Pastor Coronel
Pastor Coronel | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Politician, Torturer |
| Nationality | Paraguayan |
Pastor Milciades Coronel was the chief of the Investigations Department during General Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship. He is considered, by human rights activists like Martín Almada, the most feared torturer of the dictatorship. The discovery of the “Horror Archives” showed that he was the perpetrator of several human rights violations.
Youth and beginnings
Born in August, 9th of 1929, Pastor Coronel was working in the Education and Culture Minister when he was called by Alfredo Stroessner to reorganize the Investigations Department and turn it into the core of the politic security of the regime. Under his command, this police station would become the most feared interrogation center. The “Horror Archives” would show, later on, that most of the torturing, the executing, during the dictatorship, took place in that building.
Director of Investigations Department
The modernization of the repressive structure of the regime was based on a new system of archiving information and intelligence data and the subdivision of specialized chores in areas like unions, student centers, borders and political movements. The most important division of all was the division of “Politic and others” that, since the early 70’s, was in charge of the officer Alberto Buenaventura Cantero. According to the torture victims and political prisoners of the time, all of the authors of the human rights violations perpetrated during the dictatorship were officers from that Department.
The Identification Department was also in charge of Pastor Coronel. That Department was responsible for conceding personal documents to the population. This gave him a lot of power and allowed him to expand the institution’s income.
Political career
Once he gained a considerable amount of money and also a considerable amount of power and influences, he entered the political arena of the Colorado Party. He did it with the support of the “Milicians”, a group of his supporters that were from San Estanislao, the city where Pastor Coronel was born. He used to give away little machetes among them, and on special days, he called them the “Macheteros of Santaní“
The murder of Somoza
During his administration in the Identification Department, the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, came to Paraguay, avoiding the justice in his country and exiling in Paraguay. Even though he constantly talk about the complete security in the country, he couldn’t stop the murder of Somoza by Argentineans guerrillas with a bazooka in the middle of the street Spain, in Asunción on September 17th 1980.
Fall of the regime
The “Horror Archives” showed indisputably the deceit of the government, when authorities affirmed that they didn’t know the whereabouts of all the missing activist and prisoners of the time. Those documents were the juridical foundation that led the trial and the after the condemnation of many police torturers, including Pastor Coronel, that was a millionaire who possessed a lot of power and influences but also was the most hated person of the old regime.
He was imprisoned short time after the “coup d’état” led by General Rodriguez on February 3rd of 1989. He would die in jail, without ever regaining his freedom since his imprisonment. He was condemned to twenty – five years in jail, for his responsibility and personal involvement on several tortures and murders of political prisoners. Hunted by a morbid obesity, that caused many of his metabolic and cardiovascular complications, he died September 19th of 2000. He died being a symbol of the political repression that characterized Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship.
External links
- "El propio Stroessner era el que decidía las ejecuciones."
- Los Archivos del Horror del Operativo Cóndor.
Bibliography
- G. Mellinger de Sannemann, Paraguay en el Operativo Cóndor, RP Ediciones, Asunción, 1989.
- M. Almada, Paraguay: la cárcel olvidada, el país exiliado, Asunción, Imprenta Salesiana, 1993.