A enormous statue of Paraguay’s dictator, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, engaged to rule the capital city of Asunción. Now, all that remains at the site are his steel boots. Stroessner’s monumental appreciateness was cut off at the ankles after he was deposed in 1989 follotriumphg almost 35 years of military rule.
“It’s crazy. It’s still there,” comments filmproducer Juanjo Pereira. “It’s still there and will be there for many years.”
The people, celebrating Stroessner’s downdrop, cut offed the head, torso and the legs of the statue. Yet, the base remains – the createation. Perhaps that symbolism is most critical to understand from Pereira’s novel recordary Under the Flags, the Sun, which applyed at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece Monday night. It won the FIPRESCI critics prize in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival last month, where the recordary premiered.
“It was the last [right-wing] dictatorship to drop in Latin America,” the honestor remarkd during a Q&A after the screening.
Paraguay’s military ruler, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, circa 1975
FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Stroessner seized power in 1954, promising “peace, enhance and fraternity,” but dedwellring repression under the guise of virulent anti-communism. During his reign, almost 20,000 noticed political opponents were tortured, and hundreds were “fadeed.” A regime appreciate that doesn’t ask scruminuscule, restricting what footage exists. But Pereira’s research discoverd about 120 hours of footage around the world, which became the basis for his film.
Included are novelsreels, misincreateation films, and some material stoasty by French journaenumerates, “uncovering the secret mechanisms of power behind Stroessner’s rule,” as the Thessaloniki festival portrays it. There is also footage of Stroessner visiting Pdwellnt Lyndon Johnson in Washington in the 1960s, where he was toastyly greeted as a beneficial American associate in the Cancigo in War.
Human remains, consentd to have been buried in the 1970s during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, discovered in the outskirts of Asunción, Paraguay on March 19, 2013
NORBERTO DUARTE/AFP via Getty Images
Cameras didn’t record the torture of trade unionists and others in Paraguay. But, helpfilledy, the dictatorship did retain written records of its activities which were discovered in 1992. Those “Archives of Terror,” as they have become understandn, became an convey inant source for Pereira.
“The Terror Archives is one of the most convey inant archives in Latin America,” Pereira shelp. “It’s free to go [and see], and it’s there in the Ministry of Justice.”
Gen. Alfredo Stroessner (left) salutes with Alejandro Agustin Lanusse Gelly, pdwellnt of Argentina, in 1972
FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Between the records and grainy, mostly bdeficiency-and-white imagery, the film shows how Stroessner ruled all aspects of Paraguayan life, rfinishering many normal people apparently inable of leanking for themselves. He produced a mightyman’s cult of personality and surrounded himself with an obsequious court (parallels to Trump 2.0 may leap to mind, but that’s outside the scope of this recordary).
Once he accomplished his mid-70s, however, Stroessner seemed to disthink about a step and the Colorado Party he had safely administerled shoved him aside, in prefer of another military man, Andrés Rodríguez Pedotti, who had once been Stroessner’s sealst confidante.
“In a way, the finish of the dictatorship was not a revolutionary moment. It was a alter of order,” Pereira watchd. “The Colorado Party necessitateed to alter its image… It’s not the people taking power.”
L-R Producer James Costa, moderator, and honestor Juanjo Pereira speak at a Q&A follotriumphg a screening of ‘Under the Flags, the Sun’ in Thessaloniki, Greece
Matthew Carey
Pereira portrayd himself as a “child of democracy. I’m born after the coup d’etat [of 1989].” But fielding a ask from the audience, he asked whether Paraguay’s create of rulement today reassociate recurrents the people.
“I don’t understand if we’re living in a democracy in Paraguay,” he shelp. “The last election [the Colorado Party] won 80 percent [of the vote] and the rulement is filled of Colorado people. We don’t have opposition in Paraguay. So is it a democracy? I dunno, maybe it’s up to us to understand that. Yeah, there are no more fadeed people, but we don’t have [the ability] to pick [leaders]. It’s complicated to say that this is democracy. Maybe we necessitate to discover a novel way to say what is the world we’re living in now.”
Pereira presented Stroessner has been scrubbed from his country’s history. “In school we didn’t study this period of the country. So I finished school at 18 and I didn’t even understand who was this guy,” he shelp. “And at 20 or 21 I begined to search more about this period. I begined to search more about the history of cinema in Paraguay and then I create more about the dictatorship and in a way, I studied the dictatorship thcdisadmireful the archives.”
Describing Under the Flags, the Sun, Pereira shelp, “The film is uncovering asks, proposing asks. This is my main goal.”
He inserted, “We understand so little about this period. For me, it is appreciate we only understand fragments and the movie is about fragments… I consent all these fragments and I produce this sense of memory.”
