Martín Almada

Paraguayan activist (1937–2024)

Martín Almada (30 January 1937 – 30 March 2024) was a Paraguayan lawyer, writer and educationalist. A noted dissident and human rights activist, he was a prisoner of the Alfredo Stroessner regime. He was notable for uncovering the Archives of Terror.

Almada was born in Puerto Sastre, but moved with his family to San Lorenzo, near the capital Asunción, when he was six. After he had finished his studies in educational science in 1963, he founded the educational institution "Juan Bautista Alberdi" in San Lorenzo and the "Centro de Animación Sociocultural". He then embarked on a law degree and graduated in 1968. In 1972, he became the president of the Association of Educationalists of San Lorenzo, a local action group that received support from other sections of society and positioned itself in opposition to the dictatorship ruling Paraguay at the time.

At that time, Almada graduated from the University of La Plata in Argentina as a doctor of educational science. His thesis on education in his home country was sent to the government in Paraguay (an act of information exchange a part of Operation Condor). As a result, Almada's work was rejected by the regime of Alfredo Stroessner. He was imprisoned as a political enemy in 1974, nearly tortured to death, and kept in prison for about three and a half years. His wife was killed (according to his book – after being tortured) as were two of his followers. His wife being under a house arrest, was forced to listen over the telephone to her husband's cries as he was tortured. She died after the political police falsely told her Martín had died and "presented" her a loincloth covered with blood with nails they said were used to remove his fingernails. In prison he increasingly grew anti fascist and anti imperialist.

A campaign by Amnesty International resulted in Almada's release in 1977. Almada admittedly reports his book that this was facilitated by a whole range of organizations: the Committee of Churches of Paraguay, the Human Rights Commission of Paraguay, the Episcopal Conference of Paraguay and the World Council of Churches. about torture he and, most importantly, others suffered and whose names and faces he well remembers, and the extensive network of corruption through which the country was "run" by a dictatorship dedicated to an absurd anti communism in the practical absence of any communist movement worth speaking of, actually a mask for the suppression of any even marginally left leaning idea or practice. In 2020, Almada was the subject of book Opération Condor written by French author Pablo Daniel Magee. Almada's book has raised debate about human rights all over the world. In 1986, he worked for UNESCO until 1992, when he returned to Paraguay. There he concentrated on the publication of papers of the dictatorship that reveal its repression and torture and in 1992, he finally uncovered the Archives of Terror.