Fifty Years Later: Paraguay Convicts Stroessner-Era Torturers

The Weekly Post | 17.02.26

Victims’ relatives during the 2024 torture trial against police officer Eusebio Torres (Foto: Codehupy)

TOP STORY

Paraguay convicts three Stroessner-era torturers, half a century later

A Paraguayan court has sentenced three former police officers for the torture of political prisoners during Alfredo Stroessner’s 1954–1989 dictatorship. Eusebio Torres Romero and Fortunato Lorenzo Laspina received 25 years, while Manuel Crescencio Alcaraz got 20 years.

The case was initially filed by Domingo Guzmán Rolón, who had fled the regime into exile in northern Argentina and was illegally detained in Formosa in October 1976, transported to Asunción, and then held and tortured at the infamous Departamento de Investigaciones until late 1977.

Prosecutors combined victim and witness testimony with the dictatorship’s own records preserved in the Archivos del Terror: an official paper trail of repression that still haunts courtrooms and survivors.

Carlos Portillo, a psychiatrist who worked as an investigator for Paraguay’s 2008 Truth and Justice Commission report told El País: “It’s historic. Even though it’s late, this trial matters a lot, because the possibility of being tried still exists, even 50 years later.”

This is only the second oral trial for torture under Paraguay’s current procedural system, underscoring how rare these rulings remain. In 2024 another Stroessner-era case resulted in a 30-year maximum sentence for Torres, but is still under appeal.

THE POST TAKE:

This conviction lands in a weird split-screen Paraguay.

On one side: a state court acknowledging, in no uncertain terms, that state agents tortured dissidents — and that these crimes can still be judged decades later.

On the other: a resurgent genre of dictatorship apologetics, increasingly voiced by people who aren’t random uncles at an asado but hold top government jobs. In January, José Duarte Penayo, head of Paraguay’s higher-education accreditation body ANEAES, called Stroessner a “constitutional president”.

Duarte even argued the regime was “benign” compared to earlier Liberal-era violence at the turn of the 20th century.

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Also in this issue:
Peña versus China · Son of “narcodiputado” charged · US rare earths deal signed · Paraguayan rock celebrated · Attack of the Therians · Miami flights restart

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