Originally published in 1991. Until almost the end of the 1980s, Paraguay and General Alfredo Stroessner were perceived as virtually synonymous in the minds of a whole generation. Indeed, this dictator often eclipsed the small, inland South American country over which he ruled for more than a third of a century. Riordan Roett and Richard Sacks ha

The shots fired during the early morning hours of February 3, 1989, at the Asuncion headquarters of the presidential escort battalion presented the planet with its first blood-and-steel evidence that the year would be recorded, like 1848, as one of universal human liberation. The deposed government of Alfredo Stroessner had held power in Paraguay for close to 35 years, a political longevity then surpassed only by Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, North Korea's Kim ll-song, and Jordan's King Hussein.