Remembering South America’s Longest Dictatorship
By
Ena Alvarado
A riveting new documentary connects the Stroessner regime to broader forces beyond Paraguay's borders.
This article is adapted from AQ’s special report on COP30 An age-old Latin American joke has it that Paraguay does not exist. When your country is landlocked and counts two regional giants—Argentina and Brazil—as neighbors, a reputation for being an afterthought can seem inevitable. This gibe about Paraguay’s irrelevance is blown sky-high in filmmaker Juanjo Pereira’s Under the Flags, the Sun, a riveting documentary about Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship from 1954 to 1989, the longest in South American history. The son of a Bavarian accountant,...
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