Bajo las banderas, el sol

In 1989, the fall of Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship in Paraguay marked the end of one of the world’s longest-running authoritarian regimes. It also led to the abandonment of the audiovisual archives that had cemented its power. This material, crafted to shape a national identity and celebrate the regime, was left to fade from memory. Decades later, a trove of unseen and long-forgotten footage – in the form of newsreels, public television broadcasts, propaganda films and declassified documents – has been recovered from both Paraguay and abroad and reveals the hidden mechanisms of power behind Stroessner’s rule. The Paraguayan found footage shows how the past is appropriated to indoctrinate as well as the construction of a national imagery and the cult of Stroessner. The foreign archives tell of the Cold War, international alliances and the power games that allowed the dictatorship to prosper, in addition to denouncing propaganda and oppression. The film is a visual journey through the history of the media of the 20th century and delivers an archaeology of the present in a country where the descendants of the regime’s leaders still rule.