Skulls, femurs and other human remains ... The discovery of buried bones in one of the homes of General Alfredo Stroessner has caused excitement in Paraguay. The authorities are trying to verify if they could belong to the missing of the longest dictatorship of South America.
Built on a 30-hectare estate in Ciudad del Este, 325 kilometers east of Asuncion, on the border between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, the house dates from the 1970s. It was abandoned for many years. years, until the installation two weeks ago of nearly 200 homeless families. Squatters then discovered three skulls and human remains under the floor of one of the bathrooms.
"They found three skulls, two femurs, a humerus, and other remains. [These bones] were all preserved, marked, and sealed, and they were sent under protection to the specialized unit of human rights in Asuncion." of the Truth, Justice and Reparation Commission, which depends on the Ministry of Justice, told AFP its president, Rogelio Goiburu. Some of them claim to have found other bones, but they are animals, according to Rogelio Goiburu.
Four identifications
"They found a tunnel full of rubble, they told us it was 100 meters long and ended in a pit where there are other bones," said AFP Rafael Esquivel, a spokesman for the occupants.
The discovery of human remains in early September caused stirrings in the South American country, thirty years after the end of the dictatorship (1954-1989) in which more than 400 people disappeared.
To date, only a few officials have been convicted. But the main protagonists of the regime were not worried. Alfredo Stroessner himself, deposed by a military coup in 1989 and died in 2006 in exile in Brasilia (Brazil), was never tried.
Of the 400 or so missing during the dictatorship, only 40 corpses were found, of which only four were identified. With the help of Argentine medical examiners, the four bodies, discovered four years ago in the building of a police station, were identified by the Truth, Justice and Reparation Commission.
Among them, two were Argentine militants, Rafael Filipazzi and José Agustin Potenza, arrested in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo, victims of the Plan Condor, a program to coordinate the repression in South America and supported by the CIA.
Abuse on young women
"Many people do not know what animals have ruled us for 35 years," says Rogelio Goiburu, a former doctor whose father, Agustin Goiburu, opposed the dictatorship, disappeared in 1977, victim of the Condor Plan.
In addition to the disappearances, the Commission's work now focuses on Alfredo Stroesser's alleged abuses of young women. Charges of rape are slowly emerging. "Stroessner loved women, it's not a legend, we have women who are willing to testify in court, it appears that young girls have been raped," said Rogelio Goiburu, tireless defender of the duty of remembrance.
With AFP