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Nestled — or hidden — in between Brazil and Argentina, the country of Paraguay is mostly absent from the global consciousness. An enigma of a nation for most, it bears a turbulent history not forged in isolation but as a consequence of and in conversation with global changes.
In the incisively constructed, archive-footage documentary “Under the Flag, the Sun,” filmmaker Juanjo Pereira positions his small South American homeland as a part of a larger geopolitical context by dissecting the regime of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner. One of the world’s longest-running dictatorships, Stroessner’s rule, under the right-wing Colorado party, began in 1954 after a military coup and only ended in 1989. His promises of progress for the masses eventually turned into a thin veil for violence and human rights violations.
A large percentage of all the material in “Under the Flag” comes from foreign news outlets — some of it from French reporters, a segment from Brazilian television, a few passages in English, plus others likely shot by anonymous cameramen inside the country, likely at great risk. Pereira scoured archives around the world to construct the nonfiction project, but rather than just assembling it, he and editor Manuel Embalse processed the footage for ominous effect, at times playing it in reverse, adding glitches or modifying the color palette. These stylistic flourishes add to the already effective juxtaposition of sound and image that highlight the incongruences between what Stroessner preached and what his government carried out. Solemn declarations about freedom underscore shots of brutalized students.
Some U.S. viewers may still find it surprising to learn of their government’s involvement in perpetuating the suffering of people abroad. Like other autocrats in South America and elsewhere during the second half of the 20th century, Stroessner ruled with the White House’s support — not because his policies ensured the advent of democracy for the Paraguayan people, but because he served U.S. goals of abolishing communism from the Americas. Known as Operation Condor by intelligence agencies, the U.S. meddling in South American politics also affected Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay.
As if in a parade of horrors, the dictators in some of those neighboring countries have cameos in “Under the Flag,” either on screen or mentioned in the narration from the time, further cementing Pereira’s aim to portray the situation in Paraguay as part of a regional affliction. Over more than three decades, Stroessner visited dignitaries beyond the Americas, including those in Japan and France. The trips, whether tacitly or explicitly, legitimized his regime on the world stage even as thousands of Paraguayans were forced into exile or tortured and disappeared at home. The atrociousness went deeper, however.
If Stroessner doesn’t sound to you as a last name typical of a person from a former Spanish colony in Latin American, that’s because the dictator, in no ambiguous terms a Nazi sympathizer, was the son of a German immigrant father. Pereira spends a substantial portion of the doc on Stroessner’s support of Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor behind numerous deaths at Auschwitz, as well as abhorrent experiments. Mengele found refuge in Paraguay among other exiled Nazis and a powerful ally in Stroessner, who granted him Paraguayan citizenship to prevent extradition. Questions about the disturbing connection went unanswered since Stroessner controlled local media and refused to oblige inquiries from foreign journalists when confronted.
Propaganda songs in Guaraní, an Indigenous language still widely spoken in Paraguay, revere Stroessner as a hero. And yet, his government was accused of exploiting and segregating Indigenous communities. That Guaraní has endured as a tongue taught in schools, still present in all aspects of Paraguay, is a fascinating rarity in Latin America. Missing from Pereira’s examination is a more direct engagement with how the language played a role in shaping the country’s identity during the Stroessner years. Though the absence may reflect the limitations of archival material, near the end, a speech by a Guaraní-speaking partyman attests to the façade of false inclusivity that Stroessner procured.
An unsettling and informative introduction to Paraguay’s recent past, “Under the Flag, the Sun” attests to the notion of humanity’s interconnectivity even before the age of the internet. The chain reactions of international affairs reach even the places and people the Global North dismisses — often to their detriment. In preserving the history of Paraguay, Pereira is preserving a communal memory. Proof of the cyclical and mirroring nature of history is the image of a toppled statue of Stroessner that closes the film, an event that has now become synonymous with a fallen tyrant, no matter the latitude.
English (US) ·