Speaker 1: What's engaged in a conspiracy against all civilization my Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast that focuses on
Speaker 1: the evils of the false Pope in Rome. We are,
Speaker 1: of course, devotees of the Antipope Novadianum, who carried out
Speaker 1: a righteous rebellion against the power of Pope Cornelius in
Speaker 1: the in the mid two hundreds. Um, you know, God
Speaker 1: rest his soul, James, what's the what's the chief thing
Speaker 1: you've learned from the Antipope? No, his input on on
Speaker 1: hair and skincare has been really important to me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he had. He had a lot to say about that
Speaker 1: in the Latin language, which he was the first Roman
Speaker 1: theologian to use. Um, I'm just learning about him now
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia. I don't know why I went with this
Speaker 1: as the introduction for the Abody Knows, Robert, nobody knows,
Speaker 1: Nobody knows, nobody knows. But you know what this is
Speaker 1: now a podcast dedicated to the Antipope Novation, who lived
Speaker 1: from two hundred eighty to two hundred and fifty eight. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's a big change from my last episode, which
Speaker 1: was of course dedicated to a dead groundhog. So that's right,
Speaker 1: that's right. They have a lot in common, the Antipope
Speaker 1: and that ground log hog that built Blasio. Did build
Speaker 1: a Blasio? Drop the anti incredible you gave us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make one more request from the artists to
Speaker 1: our fans, which is a like a like a romance,
Speaker 1: a Roman style relief, like the ceiling of the U
Speaker 1: of the static. That's like, yeah, that's like antipope novation
Speaker 1: and that fucking groundhog holding hands in the sky. Find
Speaker 1: a building. It doesn't matter who owns it. Drawn that
Speaker 1: as Amia, I know we will send you a titia.
Speaker 1: Let those two kings be the symbol of our next revolution.
Speaker 1: Hand in pull the Antipope writing into battle on the
Speaker 1: graund hook. Finally, Deblasio will get his comeuppance. So, speaking
Speaker 1: of Bill Deblasio, the first official Nazi party outside of Germany,
Speaker 1: was formed in Paraguay in nineteen twenty seven under a
Speaker 1: mango tree in the capital. While Forster, that anti Semitic
Speaker 1: philosopher we talked about last time, had been a miserable
Speaker 1: failure in his goal of creating an Aryan sanctuary, his
Speaker 1: published writings traveled across the world and became kind of
Speaker 1: a leading light for several generations of German anti Semites.
Speaker 1: One of these anti Semites was a guy you might
Speaker 1: have heard of named Adolf Hitler. He comes across Forrester's
Speaker 1: readings as a young man, and he reveres them so
Speaker 1: much that when he comes to power, he sends a
Speaker 1: bunch of German soil over to Paraguay so that local
Speaker 1: Nazis can cover Forster's grave. He also allegedly sends along
Speaker 1: a tombstone plaque with the words the place where the
Speaker 1: Father of Nazism lies inscribed upon it. Um. Now there's Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have any lists in Paraguay. That's a great thing
Speaker 1: to tag. Yeah that that would be a nice thing
Speaker 1: to destroy. Yeah, yeah there is, Yeah, groundhog, that fucker
Speaker 1: do that. Give it the old build a Blasio treatment
Speaker 1: and drop it. M Now there's There is debate over
Speaker 1: whether or not Hitler is the person who sent this plaque,
Speaker 1: but the plaque does exist. British historian Ben McIntyre is
Speaker 1: one of the people who considers it it likely that
Speaker 1: Hitler would have said this. Obviously, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: he was like the only ideological father of Nazism Hitler.
Speaker 1: Hitler could be a flatterer when he wanted to be.
Speaker 1: But it does there is like it is kind of
Speaker 1: beyond arguing that Hitler was a fan of this guy
Speaker 1: and that Forster influenced his attitudes. Um. As a result
Speaker 1: of all this, it is perhaps not surprising that Nazism
Speaker 1: held an a lure to some segments of the Paraguayan populace.
Speaker 1: The nation's first National Police Director named his son Adolpho,
Speaker 1: and demanded police cadets where swastikas on their uniforms. This
Speaker 1: is this is a post nineteen five swastica right, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: these are pre forty five. Okay, still still probably a
Speaker 1: poor decision. Yeah, Um did he then say it's just
Speaker 1: a Buddhist symbol, bro or yeah, yeah, it means peace time. Yeah. Now. Paraguay, also,
Speaker 1: speaking of bad decisions, sided with the Nazis in World
Speaker 1: War Two initially, Um, so they kind of switched their
Speaker 1: allegiances midway through the war when it's like, you know what, look,
Speaker 1: Paraguay's got a history of being on the wrong side
Speaker 1: of wars. We don't want to risked at this time.
Speaker 1: And obviously also like it doesn't really matter what side
Speaker 1: of World War two Paraguay was on. They are a
Speaker 1: landlocked country in South America. They're not going to play
Speaker 1: a role in the fighting the government. Though the Paraguayan
Speaker 1: government does switch their allegiances right before the end. It
Speaker 1: is worth noting that the Paraguayan Nazi Party refuses to
Speaker 1: give up the ghost until nineteen forty six, So Paraguay's
Speaker 1: Nazi Party lasts longer than the original one. That's a
Speaker 1: great at least later. Yeah, well well done. Then after
Speaker 1: the war, this tiny landlocked nation seemed like an enticing
Speaker 1: new home to dozens of former ssmen and other fascist
Speaker 1: war criminals. Paraguay already had a modest German speaking population
Speaker 1: based around Mennonite colonists, but it was also full of
Speaker 1: and this kind of made it less desirable. It was
Speaker 1: also a place where a lot of white Russian officers
Speaker 1: had fled, some of whom had helped out in the
Speaker 1: Chaco War. These guys, some of them didn't like the
Speaker 1: ass some of them were always were also very sympathetic
Speaker 1: to the Nazis because, like you know, Stalin and the
Speaker 1: white Russians not a not a not a great mix um.
Speaker 1: So on the whole this huh fucking white Russians end
Speaker 1: up everywhere. I've recently been on a kick about reading
Speaker 1: about white Russians in the Spanish Civil War who end
Speaker 1: up yeah, all over the international brigades. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of these guys are Czarists. A lot of these
Speaker 1: guys are fascists. A lot of these guys are the
Speaker 1: kinds of Czarists that are basically fascists. In any case,
Speaker 1: it's a nice place to be a Nazi. After World
Speaker 1: War Two, Paraguay, so Nazis start filtering in there. A
Speaker 1: lot of them settle with Mennonites. At least one Mennonite
Speaker 1: community adopts a pro Nazi school curricula for its children
Speaker 1: as a result of this. God, yeah, don't speak that
Speaker 1: shit into reality because understantists will be all over it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking Mennonazis, Jesus, others simply took Nazis. Be fair if
Speaker 1: they if they'd all been Mennonites, and we probably would
Speaker 1: have had quite so many issues with them. No, No,
Speaker 1: although speaking yeah, they they I mean they already mostly
Speaker 1: did shit on horseback anyway. As as illustrated and probably
Speaker 1: the best scene of a Band of Brothers, God, that
Speaker 1: show did a lot, right, there's this great scene where
Speaker 1: like a bunch of American soldiers are like riding in
Speaker 1: after kind of the Nazi regime collapses, and they see
Speaker 1: all these like German po doubles hauling shit on horses
Speaker 1: while they're on the back of a jeep, and they're
Speaker 1: like fucking horses. Like, you thought you could win this
Speaker 1: war and you've got fucking horses. What's wrong with you people?
Speaker 1: It's very funny. So yeah, these Nazis start winding up
Speaker 1: all over the fucking place, and they decide, like, you
Speaker 1: know what Paraguay would be great for is a smuggling
Speaker 1: base for Odessa, the organization of former ss men who
Speaker 1: helped each other smuggle themselves into other countries in order
Speaker 1: to avoid prosecution for doing a holocaust. Now, some of
Speaker 1: my sources will argue that like Stressner, the kind of
Speaker 1: guy who wasn't really logically committed to much of anything
Speaker 1: other than being in power. But that's also essentially the
Speaker 1: ideology of a lot of surviving Nazi officials. So Stressner
Speaker 1: and the Nazis got along pretty well. And there are
Speaker 1: some allegations, most notably from Alex Schumtov, that Stressner was
Speaker 1: at least Nazi curious Schumatov basically claims that in his
Speaker 1: early life Stressner had little contact with Germans in Paraguay,
Speaker 1: but that this changed in his thirties and he kind
Speaker 1: of became a Germanophile, you know, getting in touch with
Speaker 1: his dad's people. I'm gonna quote from Vanity Fair again here.
Speaker 1: One of Stressner's German buddies was Hans Rudel, a flying
Speaker 1: ace in the Luftwava who flew more missions than anyone,
Speaker 1: destroyed a cruiser, a battleship five hundred nineteen Russian tanks,
Speaker 1: was shot down twice, lost his right leg below the calf,
Speaker 1: but continued to excel at tennis and water skiing. Was
Speaker 1: the idol of the post war German right, the embodiment
Speaker 1: of Aryan perfection. Hitler created a special metal with him,
Speaker 1: the Knight's crossed with golden oak leaves. After the war,
Speaker 1: he tried out planes for the Argentinian government, and when
Speaker 1: Perone fell in nineteen fifty five, was given asylum by
Speaker 1: his friend Stressner. When Argentina was no longer safe for
Speaker 1: x Nazis, Rudel went to Paraguay as well and worked
Speaker 1: in the Ferretta Paraguaya and on Suncon selling BMW's telephone,
Speaker 1: cement and iron. He also worked for Odessa, So he's like,
Speaker 1: he's like a BMWU dealer who's smuggling lavafa SS out
Speaker 1: of Europe and into Argentina. It's like the forest gump
Speaker 1: of Nazis here here, all the high points fucking Argentina. Mm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's all over the fucking place. In addition to selling
Speaker 1: used cars. Yeah, so I gotta have a side hustle.
Speaker 1: Stressner and Rudel become fast friends and working with Rudel,
Speaker 1: Stressner sets up a system whereby new passports and visas
Speaker 1: can be sold for an exorbitant price, of which he
Speaker 1: got to cut two old Nazis. And one of the
Speaker 1: Nazis who takes advantage of this very forgiving Paraguayan government
Speaker 1: policy is another fella you might have heard of, doctor
Speaker 1: Joseph Angola. So, oh good, it's good. That's yeah, so
Speaker 1: I was looking forward to that. It's Friday afternoon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you if you're not up on your Mangola.
Speaker 1: The kind of cliffs notes of this guy is that
Speaker 1: he's a doctor at Auschwitz superform's fatal experiments on fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred sets of twin children. Um, he did shit like
Speaker 1: inject colored eye into like the eyes of toddler's color
Speaker 1: die into the eyes of toddlers who were twins, to
Speaker 1: like see if it affected the other twin. It was
Speaker 1: like nonsense, it was, it was crazy nonsense. That's doctor
Speaker 1: Joseph Mangola. He's a terrible person. We will cover him
Speaker 1: at some point. He's one of those guys like Durrel Wanger,
Speaker 1: who he's not like. Mangola himself is not the most
Speaker 1: fascinating individual. So a lot of it's just kind of
Speaker 1: a list of horrible war crimes. Um, but we'll get
Speaker 1: him one of these days. I know, I know the
Speaker 1: subreddits crying out from Mangola, and eventually I Am going
Speaker 1: to show them why they don't want what they think
Speaker 1: they want. No one's going to have a good time
Speaker 1: with this episod so um it is. It is weird.
Speaker 1: The people are demanding Mangola. Got a lot of Mangola
Speaker 1: stands in the audience who can't wait to get their
Speaker 1: mangelicque out. Um got a Mangola pill. Nope, nope, no,
Speaker 1: that was not a mistake. No, that was a mistake. Ah,
Speaker 1: let's move it on, Let's move it on so Mangola.
Speaker 1: One report from a German Paraguay and who was in
Speaker 1: country at the time says that Mangola in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine made us say a living in Paraguay as a
Speaker 1: salesman for a manure spreading business. Post war Nazi careers
Speaker 1: are always like what weird? Why did they make them
Speaker 1: do shit? Like if you're just fucking like put them
Speaker 1: in a hotel or something like these comedy fucking jobs. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: they're making money. The guy who claimed this told Alex Schumatov,
Speaker 1: I didn't know he was a doctor, and we talked
Speaker 1: about business and never the war. I figured he didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk about it. Probably probably did, I see
Speaker 1: from Probably didn't want to talk about the war. Yeah. Whatever.
Speaker 1: So some reports do allege that Stressner and Mangola were
Speaker 1: close friends also and knew each other well. I have
Speaker 1: not come across any convincing evidence of this, but he's
Speaker 1: certainly it's almost certain that Mangola traveled through and spent
Speaker 1: time in Paraguay. He gets citizenship at one point in time. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's certainly possible that he and Stressner had a
Speaker 1: degree of social interactions together. Now, that's all pretty bad, James.
Speaker 1: When you are smuggling, doctor Joseph Mengel at a safety,
Speaker 1: that's a bad thing to do. That's that's high up
Speaker 1: on the list of least forgivable things. And I'm I'm
Speaker 1: very pro smuggling, but not if you're smuggling Nazis. You know,
Speaker 1: Finnyl totally fine, old electronics that you stole from people's cars,
Speaker 1: great catalytic converters, excellent. Yeah, some chop today. I was
Speaker 1: really proud of him. M Exactly. We need, we need,
Speaker 1: we need the smuggling community to come together against smuggling,
Speaker 1: Joseph Mangela. Places. Look, not even once, folks, not even once. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the government's tolerance of Nazis led the fairly small Paraguay
Speaker 1: and Jewish population to have some awkward experiences after World
Speaker 1: War Two. And this is where things get very weird. James.
Speaker 1: This is a really odd little story I've got for you.
Speaker 1: I found a peculiar but unique account of life in
Speaker 1: Stressner's Paraguay written by a person who at the time
Speaker 1: was a young boy named Michael Caine. Now, not that
Speaker 1: Michael Kine o. This Michael kine is basically a fascist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he grew up in This is so weird. The
Speaker 1: guy I found this in like this guy's blog. He's
Speaker 1: just like writing about his time as a little boy
Speaker 1: in Stressner's Paraguay. He grew up in the UK in
Speaker 1: a peace church called the bruder Hof, which was part
Speaker 1: of a network of Pacifist Anabaptist religious communities that had
Speaker 1: started spreading out from Germany in nineteen twenty. Now Michael's
Speaker 1: like three, I think in nineteen forty one when his
Speaker 1: family has to flee the UK when the war breaks out.
Speaker 1: The UK puts Germans in concentration camps, now nicer ones
Speaker 1: than the German concentration camps, it must be said, But
Speaker 1: that's why his family leaves. They're like, this is not
Speaker 1: It seems like maybe being German in the UK in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one is an ideal we might want to bounce. Yes,
Speaker 1: so well, unless you're unless you're the monarch of cause,
Speaker 1: in which grace, unless you yeah, unless you are the monarch.
Speaker 1: So his family flees the UK for the only country
Speaker 1: that will accept their peace church during the war years,
Speaker 1: which is Paraguay. Michael's recollections are on his website, and
Speaker 1: I have not looked into the Bruderhof a lot. It
Speaker 1: is again, it's like a Pacifist Anabaptist network of religious communities.
Speaker 1: Michael claims that he suffered terrible sexual abuse and paints
Speaker 1: a picture of the Bruderhof in Paraguay as a cult
Speaker 1: entirely possible. This is true, It would not be out
Speaker 1: of line with a lot of similar movements. I have
Speaker 1: no particular reason to doubt him on this. We will
Speaker 1: be using Michael's count today because it provides some contexts
Speaker 1: on how German Jewish and the German Nazi diaspora communicated.
Speaker 1: Which is an interesting thing, right that you have these
Speaker 1: Jewish people who have fled to Paraguay and these Nazis
Speaker 1: who have fled to Paraguay, and because they're all German,
Speaker 1: they wind up like involved with each other sometimes and
Speaker 1: word that would be and again Michael, he is writing
Speaker 1: as an adult about his experience as a child in
Speaker 1: this like expat community. This same bar he's talking about
Speaker 1: like a bar that he was brought to as a
Speaker 1: kid for like a business deal. The same bar used
Speaker 1: to be owned by Schortzel. His real name was a
Speaker 1: meal Wolf, a German jew and his place was used
Speaker 1: for years by Nazis and Jews, who were all involved
Speaker 1: in business and all of them good friends. As a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old, the Bruderhoff put me to work in Asuncion,
Speaker 1: where they bought a new house in Vulgiicio Marino. They
Speaker 1: rented a large house in Indepensia Naciona, two doors down
Speaker 1: from Wolf. I went to Shorze Bar with Alfred, a
Speaker 1: brother from the Bruderhoff, who wanted to drink of beer
Speaker 1: but had no money, but I did so we went together.
Speaker 1: Soon Schortzel approached me for some business in wood turn
Speaker 1: to products that the Bruderhoff was selling. That's how he
Speaker 1: became a good friend of Schortzel with Jews. The key
Speaker 1: to a good friendship is money. When I came roun
Speaker 1: oh boy, oh no? Do we want to keep reading room? It? Yeah,
Speaker 1: one last sentence. When I came round to Shortzel's with
Speaker 1: wooden articles, he called me Nachmann and I called him saujud.
Speaker 1: Now I looked these nicknames up because I was like,
Speaker 1: what kind of nicknames do basically and a Jewish boy
Speaker 1: come up with for each other. Vainachman basically means Santa Claus. Uh,
Speaker 1: So that's the Jewish guy is calling him Santa Clause
Speaker 1: right because he's buy I think, because he's buying him
Speaker 1: a beer. And Saud that nickname which is this kid's
Speaker 1: nickname for his this his Jewish friend, comes from the
Speaker 1: term judensau, which is a medieval racial caricature sure that
Speaker 1: depicts Jewish children suckling at the teats of the pig.
Speaker 1: It is a racial slur. Um. So like his friend
Speaker 1: is like, hey, Santa Claus, and he's like, hey slur,
Speaker 1: Like hey racial slur buddy, um awkward look. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would love to find I haven't found really any other
Speaker 1: accounts of like the complicated interactions of the Jewish striass
Speaker 1: for a German community in Paraguay and the Nazi. I
Speaker 1: assume this happened in places like Argentina too. Um. It's
Speaker 1: a fascinating topic. I would love to read more on
Speaker 1: the matter. Hopefully I'll find something else at some point.
Speaker 1: I just kind of a stumbled into this. The ship
Speaker 1: that people will put on the Internet without being forced to, Like,
Speaker 1: you cannot send me to Guantanamo Bay if I had,
Speaker 1: if I had been giving my friends slur nicknames and
Speaker 1: get it out with me. But this guy's used apparently
Speaker 1: popped it out on the Internet for the world to see.
Speaker 1: I mean this, I don't entirely know what's happening with
Speaker 1: the fascist Michael Caine, but he's it's it's His blog
Speaker 1: is a real one. Yeah, yeah, there was a time
Speaker 1: when yeah, humans were blogging and yeah, a powerful insight
Speaker 1: into the brain. Speaking of fascist Michael Caine, do you
Speaker 1: know what the non fascist Michael Caine loves blowing the
Speaker 1: doors off things? Is? That? Is that a thing that
Speaker 1: Michael Caine did? A lot of the Michael Caine, isn't
Speaker 1: it in h what's it called? He's in a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. He's Michael Caine. Uh yeah, I mean he
Speaker 1: was in the Batman movies. He's Alfred. So does he
Speaker 1: blow the doors off of something in the in the
Speaker 1: Italian job? Oh? Oh oh yeah, I think that is
Speaker 1: my That is Michael Caine Italian j I had a
Speaker 1: moment there, always worried. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, this is
Speaker 1: this is good Michael Caine content. This is an episode
Speaker 1: rich with Michael's cane. So um, anyway, that was a
Speaker 1: bit of a digression, but I just found it too
Speaker 1: interesting to not include. Fascinating this must have happened in
Speaker 1: a lot of other countries too. This like the German
Speaker 1: Jewish dias for a and the German Nazi dias for
Speaker 1: a having some forms of interaction with each other. I
Speaker 1: would love to read more about that. I just don't know.
Speaker 1: I haven't I haven't run into much else. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a whole whole thing, and it gives you an
Speaker 1: idea of the kind of peculiar bedfellows that exist under
Speaker 1: Stressner's regime. The main reason that I found Michael's story, though,
Speaker 1: is that it provides a rare, direct personal account of
Speaker 1: the man that Alfredo Stressner trusted to maintain his secret
Speaker 1: torture police, who were his primary instrument of maintaining power.
Speaker 1: And this man was named Pastor Militiadez Coronelle born in
Speaker 1: August of nineteen nineteen. Coronelle worked for the Education and
Speaker 1: Culture Ministry when Stressner came to power. He was like
Speaker 1: part of the Department of Education, and then Stressner's liken, no,
Speaker 1: you see my I'm more of a torture guy. To me,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put you in charge of my torture department.
Speaker 1: Coronelle was noted to be an obsessive bureaucrat. He loves paperwork.
Speaker 1: Part of all we know so much about this guy
Speaker 1: is every arrest and every torture that they do is documented.
Speaker 1: Every surveiled dissident is recorded and filed away. But he's
Speaker 1: not just a paperwork guy. He likes to get down
Speaker 1: there and get his hands dirty. In nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: when his forces arrested the secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party,
Speaker 1: Pastor Coronell had him dismembered by chainsaw while he watched.
Speaker 1: That is, yeah, we don't come into enough chainsaw killings
Speaker 1: in this show, but there we go. That's it's always
Speaker 1: good to break new ground when yeah he's an e
Speaker 1: state minns. Yeah, no, it's nice. He's like a Robert
Speaker 1: Rodriguez ville in this guy. So Coronell is a dedicated
Speaker 1: student of torture. He practiced it himself, but he was
Speaker 1: also a keen amer of the world's greatest torture experts
Speaker 1: at the time, which was the US Police. Now we
Speaker 1: know that the FBI sent him friendly letters as well
Speaker 1: as books on law enforcement. Like the director of the
Speaker 1: FBI is like sending this guy like textbooks to be
Speaker 1: like here you go, this will help you make your
Speaker 1: torture police. Don't worry, we know all about it. We
Speaker 1: also know that, through Operation Condor, the FBI kept abreast
Speaker 1: of whenever Paraguay and dissidents would pop up in surrounding
Speaker 1: countries that had right wing dictatorships allied with the US,
Speaker 1: which at this point was all of Paraguay's neighbors. This
Speaker 1: brings me to the nineteen fifty eighth story of Gladys
Speaker 1: Sanomon and Augustine Guibero. They were physicians in the capital
Speaker 1: who refused to falsify an autopsy report to claim a
Speaker 1: victim of Coronel's police had died of natural causes. Instead,
Speaker 1: doctor Santomon took the corpse to a class in her
Speaker 1: medical school and performed the autopsy in front of her students,
Speaker 1: so that there would be people who knew what had
Speaker 1: happened to this man. It was just the only thing
Speaker 1: she could think of to do to make sure that
Speaker 1: the truth got out. Like if I write anything about this,
Speaker 1: they will purge it. So I am going to autopsy
Speaker 1: this murder victim in front of my students so they
Speaker 1: see what our government's doing. Very sensibly, she and her
Speaker 1: husband fled the country for Brazil. Now they're in Brazil
Speaker 1: for a little while before the Brazilian military caesar's power,
Speaker 1: and so then they have to flee Brazil, and the
Speaker 1: next place they move, Argentina, falls to a US backed
Speaker 1: military dictatorship in nineteen seventy six. This gives you an
Speaker 1: idea of like how tough it is to be any
Speaker 1: kind of dissident in South America at this time. Right,
Speaker 1: they are like running as fast as they can, always
Speaker 1: just ahead of the next US backed military coup. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from the New York Times here.
Speaker 1: Hours after the coup, the Argentine police abducted doctor Sanomon
Speaker 1: and tortured her at the Esquela Mechanisa in Buenos Aires.
Speaker 1: Doctor Sandomon said she was bound and plunged into a
Speaker 1: bathtub of vomit and excrement. They accused me of killing
Speaker 1: a patient in my office, doctor Sanomon said, calling the
Speaker 1: charge a total lie. Then the police falsely accused her
Speaker 1: of selling drugs, she said. A week later, doctor Sanomon's
Speaker 1: husband was abducted and tortured as well. Doctor Sanomon landed
Speaker 1: at the Imboscata camp for political prisoners in Paraguay, where
Speaker 1: she treated more than four hundred fellow prisoners from several
Speaker 1: South American countries, including women whose husbands had been executed
Speaker 1: and their children. The women she said had been in
Speaker 1: prison to silence them. Doctor Sanoman and her husband were
Speaker 1: eventually given asylum in Germany in nineteen ninety seven after
Speaker 1: the German government pressed Argentina to bring about their release.
Speaker 1: The fate of doctor Gooibrew, who also refused to white
Speaker 1: watch torture, remained a mystery until the archives were opened
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven. He was kidnapped from a street
Speaker 1: in Missions, an Argentine town where he had gone to
Speaker 1: escape the stress in a regime, and um, you know
Speaker 1: he's executed by the regime. He's killed once he gets back.
Speaker 1: We have some personal accounts of Pastor Coronel's torture tactics
Speaker 1: as well. Senator Carlos Levy Ruffinelli was the leader of
Speaker 1: the Liberal Party, a controlled opposition party stressner allowed to
Speaker 1: exist to provide the illusion of democracy. And even though
Speaker 1: this was he you know, he's letting this guy basically
Speaker 1: live to be controlled or to be opposition. He still
Speaker 1: arrests him nineteen times and has him tortured six times.
Speaker 1: That guy's what that is a bold dude to just
Speaker 1: keeps coming back for more. He is a brave man,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to quote from him now talking about
Speaker 1: his experiences under Core and El's torturers. Most of the
Speaker 1: time I did not know what they wanted. They did
Speaker 1: not even know what they wanted. But when they put
Speaker 1: the needles under your fingernails, you tell them anything. You'd
Speaker 1: denounce everybody, and then they say, see, you were lying
Speaker 1: to us all the time. Now I found an even
Speaker 1: more detailed, in horrific account of Pastor Coronel's jails in
Speaker 1: a BBC article by Simon Watts. Almada came to the
Speaker 1: attention of the Secret Police in the early nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: when he and his wife Celestina were working as teachers
Speaker 1: in a school where they had set up on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of Unsuncion. Their politics were left wing, and they
Speaker 1: campaigned for better salaries and working conditions for teachers and
Speaker 1: for changes to the curriculum. One evening, the Secret Police
Speaker 1: came for him. After thirty days of interrogation, Almada was
Speaker 1: officially classified as an intellectual terrorist and an ignoramus. He
Speaker 1: was sent to the infamous in Buscata open air prison,
Speaker 1: where he was held for three years. Celestina died shortly
Speaker 1: after Almada's arrest and what the police said was a suicide.
Speaker 1: Almada has always believed she died because police played her
Speaker 1: recordings of him being tortured. The telephone was used as
Speaker 1: an instrument of ecological torture, he says. For eight days,
Speaker 1: they made her listen systematically to everything that happened to me.
Speaker 1: Then they sent her my bloodied clothing. Finally, they called
Speaker 1: her one night and said the subversive teacher is dead,
Speaker 1: come and get his body. She died of a heart attack,
Speaker 1: he says. She died of grief. And again, all of
Speaker 1: this is based on teachings that the FBI handed down
Speaker 1: to Coronel and his police. They sent trainers, the CIA
Speaker 1: sent trainers like US cops, taught Coronel's cops how to
Speaker 1: do all this. None of this was, you know, separate
Speaker 1: from American politics in Latin America at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are people alive today whose tax who's helped to
Speaker 1: pay for that. Anyway, to the FBI agents listening, I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this proud recitation of your history. Here.
Speaker 1: What a cost institution. So thanks to those now open archives,
Speaker 1: we also know that Stressner after he took power, a
Speaker 1: US military colonel named Robert Terry T. E I R R. Y.
Speaker 1: He lived in Texas, actually came to Paraguay to put
Speaker 1: together a lot of the basic structure of Stressner's police
Speaker 1: state as part of a broader US plan to crackdown
Speaker 1: on left wing organizing in the entire region. The FBI
Speaker 1: handled a lot of the grunt work. On one occasion,
Speaker 1: a dissident from Pinochet's regime in Chile fled to Paraguay.
Speaker 1: He was arrested and interrogated by Coronell's men. They then
Speaker 1: called up the FBI, who interrogated Chilean relatives of the
Speaker 1: dissident who were living in the United States, and in
Speaker 1: handed that information to Pinochet, who disappeared the dissident once
Speaker 1: he'd been handed over. This is the way things worked
Speaker 1: in Latin America, much of it. Clarence Kelly, who was
Speaker 1: head of the FBI at the time, sent Coronell a
Speaker 1: Christmas letter wishing him, quote, a truly joyous Christmas and
Speaker 1: a new year filled with all the good things you
Speaker 1: so richly deserved. Good guys, christ Good guys. Now earlier
Speaker 1: I read you a quote from that weird Michael Caine
Speaker 1: Guy's blog. I decided to highlight some of this kind
Speaker 1: of a Nazis recollections because as a child he lived
Speaker 1: near Pastor Coronell and he spent time with the man,
Speaker 1: and there's not a lot of context on this guy.
Speaker 1: So he's some of like the only evidence I've found
Speaker 1: about what Stressner's chief torture was like as a person,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of interesting. On this day I
Speaker 1: first met Pastor Coronell. He was about five years older
Speaker 1: than me. His uncle Dawn and rather or rather Mayor
Speaker 1: Coronell owned a neighboring estancia ranch to the Bruderhoff. His
Speaker 1: estancia was called San Martin, and Paraguay landowners like to
Speaker 1: give themselves military titles for importance, hence the mayor title.
Speaker 1: Mayor Coronell habitually carried a gun. He must have read
Speaker 1: the Little Read Book by Chairman Mao, whereon it says
Speaker 1: page forty eight, the power of the people comes out
Speaker 1: of the barrel of a gun. For this reason, he
Speaker 1: was highly respected or feared, pending on your language. It
Speaker 1: was him who let me shoot his cult forty five
Speaker 1: revolver for the first time in my life. The recoil
Speaker 1: hurt my thumb. This made all the Paraguayan onlookers laugh
Speaker 1: really loud. But this kind of pros it's really a
Speaker 1: gift to the Internet. It's amazing. It's amazing. You legitimately
Speaker 1: never know what this fuck is gonna come up with next.
Speaker 1: I know it's it's this man is fascinating. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just a stream of consciousness. Yeah, it's unedited. It's one
Speaker 1: of those little gifts that you, um, you come across
Speaker 1: when you're doing a deep enough dive. That's just like
Speaker 1: no one, no one would put this in a scholarly
Speaker 1: because like, I can't verify any of this, but I'm
Speaker 1: not not gonna put it in a podcast. It's just
Speaker 1: too it's just too incredible. It's hate and jam of
Speaker 1: the this guy. I was commenting on Facebook shit about
Speaker 1: how he I didn't powerfully divorced vine. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised that Michael Caine grew up to be the most
Speaker 1: divorced man on the internet. Hates his children. Perfect. Yes,
Speaker 1: now I'm giving it all to me, James's that's what
Speaker 1: I love the Internet for. Yeah, this is a true goal.
Speaker 1: So back to Paraguay. It has always been pretty deeply
Speaker 1: fucked from an economic justice point of view. Today it
Speaker 1: actually has fun fact, James, the most unequal land distribution
Speaker 1: of any nation on Earth. Ninety percent of its land
Speaker 1: is owned by twelve thousand people. Now, Jesus Christ, but
Speaker 1: that's not great. This state of affairs actually started because
Speaker 1: of the War of the Triple Alliance, which left most
Speaker 1: Paraguayans dead and their land up for grabs. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of land that there's no one alive left
Speaker 1: to Yeah, And in the wake of that calamity, the
Speaker 1: next dictators basically sold everything that wasn't nailed down, all
Speaker 1: these dead people's land, to fund rebuilding and to fund themselves.
Speaker 1: And during this period, thirty two firms purchased almost half
Speaker 1: of the country. One Spanish businessman purchased seven million hectares,
Speaker 1: which is more than a full ireland of private property. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's too much land for a person now, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know one needs so much. What was he doing.
Speaker 1: There's a brisk debate to be had about the extent
Speaker 1: to private property. No one should be able to own
Speaker 1: an ireland. Yeah no, that's that's too much. The consequences
Speaker 1: of this led directly to a situation where all wealth
Speaker 1: in Paraguay was determined by landownership, because land gave one
Speaker 1: the ability to exploit minerals or other natural resources, or
Speaker 1: at least charge rent. When Stressner came to power, the
Speaker 1: first person he killed was a government official tasked with
Speaker 1: carrying out a land reform policy to remedy this inequality.
Speaker 1: That is the first guy he has murdered. Is this
Speaker 1: guy doing the land reform? And yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote next from an article in Earth Sight. As part
Speaker 1: of these clientelist networks, Stressner divided what remained of public
Speaker 1: land among his allies. Eight million hectares were given away
Speaker 1: or sold at negligible prices to army generals and Colorado grandees.
Speaker 1: This land was a stint be destined for small scale
Speaker 1: farmers as part of a program of agrarian reform, and
Speaker 1: so has come to be known as Las tierras malhabidas
Speaker 1: the ill Gotten Lands. Yeah yeah, it's cool, good story, great, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no problem. He started off on a great note, didn't he. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this leads to a pretty long running series of
Speaker 1: massacres of what are called composinos, who are tenant farmers
Speaker 1: attempting to protest for land reform for Stressner. This also
Speaker 1: forms a crucial part of the network of bribery and
Speaker 1: other way looking that powers his dictatorship to get military
Speaker 1: officers on his side. He hands out high level positions
Speaker 1: and state monopolies or land, and then he also has
Speaker 1: Pastor Corradel's secret police stand aside and ignore the illegal
Speaker 1: trade and contrabands that they can make a shitload of
Speaker 1: money smuggling stuff into the country. Peter Lambert writes of
Speaker 1: this contraband often quoted as the price of peace and
Speaker 1: involving the vast majority of officials through their control of
Speaker 1: the frontier zones guaranteed them city of the military establishment
Speaker 1: and the maintenance of a lucrative status quo and the
Speaker 1: words of Eduardo Galiano, the generals fill their pockets and
Speaker 1: hatch no plots. So basically he takes he kills the
Speaker 1: guy who is responsible for redistributing land of the peasants.
Speaker 1: He takes all this land, he gives it to his generals,
Speaker 1: particularly land on the borders, which they then use in
Speaker 1: order to carry out like basically create smuggling networks. Right
Speaker 1: to bring products and that are not taxed, and this
Speaker 1: is fucked up. It's a mixed bag for much of
Speaker 1: the population. Because one thing this does is that you
Speaker 1: can actually get a lot of shit cheaper in Paraguay
Speaker 1: than you can in like the US where it's being made,
Speaker 1: Like TVs are cheaper there and ship for a while
Speaker 1: because it's like no taxes, and everyone in the government understands.
Speaker 1: Part of why we don't we're not dealing with any
Speaker 1: uprisings right now is that, like people get cheap TVs,
Speaker 1: and the money from those cheap TVs bribes the generals
Speaker 1: not to upset the apple cart. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty intelligent system. It's evil, but it's smart, right right,
Speaker 1: funding your your state though, if people aren't paying taxes,
Speaker 1: and well a lot of people aren't paying taxes, you
Speaker 1: do have like a ship I mean part I. Honestly,
Speaker 1: James is the CIA right, Like he's getting officially tens
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars from the United States Eutropean socialism.
Speaker 1: But it's a perfect system. What if the CIA could
Speaker 1: fund civic programs here to rebuild roads and bridges. You
Speaker 1: don't even think about it. Nope, dropping in CIA agents
Speaker 1: to like clean up that part in town in Ohio
Speaker 1: that the train just knives torturing dude who runs Norfolk seven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: backing a dictator in Ohio, but then also cleaning up
Speaker 1: the land. It's a mixed bag in Ohio. Yeah, you have.
Speaker 1: The population's been tortured to death, but the sea's cleaner. Now, um,
Speaker 1: the sea it's Ohio a yeah, yeah, the Ohio ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Ohio Ocean we call it's where the land sharks
Speaker 1: come from. We've talked a good amount about the torture
Speaker 1: and murder. Stressner's chief attack dog pastor, And by pastor's
Speaker 1: not like a religious term. It's like, I think, sorry,
Speaker 1: pastor is what I should be saying, But you know
Speaker 1: me in pronunciations, it's his first name as pastor, Pastor
Speaker 1: coronel carried out. But what's perhaps more interesting is how
Speaker 1: relatively rarely he needed to do this. The early years
Speaker 1: of the Stressner regime established such a baseline of terror
Speaker 1: that Paraguay and civil society was comprehensibly beaten down, and
Speaker 1: it had been pretty beaten down earlier. Right, So kind
Speaker 1: of what happens after he takes powers. Most people are like, yah, man,
Speaker 1: he sucks, but we're not dealing with the civil war
Speaker 1: every year, and like, you know, the corruption at least
Speaker 1: means cheap TVs. So why don't we just give up
Speaker 1: on politics? Right? Like that's kind of that's how Lambert Lambert.
Speaker 1: That's how Lambert kind of describes what happens to the people.
Speaker 1: And he calls this the institutionalization of repression and defines
Speaker 1: that as a demobilization of civil society due to a
Speaker 1: perception that politics is only the domain of soldiers and
Speaker 1: the leaders who control them. Yeah, you don't have like
Speaker 1: if civil society is like nonstate actors who make demands
Speaker 1: of the state, Like, what the fuck is the point
Speaker 1: in making demands of the state when yeah, either it
Speaker 1: changed every five minutes, so it kills you exactly. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to read another quote from Lambert here that
Speaker 1: makes this point. To a large extent, the regime succeeded
Speaker 1: in not only demobilizing the but depoliticizing civil society, destroying
Speaker 1: not only the organizational ability of the opposition, but more importantly,
Speaker 1: the capacity to question, to analyze, and to criticize. The
Speaker 1: repression and co option of nascent opposition led to an
Speaker 1: apparent acceptance of the status quo, a cynicism toward politics,
Speaker 1: a disinterest in what was seen as an area reserved
Speaker 1: for elites and prohibited to the masses. And to be fair,
Speaker 1: the stability that Stressner brings with him makes it easy
Speaker 1: for the people who aren't being targeted by the government
Speaker 1: to feel this way. Regular people are benefiting from this
Speaker 1: situation in a lot of ways, and the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: see an economic explosion as Paraguay finally covers from both
Speaker 1: the Chaco War and it's decades of instability. For a while,
Speaker 1: it has the highest growth rate of any South American country,
Speaker 1: and a lot of this is due to the fact
Speaker 1: that there's a joint Brazilian Paraguayan project to create a
Speaker 1: massive hydroelectric dam in a Typoo. Today, I believe the
Speaker 1: a Typoo Dam is still the most productive hydro electric
Speaker 1: power project on the planet. Like, it's a pretty good
Speaker 1: idea to have this dam there, you know, not that
Speaker 1: that's up to stress everybody green lights it, and massive
Speaker 1: corruption ensures that Paraguayan industry Like this is part of
Speaker 1: the problem is that like this is a great thing
Speaker 1: to have in your country, like this incredibly productive power dam.
Speaker 1: They have a contract basically with Brazil, where they split
Speaker 1: the power fifty fifty and brazil Like funds the construction.
Speaker 1: But because of massive corruption, none of the fifty percent
Speaker 1: of a typoo's power that's supposed to go to Paraguay
Speaker 1: actually goes towards, you know, building an industrial base or
Speaker 1: doing anything to improve the economy. So the project temporarily
Speaker 1: brings an economic boom because so many Paraguayans are working
Speaker 1: on it, but they're not going to actually use the
Speaker 1: resources that it generates to improves the economy in any
Speaker 1: meaningful way, which is going to be a problem for
Speaker 1: everybody in a little bit here. Paraguay's boom years are
Speaker 1: also helped by regular infusions of cash from the United
Speaker 1: States and the IMF, to the eventual tune of hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars in exchange. Stressner keeped Paraguay as
Speaker 1: a compliant and stress free part of Operation Condor. The
Speaker 1: CIA never needs to send in black ops teams to
Speaker 1: the country or fund paramilitary death squads. There's no grinding
Speaker 1: left wing insurgency that threatens the stability of the government.
Speaker 1: The fact that Stressner was generally good for US policy aims,
Speaker 1: and the undeniable fact that life under his rule was
Speaker 1: at least more stable than life under previous dictators, led
Speaker 1: some in the international community to call him a good dictator.
Speaker 1: George Landau, a US ambassador to the country, called Alfredo
Speaker 1: but nine as dictatorships go, oh god, there it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'm suring the teachers being soaked in shit
Speaker 1: and then murdered are Yeah, this is nine. Basically, yes,
Speaker 1: dictatorships go yeah, television's cheap. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: It's nice. What of the things fucking George Landau says,
Speaker 1: is that, well, you know, political prisoners and in Paraguay
Speaker 1: generally get out of prison alive as long as they
Speaker 1: have powerful friends. No, yeah, great, that's good. We're good. Yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. I was. I was worried we were complicit
Speaker 1: and nightmarish evil again. But you know what, it's good.
Speaker 1: We're fine. Shining city on a hillship as always the
Speaker 1: United States. I am at the ghost of George Washington
Speaker 1: speaking on a mountain above DC. Yeah, we will build
Speaker 1: a nation where political prisoners sometimes get out of prison
Speaker 1: if their friends are powerful. That's one of the things
Speaker 1: they didn't put on my becoming an American test Now
Speaker 1: that's one of those like little quotes they write in
Speaker 1: your passport book. I'm sure. Uh you know what else
Speaker 1: winds up written in your passport book? Is it corporations? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean kind of. If you have enough gold, you
Speaker 1: don't even need a passport. Sophie, you know what innovative?
Speaker 1: I like it. Thank you. Ah, we're back. We're all
Speaker 1: having a good time. Everybody's happy. The story is happy. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So George Landau, our our good friend, the US ambassador
Speaker 1: to Paraguay for a while, claims that Stressner repeatedly complained
Speaker 1: in the late seventies that he was tired of ruling
Speaker 1: and that he wanted to retire to a life of
Speaker 1: fishing and hunting, but that Paraguay needed him. Landau claimed
Speaker 1: he believed this most dictators do, that he was absolutely irreplaceable.
Speaker 1: He talked himself into a sense of duty. Now that's horseshit. Sorry,
Speaker 1: why's he writing this? Like is he just like doing
Speaker 1: all bay like uscon Yeah, he's like he's like I
Speaker 1: think this is like yeah, while he's he's probably yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he leaves. Yeah, So, um, I believe that,
Speaker 1: and other sources I found will argue that Stressner basically
Speaker 1: gets addicted to total power. Yeah, and it kind of
Speaker 1: loses the ability to conceive of anyone else making decisions
Speaker 1: about his country. Um. It is interesting to read accounts
Speaker 1: like Landau's by Americans who talk to Stressner during this
Speaker 1: period because like everyone in Paraguay, like all of the
Speaker 1: people in his cabinet, every other leader has to treat
Speaker 1: him as kind of a cross between like God and
Speaker 1: the devil, because his whim can destroy their lives. Right,
Speaker 1: so no one can talk to him, honestly. But American
Speaker 1: soldiers and diplomats like are safe, right, like you, you
Speaker 1: can actually have a conversation with Stressner because like he's
Speaker 1: not he's not going to fuck up the money, right,
Speaker 1: He's not an idiot. Um, so take this in taking
Speaker 1: this into account, I found a letter to the editor
Speaker 1: of National Review by a former US soldier who traveled
Speaker 1: to Paraguay for work during Stressner's time in office that
Speaker 1: I found really interesting. In very good English, he said,
Speaker 1: I am President Alfredo Stressner, and I would like to
Speaker 1: thank you for showing us your aircraft. Since I am
Speaker 1: in my country, custom requires that I continue this conversation
Speaker 1: in Spanish with my interpreter, which he did. His interpreter
Speaker 1: was far less fluent in English than the leader. We
Speaker 1: gave him a tour of the airplane and answered all
Speaker 1: his questions about it. Then he philosophized for a few minutes.
Speaker 1: We never understood why. The remark that has struck with
Speaker 1: me to this day was I am sure you have
Speaker 1: heard that I am a dictator. That is true, but
Speaker 1: I am a benevolent dictator, which my country needs. We
Speaker 1: are a backward country and my people are not ready
Speaker 1: for democracy. We wisely made no comment on the remark,
Speaker 1: and shortly after we launched for our return flight to
Speaker 1: the canal zone. Yeah. And it's interesting because this guy
Speaker 1: is he's literally writing the editor of National Review. I'm
Speaker 1: going to assume this serviceman is pretty conservative. But he
Speaker 1: ends this letter by noting we knew very well even
Speaker 1: then there was nothing benevolent about Stressner's dictatorship, which is honestly,
Speaker 1: which is more honest than George Landau was willing to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy's cut out for career and foreigner. No, no novatudio.
Speaker 1: Thanks showing him your aeroplane, just being like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that was sharing on military asset. Yeah, a piece
Speaker 1: of shit, Booma. I feel good about my service today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I signed up to defend this country, God willing. As
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties dawned, Alfredo's power was at its apparent height.
Speaker 1: From the New York Times, President Stressner was never won
Speaker 1: for understatement. His name, written in neon, flashed nightly over
Speaker 1: the Asuncion cityscape during his reign, and at the times
Speaker 1: he's adopted. Yeah, he's ready. For the Reagan years, his
Speaker 1: face was plastered daily in the newspapers and on television.
Speaker 1: He was known for turning up in his powder blue
Speaker 1: military uniform every Thursday at the General Staff Headquarters of
Speaker 1: the Armed Forces. John Finacure, writing in the New York
Speaker 1: Times magazine in nineteen eighty four, offered this snapshot of
Speaker 1: Paraguay as its army goose stepped down the boulevards to
Speaker 1: celebrate General Stressner's thirty years in power. A continual state
Speaker 1: of siege over the entire period that literally places the
Speaker 1: president above the law. People with occasionally uncontrollable urges to
Speaker 1: fall into rivers or jump from planes with their arms
Speaker 1: and legs bound serenades in front of the presidential Palace
Speaker 1: featuring the ever popular forward my General and congratulations my
Speaker 1: great friend. Foreign thieves, brutes and madmen hidden at a price.
Speaker 1: An economy administered so corruptly it is officially explained away
Speaker 1: as the cost of peace. A United Nations voting record
Speaker 1: on so called key issues more favorable to the United
Speaker 1: States than any other. Ally, a party newspaper that prints
Speaker 1: six four page color pictures of the General every day.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, what a great country thinks are going well?
Speaker 1: A powerful image anytime you've got goose stepping military and
Speaker 1: anyone in power for thirty years, as you'd set up
Speaker 1: some alarmbos. Yeah, Now, appearances can be deceiving, James, because
Speaker 1: when the construction of the type dam stopped in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, that just so happened to occur at the
Speaker 1: same time as a global collapse in the value of
Speaker 1: cotton and soyabean, which were Paraguay's two biggest crops. So because,
Speaker 1: due to rampant corruption, none of this power generated by
Speaker 1: a type who is being used to help them create
Speaker 1: a better industrial base, Paraguay's economy takes a long walk
Speaker 1: off a short pier. At this point in time, the
Speaker 1: balance of payments and deficit for Paraguay gets so bad
Speaker 1: that Stressner is finally forced to abandon his fixed rate
Speaker 1: for the currency. Inflation rises sharply, and with it comes
Speaker 1: the first stirrings of resistance to his regime. Now, in
Speaker 1: addition to the fact that the economy has taken a shit,
Speaker 1: Stressner's an old man at this point. His health troubles him,
Speaker 1: and he's forced to hand over more and more control
Speaker 1: to his underlinks, like Pastor Coronelle, who begins actively scheming
Speaker 1: to replace him. To cope with the stress, Alfredo increasingly
Speaker 1: gravitates to the only hobby that makes it all better. James,
Speaker 1: what do you do when you're stressed out? How do
Speaker 1: you chill up? I go for bike ride, interesting camp.
Speaker 1: Those his favorite activities too. I know, spoon you know
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Those are all great hobbies. James. Alfredo takes
Speaker 1: a slightly different route. He gets really involved in child
Speaker 1: sex trafficking. M Oh okay, yeah, quote different kind of
Speaker 1: spooning I enjoy. Oh boy, I'm gonna quote from Alex
Speaker 1: Schumatov from Vanity Fair. Stressner was no doubt aware of
Speaker 1: the inevitable waning of his powers, and his solution to
Speaker 1: the problem seems to have been schoolgirls much. They were
Speaker 1: his elixir. Maybe he thought that the intercombiod hormonis would
Speaker 1: keep him young. He wasn't alone in his predilection for
Speaker 1: this therapy. His friend Perrone, who liked boys as well,
Speaker 1: consoled himself with a fourteen year old after the death
Speaker 1: of Avida. In the opinion of Stressner's family surgeon Manuel Riveros,
Speaker 1: there was nothing abnormal about an old man having a
Speaker 1: soft spot for nymphets. This is an article from the
Speaker 1: eighties and vanity fair. So the writer's a bastard too. Look,
Speaker 1: let's not be wrong here. Youth is contagious, he told
Speaker 1: me Truehilo crossed the streets of Santo Domingo looking for girls.
Speaker 1: Bocasa cruised the streets of Bangui. Stressner cruised the streets
Speaker 1: of Asuncion. It went with the turf. The girls were
Speaker 1: don Alfredo's draw to signor Oh dear, oh dear. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's not very good. Alex Schumtov is a prestige magazine
Speaker 1: journalist writing in the nineteen eighties. So he's a kind
Speaker 1: of gross guy in some way. Yes, he's an extreme
Speaker 1: fucking creep. Oh I had even started James. Oh God,
Speaker 1: here's Alex sigid give me more of his pay. On
Speaker 1: to Peterophelia. It is hard not to notice the school girls,
Speaker 1: slender tan Mestiza beauties butting in their white uniforms, who
Speaker 1: pour into the streets of Asuncion at noon after a
Speaker 1: long morning Stressner would park near one of the schools
Speaker 1: and watch them come out. When he had made his pick,
Speaker 1: his age would find out who the girl was and
Speaker 1: approached the parents with an offer of cash or real estate.
Speaker 1: If all else failed, the girl was kidnapped and given
Speaker 1: an injection that made her more cooperative. If she got pregnant,
Speaker 1: she was sent to the best possible and treated by
Speaker 1: the best doctors. How many children the tyrannosaur produced is unknown,
Speaker 1: but there are a thought to be many. I am
Speaker 1: feeling physically unwell, so that's fucked up. This is obviously
Speaker 1: if you are this guy reporting for a huge magazine
Speaker 1: on this, this is critical stuff to report on. You
Speaker 1: don't need to describe how attractive the schoolgirls are. Alex,
Speaker 1: that's bad. That makes too, that story wildly inappropriate. Terrible. Wow,
Speaker 1: So yeah, Jesus Christ, good stuff. One of the people
Speaker 1: procuring children for the dictator was Colonel Leopoldo Perier, who
Speaker 1: scoured the countryside for eight to twelve year old peasant
Speaker 1: girls and brought Yeah, yep, he me very young. And
Speaker 1: he would bring them to safe houses and suburban like
Speaker 1: neighborhoods that had playgrounds so that they would be amused
Speaker 1: while they waited for the general. Um, that's like the
Speaker 1: worst to take. Yeah, fucking hellum if you've got a
Speaker 1: slide for your girlfriends, Like, yeah, you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read another very rough two sentences from
Speaker 1: that Vanity Fair article. One of the Stressner's conquests was
Speaker 1: the fifteen year old daughter of the head of the
Speaker 1: National Cement industry. As part of the seductions, she and
Speaker 1: her brother got a trip to Disney World. Ah man, good,
Speaker 1: hell now that is that is dark. That is rough.
Speaker 1: This story was first broken by Jack Anderson in The
Speaker 1: Washington Post in nineteen seventy seven. Who I'm fair from
Speaker 1: what I recall of his article does not write anything
Speaker 1: creepy about these children. Um yeah, he like bases his
Speaker 1: article off of an interview he conducts with a woman
Speaker 1: named Melina Ashwell, and Molina is the daughter of a
Speaker 1: Paraguayan official stationed in Washington, DC, who tells him that
Speaker 1: two years earlier and seventy five back in the Capitol,
Speaker 1: they'd been having lunch with a colleague when they were
Speaker 1: called over to the mansion next door, where they saw
Speaker 1: the unconscious bodies of two eight year old girls and
Speaker 1: one nine year old girl, who were both bleeding between
Speaker 1: their legs. Ashwell called the police, but they had like.
Speaker 1: The police show up, but they leave immediately because somebody
Speaker 1: points out that the house is owned by Colonel Perrya.
Speaker 1: The house is apparently a brothel frequented by the dictator himself,
Speaker 1: and she calls like, you know. Once the police leave,
Speaker 1: she calls a local journalist and tries to give him
Speaker 1: the story before she goes to the post, but the
Speaker 1: journalist she tells this all to the Paraguayan journalist gets
Speaker 1: arrested for communism, and a raid of his house turns
Speaker 1: up the text of her interview, so she gets tortured
Speaker 1: for three days. She's only saved because her dad is influential.
Speaker 1: When Anderson publishes this story, whe'll start turning in the
Speaker 1: Carter White House, and thankfully Carter is not unwilling to
Speaker 1: back dictators as he does in El Salvador during this
Speaker 1: period of time. But this is far too much for
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter, and the United States cuts aid to Stressner's dictatorship.
Speaker 1: Now Reagan winds up in the office very shortly thereafter,
Speaker 1: and Reagan's like, oh, we have no problem supporting a
Speaker 1: pedophile is totally fine. Yeah, Reagan switches up on a
Speaker 1: sea right back. They do lose out on money during
Speaker 1: this period where the economy is also in the shitter,
Speaker 1: and that creates problems that weakens Stressner's regime. Right It's
Speaker 1: one of the things that contributes to the weakening of
Speaker 1: his regime. By nineteen eighty two, campesinos who lost their job,
Speaker 1: or in nineteen eighty two, campesinos who lost their jobs
Speaker 1: when the dam was finished, started to protest again for
Speaker 1: land reform. This got in the way of the dreams
Speaker 1: of Stressner's cabinet members and military officers. Villages were declared
Speaker 1: centers of delinquency of subversion and forcibly evacuated. The peasantry
Speaker 1: began to desert Stressner as a result. By the late
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, the general was sick enough that he could
Speaker 1: no longer fully control his regime. He hoped one of
Speaker 1: his sons would take over for him, but one of
Speaker 1: them was an alcoholic and the other was gay, and
Speaker 1: neither of them had the wherewithal to politic their way
Speaker 1: through Stressner's cabinet. On February third, General Andres Rodriguez, a
Speaker 1: close relative of the dictator by marriage, executed a violent
Speaker 1: coup against Stressner. There's an eight hour gunfight. Stressner barely
Speaker 1: gets away in like a limousine from the gunfight, but
Speaker 1: like there's enough resistance that like he is able to
Speaker 1: escape and keep his own life. But his troops are
Speaker 1: not able to stop the soldiers loyal to Rodriguez from
Speaker 1: taking the capital. By the way, Rodriguez is married to
Speaker 1: his daughter. It's like his son in law too, right,
Speaker 1: So cool Stressner is able to negotiate the safe surrender
Speaker 1: of power, and he and his household are granted, you know,
Speaker 1: the ability to leave the country. So he survives losing
Speaker 1: power which is again rules for thirty five years, gets
Speaker 1: out alive. Very rare story in the annals of dictatorships.
Speaker 1: He had an initially hoped to land in Florida because
Speaker 1: he owned several houses in Florida. The traditional resting place
Speaker 1: of He feared though being tried for his crimes, and
Speaker 1: so when the right wing military government of Brazil offered
Speaker 1: him sanctuary, he took it. He spent the last seventeen
Speaker 1: years of his life there, living in comfort, until the
Speaker 1: age of ninety three. Jesus, Yeah, wow, a terrible Yeah,
Speaker 1: he'd never based for his scribes. Yeah, I was really
Speaker 1: rooting for Rodriguez Stato. Yeah. Yeah. It would have been
Speaker 1: good if he'd gotten the old Mussolini. Yeah, that would Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd have loved to see that. Yeah, or if they
Speaker 1: did him like Kadafi. But yeah, I know, put him
Speaker 1: up as a fucking pinata for eight year old girls too, alas,
Speaker 1: because he lives out his life on the beaches of Brazil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know that's a good story. Yeah, that in
Speaker 1: many ways not but it's it is a story that's undeniable.
Speaker 1: You know what else is undeniable, James, how brutal. The
Speaker 1: ending of this fucking podcast was, Yeah, that was properly.
Speaker 1: I really did backload the Yeah, yeah, that did that
Speaker 1: fucking disneyl and shit is Oh my god, it's pretty rough.
Speaker 1: You said some really horrible things on my podcast. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm glad you gave like a slight warning
Speaker 1: to people, because that's just yeah, that was some particularly
Speaker 1: dark shit. That is some particularly dark shit. James, James,
Speaker 1: do you have anything to plut Yah. Yeah, Now that
Speaker 1: we've talked about child sexual abuse, that's uh. You know,
Speaker 1: we've got another podcast in which we much more rarely
Speaker 1: talk about child sex abuse, which is you know, so
Speaker 1: if that's something you don't want to hear about, you
Speaker 1: can listen to It could happen here sometimes with me
Speaker 1: sometimes good Robert Sophie. We're gonna put that in our
Speaker 1: Vulture right up, we'll go soaring up the rankings. Yes,
Speaker 1: really discusses child sex abuse. Yeah, so yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: thing we won't talk about. I would like to plug
Speaker 1: the concept of hugging a nice friendly animal like a
Speaker 1: dog or a cat. Yeah, and definitely definitely not Phil. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well he's probably acade at this point. He's been dropped
Speaker 1: thanks to Yeah. Yeah, if you're gonna hug an animal, like,
Speaker 1: you know, really make sure you're in a stable stance,
Speaker 1: make sure the animal wants to hug you back. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't kidnap animal, Don't let your animal anywhere near filter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: built Plasia adopted it posthumously and it's now phil to Plasia. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean he simply had to at that point, but yeah,
Speaker 1: for its funeral. You have a book that people can
Speaker 1: buy I do. It's called After the Revolution. You can
Speaker 1: find it at a K Press's website or like Amazon
Speaker 1: or like bookstores. You'd go to a bookstore and you
Speaker 1: could be like I would like After the Revolution by
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. And if they say no, whatever weapon you're carrying,
Speaker 1: you know, you can just whip that out and and
Speaker 1: you know, create a hostage situation until you get a
Speaker 1: copy of my book. Or you could request it at
Speaker 1: your local library. Yeah, all of these are equally valid options.
Speaker 1: I like, my brain is on that photo of Phillio
Speaker 1: dropping fill the ground. It's very funny, very funny. Oh man,
Speaker 1: all right, this is over. I've afforded. Goodbye. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go pull one out fulfilled, poor out fulfill byebye. Kaye.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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