ASUNCION - Former Paraguayan Army captain Napoleon Ortigoza, the Western Hemisphere's longest-serving political prisoner who became a symbol throughout Latin America of opposition to military rule, has died of heart failure aged 73.
Although his was an international cause celebre in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, his death yesterday passed
virtually unnoticed outside his native Paraguay.
Ortigoza spent 25 years of solitary confinement in a tiny, windowless cell in a top security prison, on a trumped up murder charge laid by dictator General Alfredo Stroessner in 1962. In fact, he had merely resisted the general's efforts to enlist him into his all-powerful political party, the National Republican Association, widely known as the Colorado Party.
"Paraguay and all of Latin America is in mourning," said Dr Martin Almada, a fellow dissident during the Stroessner years. "Captain Ortigoza died for an ideal and for that he'll be remembered throughout Paraguayan history."
Stroessner was overthrown in a 1989 coup. Now 93 and living in exile in Brazil, he has applied to return to his homeland with his son and grandson. The latter has said he wants to run for political office.
Ortigoza's ordeal finally ended in 1987 when world pressure from Amnesty International and others forced his release.
- INDEPENDENT
