Word: asuncion
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...army, the regime's backbone, divided three ways. Unqualifiedly loyal to the dictator, whatever his course, were two units: the 1,500-man palace guard and the 900-man Cerro Cora Regiment in Asuncion. But nine miles from Asuncion sat the 2,000-man cavalry, fiercely opposed to any liberalizing. Siding with the cavalry was the 600-man navy, with two gunboats (one under repair), seven admirals. A third army group -the 1,500-man 5th Military Region headquartered in the storied Chaco area-wanted Stroessner to restore a measure of freedom. Supporting these liberals...
...broadcasting from the Interior Ministry, urged Strongman Alfredo Stroessner to proceed with "preventive executions to avoid a blood bath like Cuba's in Paraguay." One night last week, heavily armed police, tipped off by a stoolpigeon network organized by the fugitive Yugoslav war criminal, Ante Pavelic,* charged into Asuncion's southern district. There they seized two boys who, with chunks of clay, were scrawling on house walls an appeal to free political prisoners. Cops sealed off ten blocks of cobblestoned streets, raided houses and dragged 35 victims off to prison, kicking and clubbing them en route...
Mendez refused, hurried from Asuncion out to Campo Grande, Paraguay's biggest military base, and lined up an artillery regiment, two cavalry regiments, the capital's police force and an infantry battalion for the revolution. Stroessner hastily secured the loyalty of two cavalry regiments, the presidential guard battalion, an infantry regiment and Paraguay's two-gunboat navy. Politicos of the dominant Colorado party, who have developed a phenomenal sensitivity for this sort of thing, carefully studied the lineups and threw in with Stroessner. Without a shot having been fired, Mendez conceded, at least for the moment...
...this issue appears John Graham Dowling's last story (see Frontier, 1955, HEMISPHERE). His assignment in Paraguay finished, Buenos Aires Bureau Chief Dowling was flying south to the revolt in Argentina last week when he was killed in a fog-bound airliner crash, five miles from Asuncion. He was the ninth correspondent killed on foreign assignment for TIME...