By janellekranz
Hello again my fellow American,
This week was incredibly weird. My study abroad crew traveled to Paraguay to tackle the third unit of our development class, and I was shocked at what being an American means in Paraguay.
This week I spoke with Paraguayan citizens, learned from Paraguayan professors, and visited memorial sites such as Los Archivos del Terror (The Archives of Terror) and El Museo de las Memorias (The Museum of Memories). I learned that from 1954 to 1989, Paraguay was ruled by a brutal military dictatorship. For 35 years, General Alfredo Stroessner acted as “president” during which time his policies intentionally left the people of Paraguay destitute and disappeared countless others. He ruled the country in a “state of siege” so as to control the communist thought and other “dangers” in the country. In reality, the “communist thought” in Paraguay was not a threat serious enough to warrant his government’s grossly cruel actions.
This week I learned shocking news that I was never taught at school: The US supported Stroessner’s dictatorship. This alone is enough to leave me speechless, but there’s more. In 1992, a room filled with official documents was found (which would later become The Archives of Terror). A few countries – among them the US – offered to help digitize the collection, and there are strong beliefs that the US intentionally stole incriminating documents in order to cover up its involvement in sustaining the bloody dictatorship.
This week I heard the story of a Paraguayan man who lived through being kidnapped and tortured by military officials. He mentioned that he was with some American students on September 11th, 2001. He said that when they heard the news, the students were upset, but he smiled. When they questioned him about his smile, he told them that this was one horrible, terrifying moment for Americans, but for Paraguay, that horrible moment lasted 35 long, terror-filled years. Certainly, these two tragedies are very different, but his point is valid: Paraguay is a country with a painful past that is so powerful, it wiped out a generation of great thinkers and bred discouragement into people so they wouldn’t seek justice by calling for trials once the dictatorship ended.
While I’d like to think that none of this would happen in today’s world, it does leave me speechless that we have supported such a government in the past – and in many Latin American countries, not just Paraguay – and that these histories are glossed over in US history textbooks. What other topics are curiously absent from our textbooks? Some Americans may never realize these truths – I may not have realized the full extent of the Stroessner dictatorship had I not gone abroad. And as sad as these experiences can be, these are the moments I will hold closest to me. The moments when I’m shocked, outraged, or touched while abroad will no doubt become the memories that drive my ambitions in the future.
Suerte,
Janelle