[8][9] During the 1947 Paraguayan Civil War, Stroessner supported the Colorado Party, and played an important role in their victory.

[citation needed] The National Assembly appointed Tomás Romero Pereira president, who called for special elections to complete Chávez's term.

Soon after taking office, Stroessner placed the entire country under a state of siege and suspended civil liberties.

The state-of-siege provisions allowed the government to arrest and detain anyone indefinitely without trial, as well as forbid public meetings and demonstrations.

He maintained virtually unlimited power by giving a free hand to the military and to Minister of Interior Edgar Ynsfrán, who began to harass, terrorize, and occasionally murder family members of the regime's opponents.

[13] Stroessner heavily relied on various Colorado Party militias, subordinated to his control, to crush any dissent within the country.

[18] Between 1962 and 1975 the US provided $146 million to Paraguay's military government and Paraguayan officers were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas.

Furthermore, Stroessner's Paraguay became a haven for Nazi war criminals, including Josef Mengele,[25][26] and non-communist peaceful opposition was crushed.

Near the end of this presidency, he declared that he would remove the state of siege, but quickly recanted after students began protesting trolley fares.

Like its predecessor, it gave the president broad powers to take exceptional actions for the good of the country, such as suspending civil liberties and intervening in the economy.

In 1977, faced with having to leave office for good the following year, Stroessner pushed through a constitutional amendment allowing him to run for an unlimited number of five-year terms.

Paraguay was a leading participant in Operation Condor, a campaign of state terror and security operations officially implemented in 1975 which were jointly conducted by the military dictatorships of six South American countries (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil) with the support of the United States.

[34][35][36][37] Human rights violations characteristic of those in other South American countries such as kidnappings, torture, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings were routine and systematic during the Stroessner regime.

The discovery of the "Archives of Terror" in 1992 in the Lambaré suburb of Asunción confirmed allegations of widespread human rights violations.

He would interview people in a pileta, a bath of human vomit and excrement, or ram electric cattle prods up their rectums.

[41][42][23] In 1975, the Secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party, Miguel Ángel Soler [es], was dismembered alive with a chainsaw while Stroessner listened on the phone.

[41][43][44][45] The screams of tortured dissidents were often recorded and played over the phone to family members, and sometimes the bloody garments of those killed were sent to their homes.

[26] Under Stroessner, egregious human rights violations were committed against the indigenous Aché population of Paraguay's eastern districts, largely as the result of U.S. and European corporations wanting access to the country's forests, mines and grazing lands.

During Stroessner's rule, no socialist nations had diplomatic relations with Paraguay, with the sole exception of non-aligned Yugoslavia.

Stroessner dedicated large proportions of the Paraguayan national budget to the military and police apparatus, both fundamental to the maintenance of the regime.

According to a 1963 article from Time magazine, Stroessner spent 33% of the 1962 annual budget on army and police, 15% for education, and just 2% for public works.

Stroessner enacted several economic development projects, including the building of the Itaipu Dam, the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world at the time: although Paraguay received only 15% of the contracts, it was a major factor in the country having the highest rate of growth in Latin America for most of the 1970s.

However, several draconian security laws remained in effect, meaning that the substance (if not the form) of the state of siege was still in place.

[54] On 3 February 1989, only six months after being sworn in for what would have been his eighth full term, Stroessner was ousted in a coup d'état led by General Andrés Rodríguez, his closest confidant for over three decades.

[58] Although they stayed in touch by phone and occasionally met, they were unable to live together, and neither Stroessner nor his son were able to return to Paraguay to attend her funeral.

[4] Even after Stroessner's rule, the Colorado Party has continually held the presidency of Paraguay, with the exception of from 2008 to 2013, following the election of Fernando Lugo.

[61][62] The social scientist Antonio Soljancic has argued that this is because, although Stroessner was removed from power, "he left a legacy that no one has tried to bury".

[63] Mario Abdo Benítez, a member of Colorado Party who served as the president of Paraguay from 2018 to 2023, was the son of Stroessner's personal secretary.

[64] Journalist Isabel Debre expressed the view that Abdo Benítez's election to the presidency in 2018 was when Storessner's enduring influence was "never more obvious" due to this connection.

[65] In part due to Stroessner's abuses, Paraguay's current constitution limits the president to a single five-year term with no possibility of reelection, even if nonsuccessive.