Paraguay

Paraguay under General Alfredo Stroessner's dictatorship (1954–1989) — one of the longest-lasting in Latin American history — maintained comprehensive censorship of books, press, and media. Works by the country's greatest writer, Augusto Roa Bastos, were banned; Roa Bastos spent most of his adult life in exile. Opposition literature, works on social justice, and books by exiled Paraguayan writers were suppressed. The end of the dictatorship in 1989 restored press freedom.

Banned books

I, the Supreme

Augusto Roa Bastos

Augusto Roa Bastos's 1974 masterpiece is an interior monologue of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, Paraguay's Supreme Dictator from 1814–1840, examining the nature of absolute power through the despot's own documents, orders, and self-justifications. Written in exile in Argentina, it was banned by Paraguay's Stroessner dictatorship as subversive.

Literary fictionhistorical✊Political

Government / national · 1974 · lifted

Son of Man

Augusto Roa Bastos

Augusto Roa Bastos's 1960 novel, structured as interconnected stories spanning a century of Paraguayan history from the colonial era to the Chaco War, depicts the suffering of the poor with mythological force. Banned under the Stroessner dictatorship along with all of Roa Bastos's works; he spent nearly forty years in exile.

Literary fictionhistorical✊Political

Government / national · 1960 · lifted