Ananías Maidana

Ananías Maidana
Occupation	Politic, writer, teacher
Nationality	Paraguayan

Ananías Maidana (July 26th of 1924, Encarnación, Paraguay) is a teacher and a politician of Paraguay. He is the actual general secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party, and in the latest election he was a candidate to the senate for the Socialist Patriotic Alliance, politic coalition in which the PCP participated.

Childhood and youth

Ananías Maidana was born on July 26th of 1924 in Encarnación, Paraguay. There, he went to the elementary school Nº4 “Clementina Irrazábal”, where he also finished his high school. Short time after his graduation, he suffered the persecution of the government and was forced to move to Asunción, where he lived clandestinely and illegally. He wanted to finish his professorship so he registered in the Normal School Nº2. There, he was searched by the police, who took an innocent man, thinking he was Ananías, and tortured him, like it was accustomed in those turbulent years.

First steps in politics

In 1947, he was captured, tortured and imprisoned in the Public Jail of Asunción, which was located in the property where now a days, the Catholic University functions (next to the cathedral), after joining the Paraguayan Communist Youth, that was against the dictatorship of Higínio Morínigo. Between the years 1947 and 1949, there were near 4.000 politic prisoners of all politic movements, including 132 officers of the army. That’s the way the government punished the insurrection, known as the Revolution of Concepción (March/Agust/47). Every single prisoner was tortured, even the brother of the Colonel Rafael Franco, Mayor Franco or Lieutenant Colonel Vázquez. Most of the prisoners were banished from Paraguay and had to live the rest of their lives in exile, but Ananías Maidana, along with others leaders and militants returned to live clandestinely in the country.

Militancy and imprisonment

In 1950, he was brutally beaten in the streets, by the police with a handgun and a rifle. He stills suffers the sequels of that incident.

He got out of jail in 1952, thanks to the national and international solidarity and the negotiations of his family that played and essential part every time Ananías was in jail. Instead of leaving the country, that would have meant certain amount of security that wasn’t offered in Paraguay, Ananías fought once against the dictatorship, from the inside of the regime, living, as he was already accustomed, clandestinely.

Once Stroessner became president of Paraguay, and later on, an obvious dictator, Ananías was intensely searched by the police. On July, 3rd of 1959, as he was leading the fight against the dictatorship, he was caught and, once again, beaten in the street by the police. The government’s intention was to squash the opposition, led mainly by workers and students, by violently repressing anyone who expressed an ideological difference with the government. This new imprisonment of Ananías Maidana would last twenty years, and would mean practically a life time of suffering and torture for him.

File:Alfredo Stroessner military.jpg

Alfredo Stroessner.

During his imprisonment, Monsignor Benítez along with 6 Chileans deputies and 6 Chileans senators visited Paraguay to investigate what were the conditions of the prisoners of Stroessner’s government. They didn’t dare to enter Ananias’s cell because of the stink. It was a cell that he shared with the Professor Antonio Maidana, Professor Julio Rojas and Alfredo Alcorta. Sometimes they spent weeks and months without seeing the day or breathing fresh air. The cell was known as “the pantheon of the living” due to its inhuman conditions.

When the Catholic Church claimed for the freedom of those prisoners, specially prisoners like Ananías Maidana that were there just because of their political ideas, Stroessner cynically answered: “Don’t worry about them...they’re doomed to die in jail.” When the international pressure grew, demanding for the freedom of the prisoners, Stroessner confessed: “They are not my prisoners”, implying that they were in charge of CIA subordinates. During the Cold War, U.S.A. had enormous influences in Paraguay and supported the persecution and torture of communist and anyone who thought differently to the government, during decades.

Ananías was freed in the late 70’s, but was condemned to exile. He traveled to Sweden and then to the Soviet Union where he denounced the crimes perpetrated by Stroessner and promoted the international solidarity thru out his work as a journalist and a politician.

The democratic era

Once Stroessner left the government, thru a “coup d’état” perpetrated by the General Rodríguez, Ananías Maidana returned to the country. His intention was to support the new democracy, experienced for the first time in the country in more than three decades.

Now a day, Ananías Maidana is the general secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party and decided to be a candidate in the latest election to the senate for the Socialist Patriotic Alliance, politic coalition in which the PCP participated. He didn’t earned enough votes to be elected, but he continues his labor for the reinforcement of democracy in the country.

References

• BONZI, Antonio, "Proceso histórico del Partido Comunista Paraguayo (Un itinerario de luces y sombras)",Arandura Editorial, Asunción 2001.