On December 22, 1992, former school teacher Martin Almada discovered thousands of documents that detailed the systematic repression of Paraguayans under the government of dictator General Alfredo Stroessner. Almada stumbled upon what has come to be known as Paraguay’s Archives of Terror in the basement of a police station in the capital city of Asuncion while working with a judge, José Fernández, to find the police records to Almada’s own four-year ordeal as a political prisoner. Approximately four to five tons of paperwork—a total of 700,000 papers and microfilm pages—filled the room from floor to ceiling. Not only did they describe in graphic detail the kidnapping, interrogation, and imprisonment of political prisoners, but they also finally provided hard proof of Operation Condor.
Operation Condor took place approximately between the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. The military governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay conspired to thwart the plans of men and women that they considered to be subversive elements within their borders. (The operation was initially supposed to be about removing communist influence, but quickly became a tool to remove anyone the governing bodies deemed subversive for whatever reason.)
