where things get very weird. James. This is a really odd little story I've got for you. I found a peculiar but unique account of life in Stressner's Paraguay written by a person who at the time was a young boy named Michael Caine. Now, not that

Michael Kine o. This Michael kine is basically a fascist. Yeah, and he grew up in This is so weird. The guy I found this in like this guy's blog. He's just like writing about his time as a little boy in Stressner's Paraguay. He grew up in the UK in a peace church called the bruder Hof, which was part of a network of Pacifist Anabaptist religious communities that had

started spreading out from Germany in nineteen twenty. Now Michael's like three, I think in nineteen forty one when his family has to flee the UK when the war breaks out. The UK puts Germans in concentration camps, now nicer ones than the German concentration camps, it must be said, But that's why his family leaves. They're like, this is not It seems like maybe being German in the UK in

nineteen forty one is an ideal we might want to bounce. Yes, so well, unless you're unless you're the monarch of cause, in which grace, unless you yeah, unless you are the monarch. So his family flees the UK for the only country that will accept their peace church during the war years, which is Paraguay. Michael's recollections are on his website, and I have not looked into the Bruderhof a lot. It is again, it's like a Pacifist Anabaptist network of religious communities.

Michael claims that he suffered terrible sexual abuse and paints a picture of the Bruderhof in Paraguay as a cult entirely possible. This is true, It would not be out of line with a lot of similar movements. I have no particular reason to doubt him on this. We will be using Michael's count today because it provides some contexts on how German Jewish and the German Nazi diaspora communicated.

Which is an interesting thing, right that you have these Jewish people who have fled to Paraguay and these Nazis who have fled to Paraguay, and because they're all German, they wind up like involved with each other sometimes and word that would be and again Michael, he is writing as an adult about his experience as a child in this like expat community. This same bar he's talking about like a bar that he was brought to as a kid for like a business deal. The same bar used

to be owned by Schortzel. His real name was a meal Wolf, a German jew and his place was used for years by Nazis and Jews, who were all involved in business and all of them good friends. As a fourteen year old, the Bruderhoff put me to work in Asuncion, where they bought a new house in Vulgiicio Marino. They rented a large house in Indepensia Naciona, two doors down

from Wolf. I went to Shorze Bar with Alfred, a brother from the Bruderhoff, who wanted to drink of beer but had no money, but I did so we went together. Soon Schortzel approached me for some business in wood turn to products that the Bruderhoff was selling. That's how he became a good friend of Schortzel with Jews. The key to a good friendship is money. When I came roun oh boy, oh no? Do we want to keep reading room? It? Yeah,

one last sentence. When I came round to Shortzel's with wooden articles, he called me Nachmann and I called him saujud. Now I looked these nicknames up because I was like, what kind of nicknames do basically and a Jewish boy come up with for each other. Vainachman basically means Santa Claus. Uh, So that's the Jewish guy is calling him Santa Clause right because he's buy I think, because he's buying him

a beer. And Saud that nickname which is this kid's nickname for his this his Jewish friend, comes from the term judensau, which is a medieval racial caricature sure that depicts Jewish children suckling at the teats of the pig. It is a racial slur. Um. So like his friend is like, hey, Santa Claus, and he's like, hey slur, Like hey racial slur buddy, um awkward look. Yeah, I would love to find I haven't found really any other accounts of like the complicated interactions of the Jewish striass

for a German community in Paraguay and the Nazi. I assume this happened in places like Argentina too. Um. It's a fascinating topic. I would love to read more on the matter. Hopefully I'll find something else at some point. I just kind of a stumbled into this. The ship that people will put on the Internet without being forced to, Like, you cannot send me to Guantanamo Bay if I had, if I had been giving my friends slur nicknames and

get it out with me. But this guy's used apparently popped it out on the Internet for the world to see. I mean this, I don't entirely know what's happening with the fascist Michael Caine, but he's it's it's His blog is a real one. Yeah, yeah, there was a time when yeah, humans were blogging and yeah, a powerful insight into the brain. Speaking of fascist Michael Caine, do you know what the non fascist Michael Caine loves blowing the doors off things? Is? That? Is that a thing that

Michael Caine did? A lot of the Michael Caine, isn't it in h what's it called? He's in a lot of stuff. He's Michael Caine. Uh yeah, I mean he was in the Batman movies. He's Alfred. So does he blow the doors off of something in the in the Italian job? Oh? Oh oh yeah, I think that is my That is Michael Caine Italian j I had a moment there, always worried. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, this is this is good Michael Caine content. This is an episode

rich with Michael's cane. So um, anyway, that was a bit of a digression, but I just found it too interesting to not include. Fascinating this must have happened in a lot of other countries too. This like the German Jewish dias for a and the German Nazi dias for a having some forms of interaction with each other. I would love to read more about that. I just don't know.

I haven't I haven't run into much else. But yeah, it's a whole whole thing, and it gives you an idea of the kind of peculiar bedfellows that exist under Stressner's regime. The main reason that I found Michael's story, though, is that it provides a rare, direct personal account of the man that Alfredo Stressner trusted to maintain his secret torture police, who were his primary instrument of maintaining power. And this man was named Pastor Militiadez Coronelle born in

August of nineteen nineteen. Coronelle worked for the Education and Culture Ministry when Stressner came to power. He was like part of the Department of Education, and then Stressner's liken, no, you see my I'm more of a torture guy. To me, I'm gonna put you in charge of my torture department. Coronelle was noted to be an obsessive bureaucrat. He loves paperwork. Part of all we know so much about this guy is every arrest and every torture that they do is documented.

Every surveiled dissident is recorded and filed away. But he's not just a paperwork guy. He likes to get down there and get his hands dirty. In nineteen seventy five, when his forces arrested the secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party, Pastor Coronell had him dismembered by chainsaw while he watched. That is, yeah, we don't come into enough chainsaw killings in this show, but there we go. That's it's always good to break new ground when yeah he's an e

state minns. Yeah, no, it's nice. He's like a Robert Rodriguez ville in this guy. So Coronell is a dedicated student of torture. He practiced it himself, but he was also a keen amer of the world's greatest torture experts at the time, which was the US Police. Now we know that the FBI sent him friendly letters as well as books on law enforcement. Like the director of the FBI is like sending this guy like textbooks to be like here you go, this will help you make your

torture police. Don't worry, we know all about it. We also know that, through Operation Condor, the FBI kept abreast of whenever Paraguay and dissidents would pop up in surrounding countries that had right wing dictatorships allied with the US, which at this point was all of Paraguay's neighbors. This brings me to the nineteen fifty eighth story of Gladys Sanomon and Augustine Guibero. They were physicians in the capital who refused to falsify an autopsy report to claim a

victim of Coronel's police had died of natural causes. Instead, doctor Santomon took the corpse to a class in her medical school and performed the autopsy in front of her students, so that there would be people who knew what had happened to this man. It was just the only thing she could think of to do to make sure that the truth got out. Like if I write anything about this, they will purge it. So I am going to autopsy this murder victim in front of my students so they

see what our government's doing. Very sensibly, she and her husband fled the country for Brazil. Now they're in Brazil for a little while before the Brazilian military caesar's power, and so then they have to flee Brazil, and the next place they move, Argentina, falls to a US backed military dictatorship in nineteen seventy six. This gives you an idea of like how tough it is to be any kind of dissident in South America at this time. Right, they are like running as fast as they can, always

just ahead of the next US backed military coup. And I'm going to quote from the New York Times here. Hours after the coup, the Argentine police abducted doctor Sanomon and tortured her at the Esquela Mechanisa in Buenos Aires. Doctor Sandomon said she was bound and plunged into a bathtub of vomit and excrement. They accused me of killing a patient in my office, doctor Sanomon said, calling the charge a total lie. Then the police falsely accused her

of selling drugs, she said. A week later, doctor Sanomon's husband was abducted and tortured as well. Doctor Sanomon landed at the Imboscata camp for political prisoners in Paraguay, where she treated more than four hundred fellow prisoners from several South American countries, including women whose husbands had been executed and their children. The women she said had been in

prison to silence them. Doctor Sanoman and her husband were eventually given asylum in Germany in nineteen ninety seven after the German government pressed Argentina to bring about their release. The fate of doctor Gooibrew, who also refused to white watch torture, remained a mystery until the archives were opened in nineteen seventy seven. He was kidnapped from a street in Missions, an Argentine town where he had gone to escape the stress in a regime, and um, you know

he's executed by the regime. He's killed once he gets back. We have some personal accounts of Pastor Coronel's torture tactics as well. Senator Carlos Levy Ruffinelli was the leader of the Liberal Party, a controlled opposition party stressner allowed to exist to provide the illusion of democracy. And even though this was he you know, he's letting this guy basically live to be controlled or to be opposition. He still arrests him nineteen times and has him tortured six times.

That guy's what that is a bold dude to just keeps coming back for more. He is a brave man, and I'm going to quote from him now talking about his experiences under Core and El's torturers. 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'd denounce everybody, and then they say, see, you were lying

to us all the time. Now I found an even more detailed, in horrific account of Pastor Coronel's jails in a BBC article by Simon Watts. Almada came to the attention of the Secret Police in the early nineteen seventies when he and his wife Celestina were working as teachers in a school where they had set up on the outskirts of Unsuncion. Their politics were left wing, and they campaigned for better salaries and working conditions for teachers and

for changes to the curriculum. One evening, the Secret Police came for him. After thirty days of interrogation, Almada was officially classified as an intellectual terrorist and an ignoramus. He was sent to the infamous in Buscata open air prison, where he was held for three years. Celestina died shortly after Almada's arrest and what the police said was a suicide. Almada has always believed she died because police played her recordings of him being tortured. The telephone was used as

an instrument of ecological torture, he says. For eight days, they made her listen systematically to everything that happened to me. Then they sent her my bloodied clothing. Finally, they called her one night and said the subversive teacher is dead, come and get his body. She died of a heart attack, he says. She died of grief. And again, all of this is based on teachings that the FBI handed down

to Coronel and his police. They sent trainers, the CIA sent trainers like US cops, taught Coronel's cops how to do all this. None of this was, you know, separate from American politics in Latin America at the time. Yeah, there are people alive today whose tax who's helped to pay for that. Anyway, to the FBI agents listening, I hope you enjoyed this proud recitation of your history. Here.

What a cost institution. So thanks to those now open archives, we also know that Stressner after he took power, a US military colonel named Robert Terry T. E I R R. Y. He lived in Texas, actually came to Paraguay to put together a lot of the basic structure of Stressner's police state as part of a broader US plan to crackdown on left wing organizing in the entire region. The FBI handled a lot of the grunt work. On one occasion, a dissident from Pinochet's regime in Chile fled to Paraguay.

He was arrested and interrogated by Coronell's men. They then called up the FBI, who interrogated Chilean relatives of the dissident who were living in the United States, and in handed that information to Pinochet, who disappeared the dissident once he'd been handed over. This is the way things worked

in Latin America, much of it. Clarence Kelly, who was head of the FBI at the time, sent Coronell a Christmas letter wishing him, quote, a truly joyous Christmas and a new year filled with all the good things you so richly deserved. Good guys, christ Good guys. Now earlier I read you a quote from that weird Michael Caine

Guy's blog. I decided to highlight some of this kind of a Nazis recollections because as a child he lived near Pastor Coronell and he spent time with the man, and there's not a lot of context on this guy. So he's some of like the only evidence I've found about what Stressner's chief torture was like as a person, and this is kind of interesting. On this day I first met Pastor Coronell. He was about five years older than me. His uncle Dawn and rather or rather Mayor

Coronell owned a neighboring estancia ranch to the Bruderhoff. His estancia was called San Martin, and Paraguay landowners like to give themselves military titles for importance, hence the mayor title. Mayor Coronell habitually carried a gun. He must have read the Little Read Book by Chairman Mao, whereon it says page forty eight, the power of the people comes out of the barrel of a gun. For this reason, he

was highly respected or feared, pending on your language. It was him who let me shoot his cult forty five revolver for the first time in my life. The recoil hurt my thumb. This made all the Paraguayan onlookers laugh really loud. But this kind of pros it's really a gift to the Internet. It's amazing. It's amazing. You legitimately never know what this fuck is gonna come up with next. I know it's it's this man is fascinating. Yeah, yeah,

just a stream of consciousness. Yeah, it's unedited. It's one of those little gifts that you, um, you come across when you're doing a deep enough dive. That's just like no one, no one would put this in a scholarly because like, I can't verify any of this, but I'm not not gonna put it in a podcast. It's just too it's just too incredible. It's hate and jam of the this guy. I was commenting on Facebook shit about

how he I didn't powerfully divorced vine. Yeah, I'm not surprised that Michael Caine grew up to be the most divorced man on the internet. Hates his children. Perfect. Yes, now I'm giving it all to me, James's that's what I love the Internet for. Yeah, this is a true goal. So back to Paraguay. It has always been pretty deeply fucked from an economic justice point of view. Today it actually has fun fact, James, the most unequal land distribution of any nation on Earth. Ninety percent of its land

is owned by twelve thousand people. Now, Jesus Christ, but that's not great. This state of affairs actually started because of the War of the Triple Alliance, which left most Paraguayans dead and their land up for grabs. Right, there's a lot of land that there's no one alive left to Yeah, And in the wake of that calamity, the next dictators basically sold everything that wasn't nailed down, all these dead people's land, to fund rebuilding and to fund themselves.

And during this period, thirty two firms purchased almost half of the country. One Spanish businessman purchased seven million hectares, which is more than a full ireland of private property. Um, yeah, that's that's too much land for a person now, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know one needs so much. What was he doing. There's a brisk debate to be had about the extent to private property. No one should be able to own

an ireland. Yeah no, that's that's too much. The consequences of this led directly to a situation where all wealth in Paraguay was determined by landownership, because land gave one the ability to exploit minerals or other natural resources, or at least charge rent. When Stressner came to power, the first person he killed was a government official tasked with carrying out a land reform policy to remedy this inequality. That is the first guy he has murdered. Is this

guy doing the land reform? And yeah, I'm going to quote next from an article in Earth Sight. As part of these clientelist networks, Stressner divided what remained of public land among his allies. Eight million hectares were given away or sold at negligible prices to army generals and Colorado grandees. This land was a stint be destined for small scale farmers as part of a program of agrarian reform, and so has come to be known as Las tierras malhabidas

the ill Gotten Lands. Yeah yeah, it's cool, good story, great, Yeah, yeah, no problem. He started off on a great note, didn't he. Yeah. Yeah. So this leads to a pretty long running series of massacres of what are called composinos, who are tenant farmers attempting to protest for land reform for Stressner. This also forms a crucial part of the network of bribery and other way looking that powers his dictatorship to get military

officers on his side. He hands out high level positions and state monopolies or land, and then he also has Pastor Corradel's secret police stand aside and ignore the illegal trade and contrabands that they can make a shitload of

money smuggling stuff into the country. Peter Lambert writes of this contraband often quoted as the price of peace and involving the vast majority of officials through their control of the frontier zones guaranteed them city of the military establishment and the maintenance of a lucrative status quo and the words of Eduardo Galiano, the generals fill their pockets and hatch no plots. So basically he takes he kills the guy who is responsible for redistributing land of the peasants.

He takes all this land, he gives it to his generals, particularly land on the borders, which they then use in order to carry out like basically create smuggling networks. Right to bring products and that are not taxed, and this is fucked up. It's a mixed bag for much of

the population. Because one thing this does is that you can actually get a lot of shit cheaper in Paraguay than you can in like the US where it's being made, Like TVs are cheaper there and ship for a while because it's like no taxes, and everyone in the government understands. Part of why we don't we're not dealing with any uprisings right now is that, like people get cheap TVs, and the money from those cheap TVs bribes the generals not to upset the apple cart. You know, it's a

pretty intelligent system. It's evil, but it's smart, right right, funding your your state though, if people aren't paying taxes, and well a lot of people aren't paying taxes, you do have like a ship I mean part I. Honestly, James is the CIA right, Like he's getting officially tens of millions of dollars from the United States Eutropean socialism. But it's a perfect system. What if the CIA could fund civic programs here to rebuild roads and bridges. You

don't even think about it. Nope, dropping in CIA agents to like clean up that part in town in Ohio that the train just knives torturing dude who runs Norfolk seven. Yeah, backing a dictator in Ohio, but then also cleaning up the land. It's a mixed bag in Ohio. Yeah, you have. The population's been tortured to death, but the sea's cleaner. Now, um, the sea it's Ohio a yeah, yeah, the Ohio ocean. Yeah, the Ohio Ocean we call it's where the land sharks

come from. We've talked a good amount about the torture and murder. Stressner's chief attack dog pastor, And by pastor's not like a religious term. It's like, I think, sorry, pastor is what I should be saying, But you know me in pronunciations, it's his first name as pastor, Pastor coronel carried out. But what's perhaps more interesting is how

relatively rarely he needed to do this. The early years of the Stressner regime established such a baseline of terror that Paraguay and civil society was comprehensibly beaten down, and it had been pretty beaten down earlier. Right, So kind of what happens after he takes powers. Most people are like, yah, man, he sucks, but we're not dealing with the civil war every year, and like, you know, the corruption at least means cheap TVs. So why don't we just give up

on politics? Right? Like that's kind of that's how Lambert Lambert. That's how Lambert kind of describes what happens to the people. And he calls this the institutionalization of repression and defines that as a demobilization of civil society due to a perception that politics is only the domain of soldiers and

the leaders who control them. Yeah, you don't have like if civil society is like nonstate actors who make demands of the state, Like, what the fuck is the point in making demands of the state when yeah, either it changed every five minutes, so it kills you exactly. And I'm going to read another quote from Lambert here that

makes this point. To a large extent, the regime succeeded in not only demobilizing the but depoliticizing civil society, destroying not only the organizational ability of the opposition, but more importantly, the capacity to question, to analyze, and to criticize. The repression and co option of nascent opposition led to an apparent acceptance of the status quo, a cynicism toward politics, a disinterest in what was seen as an area reserved

for elites and prohibited to the masses. And to be fair, the stability that Stressner brings with him makes it easy for the people who aren't being targeted by the government to feel this way. Regular people are benefiting from this situation in a lot of ways, and the nineteen seventies see an economic explosion as Paraguay finally covers from both

the Chaco War and it's decades of instability. For a while, it has the highest growth rate of any South American country, and a lot of this is due to the fact that there's a joint Brazilian Paraguayan project to create a massive hydroelectric dam in a Typoo. Today, I believe the a Typoo Dam is still the most productive hydro electric

power project on the planet. Like, it's a pretty good idea to have this dam there, you know, not that that's up to stress everybody green lights it, and massive corruption ensures that Paraguayan industry Like this is part of the problem is that like this is a great thing to have in your country, like this incredibly productive power dam. They have a contract basically with Brazil, where they split the power fifty fifty and brazil Like funds the construction.

But because of massive corruption, none of the fifty percent of a typoo's power that's supposed to go to Paraguay actually goes towards, you know, building an industrial base or doing anything to improve the economy. So the project temporarily brings an economic boom because so many Paraguayans are working on it, but they're not going to actually use the resources that it generates to improves the economy in any meaningful way, which is going to be a problem for

everybody in a little bit here. Paraguay's boom years are also helped by regular infusions of cash from the United States and the IMF, to the eventual tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange. Stressner keeped Paraguay as a compliant and stress free part of Operation Condor. The CIA never needs to send in black ops teams to the country or fund paramilitary death squads. There's no grinding left wing insurgency that threatens the stability of the government.

The fact that Stressner was generally good for US policy aims, and the undeniable fact that life under his rule was at least more stable than life under previous dictators, led some in the international community to call him a good dictator. George Landau, a US ambassador to the country, called Alfredo but nine as dictatorships go, oh god, there it is. Yeah, I'm sure I'm suring the teachers being soaked in shit and then murdered are Yeah, this is nine. Basically, yes,

dictatorships go yeah, television's cheap. What are you gonna do? It's nice. What of the things fucking George Landau says, is that, well, you know, political prisoners and in Paraguay generally get out of prison alive as long as they have powerful friends. No, yeah, great, that's good. We're good. Yeah, no, yeah, thank you. I was. I was worried we were complicit and nightmarish evil again. But you know what, it's good. We're fine. Shining city on a hillship as always the

United States. I am at the ghost of George Washington speaking on a mountain above DC. Yeah, we will build a nation where political prisoners sometimes get out of prison if their friends are powerful. That's one of the things they didn't put on my becoming an American test Now that's one of those like little quotes they write in your passport book. I'm sure. Uh you know what else winds up written in your passport book? Is it corporations? Yeah? I mean kind of. If you have enough gold, you

don't even need a passport. Sophie, you know what innovative? I like it. Thank you. Ah, we're back. We're all having a good time. Everybody's happy. The story is happy. Um. Yeah. So George Landau, our our good friend, the US ambassador to Paraguay for a while, claims that Stressner repeatedly complained in the late seventies that he was tired of ruling and that he wanted to retire to a life of

fishing and hunting, but that Paraguay needed him. Landau claimed he believed this most dictators do, that he was absolutely irreplaceable. He talked himself into a sense of duty. Now that's horseshit. Sorry, why's he writing this? Like is he just like doing all bay like uscon Yeah, he's like he's like I think this is like yeah, while he's he's probably yeah, I think he leaves. Yeah, So, um, I believe that, and other sources I found will argue that Stressner basically

gets addicted to total power. Yeah, and it kind of loses the ability to conceive of anyone else making decisions about his country. Um. It is interesting to read accounts like Landau's by Americans who talk to Stressner during this period because like everyone in Paraguay, like all of the people in his cabinet, every other leader has to treat him as kind of a cross between like God and the devil, because his whim can destroy their lives. Right,

so no one can talk to him, honestly. But American soldiers and diplomats like are safe, right, like you, you can actually have a conversation with Stressner because like he's not he's not going to fuck up the money, right, He's not an idiot. Um, so take this in taking this into account, I found a letter to the editor of National Review by a former US soldier who traveled to Paraguay for work during Stressner's time in office that

I found really interesting. In very good English, he said, I am President Alfredo Stressner, and I would like to thank you for showing us your aircraft. Since I am in my country, custom requires that I continue this conversation in Spanish with my interpreter, which he did. His interpreter was far less fluent in English than the leader. We gave him a tour of the airplane and answered all his questions about it. Then he philosophized for a few minutes.

We never understood why. The remark that has struck with me to this day was I am sure you have heard that I am a dictator. That is true, but I am a benevolent dictator, which my country needs. We are a backward country and my people are not ready for democracy. We wisely made no comment on the remark, and shortly after we launched for our return flight to the canal zone. Yeah. And it's interesting because this guy is he's literally writing the editor of National Review. I'm

going to assume this serviceman is pretty conservative. But he ends this letter by noting we knew very well even then there was nothing benevolent about Stressner's dictatorship, which is honestly, which is more honest than George Landau was willing to. Yeah, this guy's cut out for career and foreigner. No, no novatudio. Thanks showing him your aeroplane, just being like, oh, I'm glad that was sharing on military asset. Yeah, a piece of shit, Booma. I feel good about my service today. Yeah,

I signed up to defend this country, God willing. As the nineteen eighties dawned, Alfredo's power was at its apparent height. From the New York Times, President Stressner was never won for understatement. His name, written in neon, flashed nightly over the Asuncion cityscape during his reign, and at the times he's adopted. Yeah, he's ready. For the Reagan years, his face was plastered daily in the newspapers and on television.

He was known for turning up in his powder blue military uniform every Thursday at the General Staff Headquarters of the Armed Forces. John Finacure, writing in the New York Times magazine in nineteen eighty four, offered this snapshot of Paraguay as its army goose stepped down the boulevards to celebrate General Stressner's thirty years in power. A continual state of siege over the entire period that literally places the

president above the law. People with occasionally uncontrollable urges to fall into rivers or jump from planes with their arms and legs bound serenades in front of the presidential Palace featuring the ever popular forward my General and congratulations my great friend. Foreign thieves, brutes and madmen hidden at a price. An economy administered so corruptly it is officially explained away as the cost of peace. A United Nations voting record on so called key issues more favorable to the United

States than any other. Ally, a party newspaper that prints six four page color pictures of the General every day. Jesus Christ, what a great country thinks are going well? A powerful image anytime you've got goose stepping military and anyone in power for thirty years, as you'd set up

some alarmbos. Yeah, Now, appearances can be deceiving, James, because when the construction of the type dam stopped in nineteen eighty one, that just so happened to occur at the same time as a global collapse in the value of cotton and soyabean, which were Paraguay's two biggest crops. So because, due to rampant corruption, none of this power generated by a type who is being used to help them create a better industrial base, Paraguay's economy takes a long walk

off a short pier. At this point in time, the balance of payments and deficit for Paraguay gets so bad that Stressner is finally forced to abandon his fixed rate for the currency. Inflation rises sharply, and with it comes the first stirrings of resistance to his regime. Now, in addition to the fact that the economy has taken a shit,

Stressner's an old man at this point. His health troubles him, and he's forced to hand over more and more control to his underlinks, like Pastor Coronelle, who begins actively scheming to replace him. To cope with the stress, Alfredo increasingly gravitates to the only hobby that makes it all better. James, what do you do when you're stressed out? How do you chill up? I go for bike ride, interesting camp. Those his favorite activities too. I know, spoon you know

that's interesting. Those are all great hobbies. James. Alfredo takes a slightly different route. He gets really involved in child sex trafficking. M Oh okay, yeah, quote different kind of spooning I enjoy. Oh boy, I'm gonna quote from Alex Schumatov from Vanity Fair. Stressner was no doubt aware of the inevitable waning of his powers, and his solution to the problem seems to have been schoolgirls much. They were his elixir. Maybe he thought that the intercombiod hormonis would

keep him young. He wasn't alone in his predilection for this therapy. His friend Perrone, who liked boys as well, consoled himself with a fourteen year old after the death of Avida. In the opinion of Stressner's family surgeon Manuel Riveros, there was nothing abnormal about an old man having a soft spot for nymphets. This is an article from the eighties and vanity fair. So the writer's a bastard too. Look,

let's not be wrong here. Youth is contagious, he told me Truehilo crossed the streets of Santo Domingo looking for girls. Bocasa cruised the streets of Bangui. Stressner cruised the streets of Asuncion. It went with the turf. The girls were don Alfredo's draw to signor Oh dear, oh dear. Yeah, no, it's not very good. Alex Schumtov is a prestige magazine journalist writing in the nineteen eighties. So he's a kind of gross guy in some way. Yes, he's an extreme

fucking creep. Oh I had even started James. Oh God, here's Alex sigid give me more of his pay. On to Peterophelia. It is hard not to notice the school girls, slender tan Mestiza beauties butting in their white uniforms, who pour into the streets of Asuncion at noon after a long morning Stressner would park near one of the schools and watch them come out. When he had made his pick, his age would find out who the girl was and approached the parents with an offer of cash or real estate.

If all else failed, the girl was kidnapped and given an injection that made her more cooperative. If she got pregnant, she was sent to the best possible and treated by the best doctors. How many children the tyrannosaur produced is unknown, but there are a thought to be many. I am feeling physically unwell, so that's fucked up. This is obviously if you are this guy reporting for a huge magazine on this, this is critical stuff to report on. You

don't need to describe how attractive the schoolgirls are. Alex, that's bad. That makes too, that story wildly inappropriate. Terrible. Wow, So yeah, Jesus Christ, good stuff. One of the people procuring children for the dictator was Colonel Leopoldo Perier, who scoured the countryside for eight to twelve year old peasant girls and brought Yeah, yep, he me very young. And he would bring them to safe houses and suburban like neighborhoods that had playgrounds so that they would be amused

while they waited for the general. Um, that's like the worst to take. Yeah, fucking hellum if you've got a slide for your girlfriends, Like, yeah, you're doing it wrong. I'm going to read another very rough two sentences from that Vanity Fair article. One of the Stressner's conquests was the fifteen year old daughter of the head of the National Cement industry. As part of the seductions, she and her brother got a trip to Disney World. Ah man, good, hell now that is that is dark. That is rough.

This story was first broken by Jack Anderson in The Washington Post in nineteen seventy seven. Who I'm fair from what I recall of his article does not write anything

creepy about these children. Um yeah, he like bases his article off of an interview he conducts with a woman named Melina Ashwell, and Molina is the daughter of a Paraguayan official stationed in Washington, DC, who tells him that two years earlier and seventy five back in the Capitol, they'd been having lunch with a colleague when they were called over to the mansion next door, where they saw the unconscious bodies of two eight year old girls and

one nine year old girl, who were both bleeding between their legs. Ashwell called the police, but they had like. The police show up, but they leave immediately because somebody points out that the house is owned by Colonel Perrya. The house is apparently a brothel frequented by the dictator himself,

and she calls like, you know. Once the police leave, she calls a local journalist and tries to give him the story before she goes to the post, but the journalist she tells this all to the Paraguayan journalist gets arrested for communism, and a raid of his house turns up the text of her interview, so she gets tortured for three days. She's only saved because her dad is influential.

When Anderson publishes this story, whe'll start turning in the Carter White House, and thankfully Carter is not unwilling to back dictators as he does in El Salvador during this period of time. But this is far too much for Jimmy Carter, and the United States cuts aid to Stressner's dictatorship. Now Reagan winds up in the office very shortly thereafter, and Reagan's like, oh, we have no problem supporting a pedophile is totally fine. Yeah, Reagan switches up on a

sea right back. They do lose out on money during this period where the economy is also in the shitter, and that creates problems that weakens Stressner's regime. Right It's one of the things that contributes to the weakening of his regime. By nineteen eighty two, campesinos who lost their job, or in nineteen eighty two, campesinos who lost their jobs when the dam was finished, started to protest again for land reform. This got in the way of the dreams

of Stressner's cabinet members and military officers. Villages were declared centers of delinquency of subversion and forcibly evacuated. The peasantry began to desert Stressner as a result. By the late nineteen eighties, the general was sick enough that he could no longer fully control his regime. He hoped one of his sons would take over for him, but one of them was an alcoholic and the other was gay, and neither of them had the wherewithal to politic their way

through Stressner's cabinet. On February third, General Andres Rodriguez, a close relative of the dictator by marriage, executed a violent coup against Stressner. There's an eight hour gunfight. Stressner barely gets away in like a limousine from the gunfight, but like there's enough resistance that like he is able to escape and keep his own life. But his troops are not able to stop the soldiers loyal to Rodriguez from taking the capital. By the way, Rodriguez is married to

his daughter. It's like his son in law too, right, So cool Stressner is able to negotiate the safe surrender of power, and he and his household are granted, you know, the ability to leave the country. So he survives losing power which is again rules for thirty five years, gets out alive. Very rare story in the annals of dictatorships. He had an initially hoped to land in Florida because

he owned several houses in Florida. The traditional resting place of He feared though being tried for his crimes, and so when the right wing military government of Brazil offered him sanctuary, he took it. He spent the last seventeen years of his life there, living in comfort, until the age of ninety three. Jesus, Yeah, wow, a terrible Yeah, he'd never based for his scribes. Yeah, I was really rooting for Rodriguez Stato. Yeah. Yeah. It would have been

good if he'd gotten the old Mussolini. Yeah, that would Yeah, we'd have loved to see that. Yeah, or if they did him like Kadafi. But yeah, I know, put him up as a fucking pinata for eight year old girls too, alas, because he lives out his life on the beaches of Brazil. Yeah, so you know that's a good story. Yeah, that in many ways not but it's it is a story that's undeniable. You know what else is undeniable, James, how brutal. The ending of this fucking podcast was, Yeah, that was properly.

I really did backload the Yeah, yeah, that did that fucking disneyl and shit is Oh my god, it's pretty rough. You said some really horrible things on my podcast. Wow. Yeah, that I'm I'm glad you gave like a slight warning to people, because that's just yeah, that was some particularly dark shit. That is some particularly dark shit. James, James, do you have anything to plut Yah. Yeah, Now that

we've talked about child sexual abuse, that's uh. You know, we've got another podcast in which we much more rarely talk about child sex abuse, which is you know, so if that's something you don't want to hear about, you can listen to It could happen here sometimes with me sometimes good Robert Sophie. We're gonna put that in our Vulture right up, we'll go soaring up the rankings. Yes, really discusses child sex abuse. Yeah, so yeah, it's the

thing we won't talk about. I would like to plug the concept of hugging a nice friendly animal like a dog or a cat. Yeah, and definitely definitely not Phil. Yeah. Yeah, well he's probably acade at this point. He's been dropped thanks to Yeah. Yeah, if you're gonna hug an animal, like, you know, really make sure you're in a stable stance, make sure the animal wants to hug you back. Yeah. Yeah, don't kidnap animal, Don't let your animal anywhere near filter. Yeah,

built Plasia adopted it posthumously and it's now phil to Plasia. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean he simply had to at that point, but yeah, for its funeral. You have a book that people can buy I do. It's called After the Revolution. You can find it at a K Press's website or like Amazon or like bookstores. You'd go to a bookstore and you could be like I would like After the Revolution by

Robert Evans. And if they say no, whatever weapon you're carrying, you know, you can just whip that out and and you know, create a hostage situation until you get a copy of my book. Or you could request it at your local library. Yeah, all of these are equally valid options. I like, my brain is on that photo of Phillio dropping fill the ground. It's very funny, very funny. Oh man, all right, this is over. I've afforded. Goodbye. We're gonna

go pull one out fulfilled, poor out fulfill byebye. Kaye. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts