- [Voiceover] Like all continents,
South America has had its share of brutal dictators.
In the future, we plan to look
at the worst dictators of every continent,
except Australia and Antarctica of course.
But for now, we've put together a list
of the five worst South American dictators.
Number five is Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay
who was a Paraguayan military dictator
who seized power through a U.S.-backed military coup.
Shtroessner ruled under what amounted to martial law
for virtually his entire tenure,
and used the threat of communism as a justification
for his own undisputed control over Paraguay.
During his time in power, Stroessner's Paraguay
became a haven for Nazi war criminals,
including Josef Mengele, but this is just a tiny fraction
of the travesties committed by his regime.
While Stroessner's rule saw more stability
than any living Paraguayan had known, it came at high cost.
Corruption in Paraguay was so endemic and widespread
that Stroessner himself admitted that Paraguayan officials
were immensely corrrupt during his regime.
On top of this, Paraguay's human rights record
was considered one of the poorest in South America.
During Stroessner's time as the dictator of Paraguay,
an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people were murdered,
thousands more were imprisoned and tortured,
while countless others simply disappeared.
It has even been alleged that his secret police
would bathe their captives in human excrement
and shock them with electric cattle prods
while torturing them.
The secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party
was even dismembered alive with a chainsaw
while Stroessner listened to the ordeal over the phone.
After apparently taking a liking to hearing
the screams of dissidents over the telephone,
Stroessner ordered that recordings of the screams
of tortured dissidents be played
over the phone to their family members.
Eventually however, Alfredo Stroessner was forced
into exile in Brazil, where he spent
the last 17 years of his life before dying in 2006.
Number four is Alberto Fujimori of Peru.
(foreign language speech)
In comparison to other South American dictators,
Alberto Fujimori wasn't so much brutal
as he was hopelessly corrupt.
While analysts have credited Fujimori
with successfully crushing communist insurgents in Peru,
albeit through the use of death squads,
as well as bringing economic stability to Peru,
he was also, unfortunately,
one of the world's worst kleptocrats.
In its Global Corruption Report of 2004,
Transparency International listed Fujimori as leading
the seventh most corrupt government of the modern age,
and estimated that through corruption,
Fujimori embezzled over 600 million U.S. dollars
while many Peruvians lived in abject poverty.
Fujimori ended his presidency by fleeing Peru for Japan
amid a major corruption scandal
and allegations of human rights violations.
However, he was later extradited back to Peru,
and is currently serving time in prison
on charges of corruption and human rights violations.
Number three is Augosto Pinochet of Chile,
(foreign language speech)
who dramatically seized control of Chile
during a U.S.-backed military coup in 1973
that disposed the democratically-elected Salvador Allende.
Over the course of 20 years, Pinochet ruled Chile
with an iron fist and ordered the deaths
of thousands of suspected leftists and communists.
Pinochet's legacy is mired in controversy.
To his supporters, he is the man who saved Chile
from communism, and put it on the path to modernity.
To his detractors, he was an autocratic thug
who ordered countless innocents to be put to death.
Shortly after Pinochet's coup, Chile's new
military government banned all political parties,
and rounded up thousands of people and held them
in a stadium where many were killed on the spot.
Pinochet's regime would later go on to commit
egregious human rights abuses.
According to a report that included testimony
from more than 30,000 people,
Pinochet's government killed at least 3,197 people,
and tortured another 29,000 Chileans.
However, Pinochet's repression
was not met without resistance, as he frequently faced
assassination attempts, where in one instance,
his motorcade was ambushed by insurgents.
Pinochet's bulletproof Mercedes Benz vehicle was struck
by a rocket during this attack, but failed to explode,
and Pinochet suffered only minor injuries.
This resistance only caused Pinochet
to clamp down even harder on his opposition.
His secret police struck back, and redoubled their efforts,
and their methods of torture only became more bizarre.
Pinochet's secret police became infamous
for rounding up suspected communists,
loading them into waiting helicopters,
and then taking them up to high altitudes
to hurl them overboard to their deaths.
By the time of Pinochet's death
on the 10th of December in 2006,
about 300 criminal charges
were still pending against Pinochet,
and his legacy of anti-communism,
aggressive privatization of industries,
and harsh repression has remained a subject
of fierce debate to this day.
Number two is Luis Garcia Meza Tejada of Bolivia.
Garcia Meza began his political career
when he overthrew Bolivia's first democratically-elected
female president during a bloody military coup
that is known today as the Cocaine Coup d'etat.
Like many other South American dictators,
Garcia Meza also enjoyed close ties with former Nazis.
Garcia Meza's nefarious power grab
was infamously backed-up by former SS officer
and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie
and the Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie.
The Garcia Meza regime, while brief,
was best known for its extreme brutality.
After seizing power, Tejada immediately outlawed
all political parties, exiled opposition leaders,
and repressed trade unions.
Some 1000 people are estimated to have been killed
by the Bolivian Army and security forces
in a span of only 13 months,
and Garcia Meza's regime even openly engaged
in state-sponsored drug trafficking,
which is usually a pursuit reserved
for drug cartels and other criminal organizations.
Eventually however, Garcia Meza was forced to resign,
and was tried and convicted for the serious
human rights violations committed by his regime.
After his conviction, Garcia Meza reportedly lived
in considerable comfort while in prison,
with a barbecue, gym, telephone, sauna,
and even an unusually large prison cell.
However, these privileges were later revoked
in response to very public protests
from human rights organizations
and his regime's former victims.
And number one
is Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina,
(foreign language speech)
who came to power through a coup d'etat
that deposed Argentine civilian government,
and started decades of military rule.
Today, Videla's regime is best known
for sheltering Nazi fugitives,
large-scale human rights abuses,
and crimes against humanity,
all of which directly took place under his rule.
These abuses included kidnappings, forced disappearances,
widespread torture, and extrajudicial murders
as well as secret concentration camps.
According to human rights groups,
thousands of Argentinians quote unquote disappeared
while in the custody of the police.
Some were even drugged into a stupor,
loaded into military aircraft, stripped naked,
and then thrown into the Atlantic Ocean to drown
in what became infamously known as death flights.
Videla would later take full responsibility
for his army's actions during his rule
by saying, "I accept the responsibility as the highest
"military authority during the internal war.
"My subordinates followed my orders."
Videla even nearly started a war
with neighboring Chile on a whim,
with only Pope John II's last-minute intervention
preventing a conflict between
the two South American nations.
All in all, during Videla's regime,
Argentina's foreign debt increased fourfold,
and the disparities between the upper class
and lower classes became much more pronounced.
Videla's dictatorship ended in a massive
devaluation of Argentina's currency,
and one of the worst financial crises in Argentine history.
After being ousted and being convicted of numerous crimes,
Videla was sentenced to life in prison
and died after suffering a fall in a shower.
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