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Paraguay

The United States backed Alfredo Stroessner 's anti-communist military dictatorship and played a "critical supporting role" in the domestic affairs of Stroessner's Paraguay. For instance, when Stroessner established a special branch of the secret police, subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs - the National Directorate of Technical Affairs (Dirección Nacional de Asuntos Técnicos, DNAT), U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thierry was sent to help set up the organization and find recruits, ultimately settling on Antonio Campos Alum as head of this organization (nicknamed La Technica) which would carry out disappearances and torture in Paraguay. Another branch, the Department of Investigations of the Metropolitan Police (Departamento de Investigaciones de la Policía de la Capital, DIPC), headed by Pastor Coronel, interrogated their captives in tubs of human vomit and excrement and shocked them in the rectum with electric cattle prods. They dismembered the Communist Party Secretary, Miguel Ángel Soler, alive with a chainsaw while Stroessner listened on the phone. Stroessner demanded the tapes of detainees screaming in pain to be played to their family members.

In a report to Kissinger, Harry Shlaudeman described Paraguay's militaristic state as a "nineteenth-century military regime that looks good on the cartoon page." Shlaudeman's judgments adopted a tone of paternalism, but was correct in noting that Paraguay's "backwardness" was leading it toward the fate of its neighbors. Although the United States viewed conflict from a global and ideological perspective, many decolonized nations defined national security threats in terms of neighboring nations and longstanding ethnic or regional feuds. Shlaudeman notes the incredible resilience that Paraguay showed against the superior military might of its neighbors during the Chaco War. From the perspective of the government in Paraguay, the victory against its neighbors over the course of several decades justified the lack of development in the nation. The report further states that the political traditions in Paraguay were anything but democratic. This reality, combined with a fear of leftist dissent in neighboring nations, led the government to focus on the containment of political opposition instead of on the development of its economic and political institutions. An ideological fear of its neighbors compelled them to protect its sovereignty. Therefore, the fight against radical, leftist movements within and without the country motivated many policymakers to act in the interest of security. In 2020, French writer Pablo Daniel Magee published the book Opération Condor prefaced by Costa Gavras. The book follows the life of Paraguayan victim of the Condor Operation Martín Almada.