Prisoners

Last week TIME Correspondent Robert Benjamin flew to Asuncion for the inauguration of Paraguay's new President, Juan Natalicio Gonzalez. He cabled:

For four days dusty, backward Asuncion looked like the set for a high-budget Warner Brothers' production. Under the palms, military attaches in fancy uniforms and foreign ambassadors wearing bright-hued sashes danced Paraguayan polkas with the dark-eyed daughters of Asuncion society. Workers in pink shirts and red bandannas paraded under the unseasonably hot winter sun. The troops showed off their best uniforms and equipment, while the new President, standing in an open car, dashed about the capital with a bodyguard.

If it all went off without a hitch, the reason was that the army and police had rounded up everyone able to cause trouble. Some suspects had been dragged off to jail to sit out the ceremonies; many another had been told to stay out of Asuncion for a while. But the really dangerous enemies of the regime had long ago gone underground, or been sent to Asuncion's red-walled prison or to the isolation of the Pena Hermosa concentration camp in the steaming Chaco.

In the Filth. Through the super-secret hocus-pocus common to all police states, an old friend put me in touch with a member of the Paraguayan underground, an attractive girl of about 28. "Lola" (that is not her name) is a member of the Movimiento Revoludonario Febrerista, a militant, left-wing organization corresponding to Peru's APRA.

Only a few days before, President-elect Gonzalez had suavely assured newsmen that not more than a few political prisoners were still behind bars. Lola showed me documents proving that more than 1,200 still rot in the filth of Paraguay's jails. If I wanted to see for myself, Lola said, she could arrange to slip me into the Asuncion jail as a visitor.

Next afternoon, unshaven and dressed in rags, I joined some 30 shabbily dressed Paraguayans in the unpaved street before Asuncion's decaying prison close by the river front. An old man carrying a package of medicines for his son got me past the swarthy Indian guard.

Behind the Bars. The jail is a dark, dank, one-story building surrounding a dirty, unpaved patio. At least 500 men were packed in that patio. Some were crippled veterans of last year's civil war. Along the walls the sick lay in the sun. Over all hung the stench of the prison's single latrine.

Lola had given me the names of three prisoners with whom to talk, and a guard brought them to me. One, a 24-year-old student leader, had been in jail since February 1947, because of activities against the Morinigo government before it was overthrown. The other two, both of them young teachers, had been arrested after handing out anti-Morinigo leaflets and painting propaganda slogans on Asuncion walls. They have never stood trial, have never been told how long their jail terms will run.

They complained, as prisoners always do, of poor food, but seemingly they had reason. Breakfast consists of a small cup of mate, sometimes with sugar, seldom with a biscuit. Meat, usually rotten, is served occasionally, but the dinner staple is corn and beans, which the prisoners eat seated on the floor.

"The prison has no medical services and no medicines," said one of the men. "Though T.B. is the prison's scourge, nothing is done about it; a man is taken out to a hospital only when he is dying."

I heard tales of torture. I heard how unruly prisoners are machine-gunned "for trying to escape." Every so often a guard would sidle up to us, and we would change the subject. Finally, the stench from the latrine made me feel so ill that I had to leave the jail.

With Mirrors. In his inaugural address, President Gonzalez said that he wanted real democracy for Paraguay. He invited all Paraguayans in exile to return to help build up their country. He promised foreign correspondents that there would be no censorship of their dispatches. For a moment it seemed that freedom might return to totalitarian Paraguay. But it was all done with mirrors.

Gonzalez himself is a prisoner of the army and the Guion Rojo (Red Banner), the anti-democratic wing of the ruling Colorado party. Should he try any democratic tricks, he would certainly be overthrown in accordance with the Guion Rojo motto: "Those who are not with us are against us."

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