Antonio Maidana

From 1954 to 1989 The head of state was General Alfredo Stroessner. Alfredo Stroessner's parents are immigrants from Bavaria. In foreign policy, Stroessner proclaimed Paraguay "the best friend of the United States" and sent troops to the Dominican Republic to assist the Americans in their intervention in the country. Formally, some semblance of democracy was maintained in Paraguay; elections were held every five years, in which Stroessner invariably won, and the Parliament functioned, stamping the decisions of the head of state. At Stroessner's call, representatives of Chile, Uruguay and Argentina supported his idea of ​​​​fighting communism. In Paraguay itself, up to 130 thousand people were killed during his reign. In Paraguay, under Stroessner, many Nazi criminals (more than 200 thousand) found refuge, among them was the chief doctor of Auschwitz, Joseph Mengele, who became Stroessner’s close friend.

The entire life of Antonio Maidana, the leader of the Paraguayan communists, is an example of selfless service to his people and the struggle for freedom.

Antonio Maidana was born in 1916. A teacher by training, Maidana became involved in the political struggle from his youth. In 1936 he joined the ranks of the Paraguayan Communist Party. In 1941 and 1943, he was arrested for participating in a teachers' strike, escaped from prison, hid in Uruguay and returned to Paraguay in 1946 on the wave of democratic concessions by the Paraguayan authorities. In 1947 he was again imprisoned and escaped again. In 1958, together with his brother Ananias Maidana and other comrades, he was arrested again on charges of organizing the 1958 strike. While he was in prison, he was elected in absentia as chairman of the Paraguayan Communist Party. All world left circles advocated for his release. As a result, after 19 years of imprisonment, he was released, was in Sweden and the USSR, and from June 1978 was the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Paraguay. In 1980, he was in Buenos Aires fulfilling his duties as party leader, after which Antonio Maidana and labor movement veteran Emilio Roa disappeared in August 1980. They became victims of a continental project involving Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil - the so-called. "Operation Condor". The Paraguayan intelligence services joined Operation Condor in 1976. The Paraguayan Communist Party believes that it is with the activities of this continental terrorist organization that the murders and numerous abductions (followed by the forced return to their homeland - to the Stressner dungeons) of patriotic emigrants living in neighboring countries - Argentina and Brazil - are connected.