Fifty-eight years later, when Rogelio Goiburú dug up the body in a remote part of eastern Paraguay this March, a few teeth were all that were left to identify it.
“We’re fighting against time,” he said. Paraguay’s soil is highly acidic, he explained. “It eats bones very quickly, so the DNA disappears, and it’s much harder to obtain a genetic profile.”
Goiburú, 62, heads Paraguay’s commission for historical memory and reparation. Since 2011, the underfunded body has documented some 450 desaparecidos, located and exhumed 37 bodies, named four, and returned them to living relatives where possible.
All were victims of the 1954-89 regime of Alfredo Stroessner, which jailed, raped, tortured and “disappeared” opponents under the auspices of a US-backed anti-communist crusade.
For Goiburú, the mission is personal. His father, Agustín Goiburú, is still missing. “All human beings have the right to mourn, to know where their loved one is,” he said. “And I include myself.”
But his search also carries new political resonance. On Sunday, Mario Abdo Benítez, 46 – the son of Stroessner’s private secretary – is on course to be elected president.
After Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Chile, Paraguay is the latest country in the region to pivot rightwards. It has less far to go than some.
The current president, Horacio Cartes – like Abdo Benítez a member of the Stroessner’s Colorado party – has placed former functionaries of the dictatorship in key ministries and called the general’s birthday “a happy date”.
But the rise of “Marito” – championed by the church and a rural Colorado base disgruntled with Cartes’s liberal economics – is a painful reminder of how little Paraguay has reckoned with its past. Abdo Benítez has called for the enforcement of obligatory military service – another Stroessner legacy – and promised to fill all public positions with Colorado faithful.
“Even though he was a kid at the time, he defends that era,” said Guillermina Kanonikoff, a former leftwing guerrilla whose husband, Mario Schaerer, was tortured to death by the regime.
“He doesn’t have to carry the sin of his father,” she added. “But he never asked for forgiveness, or showed shame ... he’s creating the platform for a dictatorship.”
According to Rosa Palau – custodian of the supreme court’s Museum of Justice – Paraguay’s lingering culture of fear has stopped people coming forward with information about dictatorship-era crimes.
“While Stroessner left,” she added, “the authoritarianism continues.”
Many older Paraguayans – particularly those with links to the military – remember the dictatorship as a time of prosperity. At a Colorado rally in Asunción two weeks before the election, Abdo Benítez defended the example of his father and the Colorado legacy. “It’s the party that has built this country,” he said.
“He’s going to win by far. He’s a holy, clean, hardworking young man,” said a retiree who gave her name as María Luisa. “My husband worked for 15 years in the security services,” she added. “I’m a Stronista through and through.”
Abdo Benítez will take a strongly conservative line on abortion (Paraguay forbids the termination of pregnancy in practically all cases), LGBT rights and gender equality, said Andrew Nickson, a Paraguay expert at the University of Birmingham.
He added that Abdo Benítez’s father had never been personally linked to human rights abuses. “He was a crook and a sycophant but that’s about all,” Nickson said.
Abdo Benítez’s advisors emphasise his commitment to Paraguay’s institutions and record as a senator of building consensus across party lines. “I think he’s demonstrated on many opportunities his democratic credentials,” said one.
“He has always mentioned the shortcomings of the dictatorship,” the adviser added, suggesting that Paraguay’s young society – nearly 60% of the population was born after 1989 – now had the necessary “antibodies” to resist any democratic backsliding.
The dwindling number of activists who remember authoritarian rule are also counting on a new generation.
“There are many young people who aren’t afraid because they didn’t live through the repression of the dictatorship,” said Goiburú. He hopes that Abdo Benítez will honour a pledge to maintain funding for the search for desaparecidos.
“I always say: I’m looking for Dad, but I’m looking for everyone,” he explained. “And while my strength lasts and blood runs through my veins I’ll do it.”
Excavating human remains did not scare him, he added. “You have to be afraid of those who are alive, not the dead.”