Alfredo Stroessner

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Alfredo Stroessner" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,482 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Alfredo Stroessner]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Alfredo Stroessner}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Alfredo Stroessner
Stroessner in 1959
42nd President of Paraguay
In office 15 August 1954 – 3 February 1989
Preceded by	Tomás Romero Pereira
Succeeded by	Andrés Rodríguez
Leader of Paraguay
De facto 4 May 1954 – 15 August 1954
President	Tomás Romero Pereira
Preceded by	Federico Chaves (as President)
Succeeded by	Himself (as President)
Personal details
Born	(1912-11-03)3 November 1912 Encarnación, Paraguay
Died	16 August 2006(2006-08-16) (aged 93) Brasília, Brazil
Political party	Colorado Party (1951–1989)
Spouse	Eligia Mora Delgado [es][1]
Children	3
Alma mater	Mar. Francisco Solano López Military Academy
Signature
Military service
Branch/service	Paraguayan Army
Years of service	1929–1989
Rank	General (1956)[2] Lieutenant general (1951) Major general (1949)
Battles/wars	Chaco War Battle of Boquerón Paraguayan Civil War of 1947
Alfredo Stroessner's voice Stroessner's speech during a signing of binational agreements (recorded 29 November 1979)

Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda (Spanish: [alˈfɾeðo esˈtɾosneɾ]; 3 November 1912 – 16 August 2006) was a Paraguayan politician, army general and military dictator who ruled as the 42nd president of Paraguay from 15 August 1954 until his overthrow in 1989. Known there as El Stronato, his dictatorship was marked by political violence. Before his accession to the presidency, he was the country's de facto leader from May to August 1954.

Stroessner rose to power after leading the 1954 Paraguayan coup d'état on 4 May, with backing from the Colorado Party and Paraguayan Army. Following a brief provisional government under Tomás Romero Pereira, he was elected unopposed in the 1954 presidential election, as all opposition parties had been banned since 1947.

He quickly suspended constitutional and civil rights upon taking office on 15 August 1954. With the army and military police, who acted as a secret police, he instituted a period of authoritarian rule and violent political repression (especially of opponents, whose parties were nominally legalized in 1962). From the 1958 through the 1988 elections, Stroessner maintained power by electoral fraud. The Constitution of 1967, introduced on 25 August, permitted his re-election, and changes in 1977 effectively enabled his indefinite rule.

His trusted confidant Lieutenant General Andrés Rodríguez Pedotti seized power in the 1989 coup d'état of 2 and 3 February. Stroessner was exiled to Brazil on 5 February, where he died on 16 August 2006 and was buried.^[3] His legacy continues in Paraguay, where his Colorado Party has retained power and continues to rule through clientelistic practices.^[4][5]