Institute for the Study of the Americas

The majority of the materials held in this collection at present originate from the 1970s and 1980s, during which time Paraguay was effectively a military dictatorship under the rule of President Alfredo Stroessner. In the 1970s the country enjoyed a period of sustained economic growth, significantly fuelled by its joint participation with Brazil in the Itaipú hydroelectric plant, but this growth was to evaporate following the completion of the project in the 1980s, and the Stronato was eventually overthrown in a February 1989 coup. The limits of the aforementioned economic boom can be seen in the fact that the most prominent organisation represented here is the Misión de Amistad, the church group which through its various projects sought to alleviate poverty and faciliate rural development amongst Paraguay's peasantry and indigenous peoples. Furthermore the price paid by the country for its political stability was a record of repression which helped produce the growing international isolation that preceded Stroessner's deposition, and which is reflected here in a number of items issued by human rights organisations based abroad in Argentina and elsewhere.