workingclasshistory:

On this day, 28 August 2008, Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo gave a formal apology to the victims of the US-backed military dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner which ruled over the country from 1954-1989 (content note: sexual violence). The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Victor Núñez, was booed off the stage by the crowd before he could make his speech, as he was heckled by shouts of “pyrague” (“informant” in the Indigenous Guaraní language). The apology came after the publication of a comprehensive report which revealed the extent of the crimes of the regime. Its victims numbered over 128,000, with labour organisers, socialists, communists, Indigenous people and Christian rural collectives as the primary targets. Thousands of people were illegally imprisoned, dozens executed and 337 “disappeared” as part of Operation Condor – a coordinated anti-communist plan across several right-wing dictatorships in the region. The most numerous group of victims were women and young girls who were sexually abused by members of the military, the police and the government – many of them having been abducted from poor, rural, mostly Indigenous communities and held captive. The regime was toppled by a coup in 1989, but Stroessner himself was given asylum in Brazil where he lived out his days.
Pictured: Stroessner with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1513090025542809/?type=3