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The Centro de Documentación y Archivo (CDyA) opens police files to the public to contribute to justice and healing in Paraguay.  The discovery of an immense cache of files in a small Paraguayan police station by a former political prisoner in December 1992 led to the creation of the CDyA.  This archive is commonly known as the “Archive of Terror” because of the nature of the files it contains.  These files document prisoners’ detention experiences in detail and have been used to corroborate individuals’ stories of detention during several Latin American dictatorships, to confirm the disappearance of citizens, and as evidence in the prosecution of former police and military personnel in several Latin American countries. The Centro de Documentación y Archivo (CDyA) opens police files to the public to contribute to justice and healing in Paraguay.  The discovery of an immense cache of files in a small Paraguayan police station by a former political prisoner in December 1992 led to the creation of the CDyA.  This archive is commonly known as the “Archive of Terror” because of the nature of the files it contains.  These files document prisoners’ detention experiences in detail and have been used to corroborate individuals’ stories of detention during several Latin American dictatorships, to confirm the disappearance of citizens, and as evidence in the prosecution of former police and military personnel in several Latin American countries.  

Through a constitutional provision laid out in the post-Stroessner constitution called habeas data, political prisoners can file a petition with the Paraguayan courts to require the police or military to turn over their own detention file.  The habeas data constitutional right protects the individual’s right to control data collected about themselves and their experiences.  In the last two decades, six Latin American countries have incorporated the habeas data right in their new constitutions: Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, and Colombia, and there have been movements to include it in the constitutions of Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, and Mexico.

After filing a habeas data petition to obtain his own file, it was this process that led Martin Alamada, accompanied by a local judge, to a police station in Lambare, Paraguay, where they found thousands of detention files documenting prisoners’ experiences of torture and other human rights violations during the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner.  The archive included not only Paraguayans’ detention experiences, but also the experiences of non-Paraguayans detained under Stroessner and in the other countries involved in Operation Condor in the 1970s and 1980s, specifically, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, and Bolivia.

Within a week of the discovery of the files, Alamada formed a national commission to protect CDyA.  Eventually, the Paraguayan courts, including the Supreme Court, ordered that the files be accessible to the public and they were moved to the eighth floor of the Palace of Justice where they are housed with the Supreme Court.  The archive is open to the researchers, investigators, human rights activists, and the general public on weekday mornings.

Alamada subsequently organized a Paraguayan branch of the American Association of Jurists and, using the information in the files, began to organize tribunals to prosecute the chief perpetrators of the state-sponsored torture and illegal detention.  The first official to be prosecuted, General Ramon Duarte Vera, Chief of Police under Stroessner, was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison for his participation in these police activities.  Five other officials have been successfully prosecuted using the information in the archive.  Also, the Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon used a significant amount of documentation from the archive to assemble his case for the extradition of General Augusto Pinochet from Great Britain to Spain in 1998.

Alamada and CDyA have encountered a couple of challenges in the management and preservation of the archive.  Because the archive was open to the public from its creation, there were some instances in which files in the archive were “sanitized” or disappeared completely.  These occurrences lessened once the files were moved to the Palace of Justice and, to prevent the loss of any further information, CDyA is currently attempting to transfer the files to microfilm as quickly as possible.  Another issue facing CDyA has been fundraising.  To help fund and protect the archive, Alamada requested that UNESCO, for whom he previously worked, designate the “Archives of Terror” as an international cultural site.

Completed in March, 2003.

Photo credit: p0psicle